Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Habits

Aahhh, once again, both boys are napping! And what am I doing, you ask? Let me tell you that I am soaking up every quiet moment present, indulging in a big bowl of Chipolte chips and guacamole. Something about the salt on their chips, it has a lime taste to me, and the guac - thank goodness the kids don't like it, so I don't even have to share!

Habits are really hard to break, but I think sometimes they are even harder to learn. You might think that while I have been doing this domestic gig for about five years now, I might have picked up some good habits along the way. Unfortunately, I must say that I have yet to really rack up a list of good ones. There is one that I am really trying to tackle of late. Let me explain it to you.

Scene: It's 4:00 p.m. and hubby phones home. "What's your plan for dinner?", he asks. PLAN?? I never seem to have a plan. So, for the next two hours, I elevate my blood pressure, scream a little more than usual at the kids, open the fridge and pantry about 20 times just to see that everything I could possibly make is still frozen, and then swear to myself that I won't let this happen again tomorrow. Then, I pick up the phone and call sweet hubby, and say ever so sweetly that I indeed don't have a plan and am having trouble coming up with anything. Would he ever so kindly stop and pick something up for us and I promise him this will be the last time!

I am tired of this scene and I am going to try so hard to change it. I have planned menus before, I have even been in a cooking group that exchanged freezer meals, but I have never stuck with them long enough for them to become, well, a habit.

Last Friday, when the boys napped (boy, you can do a lot when they actually nap!), I sat down and planned a menu for this week. I made the grocery list and all. Then I started to think that there has to be some tool out there to help me make this task easier. After much time spent at the computer, I came across this organizing site that posts Menu Planning Mondays every week.

Here, the author posts her own weekly menu, plus many readers (like 300 or so) also link their menus to this site as well. Most of them also include recipes. After browsing through many of the already made menus, all I did was copy someone else's menu, print any necessary recipes, and make my grocery list. Ta-da, it only took about an hour and it was fun to see what other moms are cooking.

So, today at 8:30 a.m., I already knew that I was going to make fish for dinner and I got it out of the freezer to thaw and I am set! Also, since I have a plan, I bought enough ingredients at the store to double the recipes for a couple of nights this week so I can freeze a couple extra dinners to have on hand. And the best part yet, I only spent a fraction of what I normally do when I go to the grocery store.

Biggest question now, is, how long will I keep this up? Well, I am hoping someone out there reading this will ask me how this is going every once in a while, just to keep me on my toes!

I must be going, Sam is starting to wake, probably needing to use the restroom, as I forgot to make him go before he went to sleep. Now there's another habit I have to work on!

1 comment:

Wendi@EveryDayMiracles said...

You domestic goddes you! Of course I will hold you accountable on all this... :)
Now if only I could figure out what I am making for supper tonight. :) Going to check out that web site.