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Epic Meal Planning – A Write 31 Days Project

Posted in 31 Days, Epic Meal Planning, Food on October 1, 2016| 7 Comments »

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I have a calendar that hangs in my kitchen that is specifically for meal planning. Once a month, I pull it down and schedule specific shopping days and specific cooking days, and I decide what I’m going to cook and use that to create my grocery lists. I try to aim for Friday evenings for shopping days, and I really prefer having lightly scheduled weekends for cooking time so that I don’t have to cook during the week.

I like having a plan because it keeps me from making habitual terrible food choices that zap my energy.  I do not like having to find an hour or two a month to produce said plan.

Enter epic meal planning.

This level of meal planning is not for the faint of heart. It is structured and detailed but also magically flexible. This is go-on-a-dangerous-quest, feed-a-horde-of-hangry-dragon-slayers, survive-NaNoWriMo-without-gaining-20-pounds meal planning.

Once you’ve completed this process, you will be able to make each month’s plan to feed yourself and your loved ones – choices, schedule, and lists – in about ten minutes. And once you’ve done it, it works forever. I occasionally tweak my plan – add some new, exciting ingredient to kitchen staples, add a new recipe I liked, archive an old recipe that doesn’t seem appealing anymore – but that only takes a few minutes.

Having a structured plan doesn’t mean that you can never find a new recipe on Pinterest, go straight to the market, and make it that night. It also doesn’t mean you have to give up the drive-through forever. It does mean that you have something to work with on all the other days (and will help you say no to making the drive through a major habit). It perpetually answers the “What will we have for dinner?” question.

I’m so certain that this process will work for you like it works for me that I’m writing a book about it. It started as getting posts ready for Write 31 Days and has morphed into something larger. The book will include a lot of my own personal recipes and tips on how to expand the plan to fit your personal lifestyle, but this blog series will get you started.

Here are a few things to know about my approach before we get started:

– I looooove leftovers. I can happily eat the same thing three or four times a week, especially if I can throw a poached egg on top and call it breakfast. My favorite weeks are those when I have an open weekend where I can cook three or four meals and just eat on those the whole next week.

If you do not share this love, this will still work for you. You’ll just need to cook more often. If you despise leftovers or have intense appetites in your household that make leftovers as elusive and mythical as a unicorn, and you don’t already have a meal planning system in place, then we are going to be besties by the end of this month. Having a plan will revolutionize your life. You’re welcome, and I love you, too.

– I am not you; you are not I. The minute details of our meal planning will be different because we are different people with different lives. I am single, and I live alone in a spacious two-bedroom apartment with a not-spacious kitchen and an abysmal lack of food storage space. My kitchen staples are probably going to look a lot different from yours. That’s okay – there is still something to be learned from that step.You may have more storage space and thus more freedom in this area than I do, and I encourage you to embrace it.

You may also probably shop less often than I do. You probably have a real pantry and a full-size freezer in your utility room or garage. I commend you on your great use of space. Feel free to send me pictures so that I can live vicariously through you, as having a pantry and extra freezer is one of the top five reasons I’m saving up to buy a house. If you have the space and would like suggestions of freezers to buy, I have been making eyes at a couple of units at Lowe’s and would be happy to advise.

Focus on the instructions, not the examples. The purpose of examples is to see how concepts might be applied, not to become the concepts themselves. The goal of this month is to create a plan that works for you, and that probably won’t work if you’re trying to replicate exactly what I do and eat.

– I’m 41. I’ve been the adult who is primarily responsible for my nourishment for quite some time. Most of the information I will pass on in the next thirty days is from my own trial-and-error experience. I also read a lot on the subject of food, and I will give recommendations for further study whenever the opportunity arises.

If you are twenty and have moved out of the dorm and away from its meal plan into your first apartment, there may be some things that I’ve forgotten to include simply because I am old and forget that people don’t know how to do them. First of all – welcome, and good for you! If I had started doing this when I was twenty years old, I would be a lot healthier right now and wouldn’t have had to unlearn so many bad habits to get to a decent relationship with food. Second, please feel free to ask questions. That’s what a comment section is for. And third, if you are currently staring into the blank canvas that is your first kitchen, a couple of great additional resources for getting started are Alton Brown’s Gear for Your Kitchen and Kallio and Krastins’s The Stocked Kitchen.

