what made me start a blog?

…when there are hundreds others out there?

To be honest, I’m not sure.  There are cooler/bigger/badder food blogs out there, discussing everything from food-hoarding to pioneer living to cooking meals that cost a dime.  (Not that there's anything wrong with that, because you know, I want to do ALL of it.)  But I wanted to start this blog, as I am eager to share where I’ve been and to document where I’m going. 

You could say my infatuation with food started when I was young.  Growing up in a family of 8 you had to get to the table fast, serve yourself fast, and eat fast, or you may end up with a plate of stuff that was scraped from the bottom of the pan.  And forget about second servings, unless your big sister happened to boil extra noodles and by chance there is a tiny bit of leftover spaghetti sauce in the jar and so your dad shoves the noodles into the jar, stirs it around, and viola, more spaghetti dinner for you.  You think I make this stuff up?

My journey from noodles-and-sauce to regularly preparing healthy, home-cooked dinners in a nutshell:

Newly married, going out to eat 3 or 4 nights a week while slowly building my culinary skills, i.e., making lemon-pepper-chicken-over-pasta like once a week.  (I miss those days, but not because of the lemon-pepper-chicken.)

Having a newborn and learning to juggle home- and work-life in light of the responsibilities of parenthood, on a tighter budget, while still wanting to eat Fancy.  It occurred to me when Finn was 6 months old that I could create a weekly meal plan of 7 dinners on which to base my grocery list, my evenings, and the rest of my foreseeable future.

Just six months later Finn tested positive for dairy, egg, and peanut allergies.  (Way to throw a wrench in things, dude.)  I delved into the research and tried to figure out how in the heck I’d make this work.  For the next few months I cooked him separate meals, which was unrealistic and inefficient process to maintain.  I eventually resigned to the fact that I’d have to figure out a way for all of us to enjoy the same foods at mealtime.  Shoot, man, I LOVE cheese.  I wondered how the heck I’d cook without it.  (And have you HAD the soy stuff?  It’s freaking sick.)  So there went about half of my recipes.

Months passed.  I was growing a bit weary trying to think of 7 different meals per week.  Mind you, I had criteria.  It had to be 1) healthy, 2) allergy-friendly, 3) varied, and 4) fit within our grocery budget.  Say it with me: What The H.  I was also so tired of cooking 7 nights a week.  It dawned on me to start creating my weekly lists with only 3-4 meals per week, but doubling my quantities so that we’d have leftovers to eat the following night.  Freaking brilliant, seriously.  A year-plus later and we’re still going strong.  It is much easier to think of a healthy, allergy-friendly, varied, and budget-conscious meal list if you only have to think of 3 items and not 7.  This has also freed up precious evening time in my household, by only having to cook every other night.  Because, did I mention?  Somewhere in there I had Baby #2. 

Throughout this time I had also saved each week’s meal list and shoved it in a kitchen cabinet with the intention of stockpiling 6 months’ worth of lists and reusing them for added convenience.  Yeah, that never happened.  Three years later I had around 150 lists shoved into mason jars, staring at me in the face, all like, “WTheck are you going to do with us?” 

And here we are.

One pile

This one must have been via email correspondence
with my husband.



A little ambitious, don't you think?



Oooh, an easy one!

 

Aw, my baby's meal list!  Sniff!