Meal Planning

Every once in a while I get on a meal-planning kick. I figure out what I'm going to make each day for lunch and dinner and then buy all the groceries at once. Often I fizzle out on my plans before I reach the end of the week and have a bunch of food left over that taunts me with its impending bad-ness. Or the grocery store (or delivery service) throws a wrench in the works by not having something in stock or sending me the wrong thing. Or I make too much of one thing and don't have a chance to eat leftovers because I have all these plans for other meals.

You just have to be really flexible and ready to adapt and eventually it just seems like too much effort. When the weather's nice I don't mind shopping every day and just making meals on the fly. But with slushy snow on the ground and a stroller that doesn't always fit into the six-inch-wide paths of cleared sidewalk, I'm trying again.

First I got messed up because Fresh Direct sent me parsnips instead of tomatillos for my chili. Can you imagine a turkey-parsnip chili? (Hmmm. Maybe I should've tried that one out.) I just used the canned tomatoes I was going to use for the fennel tomato soup. So now I have 4 parsnips and a whole bunch of fennel that I don't know what to do with.

I did make a pork tenderloin, broccoli and mashed potatoes. The pork went into tacos the next night, the broccoli will go into homemade calzones tomorrow, and I'm starting to think the potatoes would be good in a parsnip soup.

On top of all that, last night during the breaks in the Oscars I assembled a strata for some brunch guests I was expecting today. It sits in the refrigerator all night, bread soaking up custard, then bakes in the morning, until it's this beautiful, golden, puffy thing. But only one person would brave the weather, so now I have a big pan of the stuff and a son and husband unwilling to eat it. Maybe I'll post the recipe later. It was good.