Meal plan 5/21/20-5/27/2020

Thursday 5/21/2020
L: nachos, salad
D: Roast potatoes and cauliflower, and something else?  I just don't remember what it was.

Friday
L: sandwiches, salad
D: leftover fried rice, stir fried green beans and broccoli

Saturday:
L: Takeout.  Finney's.  Tasty, but hurt my tummy later
D: Brown rice risotto with mushrooms and fava beans, loosely based on a recipe from Run Fast, Cook Fast, Eat Slow

Sunday:
L: Mac and cheese?  Leftovers?
D: Lentil soup

Monday: (holiday, but who am I kidding we worked)
L: Quesadillas, Ramen, Salad
D: Leftover soup, kale chips

Tuesday:
L: Sandwiches, mac and cheese, salad
D: Favorite chicken, leftover risotto, salad, leftover lentil soup

Wednesday:
L: Takeout.  Los Agaves taco bar.
D: Was going to be pasta, instead will be leftovers from lunch and soup and rice.

I've started taking probiotics to help with tummy issues.

We have half a head of lettuce left, an onion, and a green pepper.  Plus some cherries, bananas, and some apples.

2017 Goals - Weeks 4 and 5!

Two for the price of one! Because for the last 3 weeks at least 2 family members have been sick with something.  First fever/ cold/ then infections because the cold wouldn't let go (antibiotics), follows by a stomach virus.  Big kid missed 4 days of school, little kid still has it.  Daddy and I are just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

1. Exercise: as of Saturday 2/4/17
Running: 300 miles: To date: 18.33 miles  (running group started up again!)
Biking: 500 miles: To date: 0 miles (rain, sickness)
Swimming: 50 miles: To date: 4.19 miles 
Walking: 150 miles: To date: 21.92 miles
Weights/ yoga: 30 minutes a week (1560 this year): 216 minutes (3 weeks, sleeping on the couch)

2. Grocery bill: Keep it under $7000 ($134.62/wk): $xxxx (gatorade, saltines, applesauce).  I'm going to have to update you on week 6.  No access to the home computer and haven't updated the spreadsheet.

3.  Weight: Still good.

4.  Family:
Go on 12 family hikes: Zippo. Nada.  Unless cleaning up barf counts
Do game night once a week: Nope

5.  Crafts:
- Crochet a blanket (a "thermometer" granny square blanket, based on the temperature each day): Orange!  It was over 80 for 3 days.  

- crochet a purse: nothing
- finish a quilting baby blanket: done

- participate in my quilting group's exchange: nothing
- make 12 snowflakes: nothing
- attempt to make socks: I've pinned a bunch of instructions?

6.  Sleep: keep track of it and see if the low dose estrogen helps: Not great sleep this week because I was sleeping on the couch (see sick husband and barfing children).

7.  Food: eat vegan 2 days a week: Came close last week, maybe a little cheese.  No attempt this week, but probably close anyway.

8.  Cookbooks: Try 1 recipe from every cookbook I own:
Quinoa pineapple stir-fry from Veganomicon last week.  This week, nothing.

9.  Work:
     a. Skills: Learn enough programming to automate the data pulls for problem lots (which requires pulling data from 2 different databases).  Haven't worked on this yet.
     b. Personal:  Don't engage.  Really.  Did okay here.

10.  Home: Contact contractor/ architect on adding a second bathroom.Nothing

11.  Garden: actually plant tomatoes this year.  Baby steps. Nothing
Ooh, need to add: put some ground cover in the back dirt patch

12.  Spouse: once a month lunch date: nothing.  He was sick and I was doing triple duty (work/ kid/ household).  He's still sick, stomach bug this time.

13.  Beverages:
- Drink less coffee and more tea (one cup coffee per day): This was a rough 2 weeks.
- Do not buy any wine aside from my two wine club memberships: No wine here!
- Drink two 24-oz bottles of water a day, minimum.  My doc thinks that my occasional light-headedness when exercising is a combo between low blood pressure + slight dehydration.
Mmm...note to self.  Do not try to "make up" for a low water day after 7:15 pm.  I woke up 5 times to pee.  Ugh.

14.  Mom's nights/ dad's night once a month: Done!

15.  Host friends.  We hosted before everyone got sick.

Weekend Cooking Chores again

We now interrupt this "Frugal Eating on Vacation" series (mostly because I've written #5, but not #4) to discuss weekend cooking again.

My weekend cooking has been coming and going with the crazy weekends and back to school stuff.  Oh, I usually cook at least one thing.  And I make something for the pot luck.  But honestly, the thought of prepping everything for a week is kind of daunting, and I haven't been doing it.

Yesterday was a busy day with swim lessons (I helped a friend with twins who needed a second adult in the pool with her 2 year olds), then beach, then lunch out with toddler friends, then more beach.  It ended with babysitting the neighbor girls (3 of them) so that their parents could celebrate their anniversary.  Our kids are all great buddies, so they played, screamed, made lots of noise, ate popcorn, spilled popcorn all over...you can probably imagine.

But Sunday, well, that's food prep day.  My nine year old decided to try playing baseball.  The practice league just started, so today was his first game.  They left at 9:30 and didn't get home until 1 pm.  Toddler didn't want to go, so I got busy cooking for 2 hours while he spent way to much on the pad.

Here's what's cooking:
Pork chops in crock pot (easiest way to cook them). I know, a waste of good pork, but I'm going to stretch it by putting it in fried rice.

Fried rice: I cooked up some rice.  I chopped a million tiny green onions, plus some cilantro. I will also add peas and maybe carrots. This is going to be dinner/ lunch for much of the week.