– You can use a computer to collect recipes and compile your grocery lists, and I encourage this if you are starting fresh, because copy-paste-print is super efficient. If you prefer to kick it old school (as I do), you’ll need a recipe box with dividers, index cards, a pen, a hole punch, and a binder ring (for shopping purposes). For both methods, you will need some sort of calendar system to assign meals to days. Regardless of which method you use, once you’ve completed the overall process, meal planning will be a breeze.

If you want to review any section we have covered, they’ll all be archived here (archive may be delayed on days I’m without a computer, but all links will be up by the end of the month):

Section One – Pre-planning Phase: Taking Stock

Day 2 – Confronting the Fridge

Day 3 – Confronting the Cupboard

Day 4 – If I Got Snowed in Right Now…

Day 5 – Grocery List #1

Day 6 – Shopping Day #1

Section Two – Planning Phase 1: Making Lists

Day 7 – Basic Staples

Day 8 – Meal Staples

Day 9 – Saving Graces

Day 10 – Recipes for Fall

Day 11 – Recipes for Winter

Day 12 – Recipes for Spring

Day 13 – Recipes for Summer

Day 14 – Breakfast

Day 15 – Grocery List #2

Day 16 – Shopping Day #2

Day 17 – Freezer Tips

Section Three – Planning Phase 2: Monthly Planning

Day 18 – Recipe Cards

Day 19 – Revisiting Inventory

Day 20 – Master Calendar

Day 21 – Shopping Days, Cooking Days

Day 22 – Schedule Reminders

Day 23 – Grocery List #3

Day 24 – Shopping Day #3

Section Four – Planning Phase 3: Entertaining and Special Occasions

Day 25 – Traditions

Day 26 – Party Planning

Day 27 – Anticipating Needs

Day 28 – Recipes – Finding New Loves and Rekindling Old Flames

Section Five – Review

Day 29 – Self-Awareness

Day 30 – Space-Awareness

Day 31 – Flexibility

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The Magic of Onions

Posted in Food on August 30, 2016| Leave a Comment »

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We had a church potluck on Sunday to welcome back the college students who go away for the summer and to welcome the new school year.

It came at a good time. I have been eating terribly for the last few weeks. Work is busy, and I’m trying to finish a manuscript (about meal planning, oddly enough), so home has been easy food (sandwiches, cereal, the occasional drive-through) and comfort ice cream. I needed to get back in the kitchen and make something again.

I am going to the farm this coming weekend, so I decided to use up some of the veggies in my fridge and on my counter while they were still at their peak. I chopped everything Saturday night so that I could just load up the slow cooker in the morning to create a little ratatouille/caponata hybrid.

Then I went about my evening. It didn’t go as planned. I planned my usual evening of late – sitting in front of the television or reading until I was tired.

But there’s something about onions.

The smell of onions in the air changes my mood. It reminds me of MeMaw’s garden and kitchen. It makes me want to read cookbooks and dream of future dishes. It got me off the couch and into the office to write another 1,100 words on meal planning.

Onions might be my favorite vegetable.

I mean, I’m not going to sit and eat a raw onion like an apple, but I put them in almost everything I cook. I like raw onions just fine but if a dish contains them, they are so overpowering that they’re all I can taste. Then my mouth gets confused, because why is this onion creamy?!?! Oh, wait. Because it’s actually guacamole. My taste buds register it as an oddly green onion dip.

When I make guacamole, I mince the onions (and the peppers, because ditto on the strong taste of peppers) and soften them for a few minutes in a little olive oil. Then I drain the oil and reserve it for a future stir fry or scrambled eggs and let the onions and peppers cool while I prepare the avocado, tomatoes, and celery (yes, celery. Do it! You know, if you like celery). Then I mix it all together, sprinkle in some fresh cilantro, salt, and pepper, and enjoy, usually straight from the mixing bowl.

