On Saturday mornings, Mr. Crunchycake, Miss K and I almost always go to our local farmers market. It’s actually quite good – according to yelp.com, it’s four and a half stars out of five. I like it because the vendors are nice, and there’s not too much of the artisan crap taking up all the space. There’s all kinds of produce and it’s mostly quality stuff. Freshly picked (same day or the day before) and it’s usually very clean. Also a pretty good variety of produce to pick from. Since it’s summertime right now (I hate it when people say Labor Day is the unofficial end of the summer. It’s not. Long live summer!), we’ve really been enjoying the fruit – peaches, nectarines, pluots, watermelon – all fantastically delicious. There are usually all kinds of vegetables, greens and herbs that I’m not familiar with so sometimes I just grab stuff that looks interesting and then come home and try to figure out what to do with it.
Once I have some idea of what I want to make, I do my grocery list and go out and buy the rest of the necessary ingredients from the markets I normally go to. This week it was raining so no farmers market. Boo. So instead I’m going to decide what I want to make and see if I can find the ingredients I need. I find that when I have a meal plan, things go a lot better. I’m more likely to cook at home than when I wing it. So here’s what I’m hoping to do for dinner (I’ll update the post at the end of the week and report back on whether or not I stuck with the plan):
Saturday: Mexican Pasta & Modified Mexican Caesar Salad/Miss K: Oatmeal, Banana, Green Beans
Sunday: Chipotle patty melts/Miss K: Oatmeal, apple and avocado, zucchini
Monday: Quiche
Tuesday: Tom Ka Gai Soup, Green Curry Vegetables & Rice/Miss K: Banana, peas, zucchini
Wednesday: Crispy Seitan and broccoli, tomato and avocado salad/Miss K: Sweet Potato, pumpkin, peas
Thursday: Pizza & Salad/Miss K: Sweet potato, pumpkin, oatmeal
Friday: Cousin’s Wedding Reception/Miss K: sweet potato, banana, rice cereal
Wish me luck!
UPDATE: So how did we do?
Not so good. On Sunday we did have the mexican pasta and salad. Not great. Probably will end up throwing out more than we ate, which is surprising given the high rating on this recipe. I think there was something weird with the tomatoes – it was just really tangy. I doubt we’ll use this recipe again.
We made the patty melts – oh my delicious. Hubby actually mixed and formed the patties so it was definitely a team effort! And I’m not usually a burger person, but I ate one and a half just that night. Only thing I changed was made them into quarter pounders instead of third pounders. So so good (not especially healthy though).
Then things started falling apart. My husband had an event to go to so I didn’t make dinner on Monday, just had left overs and he ate out. I looked for the lemongrass for the Tom Ka Gai soup but the market I go to didn’t have it so I skipped it and just made the green curry tofu/veggies and rice. Not bad. Plenty of left overs that I used for lunch. Wednesday fell apart a little too – I scarfed down some leftovers and my husband was on a conference call til late. So he ended up going to In n Out. Thursday night we took some family pictures and picked up pizza on the way home.
On the one hand, I ate at dinner at home five days out of six- YAY! But my husband didn’t – BOO! So it’s kind of a draw. Until we start factoring in lunch. I was really bad this week. I got chili fries and a Dr. Pepper from Del Taco and I got chicken strips from Jack in the Box and I picked up a chicken biscuit from Chick-Fil-e. I hang my head in shame. Three fast food runs this week…not good.
As for Karina, she did get three meals a day, just not the ones I planned on originally. She had oatmeal, kichadi, bananas, avocados, pumpkin, zucchini, and green beans. Didn’t get around to making her the sweet potatoes this week. I’ll make them as soon as I get back from our trip this weekend. Speaking of which, hope you all have an awesome weekend. I’ll do the next meal planning post when I get back!