Blueberry muffins.  So, we have these freeze dried blueberries from Costco, that you buy on line - big bucket of various fruits.  Cheaper than the little bags at Trader Joe's.  But this one bag got opened and then left  open, and they are soggy not crunchy.  So I have this buttermilk, and I found a recipe for muffins with buttermilk... (I have buttermilk because I came home from a school function to find that spouse hadn't put food away after dinner, including the ranch dressing.  So I bought buttermilk and made some instead of buying it.)

Butternut squash. Yes, in this heat, I had the oven on. I need veggies for the week, so I roasted the squash.  It gets mashed and mixed with pomegranate seeds (first of the season), toasted walnuts, chopped apple, raisins, and cinnamon.  Yum.

Salad.  Yes I washed 2 heads of lettuce.  At least they were small.

Green beans and yellow peppers.  Washed and sliced, and destined for a stir fry side.

Salmon salad (with mayo, cottage cheese, and pickles) - half for today, half for tomorrow.

Only half the dishes

On an unrelated note - I realize those of you who occasionally read my blog do not do it for my awesome photography.  And that's a good thing.  Because I cannot seem to get photos anymore.  My computer doesn't recognize my phone to download, and the few other ways I had it set up (google photos, google drive, picasa albums), well, those don't work either.  It's like my phone is it's own little monster.  If I figure it out I'll add them back in.  (Had to email them to myself.)

Healthy Eating on Vacation - Part 3. Train travel

Welcome to Part 3 of my Healthy Eating on Vacation series - Train travel.

Mid-way through our trip, we took a train from my family's to my in-laws house.

This involved:
1.  2 hour drive to the "big city" (Erie)
2.  Dinner in Erie
3.  Overnight hotel stay
4.  Breakfast at McDonald's (included in the hotel stay)
5.  Train trip to Upstate NY

Train travel is much like airplane travel.  The food on Amtrak sucks (I know this by experience).  Luckily, this was a short trip - supposed to be 6 hours (was actually 7 due to construction).  I've been on 24 hour trips before...no fun in the food department.

This trip had a few new challenges:
1.  We had to carry all our bags with us (no checked bags)
2.  We were leaving from a hotel room, not from home. That limits your food choices.
3.  We were in the city for dinner, with no kitchen

Let's start with step 1: dinner.  Erie is like any other city, with many restaurants and grocery stores.  I knew that my stepdad would want to have dinner at a restaurant, and truthfully - we hadn't eaten out all trip at that point.  I chose Applebees, because I know they have paleo-friendly, lower calorie options.  I also know that they have meals that my stepdad likes.

In general, I avoid sit-down restaurants with the kids because the 3 year old cannot sit still.  And in fact, he didn't.  When his older brother was 2 to 4, we didn't eat out either.

I ordered the Napa chicken with portobellos.  I have to say, it was kind of bland and overcooked.  But my 3 year old loved it.  So much for choosing healthy - I ended up eating one of his mini-sliders. I tried to talk him into getting chicken, because he likes chicken, but NO.  (Step #1 of a good mom, always order something that your kid likes.  Step #2 be willing to trade with him.)

From there we went back to the hotel to go to bed.  We had a room with 2 double beds.  My stepdad was next door.  We all slept great!  Okay, I lie.  My toddler fell out of the bed.  So my husband joined us so we could trap him.  Two adults, one toddler, in a full bed.  And the toddler did NOT want to share, so he woke up every half hour to push, kick, and complain.

Train left at 7 am.  So we were up at 5 am.  We went to McDonald's for breakfast.  I know, I know.  But this particular hotel had no breakfast, but they gave you a voucher to the McD's across the parking lot.  Again, you have to be flexible.  Big boy ordered pancakes, but only ate one.  Toddler ate the other one.  I had a coffee (my second, the first was from the hotel office), and an Egg McMuffin, because I figured it would be filling.

Next thing we did is pack up.  This particular room had a fridge.  I'd taken some snacks in a cooler up with us.  This is a good tip - your food choices expand when you have access to refrigeration.  It was very nice of my stepdad to drive us up and stay up overnight to take us to the station.

Snacks from the fridge that we packed up:
1.  string cheese
2.  hard boiled eggs - I peeled them at the hotel and put them in a baggie with salt and pepper
3.  apples
4.  raw veggies again (cucumber, carrots mostly)

Other snacks:
Granola bars
Nuts
2 small bags of M&Ms from grandpa's house.  That candy did come in handy.  My newly potty trained toddler is afraid of public restrooms (can you blame him?) His reward for using the train bathroom was the M&M's.
Water bottles

So my meals looked like this:
Breakfast: egg McMuffin
Snack: shakeo protein shake (I just made it and shook it up and drank it on the way to the train station)
Lunch/snacks on the train: Quest bar, raw veggies, apple, eggs, string cheese.
Dinner: birthday party at my MILs house!  Did I mention that we were traveling on hubby's birthday?

Again, my husband and kids bought some additional snacks, coffee, water, and lemonade from the train.

All in all the 7 hour trip wasn't too bad.  Amtrak seats are pretty comfy and spacious. The kids napped, watched movies, colored, played games on the pads.  We enjoyed the sights, the brief view of the lake.  We had to stop 2x for construction, which made us an hour late.

Probably the most exciting/ scary/ stupid part was watching people at the Erie station.  There was a cargo train that went by before the passenger train.  About 1/4 mile down the tracks there were two people purposely standing in front of the train and jumping out at the last minute.  For both trains.  I hope they were arrested.  Sometimes I think about Darwin, but really you have to feel bad for the guys driving the train.

Have you ever traveled by train?  Do you have any other tips on packing food for the train?

Healthy Eating on Vacation - Part 2. When you are the cook

Welcome to Part 2 of my series: Eating Healthy on Vacation.

Part 2 covers "When you are the cook", aka "When you have control".