What’s your favorite veggie? What’s your favorite way to eat it?

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What I’m Into – April 2016

Posted in Books, Food, What I'm Into, Work on May 2, 2016| 4 Comments »

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April was a month of celebrations and change. I typically am opposed to changes,  but I like these ones.

Mom and Dad, my brother-in-law, and several friends all have birthdays in April. I didn’t get to see my parents on their birthdays, but we talked on the phone. I got to go out to dinner with several friends and my brother-in-law on their birthdays, though. I forget how expensive going out to eat is. How did I do that so often when I was in college? Mystery.

I did get to deliver good news on my parents’ birthdays, though. On Mom’s birthday, I got to tell her that I got a new job (which started today!). And on Dad’s birthday, I got to tell him that I found a new place to live (moving in June). I think they’re even more excited than I am. Mom broke out that chipper, squeaky voice that she usually reserves for babies and feral cats she’s trying to woo.

I’ve been binge-watching Grey’s Anatomy. This show has taken over my life. I’m on season five, and I already know the terrible thing that happens toward the end of the season, and my heart is angry already.

Most of my reading has been cookbooks. Simple Food, Big Flavor by Aaron Sanchez makes me want to roast all the things and make them into sauces. I don’t like the way he writes, but the food makes up for it. Simply Done Well Done by Aaron McCargo, Jr. also had some great food ideas. There was a lot of deep-frying and heavy cream involved, though, so they’re going to have to be sometimes-food. My favorite cookbook I read this month was Sunny’s Kitchen by Sunny Anderson. I appreciate her stories about how her travels have affected her cooking. I also appreciate that she cooks exactly the way I do. Usually when I read a cookbook, I find myself saying, “That’s a good idea, but I would change this and substitute that.” Not on hers. I will follow those recipes exactly.

In March, I started a new health plan that basically involves drinking more water, eating better, and exercising regularly. At the beginning of April, I had already lost 6 pounds. Now I’ve lost 3 more pounds, even though I have eaten luxuriously and only completed about half of my exercise days. Yippee!

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I’m linking up with Leigh Kramer. Hop over there and tell us what you’re into!

 

 

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What I’m Into – November 2015

Posted in Books, Food, NaNoWriMo, TV, What I'm Into, Writing on November 30, 2015| 2 Comments »

Superheroes and villains. Family and pie.

In other words – the essentials.

I spent NaNoWriMo fleshing out a new story wherein the main character is a superhero who currently has telepathy and mad combat skills. Her powers are up in the air – I had a lot of fun writing different scenes where she has different powers and seeing how that would play out. In the end, my favorite scenes (or the ones that I can actually piece together and make into a story) will probably dictate what her powers will be. I only finished about 10,000 words, but I love her, so this will be a story I revisit.

Of course, this meant I watched a lot of Smallville. You know, for inspiration. And trips down fandom memory lane. And eye candy.

Thanksgiving was fun but seemed rushed. I took the whole week off last week so that I could have two days of getting-things-done and be able to relax when we went to see the parents on Wednesday instead of spending the holiday making lists of all the things I needed to remember to do when we got home Sunday. Of course, like a fool, I then told people I took the whole week off, and because I would much rather have dinner and hang out with people I miss than clean my nasty apartment…well…that’s how that went.

You’re right. I totally told them on purpose.

To-do list completely not done, we left around noon on Wednesday to travel to the parents’ house. This was my view:

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Love that sky.

But I still managed to relax a little at Thanksgiving, although my lists on my phone are out of control now and I might never get them done. We had traditional fare and lots of dessert. I ate four different kinds of pie (over the course of the weekend, to be clear). There was coconut cream pie and chocolate meringue pie and lemon pudding pie and because that went so well (and so quickly), a chocolate pudding pie. There was also a pecan pie, but I am not a fan, so I left that one to others.

I really love pie, y’all.

The weather is finally exactly how I like it. Cold. And not the “cold” that some people start complaining about in late October when it dips slightly below 70. Like…ice has formed. I mean, not here. But at my parents’ house –

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Ice on the kitchen window.

