WIAW – 52

Well – it’s taken me more than a year to write a year’s worth of posts – but that’s all right. (With me, at least… and I assume with you!) This feels to me more like a framework than an absolute weekly commitment.

These were the meals yesterday – Mardi Gras. I decided to get meaty… (since I’ll be more deliberate about meatless meals for the next 6 weeks.)

Breakfast was sausage and eggs, with corn muffins. Sausage has always been a real treat for me… 10 years or so, when I started getting serious about eating a good breakfast every morning, I found that if I had sausage, I didn’t “forget” to eat… though I often did otherwise. So for several years I simply had sausage every morning. I started making my own, sometimes from ground pork from the store, more often from ground turkey (largely because it was both more reliably available and less expensive.) This is from a batch I made up of pork sausage, most of which is frozen for future use. This meal finished the pack in the fridge.

Lunch was lentil soup. I’m trying to get better at streamlining lunch… The hard truth is that, if I want to eat home cooked lunches, and eat when I need to, I can’t start planning lunch at lunchtime. If I want to throw things together to make lunch, the way I do all summer with my salads, I need to have things handy that can be thrown into a solid meal. I like lentil soup, but it does take about 45 minutes for just the lentils to cook, so lunch was running late – wait – so why am I cooking lentils at lunchtime? A few weeks ago I started periodically cooking a batch of lentils – just plain. They take less room in the fridge than fully assembled lentil soup with broth and vegetables and all – and I can vary them more, so I’m not eating the same thing every day. I mean, I’m already doing that with other beans…

So anyway, Tuesday I thought of it in time to cook the lentils and have them ready at lunchtime. I then wanted to turn it into soup quickly, for lunch… so I put lentils and the liquid they cooked in (I don’t want it taking up fridge space) and a few cubes of pork broth into a pot. Then I added some of the frozen precooked onion I keep on hand, and frozen precooked celery from last fall (I’m almost out) and a diced  greens muffin, and the last of the slow cooked pork. (Well – there’s still a pound or so in the freezer – but this was the last in the fridge.) A good shake of Spike seasoned salt, let it simmer a couple of minutes, and I had lunch. With the rest of the muffins from breakfast.

Now, I had been feeling all efficient (and well) in the morning – not only had I cooked lentils, I’d slung a piece of beef in the slow cooker, with a sliced onion, for my couldn’t be any easier pot roast.  (Cooked on Low for 8 hours.) And a good thing, too – I had a bad afternoon. So I told Rich to put rice in the rice cooker and went to bed…  when I finally pulled myself up again, he microwaved frozen vegetables, and served dinner. And you know – it was very good… and I didn’t have to lift a finger that evening (which was even better.)

I’m sorry to say that I am not joining Jenn at her party, as usual  – she isn’t throwing one, today. She’s been overwhelmed by posts that have nothing at all to do with WIAW…  and is taking a well deserved break from fools who refuse to follow instructions. (I feel quite strongly that the person giving the party has the right to set the conditions. I don’t wear jeans to a dinner dance or a ballgown to a barbecue. If I feel I don’t want to – or cannot – abide by the directions in a link party, I don’t link to it. Pretty simple, when you see it as common courtesy.) Anyhow, she still does a great vegetable oriented blog… do take a look!

And whether or not she decides to continue the linky party, I’m going to continue these posts. I really do like showing – and looking at myself – the way my food comes together. Recipes only tell you so much. This shows how they work.