Let's face it, when you are cooking at home, you have control over what goes into your food and what you eat.  Traveling has a whole other set of problems.  I went over my method of controlling my food on an 18-hour day of driving and flights (basically, take all your own food).  Now I'm going to review my methods when I'm the cook.

We spent a week with my stepfather.  He doesn't cook, so I did the cooking. This is a good thing!  However I had to navigate some picky eating - his and mine.  And my brother's family was over for dinner a couple of times, resulting in my cooking for 8 or 9 people.  This wasn't too terrible because I normally batch-cook anyway.  There were just no leftovers.

The difficulty in a new place is the type and quality of food.  My options were Walmart and... Walmart.  (That's not totally true, there is a farmstand and family gardens.)  My stepdad insisted on buying vegetables ahead of time, which is hard when he doesn't eat them. I am picky about my veggies.  I get very high quality in California (hello CSA!)  So when in other places, I am likely to look at the veggies, and the price, and make choices.  For example, I may go in looking for cucumbers and peppers, but leave with cauliflower and carrots, because they look better.

That meant I was doing a LOT of winging it with what he got.  He generally wasn't interested in the veggies himself, so I tried to make what we had tasty.  Here's what I made:

raw veggies: peppers, carrots, cucumbers (from his and my sister's gardens) with hummus
Greek salad (onion, peppers, cucumber, olives, tomatoes)
Sauteed frozen broccoli
Sauerkraut and kielbasa (homemade sauerkraut from my BIL!)
Quesadillas
Baked chicken tenders with hashbrowns
Salad

I also went to a family party (took the Greek salad to it). My siblings brought lots of yummy foods, homemade mostly.  I tend to give myself one meal "off" a week, so I don't need to stress in that situation.  And I didn't!  I also have a bunch of recipes saved for later.  There was cowboy beans, pulled pork, jalapeno dip, corn pudding, pie, meatball sandwiches, veggies and hummus, salads...

The big difficulty during this week was the junk food - candy, cookies, chips, gatorade, soda, beer.  (This was also a challenge for the second half of the trip.)  It's hard to say no to it all the time, and my 9 year old is a gatorade fiend (we almost NEVER buy it).  I ended up hiding the candy so that they didn't know about it, and they only really had chips or cookies a couple of times.  I admit to a beer (or a few) and some sodas.  The liquid calories were the killer all around, especially gatorade for the big kiddo.  The little one was fine with water and milk.

It's hard to say no when it is there!  This is why my #1 recommendation for anyone trying to lose weight or be healthy is this - KEEP IT OUT OF THE HOUSE.   Now, there are some things that I didn't realize would even be tempting - like the soda! I don't drink it anymore.  But it was.  Seriously tempting.  Because: there it is, staring at you.

Many people don't want to "deprive" their spouse or kids of the junk food, so they still buy it, and are still tempted.  I say "what??"  I mean the spouse and kids can get it EVERYWHERE - so let them eat it out of the house!  Not stocking it doesn't mean they never get it.

All in all, I did pretty well this week.  It's nice when you have control.  Then, when it's hot out, you can enjoy a little ice cream.

Healthy Eating On Vacation - Part 1. The all-day plane travel

If you are a friend, or follow me on FB or Instagram, then you know my family recently traveled on summer vacation.

This was the year that we traveled to visit our families on the opposite side of the country, for two weeks.  The vacation started with one VERY long day.  We left the house around 5 or 5:30 am, drove two hours to Los Angeles, parked the car and took a shuttle to the airport.

Next up was two 3 to 3.5 hour flights, with a short layover in between.  Then another 2 hour drive to my family's house (luckily my stepfather picked us up AND borrowed an Explorer from his brother).

So, how do you eat healthy traveling all day?  It can be tricky.  You can buy food in the airport, but it is rarely healthy.  If you find healthy food, it's expensive (I paid $7.64 for 2 bottles of water at LAX).  You can find salads, but I find that many salads from "elsewhere" make me sick - as if they don't wash the greens first.  My niece travels for business and she carries ALL her own food, often for 3 full days - otherwise she'll go off plan.  (You can read her blog here.)  That's a little much for me, and I'm not sure how well the food would keep when traveling for as long as we did.  (By the time we made it to the house, we'd been "on the road" for 18 hours).

It's of course frugal to bring your own food, also.

Well let's start with my parameters.  First of all, my breakfast is pretty much shakeology every day.  I prefer to blend it with ice and banana.  On the long flight, that's what I did - made it, chugged it, and rinsed out my container and packed it before we left.

I'd really planned on staying "on track" with the 21 day fix for the full trip.  Here was my loose plan on the first travel day:

Breakfast: Shakeo w/ banana (1 red, 1 purple)
Snack in the car: 2 hard boiled eggs, Mary's gone crackers (1 red, 1 yellow)
Lunch at LAX: Vega One shake, apple, raw veggies (1 red, 1 purple 1 green) (I chose Vega One because they mix will with just ice and water)
Snack on the plane: Cashews and cucumber/tomato salad (1 orange, 1 green)
Dinner in Houston: Quest protein bar and more veggies (1 red, 1 green)
Snack: Kind bar: (1 blue, 1 tsp)

I did pretty well, but honestly don't remember exactly what I ate.  We spent a couple of hours or more at the United Club in LAX.  They had nice breakfast options (and good coffee), so I may have had part of a bagel.  They had switched over to lunch before we left.  For my lunch I had packed a tomato and cucumber salad - the lunch offered included hummus and kalamata olives, so I took some of the olives to add to my salad and some hummus to eat with my veggies later.  I also tossed some cheese cubes in my container to go with my crackers.

Of course I drank a ton of water, but carefully timed because you don't want to be stuck on a plane having to pee when the seat belt light is on.  Which the boys and I BOTH had to do when we weren't allowed up.  When the light went off again, yes I went to the bathroom FIRST.  But on the other hand, I let my old son pee in a bottle, while I held a blanket to cover him.  Those $7 bottles of water came in handy.

