When something's got to give

This fall has been full of lessons for me.  Lessons about maintaining my health.  Lessons on making time for relaxation.  Lessons concerning how fast my children are growing.  The latest lesson I have yet to conquer is how to recognize, and subsequently respect, my own limits.

But I'm trying.

My baby sister got married this weekend.  The day after her wedding Bean turned 4.  Two weeks from now MY baby Inchie turns 2.  Given the craziness of the month, I combined their birthday celebrations into one happy party.  I took that as proof that I was finally getting the hang of not overextending myself.  Maybe I was learning my lesson.

Regrettably one less party didn't seem to lessen the load.  At we entered into wedding weekend, I felt out of control.  Work had been accomplished that week through force of will.  There was nothing organic or sustaining about the energy used.  I have a plaque in my office which reads "You will because you can."  It's meant to be empowering I think, but I've started reading it as a warning.  I can do a lot of things but maybe I shouldn't do them all at once.

I wasn't keeping up.  My head was full of unfinished tasks.  So I made a list.  Better out than in.

• Make Dinner
• Set tomorrow's clothes
• Pack Lunches
• Pack Snack (M,W)
• Prep Dinner for tomorrow
• Fold laundry and Put away clean clothes
• Gather up dirty clothes and Swap loads
• Sort mail
• Wipe off table
• Pick up living room
• Pack gym bag for the morning

I showed the list to my husband.  He didn't like the list.  He said I had too many things on it and I was going to discourage myself.  He was right.  That list is too long.  But someone has to do the work.  I tried following the list each day  for a week and I made little progress.

I still wasn't accounting for all the things I need to do on a weekly basis.  They weren't on the list.  And I grew more and more discouraged and frustrated.   My head filled back up again and I pretty much threw in the towel.  I selected our clothes for the weekend from the dirty piles in my laundry room and washed them all at once.  They came out of the dryer, into the suitcase and we departed for the wedding.  I do not like living that way.  Whatever feeling exists beyond overwhelmed is where I was at.  And it started to show.

After numerous heated exchanges, I finally got to the heart of the matter with my husband.  I needed to divest of something.  Ignoring the list to start with we decided that my primary household responsibilities were Finances, Scheduling, Food and Clothing.  My husband took care of  Dishes, Trash, House Upkeep and Yard Work.

Strangely enough, my husband was extremely hesitant to take over any of my responsibilities.  My trend is to control everything to meet my expectations.  It keeps life stable.  It also keeps me very very busy; I'm learning - too busy.  Trying to take a task from me is possibly like trying to cook a nice meal for a gourmet chef.  It's just not fair.

But it was necessary.  As of this week, Food is no longer mainly my responsibility.  I still cook dinner in the evening because I'm the first one home.  My husband is in charge of menu planning, grocery shopping, packing lunches and nightly dinner prep.  I cook what he tells me to cook and make requests.

I haven't driven him to quit yet.  I hope I don't.  When we finally agreed on what our new delineation of duties was I felt like I could breathe for the first time in weeks.  When I turned the cleaning of my house over to professionals, it took me about 3 months to stop being stressed about it.  Hopefully I learned my lessons during that divesting.

We are three days in.

Menu Plan Monday: Back on the Road Again

While I haven't been posting them here every week, I have continued to Menu Plan.  Over the past couple of months, I've leaned HEAVILY on my Top Ten Meals.  So heavily in fact that I'm sick and tired of eating them.

Making the same meals so often makes dinner easy to get out, even on the days when cooking is just about the last thing I want to do.  The flip side of that is that cooking gets really boring.  Really. Boring.  Even when I have the energy to cook, I'm so uninspired that the first thought that comes to mind is whether I should call for Pizza or Chinese.  Being bored quickly defeated all of my good intentions behind menu planning.

My approach this week is a bit more ambitious than past weeks.  I'm trying out a few new recipes.  Prep each night will be required to make the next night's meal.  But to feel inspired  to cook each night is worth it.  Motivation will follow.  I hope.

This week's menu:

Breakfast:
(Me & Hubby) Oatmeal, Bananas & OJ
Lunch:
Soup & Bread
Apples
Lettuce Salad/Veggie Sticks

Monday: Tortellini Soup with Beans and Chard
Tuesday: Teriyaki Chicken with Rice
Wednesday: Mini Meatloaf with Roasted Cauliflower & Green Beans
Thursday: Tuna Rollups with Spinach
Friday: Quesadillas with Guacamole and Salad
Saturday: Pork BBQ
Sunday: Shrimp Kabobs with Cous Cous

Do you ever find the same old recipes uninspiring? Where do you look for recipes to spice up the dinner routine?

