Dinner again?!?

So, when we last left off, I was actually managing to get dinner together, but it still confused me. Narrowing down what we were trying to do (come up with plan, make it healthy and on sale if possible) made it a lot easier.

On Sundays during lunch, we would look at the sales fliers, clip some coupons and then talk about what we wanted to eat. I pass the flier over to Mark, he looks at it, says "Oh, ____ is on sale, what about _____?" (For some reason, only I get ridiculously stressed out/confused over meals).

Once we plan the weeks dinners (throwing in a few ideas for lunch and breakfast for extra credit on occasion), I make a grocery list. One of the things we had to tweak was when to plan for...I prefer to grocery shop during the week (on my way home from work--or at least I did when I was at the Old School). So I have to promise to shop on Monday, when I already work late because the Recycling Club meeting is that day. Ugh. So we are trying Wednesday to Wednesday with moderate success.

I think the big thing that has really helped us is making a shared calendar in Google for meals (I know. This whole thing is ridiculous, and it feels even more absurd writing it out. It's nice of Mark to humor me, no?). We spent maybe 20 minutes going through and putting meals on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays (over planning doesn't go well--we don't know what will come up, and then we shop for--and waste---food for meals we don't end up eating). We filled in the whole month either with favorites we already know or a quick perusal of magazine recipes I'd clipped (I love cooking magazines). Now we can just check in and say, "Still good with x, y and z?" and change one if we want.

It's also finally gotten us to try some of the things we thought sounded good, but never do because we always revert to something we already know, like the Scallop Risotto we made for Valentines Day.

Hopefully this will keep for working for us me. Mark was volunteering at church on Sunday, and I was supposed to figure out dinner. He told me to make whatever. And I worked myself up and could not figure out what to make. I spent twenty minutes walking from my computer in the living room into the kitchen to look in the fridge, then pull my recipe file, then look stuff up on the computer. I almost called Mark. And then I reminded myself it was just dinner.

How do you get dinner on the table? Do you find it to be way harder than you thought it would be?

Dinner's Getting There

Last summer, we started trying to work out everything we wanted dinner to be:

• healthy
• easy
• delicious
• not too expensive
• something we both like

It turned out to be harder than anticipated. Part of the problem was that it's generally a bad idea to try and do five things at once. Particularly when you're generally a big dinner-fail. And we were also trying to plan lunch and breakfast.

My sister plans her meals by the week, and tried to help me as well. On our 17 hour drive from Tahoe to Colorado over the summer, she helped make a list of different meal options we could try. This was pretty good, but I like to use coupons too, and so I wanted to find stuff that was on sale, and also I wanted to plan in advance, and when should we be going to the grocery store and how many meals do we shop for and and and and. (I know. I gave myself a headache too. And probably Mark.)

So. We talked over what to do (Mark was ridiculously patient with this part. I was frankly pretty ridiculous.) We decided to have only two goals for right now:
Plan the meals in advance so we know what we're having before 6 pm.
Buy stuff that's on sale.

To do that, we said we'd look at the sale flyers to get ideas, and try to plan meals around those things. And if we couldn't? Then, whatever, we'd just pick a recipe and buy the stuff full price. More important to get the eating on track than save money. And it worked! It totally helped us focus our thinking.

I said, hey tomatoes are on sale, Mark said, how about Caprese salad? And then, how about pizza? And that was pretty much it. Except I still spend way too much money (relatively speaking) and am buying food with no use in my mind, which of course means a good bit of it goes to waste. But at least this time the actual planning went pretty simply. And I don't think I bought quite as much too much food as last time. Part of our problem is that our plans end up changing throughout the week (not surprising considering our social circles) so we don't know what exactly to plan for. I expect that to be an easy, if eventual, fix though.

The problem with this week is a) I spent a fair amount (although some was on stock up food that I'm certain will be used, like cheese, butter and cream cheese). And I also have a good bit of perishable food still hanging out in my fridge. Darn.

But we're definitely getting the hang of it!

Dinner time, Part I

I started this project waaaaay back in mid-summer. We've been making baby steps ever since, but I think its most useful to talk about things in order (and, um, we haven't improved all that much, so maybe writing about it will help). At that time, I wasn't really working and Mark worked full time. Our schedules remain similar, but he comes home from school around 6 instead of work.

Meal planning and grocery planning is something I've been wanting to do for awhile. Mark and I eat most of our meals together, and it stresses.me.out. I'm not sure why it bothers me so much, but I think its because I thought this would be easy. It wasn't even something that it occured to me could be difficult or annoying. And we just cannot make it work. (I was really frustrated this summer. Probably something about too much time on my hands. I'm better now. Ish.)

On a sample day, I get home around 5 or so (I leave for work before7). Mark comes over usually after 6, by which time I'm hungry. And I'm trying not to eat something, because it should be dinner, but he wants to chat and relax and catch up. And I'm STARVING. After that, he wants to discuss several options for dinner. I no longer care, because I'm so hungry. I suggest one or two things, he doesn't like them, and we both end up annoyed (me more so, because I'm annoyed and famished). Mark genuinely likes cooking, but he isn't big on having a plan or scheduling. So its no big deal to him if he doesn't figure out what's for dinner til 7 and eat til 8:30. Part of this is laidback-ness, part is having a day that is altogether later than mine (my schedule is dictated by my workday, and I eat both other meals earlier than he does; I also eat a lot less).

I think I had in my head that you just figure out a plan and it comes together. Never did I think I would be totally miserable every night. Mark knows it bothers me, but he isn't sure what to do either. (This has actually been an issue since the worst-anniversary-week-ever*.) So he tells me he doesn't care, which is not true at all, just that he has no interest in dealing with it. He just isn't into almost every meal I come up with. The obvious remedy would be meal planning, but I'm so frustrated by the whole issue that I'm overwhelmed and don't know where to start. And Mark just wishes I could work it out and cheer up about it already. I'm too hungry to cheer up.

So I spent half my weekend reading everything Trent has ever written about food, and trying to come up with a plan. I heart Trent, so that was fun, but I was still a little lost. And Mark isn't always the best listener, so when he gets frustrated he mostly a) repeats himself and b) ignores whatever I'm saying. So he'll say "x" and I'll say "Agreed, thats a great point" to which he'll say "X" and I'll say, "Yeah, definitely, and what about Y?" And he'll say, "I really think x". Its a little frustrating.
I made out a list of the meals we needed and wrote down what we needed to buy (which sounds pathetically simple when I write it...but there are so many little decisions involved, it doesn't feel like it).

*Which I will tell you about sometime. It involves bad food, a work event and possible criminal charges.