Meal planning

Last year I took a class called Eat Your Roots taught by Amanda at www.mydailydiner.com.  Amanda encourages eating local, whole foods without artificial preservatives.  Her class really changed the way I cook, shop for food and plan our meals (as in it made me actually plan our meals).  I think adopting her style has been one of the best changes we've made to improve our health.


Every week, usually around Thursday, I come up with a meal list for the following week. Usually I plan about 4 meals a week and have leftovers of one of those meals at least one night.  I find that we eat much better and spend much less money on food this way.  For the most part I plan our meals, buy only what we need week then we eat what I buy!


I do all my food shopping on Saturday morning.  First I hit our local farmer's market, which is thankfully open year round, for our fruits, veggies and eggs.  Then I do the rest of food shopping at Whole Foods or sometimes Trader Joe's.  


Most of my big cooking I do on Sunday.  This lets me cook when I have time and feel like it.  When I get home from work during the week I just have to put things together and do a minimal amount of cooking.  


This week, because I'm trying out this not-eating-meat-thing, I'm making almost all new recipes.  I don't usually do that but these struck me as interesting.

Sunday: Vegetarian pasta bake and winter fruit salad.  This pasta dish is made with lentils in the place of ground beef.

Monday: Miso soup for me, Spaghetti O's for Hubby since he won't touch tofu.  I don't consider Spaghetti O's a whole food but Hubby is perfectly fine believing these cans grow on a tree.  He'd eat them every day.

Tuesday: Leftover pasta bake, salad

Wednesday: Broccoli rice casserole and salad for me, rice casserole (with the broccoli picked out) and sausage for Hubby

Thursday: Portobello mushrooms stuffed with pine nuts & feta and salad for me.  I don't know what Hubby is eating yet.  I didn't quite think this meal through.

On a side note, I'm not really sure how me not eating meat for the month is going to work for Hubby.  He pretty much despises all vegetables although he's gotten much better over the last year.  Normally I do NOT cook two separate meals because that just irritates me.  Generally we can find enough common ground in our food and I just make a veggie or salad for myself.  But I realize this no-meat thing is entirely my own idea so I'll probably end up making some sort of separate thing for him on occasion.

Happy New Year's Resolutions

My hubby and I set New Year's resolutions every year but unlike a lot of people we keep them for the most part.  I absolutely used to be someone who didn't keep resolutions but my hubby changed that because he can do whatever he sets his mind to do.  It's very impressive and inspirational but also disgusting and irritating.  I knew he would keep his resolution no matter what and I never wanted to be the loser who caved in so I've stuck with them too.  

In years past we have gone an entire year without soda, fast food, candy (hubby), swearing (me), and buying from or hosting home parties (also me).  Not all in the same year of course!  This year there were several things I wanted to challenge myself to do and several areas I could use improvement so this year has a whole list of resolutions.

Exercise: This is the bane of my existence and always has been.  I've NEVER liked exercise.  I've always particularly hated running.  So... I'm going to learn to run.

• Run a mile without stopping by the end of March
• Run/Walk a 5k during the year

Healthy Eating:  Last year we started eating mostly whole foods and significantly reduced our processed/junk food consumption.  Not entirely but we did pretty darn good.  We also limited our eating out to only planned meals out with friends and family and our twice a month date night.  Since coming back from vacation in October we've kind of been sucking in this department.  It's time to get with the program!

• Eat out only planned meals with friends/family and twice a month date night; not to exceed 6x a month.  Vacations excluded entirely.
• Eat all "at home" meals at the table.  No couch, no TV.

Gratitude:  I've always wanted to keep a gratitude journal.  It sounds like a very enlightening thing to do but I know I would never follow through and write in a journal every day.  I've never been successful in writing regularly in a journal and I doubt I would be now.  BUT I do go online every so here's the plan.

• Post daily on Facebook or this blog what I am thankful for with no repeats throughout the year.

There are several things I'd like to challenge myself to do but I'm not willing do them for a full year.  So I'm going to have a monthly challenge for myself each month of 2011.  I only have a few ideas so far but I think they are mostly going to be health or finance related.  I want them to be things that benefit me in some way not things that are difficult just for the sake of being difficult.

• In January I'm going to not eat meat with the exception of occasional fish or seafood.  I like meat way too much to be a vegetarian.  On the flip side I really like vegetables but sometimes don't feel like making them just for me (since my husband isn't a fan).  I figure this will force me to explore vegetarian dishes since I won't want to starve for the month.
• In February I think I'm going to focus on cleaning out my pantry and trying to use up a lot of what's in there.  Generally speaking I try really hard to plan our meals, buy what we need and eat what I buy.  But, like I said, we haven't been very good the last few months so my pantry has more that the normal amount of stuff in it and it needs to be used up.  

What about you?  Do you set resolutions?  Do you keep them?  What are your 2011 resolutions?