I've Got Issues

I have issues.  Really, I do.  Not that I didn't know I had issues before now, but once in a while something happens that makes me take a good look at myself and go, "Wow, I'm crazier than I thought."

I might have mentioned that we are having a little budget crisis in our household right now.  Nothing major, but even a small bump in the road in the financial department is enough to send me to the kitchen for a giant spoonful of hot fudge followed by a wine chaser--bottle size, please. I get a little more stressed out than is probably necessary.  When the end of the month arrived last month with $4.17 in my account and a transfer from savings required for my husband's account, I panicked and demanded we both take a good, hard look at the budget.

No big surprises there, really.  We've been eating out too much.  Back-to-school season is freaking expensive, and getting more so every minute. (FREE public education? Bahhh!  I'll save that for another time.) We have an extra house payment with one of our rental houses sitting empty.  Nothing we didn't know and nothing we can't solve given a little time and focused effort.

Nonetheless, to calm my racing pulse, I've called a self-imposed temporary hiatus to any unnecessary spending and a once a week limit to eating out.  Sounds simple enough.  To anyone not quite as crazy as I am, I suppose.  It actually sounded totally fine to me too.  Until about the fifth day of no shopping and no eating out.

Now, let's be clear. I am not a shopaholic. I am a committed bargain shopper. I rarely buy anything that I don't have a coupon for or that isn't on sale or that we don't need.  We can debate needs and wants later, but with three children, three houses, and a business, there are lots of things we need.  I try very hard to never pay full price for all of those things so when I am out and discover a great deal on something, I buy it.  This happens quite frequently.  At least a couple of times a week.  It might be mouse traps that we will inevitably need that are in the clearance bin for mere pennies, an unadvertised sale at the Goodwill on housewares so I can get the cloth napkins I've been eyeing at half-price (carbon footprint, you know), or just the right size container I find at a garage sale for the kids' gazillion stuffed animals.

I've been walking past all of that this week, and it's starting to make me twitch.

I went to Target last night just to get milk. This was completely unnecessary since I drove by two groceries and four convenience stores to get to Target, but I really was just dying to touch all the stuff.  Stuff I am not letting myself buy right now.  Even though a bunch of it was on clearance.  Even though we need it or will soon.  Do alcoholics go to bars just to have a Diet Coke?  Oh boy, do I have issues.

Another thing I think you probably already know: I like to cook.  I really do.  And I'm not bad at it.  So, what's the deal with restaurants?  By Day #8 of no eating in restaurants (it ended up we had one whole week of no eating out planned, and then the second week where we planned a night out at the end, so in whole it was like two weeks with no restaurant), I was having daydreams of french fries.  I made oven baked fries at home one night in an attempt to curb the craving. No relief.  The next night I pulled a pound of ground beef out of the freezer and made patty melts in an attempt to quench the craving.  No relief.

Ends up a friend was feeling the need to get out of the house with her four-year-old one day and invited me out to lunch on Day #10.  Who could say no to a friend in need?  I'm a giver, you know.  Even though I was prepared to give up my first born for a plate of bacon-cheese fries, we went to a place that has a fancy BBQ chicken salad I love.  I ended up getting that.  And water.  No Diet Coke, which I usually only allow myself at restaurants.  And I still felt a little better.  The twitching subsided for a while.

I think I am a bit (maybe a lot) addicted to restaurant food.  I used to believe that I enjoyed restaurants so much because someone else was taking care of everything.  I don't have to plan it, prepare it, cook it, get up in the middle of it to refill anyone's milk, clean it up or find the right size plastic container and matching lid to store the leftovers in.  All of that is really nice.

Yet, I am starting to think that there is a kind of addiction that goes along with the overly-salted, overly-fatty, overly-sugary food served in restaurants.  Not that I haven't heard this idea before. Thanks to Jamie Oliver, Michael Polan, and Food Inc., I know way more about the things that go on in processed and restaurant-prepared food than I would like to know.  It ain't pretty.  Even knowing that, I didn't really think that I was addicted.  Just that I enjoyed the experience of going out to eat. I know I don't NEED french fries or Cincinnati chili with a mountain of cheese on top or cheddar garlic biscuits drenched in butter.  Even more importantly, I can make all of that at home if I really do want it.  So what is causing this ridiculously overwhelming desire to run out and get it?  Clearly, I have serious issues.

In a lot of ways I feel like I do a good job making sure my family eats healthy, but we've got miles to go still.  In a lot of ways, I know we do a good job managing our money, but we could do a much better job if we were more intentional about it. Despite the budget crunch that prompted these changes, I'm pretty happy to be working on my "issues." Self-improvement is good for the soul. Sometimes a little crisis is just the push I need to move in the right direction. 

Weekly dinner menu Oct 3-9

Despite the chicken nugget debacle last week (exaggerate??? me??? never!), I feel like the menu planning worked out extremely well. I am not exactly a plan ahead kind of gal so actually cooking five of the seven meals I had planned is a huge success. Now, the trick will be doing it again. And again. And again. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

This week's menu is not quite as firm as last week's since I haven't scoured the weekly ads yet to see exactly what is on sale. I do know what I have in the refrigerator, freezer and pantry so we're going to start there and make modifications as necessary.

Last week was really heavy on the cheese. I think I bought three or four ponds for the week's meals. Tasty, yes. Budget-wise and waist-wise, not so much. So I am going to work on reducing that a bit.

I am feeling a little under the weather so it's simpler than last week.