Bonus: they have bubble water/ seltzer as an option now on United flights, which beats juice/ soda for me.

More about the Vega One: I got the vanilla chai based on online recommendations, and it was yucky. And now I have 28 more of them.  I think I may try to blend them with blueberries, and see if it gets better.  Or bananas.  Or donate them.  Because, yuck.

So, what did my family eat?  Well, I wish I'd taken a picture.  But I didn't.  Each family member got two small baggies with their name on them.
One had raw veggies (carrots, snap peas, cucumber, peppers)
One had other snacks, like nuts, granola bars, or a small chocolate bar.
Each family member also had an apple.
I also took string cheese that I'd frozen so it would defrost as we went.

I did not worry about lunch and dinner for the family.  They ate at the airports.  It's too much work to worry about me AND them, and they like eating out anyway.  Honestly, I don't even remember what they ate at the airports, aside from the free food in the United Club.

In summary, recommendations for healthy eating for long plane travel:
1.  For produce, pack as many fruits and veggies as you'd normally eat during that time.
2.  Fruit: pick things that keep well: apples, oranges - not bananas that mush easily.  Berries or melon in a tupperware container will be good too, and more of a "treat" (with a plastic fork).
3.  Vegetables: raw is your friend. Maybe you can find hummus at the airport.  Chopped salads are great, especially ones that you can pre-dress, like cucumber or bean salads or kale salads.  Depending on how long you are waiting to eat them, I'd avoid dairy.
4.  Pre-pack in baggies or containers with everyone's name, so you don't forget anyone.
5.  Make sure to pack "treats" (100 calorie chocolate bars for us) for the trip.
6.  Bring an empty water bottle for each person (I paid $7.64 for 2 bottles of water at LAX).
7.  Bring some protein - hard boiled eggs, string cheese, nuts.  You can bring tuna packets but do NOT eat those on the plane!
8.  Eat the perishable foods FIRST.  Early in the day you'll be eating the eggs and cheese and berries.  Later in the day you'll be eating apples and nuts.
9.  For inspiration, pretend like you are camping without refrigeration
10.  Pack an "emergency" snack bag, in addition to bags for each family member.  I cannot tell you how many times we have been traveling and we ended up running between flights - so NO time to get food in the airport.  Then, on the next flight, we'd end up in the back of the plane - they would run out of food for sale before they got to us.  My emergency snack bags usually have nuts, fruit, candy, granola bars, crackers.

Let me know in the comments if you have any more tips!

A Word on Variety

A continuation of the theme of "Why do people...?" instead of cook.

I think a lot of it is variety.

Think about that a little.

When I was a child, my mother cooked "American" food.  It was pretty repetitive.  Chicken, meatloaf, spaghetti, chili, burgers, scrambled eggs during lent, corned beef and cabbage, sauerkraut and kielbasa, ham and bean soup, mashed potatoes, canned vegetables.

I have friends from "elsewhere".  A lot of my Chinese friends eat mostly Chinese food.  My Indian friends make Indian food.  My Mexican friends eat Mexican food (you see where I am going here?)

As I hit adulthood and left my small town, I was able to try other cuisines.  And I liked them.

I love Indian, Thai, Korean, Mexican, Italian, Chinese, Middle Eastern, Greek food.

I like variety.
I get bored with the same old flavors.

But eating different foods comes with a cost.

If you don't know how to cook it, then you are eating out.  How many people know friends who, for lunch or dinner, often say "what do you feel like, Indian or burritos?"

If you do know how to cook it, then you have time and money invested in learning how to cook the dishes (they are all very different), and in the ingredients.  Cumin is great for Middle Eastern,  Mexican, and Indian, but a lot of the other cuisines use many other spices and ingredients.

And of course you must practice.  I made a mean stir-fry in my day, but now I tend to slow cook things, and I end up overcooking the stir-fry.  Because I'm out of practice.

Mr. Money Mustache talks a lot about hedonic adaptation.  How as you get used to things - air conditioning, nice vacations, nicer cars - they become necessary and you must move the next bigger better thing - because you no longer enjoy what you used to have.

I think the same thing holds true with food.
When you get used to having someone else serve you and cook your food, you don't enjoy doing it yourself anymore.
When you get used to having *any* kind of food you want, whenever you want, cooked properly - you lose the ability to enjoy your own home cooked repetitive meal.

And of course, there is the expense - both time and money.
- money - all the different spices and ingredients for each type of cuisine
- time - if you want to have a great burrito, or salad, based on a restaurant - you have to make the chicken, the salsa, the guacamole, and then shred the cheese, wash and prep the lettuce and vegetables, etc.  There are several steps involved.

Another really good source of "frugal simple food" for me is Frugalwoods.  I recently found this blog and enjoyed reading some of their archives.  One of the things that they do is cook up a batch of beans and rice on the weekend, and they eat it every day for a week for lunch.  They also have oats for breakfast, and rotate dinners.

This is frugal and simple:
- the ingredients are cheap
- they are "used up" and not wasted because you eat them until they are gone
- it's very simple - the meals themselves are simple to make, and they are made once and reheated.

This, of course, prompted me to cook up a batch of beans and rice over the weekend.  There were definitely some comments on their blog with "I could never do that, I'd get bored".  I think, personally, you would get used to it.  Another blog that used to post their meals (I don't think they do anymore) was Path to Freedom in Pasadena.  They are urban homesteaders.  They would also make a batch of beans and rice, and eat it for lunch and dinner until it was gone, and then make something else.  Food is fuel.

