M. Suzanne Terry

Making my own extracts? Yes. Making my own chili paste? Don’t be ridiculous.

I have a picture in my head of the life I want to have someday, and it looks a little different from the life that I do have. I love my life now, but I also have plans for the future.

In this future life, I have a real pantry and a large freezer. I use storage space so well that I perpetually have enough food in the house that I could eat for two months without going to the store for anything other than the occasional egg or coffee run. And really, if I’m describing the life I want, it’s more likely that I’ll be trading produce from my garden for eggs from the neighbor’s chickens. In this life, I’m making a decent living as a writer so that I have a more flexible schedule, allowing me to plan some other time than my precious, heavily guarded weekends to break out the canning equipment to squirrel away enough tomato sauce, jam, and beans to last the whole year long.

Back in my current reality, however, this is not (yet) feasible.

I can store a few things. I use the space I have efficiently by buying mostly real food instead of processed foods. I can freeze pesto in cubes for a quick sauce because a little goes a long way, and a little is what I have room to store. But tomato sauce is something I have to make every time I want it, because it doesn’t store so compactly.

I have time to make some things from scratch. Vanilla and other extracts are better when you make them yourself, and they’re super easy. You basically pop a vanilla bean in a bottle of vodka and wait a few weeks. Limoncello – almost as easy. But as often as I eat roasted peppers, I don’t have the time to keep up with it roasting them on my own. I always end up buying the jars (or the paste in tubes).

I love baking my own bread. It’s way less expensive and so much tastier than anything I can buy at the grocery store. But I also live in Texas, which means at least half the year, an hour of bread-baking is followed by either three hours of sweating while I wait for the apartment to cool back down or keeping the apartment so tundra-esque that I have to take out a personal loan to pay my electric bill. So I compromise and splurge a little on bakery bread (and bonus – support a local business in the process) during those months.

Part of planning well is self-awareness. It’s recognizing that while you may want to milk your own goat and make your own cheese, you live in an apartment. Recognize your limits. Look for ways to stretch them, but accept those you can’t.

I’m sharing my Epic Meal Planning strategies for Write 31 Days – click here to see the master list.