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Frozen vines and icicles on the trellis in the backyard.

I didn’t read a lot this month, but it definitely had a theme to it. Holidays apparently make me want to look at my relationship with food. I picked Unbearable Lightness by Portia de Rossi for my memoir/biography discussion for book club. She already had me at this:

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This is the best, rawest, most honest capture of what it’s like to have an eating disorder that I’ve ever read. Sometimes, it was like reading pages out of my own journals from my late teens/early twenties. It would be tempting to write a memoir on this subject from a heavy now-looking-back perspective – to rush to lessons learned and mountains moved. But she didn’t do that, and that’s why this book is so important. She takes you through the details of her thoughts and feelings, which, if you’ve ever thought and felt similar things, doesn’t give you the chance to say, “Well, that’s not me.” It hits you in the gut and makes you deal with it. I cannot recommend this book enough.

I also read a lot of Mireille Guiliano. I loved the food philosophy (i.e., common sense) of French Women Don’t Get Fat, so I tried French Women for All Seasons (I liked it…and found it charming that she included sections on how to tie scarves in each season…but otherwise meh) and Women, Work, and the Art of Savoir Faire (I found some parts very useful and some parts very baffling). She reminds me a little of my mother.

So that’s what I’ve been into this month. What have you been doing/eating/reading?

I’m linking up with Leigh Kramer – click the button below and join us!

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What I’m Into – October 2015

Posted in Food, Shelfies, What I'm Into on November 4, 2015| 4 Comments »

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Because Fall.

Fall food is my favorite food. October didn’t have quite the sharp coolness that I wanted, but I feel like I ushered in the season in my heart with food and habits.

I made so much beer bread last month. I used a slight variation of my friend Mel’s recipe, which is super easy – Mix 3 cups self-rising flour and one beer (I use Corona or a similar beverage), put it in a greased loaf pan (that’s right – no kneading necessary), pour half a stick of melted butter on top, and bake it for about an hour at 350 degrees. It is good with soup (and also with gravy, but we won’t talk about that).

I also made a lot of lasagna and stacked enchiladas, and I quite possibly ate my weight in kettle corn. It was not a health food month.

For someone who spent almost every day blogging about books, I certainly did not read that many. Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones was nice. I enjoyed that.

I spent most of my TV hours watching My Boys (ah, that takes me back) at home and Once Upon A Time at my sister’s house. Whoever told me that I would loooooove OUAT? You were utterly correct. It’s so clever and awesome, and I want all of the evil queen’s clothes/costumes. Also…Hook. I don’t care if he’s bad, I am a big, big fan.

But the main thing I was into this October? Knitting. I knitted like a madwoman.

I finished a blanket that I started over three years ago:

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I started and finished a whole new lap blanket:

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I made several scarves:

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All of these projects barely made a dent in my yarn stash. I don’t know what triggers these knitting frenzies, but I’m glad I have them every once in a while. My house would be overrun with yarn.

What have you been into this October

I’m linking up with Leigh Kramer – come join us!

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Reformation Sunday

Posted in 31 Days, Food, Shelfies on October 26, 2015| 2 Comments »

Most days, I really love my introversion. I appreciate that I can enjoy my solitude (a useful skill, as I am single and thus get a lot of it). I like being able to restore my own well of energy without needing others to do that for me.

But my particular brand of introversion is not without its problems, one of them being a certain measure of social anxiety. Like in our church building when 1) it’s Reformation Sunday and 2) there’s a baptism (and the extra people who came to see it). Many, many people – tiny, tiny space. Add to this that I’m in the choir, so I couldn’t just sit in a corner and hide – I had to be up and moving around and part of the service – and this leaves me counting the moments until I can escape. I’m really proud of myself that I did not run screaming from the building afterwards.

Then I drove to Fort Worth in construction that I’m pretty sure has been going on for at least the 22 years I’ve lived in the area, and that didn’t help. I went to the Friends of the Library book sale, which was also crowded. At one point, I texted my friend, “I’m going to go stand outside and breathe deeply.”