There was a time, after baby #2 when I was only working part time, when that was my method.  I would cook up a batch of "something" for dinner for the week, and a separate batch of "something" for lunch for the week.  The lunches tended to be beans and rice, or spaghetti, or sandwiches.  The dinners varied by time of year.  And then Wednesday was crock pot day (which also aligned with "we are out of dinner #1" day).  It helped that it decreased the tendency to overeat at lunch, because by Thursday or Friday, you are tired of the food.

Of course times change, and I'm back full time.  I still use some of the techniques, but not as many.  The challenges I face now are:
- weight loss.  I've lost a bunch of weight, but it was never going to happen on beans and rice, or sandwiches, or spaghetti.  I cannot eat that many carbs.  So I tend to eat salad, which I can only prep a day or two in advance.  (I have 10 pounds to go, and these are the stubborn ones.)
- CSA - we get a lot of variety, and they aren't necessarily conducive to "one-pot" or "prep ahead"
- kids - I find myself packing lunches during the school year
- time (always!) - Last night we had a date night, and I didn't feel like packing lunch. So, I went to bed late, and skipped the gym.  I thought about going for a walk when I woke up at 5:30 am, but opted to prep my lunch for the day ... it took an hour.  Washing and chopping cucumbers, green onions, peppers, and tomatoes for a salad.  Washing and peeling a bunch of carrots for a snack (I eat at least 3 cups of veggies a day, and have to prep them all).  Packing lunch for the 9 year old.
- volume - I am cooking and prepping for four people (though I don't have to do lunch for my child in daycare and during most of the summer I don't have to pack lunch for my 9 year old.  And I also don't pack my husband's lunch anymore, but I *do* make sure we have lunch things available.)

It's always good to be reminded of how lack of variety makes life more simple.  It's really okay to eat raw veggies and a protein for lunch every day.  It certainly also helps me lose weight - just instead of "beans and rice" for lunch, it's "vegetables and protein".

How much variety do you need in your life?

Superbowl Sunday

Well, I survived another week.  Thanks to Smowmaggeddon, my husband's trip to the frigid northeast was canceled last minute (well, postponed really, to an undecided date).  Yay!  The week ended up a social whirlwind.

I am a fairly social person for an engineer.  I have a lot of groups of friends and like to cultivate and embrace them.  But that's a lot of work.  On the Myers-Briggs surveys I tend to come in at ESTJ or INTJ.  I am weak in the E/I and S/N.  I find that when I was a supervisor of a group of six, I leaned more ESTJ.  But now that I'm more of an individual contributor, I lean more INTJ.  Interesting.

Anyway, this week sported:
Morning brunch potluck at the park (Sun) - standing weekly date
Elementary kid birthday party (tons of fun, lots of parents to talk to), it was at a ropes climbing course. (Sun)
PTA move-a-thon planning meeting (Mon)
Fundraiser for school at local pizza place (Tues) - are you tired yet?
Out for a glass of wine (and she brought cheese/ crackers, I took nuts) with a good friend (Weds)
Lunch out with a former boss and couple of others (Fri)
Lunch out with a good friend (Sat)

Well, it definitely hit all at once (that is 6 months worth of social engagements for me).  Also I had PMS so maybe my food choices weren't always the best (sometimes they were!)  I also had about 6 months worth of beer and wine (a total of 4 beers and 2 glasses of wine all week).

So for Superbowl Sunday?  There's our standing date for the potluck, then to the pool with the boys, then...nothing.  No plans, other than to occasionally check the score to see if I've won money in the pool (my numbers are 8 and 5, so...I'm not particularly hopeful).  And of course I wrote this yesterday, we all know I won no money.

Here's a snapshot of the CSA, the menu and cooking for the week:
Beets: roasted for salads, steamed the greens to go into a frittata for today's potluck
Lettuce and radishes: lunch salads
Butternut squash:  Roast
Cauliflower (from a coworker): Roast for tonight's dinner
Kale: chips (last night)
Parsley: I washed and spun 2 very large bunches and stuffed it into a small ziploc bag for the freezer.  No way I could have used it all up.

I also made refried beans in the crock pot (from 100 days of Real Food), but I must have put too much water in there.  They were like soup, so I had to cook them down for an hour after.  We used canned beans for last night's burritos.

Left to do today:
Make the frittata
Make granola
Figure out what to make for dinner.  There was an interesting chicken and lentil soup I saw on the kitchn this week.  So maybe that?  Or  maybe something else?  It's a bad sign that I haven't figured it out yet.
Wash the lettuce and radishes and some carrots for the week's lunches (mine and the 3rd grader's)

A few photos of the work - so much of the prep work is for lunches.

Here's an outside picture of my lunch (salad)

Here's my 3rd grader's lunch (that's homemade hummus!)

Here's some roasted carrots - my coworker gave me a bunch of HUGE free carrots, so I made them into "fries" and baked them.  And we'll probably not eat them until tomorrow.

How I food prep

An example of my weekly prep:

My life is so busy right now, and I’m trying to lose weight, so my success heavily hinges on my weekend prep.  I spent some time on the internet looking for examples, recommendations, tips and tricks to help.  I didn’t find much.

So instead, I decided to write down what I do and see where I can make improvements.

Step 1:  Figure out what you like to eat.  This is the biggest thing. 

-          Find things that you like to eat ALL THE TIME – these will be staples

-          Find things that are easy to make

Step 2: Figure out your schedule

-          When are you eating breakfast, lunch, dinner? Snacks?

-          Are you eating at home, at work, at a soccer game?

-          Are there certain nights that you work late and are tired?

Step 3: Any special goals?

-          Do you prefer to eat organic? Local?

-          Are you trying to lose weight?  Save money?

-          Do you have special dietary needs?

Step 4: The meal plan

-          Do you want to plan daily, weekly, monthly?

-          Do you want to incorporate leftovers?

-          Do you have time to shop more than once/ week?

-          What can you prepare ahead of time?

