Meal plan: check

I know I said I was going to stain the bed frame yesterday or today, but that hasn't happened yet- I've been busy working on a meal plan and shopping list to use after we move. I've done very little cooking in the last 2+ years, so cooking every single day is going to take some getting used to. I'm not a fan of complicated recipes with tons of ingredients. Simple, quick, and easy is the what I go for.  In the interest of making a smooth transition, I'm starting out with a bunch of crockpot recipes (which are quite easy and don't use lots of ingredients), and then we'll go from there.

When I made up my meal plan I used a lot of recipes from Make it Fast, Cook it Slow by Stephanie O'Dea. I also used a few from The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone and some from The Flexitarian Diet by Dawn Jackson  Blatner. The crockpot recipes were already gluten free, and I picked naturally gluten free recipes from the other two books. The recipes I picked use a lot of fresh produce and very little processed items, so hopefully they'll be healthier than some of the meals I've cooked in the past.

The meal plan I made is for seven weeks of dinners (each a unique recipe, allowing one night per week for leftovers or pizza), but I only did the ingredient and shopping list for the first two weeks. Since the recipes are ones I haven't used, I really don't know how they'll turn out or if there will be lots of leftovers or none. Hopefully after two weeks I'll have a better idea of how well things are working and what changes need to be made. I also have a list of breakfast and lunch recipes, but I didn't chart those out for x number of weeks, so there's a lot more flexibility with them. I did make an ingredient and shopping list for all of them, though.

It was all quite time consuming, but being the OCD control freak that I am, I do feel more prepared to jump back into daily cooking.

On another subject:
Mr. M heard from the company he was working with this fall - they have a couple positions available that they think he might be a good fit for. Too funny that everyone's got openings now that he's a got a job. The one he took is the one we wanted, so at least there's no buyer's remorse (or the equivalent).

'Make it Fast, Cook it Slow' and 'The Kind Diet'

In my search for new gluten free healthy recipes I've been reading quite a few cookbooks. Two I recently read are 'Make it Fast, Cook it Slow' and 'The Kind Diet'.

'Make it Fast, Cook it Slow' by Stephanie O'Dea is a book of crockpot recipes that originated in the author's goal of making something in her crockpot every day for a year. I found it interesting- they weren't all meat and potatoes recipes, and they weren't all dinner recipes either. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, even a few crafty ideas. A big bonus for me is that the author has celiac, so the recipes are all gluten free already- I wouldn't have to do any tweaking. I don't plan on trying them all, but there is a good number of recipes I'd like to try.

Another book I've read recently is 'The Kind Diet' by Alicia Silverstone. She has lots of information about the environment and why veganism is the way to go, and does a good job of documenting where she gets her information. However, she does make the statement that celiac is very rare and uncommon (and doesn't document a source for that statement), and basically brushes off gluten intolerance. I wish it were that easy.

In any case, the real reason I checked out the book was for the recipes, not the philosophy. I've been looking for healthy bean recipes and recipes that use a lot of veggies and aren't full of refined crap. I knew I'd find those in a vegan cookbook, and I did. I'm definitely not going vegan (I like my meat and dairy products too much), but I don't mind using recipes that are healthy, regardless of whether they come from a mainstream cookbook, a vegetarian cookbook, or a vegan cookbook.

Next up: using all the recipes I've found to make up a preliminary menu for a month or two of meals and a shopping list to go with it. That way I'll be ready to cook healthy meals for us as soon as we move, and not 2 or 3 weeks later, during which time we've been eating whatever I can find or whatever Mr. M talks me into getting from restaraunts (not cheap or healthy).