A Recipe Repertoire
Last night I was very tempted to pick up some steak or ground beef at the store last night, fire up the grill and have a carnivore fest. I resisted successfully. Yay!
In the past month or so I haven't been doing a very good job of planning meals or grocery trips. This has led to rather unplanned dinners and a rather unsatisfying dining experience, not to mention a dearth of good leftovers for lunch. After a long, tiring day at work, I really don't have the energy or the mental creativity to come up with some sort of dinner idea, then cook it. Ideally, I would accomplish the planning on Thursday or Friday night, then shop either Friday on the way home or on Saturday morning. What I've been doing is going shopping for staples on Saturday morning, then picking up some ingredients that look good but without any sort of plan in mind. This is not working for me.
I don't mind buying some things on a whim and working them into my menu or meal plan. The problem is that lately I'm buying a bunch of disjointed items without much plan, figuring that I'll just work out the details later. This makes it hard to prepare a meal. What actually happens is that I don't really have time during the week to figure out meal plans in advance. I have the time to cook and usually have the energy to cook too, but not time or energy to plan from scratch *and* cook. So I end up with really good food going bad before I use it. I also end up eating a lot of peanut butter samiches and oatmeal or Scooters for dinner.
My new plan is to develop a repertoire of recipes. I had been on a roll with that for a while earlier in the fall, but got out of the habit. Fortunately I have the list of recipes from the previous planning. I just need to go through the stuff in the pantry and fridge so I have something to work from in the planning process. I have quite a bit of food in the house. I just need to find some way of pulling it together into meals. It's really no different than having a closet full of clothes and needing to find ways to pull them together into outfits. Of course, I'm horrible at that. Food I can handle. The wardrobe, not so much. :o)
The Dog Whisperer
I *love* this show. Cesar Milan has a thorough understanding of dog behavior and the difficulties that dogs get into when their owners don't understand dog behavior. Invariably the people involved are trying to treat the dog more like people than like dogs. People need to be the leader of their pack and with a dog as part of their environment, they are part of a pack, whether they like to think of it that way or not. And sometimes the people with the dog hasn't any idea what the characteristics of their dog's breed are. You can't expect a retriever breed to not have urges to retrieve. You also can't expect a dog without sufficient outlets for its energy to be very happy for very long. Dogs in that situation tend to *find* outlets for their energy, which may involve eating your shoes, chewing your furniture and jumping all over everybody.
In this particular episode of The Dog Whisperer, Cesar will work with the family who owed Marley, of Marley and Me fame. Apparently their current dog, Gracie, ate one of their other pets (a chicken). As you might expect, this is causing some disharmony in the household.
In the past month or so I haven't been doing a very good job of planning meals or grocery trips. This has led to rather unplanned dinners and a rather unsatisfying dining experience, not to mention a dearth of good leftovers for lunch. After a long, tiring day at work, I really don't have the energy or the mental creativity to come up with some sort of dinner idea, then cook it. Ideally, I would accomplish the planning on Thursday or Friday night, then shop either Friday on the way home or on Saturday morning. What I've been doing is going shopping for staples on Saturday morning, then picking up some ingredients that look good but without any sort of plan in mind. This is not working for me.
I don't mind buying some things on a whim and working them into my menu or meal plan. The problem is that lately I'm buying a bunch of disjointed items without much plan, figuring that I'll just work out the details later. This makes it hard to prepare a meal. What actually happens is that I don't really have time during the week to figure out meal plans in advance. I have the time to cook and usually have the energy to cook too, but not time or energy to plan from scratch *and* cook. So I end up with really good food going bad before I use it. I also end up eating a lot of peanut butter samiches and oatmeal or Scooters for dinner.
My new plan is to develop a repertoire of recipes. I had been on a roll with that for a while earlier in the fall, but got out of the habit. Fortunately I have the list of recipes from the previous planning. I just need to go through the stuff in the pantry and fridge so I have something to work from in the planning process. I have quite a bit of food in the house. I just need to find some way of pulling it together into meals. It's really no different than having a closet full of clothes and needing to find ways to pull them together into outfits. Of course, I'm horrible at that. Food I can handle. The wardrobe, not so much. :o)
The Dog Whisperer
I *love* this show. Cesar Milan has a thorough understanding of dog behavior and the difficulties that dogs get into when their owners don't understand dog behavior. Invariably the people involved are trying to treat the dog more like people than like dogs. People need to be the leader of their pack and with a dog as part of their environment, they are part of a pack, whether they like to think of it that way or not. And sometimes the people with the dog hasn't any idea what the characteristics of their dog's breed are. You can't expect a retriever breed to not have urges to retrieve. You also can't expect a dog without sufficient outlets for its energy to be very happy for very long. Dogs in that situation tend to *find* outlets for their energy, which may involve eating your shoes, chewing your furniture and jumping all over everybody.
In this particular episode of The Dog Whisperer, Cesar will work with the family who owed Marley, of Marley and Me fame. Apparently their current dog, Gracie, ate one of their other pets (a chicken). As you might expect, this is causing some disharmony in the household.
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