-          What will go bad first? (What produce lives longer vs. not)

Step 5: Make a list of “best”, “better”, “okay”, “rather not”

-          Best: cook from scratch with local ingredients

-          Better: cook from scratch with grocery store ingredients

-          Okay: prepared foods from the fridge or freezer section of the store: Costco chicken, frozen pizza, frozen chicken tenders, pre-prepared meatballs, pre-sliced deli turkey

-          Rather not: eat takeout food

-          (Your list may be different!)

For my family, it would look like this:

1.        We eat just about everything.

2.       “Easy to make” for us means Trader Joe’s frozen breaded chicken tenders, microwaved vegetables, frozen pizza, one-pot spaghetti, crockpot meals, soup.

3.       Breakfast at home, snacks and lunch at work (microwave available for the adults, not the kiddo), Dinner at home.  Always tired but especially Friday.

4.       Special goals: weight loss (meaning: extra time chopping veggies and counting calories, so try to keep meals simple – more whole foods or proportioned packaged foods, fewer homemade casseroles).  Salads, steamed veggies, hard boiled eggs, deli turkey, fruit, almonds, cottage cheese.  Most of what I eat is a single-ingredient.

5.       Meal plan – I plan weekly, or every couple of days.  I usually make something on the weekend, then fill in during the week with our “easy” meals.  “Make ahead” meals are things like vegetable soups, bean burritos, pasta.

6.       Vegetables that go bad first tend to be the leafies or the things like peppers.  Carrots last longer.

7.       Shopping – strictly once per week for me.

Here’s an example of a weekend prep.  I spread it out over a couple of days.

Breakfast:  (What do you like to eat?  What about the family?)

1.       Make sure you don’t run out of cereal and milk (easy, husband’s fave)

2.       Or oatmeal (cheap)

3.       Or bananas (I have a smoothie every day)

4.       Bagels and cream cheese (kids)

5.       Toast (last resort)

Snacks:

1.       Veggies and hummus or dip.

-          Wash and make veggie sticks: carrots, celery, snap peas, peppers, cucumber.  Package up in five small Ziploc bags for each day of the week.  Prep time: about 20 minutes, dependent entirely on how small the carrots are from the CSA (so much peeling!)

-          Buy hummus or Goddess dressing for dipping.  Measure out.

2.       Cottage cheese or nuts and fruit

-          Buy apples.  Buy pre-bagged almonds.  Buy cottage cheese and scoop out each day.

3.       Ham and cheese (or turkey and cheese) rollups

-          Buy deli meat and sliced or string cheese.  Pack up each day.

Lunch:

I pretty much eat salad every day for lunch.

-          Wash a head of lettuce.  Depending on the size of the head, this is 2-3 salads.  This is about 10 minutes per head. I store the rest of the washed lettuce in a Ziploc baggie (large) with a paper towel.

-          Hard boil a dozen eggs (my children sometimes snack on my eggs, so I need to cook up a bunch): 20 minutes total.

-          Keep small pouches of tuna or salmon on hand for when you run out of eggs.  Or canned beans.

-          Mix up a bottle of vinaigrette dressing, or buy Trader Joe’s bruschetta and use that for dressing, with a little added vinegar.

-          Each day: put dressing in the bottom of the Tupperware container.  Add chopped veggies (I usually take a few out of my snack baggies).  Peel and chop two eggs to put on top.  Finish with the lettuce.  (Essentially, wet on the bottom, dry on the top.)  Shake up at work before lunch and eat – bonus – only one dish to wash!  Time: about 10 minutes.

Dinner:

1.       Make one big meal on the weekend, two if I’m being ambitious.  This could be:

-          One pot pasta

-          Refried beans in slow cooker, made into burritos

-          Soup

-          Fried rice

-          Pork shoulder in the crockpot

2.       Eat this for dinner until you run out.  I aim for it to be 2-3 meals, no more.  If it’s soup, I make a double batch and immediately freeze half for later.

3.       When you run out of this for dinner, move on to plan B:

-          Soup from the freezer

-          Grilled cheese sandwiches

-          Microwaved vegetables with some sort of thing from Trader Joe’s or Costco like pizza or chicken

-          Costco chicken

-          Crockpot

-          Cheater stir fry (chopped veggies, frozen meatballs, Trader Joe’s island soyaki sauce)

-          Pancakes or cereal

4.       Don’t forget Saturday!  If you have energy, you can cook a special meal on Saturday.  But I find that by the time I get to Saturday, I’m kind of over the whole cooking thing and I forgot to plan for it.

What happens if you are the last one home, the spouse doesn’t feel like cooking?  How can you “help” avoid the takeout trap, or the processed food trap (as you can see, I am not avoiding the processed food trap)?

-          Start small.  Simply cooking one big pot of one-pot pasta on Sunday night – that will last you for 3 meals, depending on the size of your family.  Ingredients are: whatever veggies you have, a jar of marinara, 13 oz of whole wheat pasta, and some meatballs if you’ve got them.

-          Keep emergency food in the freezer for when you don’t even feel like doing that.  Pre-made lasagna, enchiladas.  What are options on the way home from work?  Costco chicken is cheaper than takeout.  Or “just heat and serve” meals from most grocery stores, like mac and cheese.  Deli salads are also an option. People are so busy and cook so little these days that there are TONS of options of ready made food at the store, depending on your budget.

This is Chicken Week and maybe 21-Day Fix

It's no secret that I am trying to lose the last of the baby weight.  By "last", I mean "20-25 pounds".  Which seems like a lot, but remember, I gained 50.

It took 2 years (23 months, actually) to lose it after the first kid, and now I"m 6 years older.  So I'm hoping to get it done by 2 years, but I'm also trying to be realistic.

