Sunday, September 30, 2012

Planning to Eat

Plans.  It's the only way for me to get anything done.  Meal planning has always been an issue.  When it works, it works really well.  When the plans fail or I fail to plan, we eat takeout.  A lot.  That leads to lethargy and moodiness, which leads to an unhappy family. 

The problem is, meal planning can be a pain in the ass.  It's labor intensive and I've never found a way that works for our family.  Until now.  I found this site, plantoeat.com.  It uses your recipes and you can easily add recipes from the web.  You enter the recipes one time, and have access to them forever.  You can drag them to a calendar and a shopping list will automatically be created. 

Shopping with the list was amazing.  I was in and out in 45 minutes and came in under budget.  I only bought one impulse purchase and it was sprouted sour dough bread, so I feel ok about that. 

Breakfast is Slow Cooker Banana and Coconut Milk Steel Cut Oats

Lunch is leftovers from tonight's dinner, Melt in Your Mouth Chicken Breast, mashed potatoes, and asparagus.  Matty won't eat asparagus, so he had apple sauce with the chicken and potatoes.

Dinner is Crock Pot Beer Chicken

Today I also made Chicken Stew with Kale and Cannellini Beans and Cardamom Pistachio Quick Bread.   Took some stew to a friend who just lost her mom and giving some to my parents tomorrow.  They are down with some kind of viral upper-respiratory bug.  The stew has six cups of the most gelatinous chicken stock you ever saw, all home made and full of the good stuff.  Hoping it will provide nourishment and calming healing to each of them.   I haven't tasted the bread yet, but will report back.

So, planning to plan meals?  CHECK!  Keeping up with that and making it a habit?  TO BE DETERMINED.


Saturday, September 29, 2012

Is it the journey or the destination?

My life is crazy.  It's all react, react, react and I'm over it. I want to live with more intention and purpose. 

I'm not a big planner.  More acurately, I'm not good at following through.  The thing is, I have this dream.  Really, an honest to goodness dream.  I'm not a dreamer.  I'm the girl who didn't waste time imagining her wedding dress, wedding, or husband.  I didn't know what I wanted to be when I "grew up".  Fast forward a few years and here I am, a married chick with a kid, a dog, and a house that I own.  And a job.  A responsible job that pays well and offers even better benefits.   Ah, but all is not as vanilla as it seems.

We're actually a round family trying to find our way in a square world.  My spouse is my wife, Mellie (Mel).  We're not married since that's illegal.  We have been together for fourteen years.  We finally had a committment ceremony last year on a lesbian cruise.  Just the two  us (and about 100 other lesbian couples).  The kid?  The awesome kid that we have?  Not conceived from or carried in either of our bodies.  His name is Mathew (Matty) and he is the son of my brother.  We've had him since he was 1.  He's 11 now and is on the Autism spectrum.  The dog is yellow lab named Jackson.  He is the one planned member of our family.  Everyone else just came together from circumstance but sometimes that is the best way, or at least for us. 

The house is in Delaware.  Just a simple, new construction house with a little back yard, but I've got plans for that barren back yard.  I've got plans for our whole lives IF I can quit my job and make them a reality.  Actually, it's the quitting of the job that is my goal.  On the first Monday that I would have been at work but instead get to take my kid to school and come home and make my house a home, I will consider that goal met.  

The biggest threat to this plan is me and my own BS.  If I put too much into this too soon, I will burn out and never meet my goal.  That's just the way I am was.  So I'm going to try to make monthly and weeky goals in order to meet the big goal in the sky.  Think I can pull it off?  Stick around and find out.