But then we went to eat Ethiopian food at Samson’s, and it was so relaxing.

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I’m gonna learn to make injera. That’s one of my food goals. 

Margarett and I split the vegetarian sampler, as is our habit. As soon as I folded the first piece of injera over the miser wat, all the stress of the day faded. Margarett enjoyed it, too:

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“My fingers smell delicious.”

Then I had coffee. For me, Ethiopian coffee is half the reason to go.

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Little shelf-ish (were you wondering when the shelf would appear?) coffee tray

I normally drink my coffee black with no sugar, but I enjoyed a little sweetness with this one.

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CUTE.

We stuck around while I sipped my coffee and ate until we were beyond full, and we got to talk to the owners. We had a nice chat about children and the ethics of responsibility and capitalism and systems that perpetuate abuse. Good times.

I was so content by the time we left that the drive back to Denton didn’t stress me out at all.

I’m writing 31 Days of Shelfies.

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Cooking for One

Posted in 31 Days, Food, Shelfies on October 14, 2015| Leave a Comment »

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When I first lived alone, I relished coming home and having popcorn or a bowl of strawberries for dinner. One of the perks of living alone is that there is no one else to cook for unless I specifically invite them over, so I can always do what I want.

But it didn’t take long to start to miss cooking (and eating) proper meals. And while I’m not opposed to leftovers, I also don’t find it appetizing to eat the same thing four times a week. However, my cooking experience was in cooking meals for groups.

I needed guidance.

So I started acquiring a nice collection of cookbooks about cooking for one. The one pictured above is my favorite (and not just because her shoes are amazing – click on the following link to check out those shoes). Even the title is the best: The Pleasure is All Mine: Selfish Food for Modern Life by Suzanne Pirret.

This book is two parts cookbook, one part memoir. She has great stories and great recipes. Added bonus – the cocktail pairings. She has a fantastic name, too. I feel that she and I could be friends.

There are other books that I love in this specific genre. Judith Jones’s The Pleasures of Cooking for One is wonderful. Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant is one that I bought just for the title, but it’s right up my alley – a collection of essays on the subject of cooking and dining alone.

What sub-genres do you love?

I am writing 31 days of shelfies.

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Happy Accident

Posted in Food on August 27, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Today on the August Break Challenge on Instagram, the prompt is “favorite recipe.” So a couple of weeks ago, when I made cavatini, I took this picture in anticipation of this prompt:

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Doesn’t that look delicious? Don’t you like the quirky angle from which I took this picture, as if all it took was a little point-and-shoot rather than retaking it eleventy dozen times to get a less fuzzy picture that still looked spontaneous and fun? Aren’t you impressed with how clean my counter looks or that I actually planned ahead to show you something?

Well, go ahead and be impressed for a little while. Because 1) it was delicious, 2) while it’s not the best picture I’ve ever taken, I can definitely see a marked improvement in what I’ve learned about photo-taking in the last year or so, and 3) I am impressed with my own self that there was a clean counter and that I planned ahead, so you might as well be, too.

But honestly – this is a picture of what my kitchen usually looks like when I’m cooking:

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There are dirty bowls and spatulas all over the place. If you look closely, there’s even a wine cork there, even though there’s absolutely no wine in monkey bread (although dark buttered rum might be nice…hmm… *plots*), so who knows how long that has even been there. That was the picture from Tuesday night, or as I will remember it in my nightmares, Disaster Night.

It started with a pretty straightforward plan. I was going to make a sausage/broccoli stir fry to put over rice, with monkey bread for dessert. Simple enough.

Monday, before I went to bed, I put the frozen sausage in the refrigerator to let it thaw.

Tuesday at 5:00, it was still not thawed. Not one to be deterred, I forged ahead anyway. I sliced the ground sausage into icy rounds and put them in the skillet. Then, because I am impatient, I used my handy Pampered Chef Mix ‘N Chop to see if I could cut through one of the rounds to speed the process along. On the one hand, it cut through efficiently. On the other, I had forgotten how efficient a tool this is and applied much more force than necessary, causing half of the sausage puck to fling itself up and hit the ceiling and the other half to leap to the floor. I took a moment to completely freak out that there were now raw sausage bits on both my floor and ceiling. I have never cleaned that floor or ceiling so quickly or so thoroughly (or to the soundtrack of so much cursing).