I've tried many weight loss methods.  Weight watchers worked well for me in the past.  In the old days (2002, 2007), their plan was simple. I was an online member only.  In 2002, you could get a "meal plan" from them.  It was, generally, a very good plan.  Well balanced, very healthy, made from mostly real food. Somewhere along the way, that option disappeared from the web site.  As they changed their plan year to year (based on "new data") I found changes towards more "low-fat" - non-fat cheese, etc., and more push for prepared foods.

I'm not a fan of fat free cheese.  I understand the prepared foods issue, because that's what busy people want.  You don't HAVE to eat their frozen meals, but they are an option.  The most recent re-do of WW just did not work for me at all.  I lost NO weight.  So I gave up on it.  Then I moved on to calorie counting at MyFitnessPal and found that it worked.  As long as I kept my calories at about 1500, it worked.

But boy, calorie counting is a pain, and I simply don't have time to do it all of the time.  So I've tried other "cheat" ways around it.  I mean, once I get a meal plan going, it should be easy, right?  So I tried Chris Powell's "carb cycling" plan.  That worked, but I found it to be too hard.  Low-carb days were difficult for me to do on a schedule, simply because I bulk cook on the weekend.  So if I make a big pile of pasta, I can't just eat it every other day or it will go bad.

Enter the 21-Day Fix by beachbody.  My coworker is using this and she LOVES it.  So I ordered it.  I ordered it for a couple of reasons:
1. It comes with 30 min workouts.  And, well, my kids are starting to let me work out in the morning.  20-34 minutes is all I get.
2. It comes with containers.  "If it fits it ships". So, for my 1500 calorie range, I'd get a certain number of containers, color coded by type of food.  Kind of like a general meal plan but easier.  If you can fit it into the container, you can eat it.

It also comes with "Shakeology" which frankly, I'm not too excited about.  The normal cost for this meal-replacement shake is $4 per serving, not really in  my budget for a meal that you drink.  But hey, overall, if it helps me drop into the 140's, it will be worth it.

It's not here yet, so I'll update you when it gets here.

I've also been eating a lot of chicken.  Meal plan for the week:
1. Yesterday I made spanish rice/quinoa, pinto beans, and bought a roasted chicken from Whole Foods.  I delivered this to a friend who is pregnant with her 4th child, as a "freezer meal" for after the baby is born.
2. I used the chicken carcass to make stock
3. I used older chicken stock to make chicken tortilla soup
4. I am hoping to make ginger carrot soup today with chicken stock
5. I am going to make lemon chicken pasta for dinner tonight

I'll finish with some pictures from our walk in the rain...it's been pouring for a few days - we needed it!  We've had a drought.  Crazy waves, lots of damage in town, including a restaurant window that broke.

Meal prepping

So it's no secret by now that I do a lot of meal prepping on the weekends.  It's a little easier now that the baby is a toddler - he's a bit more independent at the end of the day, so I actually get about 10-30 minutes to prep dinner.  Still I prefer to have food ready to go, because you never know what's going to hit you.  (This week, I have to work late 2 days for conference calls with Japan.)

My niece does a TON of food prep on the weekend.  I bow to her amazingness.  I only do a bit.  But this week the CSA started, so it was a bit of a challenge!  First week of the CSA, first item wasted (a bag of spicy greens, mostly arugula...didn't get to the parsley-arugula pesto making fast enough).

Here's a little summary of what I made over the weekend:

Herb bread (bread machine - that thing was a little dusty)

Massaged kale salad

Kale chips (these were gone at dinner)

Lettuce (two heads, have washed one so far)

Carrot sticks

Moroccan lentil soup

Spanish rice (rice cooker instead of pot)

Roasted baby beets and fennel (for the salads)

Steamed broccoli

How not to start the new year...price book thoughts...menu plan

With a stomach bug.  I don't know if it was food poisoning, a little bug, or just my sensitive tummy...but on January 2nd I left work at 9:15 am (I went in at 7:45 am) and came home and slept all day.  It took me 2 days to get back to normal.

The frustrating thing (aside from being sick) is the waste.  I cannot (and should not) cook for others when I don't know WHAT it is exactly.  We end up eating out more (and by "we", I don't mean "me".  I was eating applesauce and crackers.)  The big pot of stock I made on Wednesday ended up getting thrown out because I forgot about it.  Hate it hate it hate it.

On a more positive note, I've decided to try to declutter this year.  I found a recommendation for Home Storage Solutions "Declutter your home in 15 minutes a day" calendar.  It's a full year calendar.  Now, I'm unlikely to do everything on the list and every day.  But if I even do 1/3 of it - it will be a pretty good start.  It pains me to throw out food, and the kitchen is the focus of January.  But seriously, if I don't exactly remember what that meat is, and when it went into the freezer, it's time to say goodbye.  While I like to think of myself of pretty organized, all of that goes out the window when I have babies or toddlers in the house.

So, we ended up eating half of the "lentil dish" that I made up on New Year's Day.  It was okay, made better when scooped up with naan.  I put the rest in the freezer for another day -  most likely next week when I'll mix it with some precooked ground beef.  And probably eat it with naan. 

Price book thoughts:  I used to have a price book.  In paper, then in Excel.  At some point I realized that I didn't really need it anymore.  The "best prices" for each item rarely changed stores.  I knew the prices for the staples in my head.  And quality comes into play.  While Ralph's often has really good prices on produce, their quality really sucks.  At least locally.  I have also decided to limit the stores that I shop at - in order to save time. The grocery store with the best deals varies by the week. 

Food deals of the week:
Fresh and Easy: We got a Fresh and Easy in the last couple of years, and they are the best source of onions and carrots (0.50/lb).  They also have good deals on meats from time to time.  And the naan that I bought I got from their discount rack.  I froze it right away and only defrost when we are eating it.  They send you email coupons for things you buy regularly.  For me this would be onions and carrots, frozen fruits and vegetables, hummus and crackers.