Menu Plan Monday: More than Dinner.

Whew!  Last week was a rush!  We had a short week  but it was still more than I was up to planning.  I mean, I planned for it, but I still had some slip-ups - like planning to eat lunch out on the day I was without a car and forgetting to pick up out CSA share until the next day. Thankfully, I have some awesome co-workers who happily took me to lunch and lots of gracery stores on the way home for mid-week stocking up.

Not to mention we've had rain EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. in the past week.  I might just be losing my mind.  Tropical Storm Lee broke up over the East Coast and decided not to move on.  Everyday was gray and rainy.  Not just a little drizzle either!  Lightening and Flooding and buckets of water coming from the sky.  It was all pretty overwhelming as the week went on.  I was glad I had done my planning and shopping before the week started.  That helped a lot.

One area of concern this week was lunches.  I pack lunch for myself and my husband each day.  Well, I at least try to every day.  Between our changing work schedules and the sporadic availability of leftovers, packing lunch can be onerous.  There have been more than a few last minute lunches thrown together by packing an American cheese sandwich, a Ziploc of stale crackers and an over-ripe banana.  I'm proud of my ingenuity of producing SOMETHING for lunch, but I can't say it is something I like repeating.  Plus we inevitably don't have enough food to make it through the day when one of those lunches goes out the door.

This week I've added a loose Breakfast and Lunch menu.  At least now I've put an extra minute of thought towards what we are going to eat that week in our lunches and I'll have ample supplies in the house.  I can't say I dislike 10pm grocery store trips - the quietness of Giant at 10pm is awe inspiring - but requiring one every week stops being a treat.

This week's menu:

Breakfast:
(Me) Muffin, Cottage Cheese & Blue Machine
(Hubby) Oatmeal, Bananas & OJ

Lunch:
LO Ham Bone Soup
LO Spaghetti
Mediterrean Tuna Salad
Fruit (Watermelon, Strawberries, Bananas)

Monday: Crockpot Ham Bone Soup
Tuesday: Grilled Fish with Rice & Carrots
Wednesday: Spaghetti
Thursday: Chicken Tenders with Sweet Potato Fries
Friday: Family Dinner
Saturday:Dinner at Grandma's house
Sunday: Beer Can Chicken

How do you deal with Breakfast and Lunch each day?  Is there variety to your selections?  Do you with there was?  *grin*

The First Marinara

Each week in August our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) provided us with a small shopping back of tomatoes. Over the past few weeks I've become an expert at blanching tomatoes. I've even made some decent restaurant style salsa in the blender. Having concocted a salsa I love, I'm turning my attention to marinara. For my first attempt, I'm taking these 4 lovely ripe tomatoes and turning them into marinara...

 

WITH NO RECIPE!

Yup.  You got it.  I'm winging it.  I cook a lot and I know what's in marinara, so how hard can it be?  Ha!

I began by blanching and peeling my tomatoes.  This is the step with which I'm the most comfortable.  I don't like eating tomato skins so they simply must go.  Blanching the tomatoes seems to have the added positive effect of removing any blemishes and bad spots as I'm peeling the skins off.  Once peeled I coarsely chopped the tomatoes and set them aside.

Taking inventory of all the other produce littering my counter top, I found bell peppers, okra, onions, scallions, jalapenos, cilantro, banana peppers, cucumbers, zucchini and basil.  While I like lots of ingredients in my recipes I limited myself to the bell peppers, onions, scallions and basil.  I diced and sauteed the first three ingredients in olive oil, added the basil, minced garlic, low sodium chicken stock and my tomatoes.  The resulting mix looked promising.

After simmering for an hour, I got impatient and took a potato masher to the bubbling mixture.  Another 2 hours and I ended up with a think chunky good smelling sauce.

Just enough for my Monday night dinner!  While it was adequate, I was underwhelmed.  I think my first mistake was adding the bell pepper.  The second...  leaving out the salt.  However, I can say that adding some Parmesan cheese really brightened up the flavor.  Last but not least, seeding the tomatoes might also help.  There were a lot more seeds than I expected

All in all, I'm happy with  my first attempt as marinara.  I'll be trying again next week.  My goal is to find a recipe that I like enough to can a bunch of it for later this winter when I'm no longer overwhelmed in fresh produce.  Maybe another good start would also be to do some reading of existing marinara recipes!

Do you have any suggestions?