Then the garlic refused to peel and I also dropped half the onion on the floor when my old spice rack finally gave up the ghost and plummeted right into the middle of them. I burned my hand, narrowly escaped chopping the tip of my finger off, and accidentally doubled the ginger.

At the end of this, however, I still had a delicious (albeit intensely gingery) meal. What a happy accident.

Being optimistic of thought and short of memory, I set out after my meal to make monkey bread. Monkey bread, for those of you who don’t know, is one of the easiest things to make. You pinch off pieces of biscuit dough, dip them in butter, roll them in sugar (and cinnamon, if you want), pile them in a baking dish, and bake until they’re done (usually about two or three minutes longer than what it would take to bake the same recipe as regular biscuits). What emerges from your oven is a glorious, caramel-y treat.

I usually like to make my own biscuit dough, because it’s not hard, but it is so much better than biscuits from the can. For some reason, though, I had some canned biscuits, so I used them instead (because even with canned, it’s hard to mess this up). What I had forgotten was the loud popping noise that the canned biscuits make when they are opened. Has it always been that loud? I’m pretty sure I got a super loud batch. I yelped so loudly that my new neighbor knocked on our shared wall and yelled, “Are you okay?!” So hey – now I know that if I ever get mauled (or more likely – fall and injure myself on something embarrassing, like a wayward sock), they will notice and perhaps call someone to come to my aid. That’s nice to know.

I pinched, I dipped, and I rolled the biscuits in brown sugar. Many recipes call for the initial roll to be in white sugar with brown sugar for the final sprinkling, but of course I was out of white sugar. It is not as easy to roll biscuit nuggets in brown sugar, but the extra effort and mess are worth it. From this point on, I will always make it without white sugar, because IT WAS AMAZING. I actually purred.

Now it’s your turn. Share your happy accident stories. I know you have them!

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What I’m Into – June 2015

Posted in Books, Church, Dance, Food, Fun, What I'm Into on July 2, 2015| 4 Comments »

Every year, June tries to make me love summer. It doesn’t succeed, but it’s persistent in its effort. This summer it almost had me.

I mean – just look at it –

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June, you gorgeous thing.

Of course, now the temperatures are climbing, and I’m in a constant state of being a snack for bugs, so any potential goodwill I had toward summer is now out the window. But June tried. Oh, it tried!

I started the month off at my parents’ farm. I originally planned the trip to help with their planters, but they had already finished the ones they are going to put out this year by the time I got there. So I helped them watch TV and eat a lot of food. I am very helpful in both those regards. It was such a relaxing week.

I saw two movies in the theater this month. Of course, I had to go see Pitch Perfect 2. It was pretty funny. Before I went to see it, my friend Kim said, “I just want to say two words – We Belong. Best part.” It really was. I laughed and laughed. I also went to see Spy. It was hilarious, but that’s not even the thing I liked most about it. When I read that Melissa McCarthy was cast as an agent, I expected the movie to make her out to be this bumbling, lovable character who succeeds despite her incompetence. But no. She kicked ass. They specifically cast someone who doesn’t fit the physical stereotype of the role and then make her awesome at it. Also, Jason Statham is adorable and funny. Favorite thing I’ve seen in a theater in a long time.

It has been a roller coaster of a news month. Between the police incident in McKinney and the shooting in Charleston and all consenting adults actually being able to marry the consenting adult of their choice in all 50 states and black churches burning…whew.  I really have to get a computer at home again, because my poor little phone just can’t keep up. I’m going to write more about this tomorrow, but this month, I’m really into my church. The way they have brought these stories to the foreground of our discussions and have not shied away from the parts that make us uneasy and constantly ask what work we have to do – I just love it there.