Trader Joe's is my staple store.  I shop there every week.  This is where I get brown rice, organic dairy, salad mix when the CSA is not in season, salad dressing when I'm too lazy to make my own, marinara sauce, broccoli and mushrooms, frozen berries, crackers, salsa, tortilla chips, frozen chicken fingers and meatballs.

Albertson's: We have Ralph's, Albertson's, and Vons as our "regular grocery stores".  I tend to shop at Albertsons because (1) they are close.  They are 1 mile from home and I can walk there (well, up and over a really big hill). (2) they have the best prices.  Now they do.  This changes as the years change.

The Albertson's deals this week were KILLER:
cheese: $3/lb
sour cream: $1.50
broccoli: $0.49/ lb (which is why is it featured so heavily in my menu below)
mushrooms; $3/lb (also featured in my menu)
pasta: $1/lb

Here's the loose menu plan for the week.  It's a little harder for me to plan now that we don't have the CSA (it starts up again in February):

Sunday:
Lunch: free for all (leftover lentils, tacos)
Dinner: whole wheat spaghetti with marinara, mushrooms, meatballs.  Salad with apples and feta.

Monday:
Lunch: freezer burritos
Dinner: Sunday leftovers

Tuesday:
Lunch: Leftover spaghetti
Dinner: Chicken fingers and broccoli (what else?)

Wednesday:
Lunch: Freezer burritos
Dinner: Beef and broccoli with rice (I cheat by using premade freezer meatballs)

Thursday:
Lunch: ??
Dinner: Leftover beef and broccoli

Friday:  I can't think that far in advance.  Probably pizza.

The other store we shop at regularly is Costco, but not this week.

A Regular Schedule, and how it helps with eating frugally

There are many ways to eat frugally.

There is the "Pantry Principle" (Amy Dacyzyn) - keeping a stocked pantry full of food purchased at rock bottom prices and eat from it. 

There is shopping a few times a week, and buying ONLY what you will eat that week (nothing goes to waste).  (Less is Enough follows this mode).

There is very carefully buying in bulk and planning your meals a month in advance based on this.  This is a strategy used by The Grocery Shrink.

There is heavy use of foraging and collecting free food (at the end of a farmer's market or discards from a grocery store) - 100 Dollars a Month and Penniless Parenting.

And there is simplifying by eating foods on a regular schedule.  This would be the Frugal Healthy Simple method when kids are little and work time is big.

This is really how I've been working lately.  Now that I'm full time, I don't have that extra hour at the end of the day to clean and chop.  Pretty much, if I don't prep it over the weekend, it doesn't happen.

So my regular schedule has many parts to it:
1.  Shop at Fresh and Easy on Friday afternoons, after picking up the baby (it's a few blocks away).
2.  Make TJ's baked chicken tenderloins and steamed broccoli (pre-cut and washed) on Tuesday.  Sure, this meal is on the more expensive side compared to some ($3 for the chicken and $2.29 for the broccoli), but it's easy and predictable.
3.  Make some kind of meat in the crockpot on Wednesday (after we've run out of leftovers from the week) with a frozen vegetable (by Wednesday, the CSA veggies are gone).
4.  Wash all CSA veggies on the weekend.  Steam, roast, freeze, whatever is needed.
5.  Make bread on the weekend (bread machine).
6.  2x a month, cook up a pound of beans.  3/4 of the time, this is refried beans in the crockpot (which turn into bean and cheese burritos in the freezer).  Sometimes, it's another bean.
7.  Make a salad or casserole for Sunday night potluck, which can be eaten during the week if not finished.
8.  Hard boil 1/2 dozen eggs for salad or snacks, once a week.  Twice if my hubby gets into them.
9.  Lunch: I eat the same thing every day.  Salad.  I'm trying to lose some baby weight.  It's not really working - I lost 7 lbs, but if I don't count calories, I stall.  And with the job and the lack of sleep (molars - I have had exactly one 7+ hour stretch in the last 7 days) - it's not happening.  But at least just eating salad keeps the weight in check.  If you eat the same thing every day, you aren't buying many items, and you are less likely to waste food.

Try to check out the freezer once a week and use up things that I put in there, thinking they'd be useful at some point.

The List of Weekend Cooking Chores is LONG this week.

...but the pile of delicious, frugal, and healthy food to eat is HUGE!  Boy what a long weekend it has been for cooking.  One disadvantage of full time working is 8 fewer hours mid-week to do chores.  So then it moves to nights and weekends.  I have a memory of doing a lot of prep in the evenings after Nick went to bed.  Well my friends, I am there again.

This week from the CSA we got 5 lbs of tomatoes.  Yummy.  But that's a lot of tomatoes.  So what do you do?  You make marinara.  Do you have to peel the tomatoes?  According to just about everyone on the internet: yes.

So here's  how the weekend has panned out.

Friday night: Blanch, peel, de-seed 4.5 lbs tomatoes.
Saturday breakfast: Make eggs to go with the pancakes and bacon that we made for the family and my son's friend (sleepover)
Saturday morning: Make 2 lbs of meatballs.
Saturday lunch time: Wash lettuce
Saturday afternoon: make marinara and cook pasta
Dinnertime!  Assemble salad (basically lettuce and dressing.  At this point, I was tired.)

Saturday evening: Put crockpot refried bean ingredients in crockpot
Sunday morning: Drain, mash, turn into 9 bean burritos for the freezer
Sunday lunch time (after coming back from the 3.7 mile walk to and from the Greek festival): Make Arabic lentils and rice, and caramelized onions.

Still yet to come: Make Greek salad with purslane (something new from the CSA), and roast carrots.  Dinner is the lentils and rice and onions and carrots and salad.  Everything microwaved, except the salad.  When you are cooking in 15 min spurts, you just end up reheating everything.