Day #1: BLT Turkey Tortilla roll-ups, apple salad, baked potatoes (maybe twice baked if the Nyquil does its job tonight).

Day #2: Slow cooker pot roast soup. My very best soup ever, according to my children.

Day #3: Baked spaghetti.

Day 4: Homemade chicken nuggets for the kids, fried chicken salad for the adults.

Day #5: French bread pizza.

Day #6: Chicken, rice and green bean casserole.

We're planning to go out one night this week so that's all we'll need. If we end up needing a seventh meal, pasta carbonara has been on my mind. Happy cooking!

Weekly dinner menu Sept 26-30

My BFF is an amazing woman who accomplishes more in a day than than most people accomplish in a week, maybe a month. She teaches a classroom of 27 first-graders, raises three children under the age of 8, runs a household in the country, helps her husband repair cars and split wood for their wood-burning stove, leads her daughter's Girl Scout Troupe, sings in the church choir, teaches Bible study, and manages to write random thank you notes to people to show her appreciation for their kindness. She's the kind of person who you annoys you because she's making you look bad, while at the same time you are in awe and admiration that she can do all that without the need to drink excessively or have a therapist on retainer.

There's just one thing I can confidently say I am better at than she is (probably because of the fact that she has way less time for it than me, but still...). That's cooking. She's been trying to come up with some new ideas for dinner and keeps asking me what I'm cooking. Of course, when she asks it's always something like chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese. Or PBJ sandwiches and cucumber slices. Glamorous indeed. AND, since I really, really, really, really need to be better about planning our meals ahead, I thought I'd put them here. Not only is it the easiest way to share them with my friend, but it will make me feel more committed to planning our meals. Hopefully, the information might be helpful to someone else too.

A few thoughts on my style of meal planning:

• I take a look at what's in my freezer and pantry so I can use what I have whenever possible.


• I like to use a mix of new recipes and old family favorites, as well as quick and easy recipes combined with more in-depth, from scratch, old-fashioned cooking.


• I take a look at the weekly ads before getting started so I can use what's on sale.


• I don't assign days to the menu. I like to cook based on what I am in the mood for (which is part of the reason I am so bad at planning meals ahead) so I try to get the ingredients I need for the week and then decide on a daily basis what we'll be having.


• Generally, I make the more complicated, longer-cooking dishes early in the week, so there are leftovers that I can then base other meals on later in the week. Plus, I have more time, patience and energy early in the week.


• The menus don't always include side dishes or vegetables. It's not that we don't have them. I just use whatever I happen to have on hand. Right now, that means cucumbers since they are currently plentiful in our garden, sliced apples or waldorf salad, grapes which are inexpensive and in season right now, or salad or carrot sticks which we pretty much always have on hand. If all else fails, unsweetened applesauce.

Here's what's on the menu this week:

Meal # 1: Spice roasted chicken (legs and thighs) with vegetables (carrots, onions and potatoes). I will make enough so that there is plenty of leftover chicken to use for lunches and quesadillas later in the week. This is one of the new recipes I'll be trying. The chicken is rubbed with a combination of salt, pepper, paprika and cinnamon. It calls for parsnips to be added to the vegetables. I've never had them. We'll see...

Meal #2: Nachos and Quesadillas. You can pretty much use whatever you have on hand for these. While I don't exactly consider nachos a healthy dinner, (1) I've had a craving and (2) I have a bag of tortilla chips in my pantry that I don't have a plan for. So, I'll brown a pound of ground beef, season half of it and use on the nachos. I will use a little leftover chicken from earlier in the week, plus whatever vegetables I have on hand, to make some quesadillas.

Meal #3: French bread pizza. I will use some of the ground beef from nacho night (the unseasoned half), combined with some chopped salami or pepperoni (or some Italian Sausage if I end up getting any to make soup later in the week), mixed with spaghetti sauce, spread it on the bread, sprinkle on some cheese and bake. Probably add a salad or some carrot sticks.

Meal #4: Crock pot Mongolian beef with rice and sauteed baby bok choy. This is one of my very favorite recipes ever. I love Chinese food, but find it challenging to make at home. This is so easy and delicious.

Meal #5: Spanish Tortilla with Salad. This will be another new recipe. Basically, it's eggs, potatoes and whatever else you want to put in there, started on the stovetop and finished in the oven. The recipe I have calls for red pepper and salami, and since I can use salami in the kids' lunches and in the French bread pizza, I'll probably stick with that. I might even have a pepper in the garden and can take that off my grocery list.

Meal #6: Mac-n-cheese and fried green tomatoes. The kids have been requesting my "very best mac-n-cheese ever" made with white cheddar so I am going to make that for them this week. It's rare I try three new recipes in a week, but I found a simple and delicious-sounding recipe for fried green tomatoes. Plus, I have a ton of them in the garden, and I've always wanted to try making them so why not? If that's not your thing, any fruit or vegetable could stand in.

Meal #7: I may or may not end up making this one, but I saw a yummy recipe sausage, white bean and spinach stew. If I cook 5 nights, we usually have plenty of leftovers for another night, and end up going out one night of the week. I still like to make a pot of soup to have on hand for lunches or an extra busy night. So if I have time, I might do this one too and just plan to freeze the leftovers.

I'll let you know how the week turns out--if anything is a huge hit or huge flop, if we resort to peanut butter and jelly any nights, if we have entirely too many leftovers by Wednesday, that kind of thing. Hope you find something useful here. And happy cooking!