Lesson’s learned

With this new lifestyle and all its changes, the most noticeable is the lack of time I have anymore. It really makes me wonder what is so different now. I’ve been busier in my life, I’ve had a longer commute before, and I’ve had less help in the kitchen before, so why do I have less time?

One answer might be that it’s no longer acceptable to make something from a box. There were also times where I wasn’t so adamant about a balanced and complete meal either. That makes a big difference. When we get home from work, there’s no time to waste. We need to know what we’re having when we walk in the door, or else we don’t eat until 7 or 8 in the evening. It really drives home the point of how handy it would be to have pre-made, seasonal meal plans. To flip open a little binder and choose a week of meals that looks appealing. A quick hop to the grocery store to pick up the items from our pre-planned shopping list would net me hours over the course of a week. Hours.

What would I do with those hours? I’d make more menus, and learn more about food. I’ve been having the most interesting conversations about food lately and I’ve got books lined up to read. But I haven’t the time. I’m a problem-solver though, so now that I’ve identified the problem I can implement a plan.

Ah, the plan. What a learning curve. There’s so much planning that goes into making a plan. And when we need to incorporate other people into the plan, and their dietary needs and wants – it becomes a huge daunting task.

I’m learning about my sense of loss in trying to make healthier food choices, and how to approach convincing someone else to make these choices with me. I’m learning about reading labels and caring about what I’m reading. I’m learning that the best way for me to understand what interests me about food, is to talk about it with lots of different people. I’m learning how to cope with limited kitchen tools, and space, and storage and even about the effects of a small space on ones psyche.

I know that I haven’t been getting here very often, but a plan is underway.

The new meal plan

We’ve decided that our easiest form of meal planning is to come up with the next three meals, suppers mainly. We consider variety – not only with the meats we choose, but also the ethnicity of the meal, as well as “leftover” potential for lunches. We back up the meats with a good variety of vegetables and fruits. A quick check of our staple pantry items, and we’re good to go.

Other things we consider during this planning stage of the next three meals are:

Our eating habits. We’re not big on sandwiches, we require a lot of variety (unless it’s leftovers!), if we purchase whole fruit like apples or pears, we never seem to finish them, but if we buy a couple types of melon/fruit and cut it up in a bowl in the fridge – we eat it all;

What we require from each meal. What do we know will make enough for 2 supper portions and 2 lunch portions, and what’s the backup plan? How ‘heavy’ is our day and how long will this need to last us. We also try to have a good balance of what will hold us until the next snack or meal, but not sit heavy in our stomachs and make us tired and sluggish in the afternoon;

Then we look at how much time is required and how long we really have. Sometimes we know our days are going to be a little more hectic than others. On these days we want healthy, quick, and fantastic flavours, and whether we need to get some prep work done either the evening before or the morning of. If I know (should all go well on that particular day!) that I’ll be home earlier than normal, then that’s when I like to plan a meal that we really enjoy but takes a little more time.

For breakfast, we’re breakfast shake people. Mike chooses a whey protein shake, and I love love love my Isagenix Isalean shake. For my menu business, I like to include breakfast smoothie recipes. Shakes and smoothies are just perfect for people heading out to work, or people who aren’t big on breakfast. Don’t forget that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

For lunch, we like leftovers. We will tend to choose dishes that will taste delicious when heated (or not) the next day. Dishes we enjoy that don’t bode well for reheating, we save for weekend cooking. We have been known to cart either a toaster oven or microwave off to work with us! Hey, whatever it takes!

I guess the only other thing we consider when choosing our supper dishes is the season. Aside from a nice roast, we would rarely have a winter dish in the summer. But who knows, we’re in Calgary now and we’ve had snow over the last three days!

New Things

Well, I’ve been away again! I moved. From country living to city living, from a house to an apartment, from BC to Alberta. It’s a big change. Surprisingly, one of the biggest changes we’re going through is the way we shop for our food.

We used to have a pantry – at least we had pantry items! Lots of pantry items. We’d buy bulk to pay the lowest price, shop less and always have things on hand. Now, our very small apartment kitchen cannot hold many items. We left our chest freezer in storage and now have only an icebox in our tiny little fridge. Most of our food didn’t fit in the truck anyway, so we’ve had to start from scratch all around. Just like someone who is moving out for the first time.

We did manage to squeeze our full compliment of spices into the truck, so at least we didn’t have to replace all of those. I will add here that if we did have to replace them, we would do that at a bulk food store as opposed to a grocery store. I would anticipate a savings of at least two thirds. We started out shopping for one day at a time - two if we were lucky. We’re at the grocery store every day. We were also buying semi-prepared food like crusted fish fillets, or stuffed chicken breasts. What an expensive way to shop! On one hand these items were fresh and flavourful, but on the other hand it was blowing our food budget.

Meal planning has never been more important to us. Another change right off is how much time we have to prepare meals. I used to work from home and had many an hour to spend on prep work for timely meals. Now, the household arrives home at 5:30 and we’re hungry and tired, it’s not the time to think about what to have for dinner. I want to walk in, know what I’m having for dinner and know that it’s going to be quick, easy, and delicious. 

As we learn our new way of managing meals, I’ll share my successes here and hopefully something will filter through that can help others save money, save time, and eat well. Till then…