Cook

In my never-ending efforts to do better at getting dinner on the table at a reasonable hour, I've discovered a cool website - a simple Google search for 'menu planner' yielded www.mealsmatter.org - EXACTLY what I've been looking for.

Not only is it a 'calendar' kind of thing for creating weekly menus, it also has a recipe search engine - you click on things you have on hand or ingredients you'd like to make something with, pick other criteria (under 30 minute meals are a favorite with me) and it will find recipes for you. If you choose to add a recipe to your planner, you can then automatically get a shopping list which includes all the ingredients you need to make what you've selected. AND you can edit the list to delete things you already have (for example, 3 tsp. flour, 1/2 tsp. salt, etc.) so you know exactly what you need to buy.

The next feature I'm going to update is a 'pantry' section where I can enter what we have on hand and it will keep track of it for me....yes, I'll have to learn to update it as we use things - but that will be a small price to pay for knowing what is IN the pantry at any given moment. It's sort of the black hole of the kitchen...and getting that under control will greatly ease my dinner stress AND save money.

I've made two recipes so far - and while I can't say they were huge hits, they were both pretty good and were consumed by 75% of the people in the house. H. ate frozen waffles tonight - and he was at a friends house last night. So he didn't care for the enchiladas I made tonight - they had black beans, chopped zucchini, corn, beef and cheese. They would have been terrific but the recipe called for wheat tortillas - and J. bought 'wraps' instead of tortillas - so they were too big. And sort of turned 'gummy'. They were OK - just not great. We'll use corn next time - corn would have been delicious!

We've got menus planned for the week and ingredients on hand. I have a Board meeting tomorrow night so the boys will have frozen pizza - it's easy and I know they'll eat it. And it's cheaper than ordering pizza which is what we usually do on Board nights.

This entire effort was prompted by last week's less than stellar eating out multiple nights - I was frantically working away on my big state report thing and we resorted to Subway, Taco Bell and pizza. Leftovers or salads the other nights. I was getting home late and was too tired to cook - so we did 'fast food'. Oh well.

I'm also following a new 'food guideline' - 15/6. If you get the monthly Costco magazine, you might have read the article. Try to not exceed 15 grams of sugar and 6 servings of carbs in a day. The carbs aren't too hard to adhere to. But the sugar is incredibly hard - and it's not because I'm having to stop eating a bunch of sweets. There is that to consider, of course - the basket of candy on my desk that people come in to much on throughout the day is hard to resist - but so much easier today when I realized that ONE TUBE of the candy called SMARTIES (kind of like tiny sweet tarts) has 13 grams of sugar. So ONE TUBE of those is my entire sugar allotment for the day. And the juice I bought? With acai berry and antioxidants? One 8 oz. glass has 35 grams of sugar - over TWO DAYS worth of sugar grams in one small glass. Wow. It's really made me aware of sugar. 1/2 a banana? 11 grams. It's just made me think - and consequently, I'm eating differently/better.

I'm also realizing that I'm not eating 'cuz I'm hungry, necessarily. Maybe thirsty? Maybe not wanting to do something I need to/should be doing? It's sort of an avoidance thing more than a hunger thing. So I have to work on that. Hopefully, it will get easier as my body (and mind) adjust to consuming more meaningful food at more meaningful times.

Today was a slow, groggy day...the time change does this to me every year. I never think an hour's sleep difference can make such a huge difference - but it was really hard getting up and walking out to the car to get to work and it was still dark outside. I hate that. It was nice to have more daylight at the end of the day - we had planned to walk and didn't wedge that in tonight - but we will. But oh, the loss of an hour kills me annually. It's enough to make me want to move to Arizona or Hawaii where people know not to mess with the clocks.

We had a nice weekend piddling around. Church on Sunday. Errands, laundry, tidying, some yard work. And I napped BOTH DAYS - trying to catch up on the past two weeks of working 20 straight days...I was really tired.

Spring is looming - the potted plants on the patio were dry enough to require a hose watering for the first time in months. Things are budding and blooming and we've started trying to clean up from the winter months - pulling weeds, starting to prune shrubs a bit. We also need to rebuild our pool equipment fence - the lattice fence that was there is not surviving the wet weather (nor the gardener's crew hitting it with the lawn mower on a regular basis) and it won't make it through the summer. I'm also going to try to put in a couple raised beds finally - but I'm having trouble finding places in the yard that get full sun. The best place is in the middle of the pool deck - and I don't really want to do that. But I might.

Am hoping to take 1/2 day off on Wednesday - have a meeting in the far east side of our county, which puts me about a 1/2 hour into the drive to Jackson - so I might go up there for the afternoon. We'll see. I told my boss 'either I'll go to Jackson for an afternoon or go home and take a nap - either would be completely lovely.'

And speaking of my boss, he went to Napa this weekend to receive an award. I mentioned v. Sattui winery and asked if he went there, would he please bring me two bottles of white zinfandel. I was emphatic that I didn't want him to make a special trip there - but if he somehow ended up there, we love that wine and it's only available at the winery. So this morning, he emails me and says 'please come see me and bring your car keys'. And I thought 'uh oh - why do I need my car keys?'. Of course, I quickly remembered and was so excited. Went over with money to pay him back - and he closed the door to his office, told me about his weekend. I started to hand him the money - and he said (sternly) 'put your money away - I'm not taking it'. I said 'but I didn't want you to buy me wine - I just wanted you to pick some wine up for me'. And he said 'I know - but I want to do this for you. Marianne (his wife) and I both want to do this - I want you to have the wine from me. And I want you to know that I'm incredibly proud of you. You are doing a really great job'. I know I blushed - I felt it - and I said 'I really wouldn't have survived and made it to this point without your help - truly. You deserve all the praise - and thank you so much for taking on the challenge of a new CBO and for giving me this incredible opportunity - I'm really lucky to be here and really grateful to you for hiring me and sticking with me through thick and thin'. He said 'it's been my privilege'. It was nice...

And I warned him 'of course, you still have 3 more months here so you'll have to hear all this schmaltz from me again at some point'. And he said 'that's fine'. And we went to his car and got the wine, transferred it to my car and returned to our respective offices.

He made my day/week/month/year. And I'm truly so grateful to him.