Culinary Adventures

I have been meal planning for a while now ... really, ever since we got serious about our budget. The first several months of marriage, we ate out A LOT and purchased whatever we really wanted from the grocery budget. It is kind of embarrassing to admit that we were somehow spending around $450 a month on groceries while simultaneously eating out for quite a few meals each week.
Now, we are down to $300/month (not including formula ... thank goodness we are almost done with that!), and being intentional about our grocery list is the only thing that makes that happen for us. Especially because I have really started to prioritize organic produce and dairy, hormone-free meat and nothing overly processed. Having a baby and realizing that I will be the one to choose her food and form her eating habits has given me a whole new perspective on what we eat. Especially now that she can eat a lot of our "table" food, I have really overhauled a lot of what is in our pantry.
I finally finished this book at work last night:

There was a lot of interesting history about how Americans relate to and talk about food, and it served as a sort of expose of food science and its shortcomings. In the end, he advocates for "whole foods," providing a set of helpful tips for navigating the modern market. If you want to skip the history and get right to the practical advice, you could read this instead:

And you have to take it all with a grain of salt ... for example, he spends much of the book suggesting that speaking in terms of nutrients and not whole foods is a destructive, while simultaneously suggesting the importance of omega-3s over omega 6s. I know that we can't do everything he suggests -- we have a budget, I have a husband who hates vegetable and I don't have the time to track down food that is all local and organic. But it is definitely worth reading, if for no other reason that to help identify the ways that you have bought into an improper perspective on food.

Sorry for the long tangent.

Back to the meal plan ... I usually only meal plan 7-10 days at a time. The fact that I plan at all is a feat for me, so the ideal of having a monthly plan is overwhelming and stifling to me. I get recipes from cookbooks, magazines, blogs, random internet searches, and Pinterest. And Josh and I both have an aversion to leftovers, so I usually plan 6 meals/week (something usually comes up at least once a week that steals us away from dinner at home). We will either half the recipe, or I will eat the leftovers for lunch (takin' one for the team, people).

I always appreciate when other people share their recipes/strategies, so I figure I would try that as well!

This past week was an epic meal-planning fail in our house, because our blender died. Several of our recipes required its use, so we ate some weird/lame stuff as a result.
But we did have a few big wins:

• Asian Turkey Meatballs with Lime Dipping Sauce (click HERE for source/recipe) -- neither Josh or I are all that into meatballs, but these sounded good ... and they were! We served them over brown basmati rice, and had quite a few leftovers for lunch the next day.
• Avocado Basil Pasta (click HERE for source/recipe) -- I used some fresh, pretty red pasta from the farmers market and this was AWESOME. Josh told me his mind was blown ... in his words "This looks like something I wouldn't like, but it's actually pretty darn good." And, considering there is very little meat in this recipe, that is quite the compliment from my carnivore.  

• Jerk Chicken and Snow Pea Salad -- Josh loves Jerk, but usually uses a bottled sauce. This recipe came from the "Everyday Food" magazine, and was totally from scratch ... and ridiculously good. The snow pea salad (from the same magazine) is the only form of vegetables that has Josh coming back for seconds. It's just thinly sliced snow peas, Dijon mustard, vinegar, olive oil, and shallot. 

 Other cooking wins this week:

• Lemon cupcakes with blackberry frosting (just randomly searched recipes and didn't save them. Bummer, because they were very tasty)
• Homemade baked potato chips, from this book (which is my new favorite purchase ever):

•  Cinnamon ice cream, with the ice cream maker that my sweet husband got me for my "birthday" (recipe HERE) -- Really rich, and somehow warm (even though it's frozen).

 Hope you enjoy!