Another wonderful thing that happened this month is a little cherub named Savvy turned three:

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She started out pretty subdued at her party, but before long, she was a little burst of joy:

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I just love that giggle.

I read so much this month. Most of the things I read has some sort of justice theme running through them, which seems fitting. My favorite novels were Dreams of Gods and Monsters by Laini Taylor (AMAZING end to this trilogy) and Peaches for Father Francis by Joanne Harris. I also bathed in the poetry of Nayyirah Waheed – Salt was my favorite collection.

My dad and I bond over The Chew, so I took a couple of Carla Hall’s cookbooks with me when I visited. I liked Cooking with Love, but I liked Carla’s Comfort Foods better. I blame her for my newfound obsession with tarragon (particularly in a lemon cream sauce). And if I ever meet her, I’m going to thank her for teaching me what no one else in my life has before – how to get perfect rice by baking it. Did any of you know how to do this and just not tell me? It’s so simple, and it makes so much sense (basically, bring water and rice to a boil and then cover it and put it in a 350-degree oven to steam). How have I lived this long and not known this?!

You can see more of what I’ve read this month (and this year, for that matter) at my Goodreads page.

My favorite thing about this June is that it has been infused with dance.

I read Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit, and seventeen pages of notes later, all these stories of dance have kicked my writing life back into gear. I am going to be processing it for a long time.

As always, I am loving So You Think You Can Dance. I haven’t made it through all the auditions yet, because I keep rewatching the ones I like. I get so excited for them when they get that ticket to Vegas!

And I don’t know if you heard me squealing with delight all the way from where you are, but Misty Copeland, one of my favorite dancers of all time, became the first black female principal dancer of the American Ballet Theater.

This June made a beautiful case for summer.

I’m linking up with Leigh Kramer – come join us and tell us what your June was like!

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Cheese

Posted in Food on May 13, 2015| Leave a Comment »

I just sat here for ten minutes trying to come up with a witty title for this post. But then I said to myself, “Self, it’s finals week. Forget the wit and move on.”

Today, I’m going to talk about cheese.

I’ve been reading cookbooks lately – even more so than usual – and the recipes that get me the most excited are the ones where cheese is a significant part of the show. So when Andi suggested to our writing group that we write about cheese this week, I knew I could meet that challenge.

I love cheese.

I love the way it melts and oozes. I love the way it binds things together in my favorite baked comfort foods. I’ve already written my ode to goat cheese, but today, I bring you ten things I’m excited to try with cheese when classes are finished and I have time to cook again.

  1. Harvest Breakfast Braid – So I’m totally going to replace the cranberries with dried apricots and replace the apples with peaches (because seasons), but this looks delicious.
  2. Goat. Cheese. Risotto. If a person were to design the perfect comfort food for me, this would be it. And if I manage to have leftover risotto (because no to the fast risotto…just no)…
  3. Kale and Goat Cheese Risotto Cakes – I would like to think that I would make these for appetizers to share. But that would require me NOT to eat all the risotto and then NOT to eat all the fried things before the guests arrived. This might be the greatest feat of willpower I have ever conquered.
  4. Ham and Gruyere Thumbprints – A savory answer to one of my favorite cookies. We might skip the ham.
  5. Mediterranean Dip – Oh, feta. I love you so.
  6. Pizza Pasta Casserole – One big bucket of happiness.
  7. Caprese Skillet Eggs – I love this for sentimental multiple reasons. First, I just love a caprese anything. It’s hard to mess that up. Second, I love eggs. Third, one skillet = easy cleanup. This is something I would make when I wake up late enough to still want breakfast but it’s almost time for lunch.
  8. Breakfast Enchiladas – They had me at “cheese sauce.” And “enchiladas.” And “breakfast.” Basically, they just have me.
  9. Roasted Butternut Squash and Bacon Pasta – WHAT?! There’s at least three kinds of happiness in that dish.
  10. Any (or all) of these grilled cheese sandwiches – Think you can’t improve on just bread and cheese? Click on that link and bask in the glory of how wrong you are. Deliciously, fantastically wrong.

What are some of your favorite things to do with cheese?

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