HAVE YOU HEARD? The Etsy shop has new prints, with more being added every week. Check it out here!

All posts in entree

A Beginner’s Week of Meal Planning

meal planning | foodloveswriting.com

Last Saturday night, at a time when most people our age were out with friends or stretched out on sofas, unwinding in front of TV screens, Tim and I sat across from each other at our dining room table, a laptop and a weekly planner before us, and discussed our menu for the next six days. I’d read Natalie’s blog post on meal planning the day before and, inspired, had told Tim maybe meal planning was something we ought to try. My husband, who, to his credit, is always much quicker to jump on board with my random ideas than I am with his, said okay. We would try meal planning, this concept people say simplifies your work weeks and lowers your family food budget. And while the idea of scheduling a week’s worth of meals is nothing new or revolutionary, and while there’s certainly nothing I write here that you wouldn’t find in a simple Google search, I’m chronicling our first week’s efforts here in this post anyway for two reasons:

1) Whatever the future holds for us, at least in terms of planning meals, I want to remember what the beginning felt like, much the way married people want to remember the newlywed years or moms, their babies’ first steps, and also,

2) While of course, when you begin anything new—whether it’s a job or a treatment or a hobby—it’s nice to hear from the experts, sometimes the ones you most want to hear from are the ones who were also new like you, not so long ago. So for any of you out there who have likewise not known about or personally tried meal planning, I hope this is of some interest to you.

(Plus, bonus reason, 3) Who doesn’t like to peek in someone else’s shopping cart? Here’s a figurative look at ours, last week, as well as some meals and methods we used.)

Read more…

Spicy Sweet Potato Quesadillas

sweet potato quesadillas | foodloveswriting.com

A few Saturdays ago, wearing red lipstick and riding boots, I took a free Mexican cooking class with my old Nashville roommates, Sara and Sarah. We met in a bright, sunny space dubbed the grocery store’s “community room,” where the tall ceiling stretched as high as a church building’s and the kitchen featured two portable stoves. While Sara asked questions and Sarah sipped iced coffee with sunglasses perched atop her head, all three of us leaned forward from our third row seats to get closer looks as a man named Michael flashed through a handful of demonstrations, beginning with tortilla soup and ending with fried avocados on sticks.

Michael, who looked a little like a stoic Ron Howard, gave constant tips and tricks to our little, informal group of around 16 as he worked. He explained how to chop an onion (sort of like this), why he likes polenta as a soup thickener (the flavor), when to add spices (to oil, before liquid, as most are fat-soluble). When he completed a dish, we tasted—and, no one is more surprised than I am to say this, but the taste I liked best was the quesadillas. Read more…

Cauliflower Stuffed Peppers

Cauliflower Stuffed Peppers | FoodLovesWriting.com

Like businesses, music, vacations and books, most meals begin as ideas—but as ideas that come more quickly down the mental conveyor belt than sonatas or summer getaway plans. A conversation at the office jogs a memory of Grandma’s butter cookies, and the kitchen finds you rolling dough; a blog post inspires dessert and you’re beelining for the pantry; or, unexpectedly on a weekday afternoon, a hunt through the refrigerator, opening drawers and crispers, fills your hands with bright red peppers and cauliflower and recalls a possibility you’d almost forgotten—and then, that quick, momentary thought, incubated right away in discussion and action, becomes a recipe you test twice in one week with your husband, the two of you lost together in discovery, in watching the abstract become something you hold in your hands and eat. Read more…