weekly meal plan

cooking is not my thing.  i'm not good at it and i don't enjoy it.  i'm way too add to multitask so cooking stresses me out hardcore.  lucky for me, i married a guy that didn't care if he had a hot meal. ever.

our first year of marriage (senior year at byu) was filled with cereal, canned ravioli, and frozen corndogs.  no joke.  i used to buy all of that stuff in bulk and it is all. we. ate.

the following four months of our marriage were spent in pennsylvania while my honey hated his life in exchange for lots of money worked for apx selling security systems.  i was a nanny so i got home at 4 and honey got home between 9 and 10.  so i tried my hand at cooking.  it wasn't too hard since i had nothing to do anyways.  seriously, my alternative was staring at the ceiling.  which i actually did frequently for lack of anything more entertaining.  anyways, i cooked a few times a week but honey and i found we didn't really care for hot food.  he was still loving cereal all day every day and meanwhile i was addicted to granola (mom's recipe) and yogurt (i actually make my own now!) and was way too happy to eat it morning, noon, evening, and night.  i consumed gallons of granola and yogurt that summer.

then we moved to colorado for 11 months.  i actually don't remember eating during this time.  actually scratch that.  i do.  breakfast was normally two or three pieces of white bread... eaten in the car... on my way to work at the daycare.  honey also grabbed several pieces of bread on his way out the door and called it breakfast.  neither of us really packed a lunch so honey did a combination of starving and eating out during lunch meetings, and i did a combination of starving and eating leftovers of the nasty food (except on wednesdays because it was mexican and rosa always made something amazing) the kids ate at lunch.  i am not proud of this but laziness got the best of me.  dinner?  sundays we ate dinner at the in laws after church.  but at home?  i actually only have one memory of eating dinner in our apartment... i remember it because honey made it for me.  so really we'd both get home from work at the same time and we'd maybe grab a quick bowl of cereal before heading over to play with our only friends bryan and carolyn and we would eat whatever deliciousness carolyn had cooked up.  she's one of those people that married someone that likes a hot meal.  thank you bryan, we all benefited from your need to eat good food.  and then we would hang out, snack, watch tv, and play games before heading back to our cold, gloomy, empty cupboards apartment to go to sleep so we could wake up and start our day with more bread. i don't even remember going to the grocery store for more than milk.  seriously.

then we moved to california.  food was way more expensive than colorado but the produce was cheaper than the rest of the country.  so being the cheap person i am, i bought tons of produce.  i have many many memories of buying produce from milk pail and hating my life while i got everything else from the worst ever non super walmart.  the first month i was there, i was at home all day looking for a job and i prepared and ate tons of food, all super healthy.  i actually gained over 10 lbs in six weeks.  it was all part of my plan to increase my fertility to help me get pregnant.  well... it worked.  and then i was so sick i didn't eat anything for three months.  the rest of the time we were living in our tiny one bedroom highrise apartment, i only ate while i was at work (nannying) and then a bowl of cereal before bed.  i think honey lived off of cereal.  i was tired (ha, that's an understatement) throughout my entire pregnancy and spent every waking moment at home in my bed.  true story.

then we moved to a two bedroom townhouse apartment, i finished working, and we had a baby.  i tried my hand at cooking because i had so much downtime with a constantly napping newborn.  but honey was super involved in school and rarely home to eat.  and he seemed to always bring food home from club dinners he'd be helping out with.

then we moved here to lovely parker colorado and we decided to be real adults.  we have a kid, a house, a garage (i feel like real adults have garages) and normal work hours (for honey).  it's not super regular but i know that 90% of the time, he'll be coming home between 6 and 8.  and since honey still believes in cereal for breakfast and nothing for lunch, he comes home from work starving and wants a hot meal.  and since bryan and carolyn abandoned us and moved to texas (yes, i'm still bitter and i'm not getting over it anytime soon), that hot meal responsibility falls on me.

so this is what i really wanted to get to... i've been attempting to meal plan.  and this past week (we've been here for six months) was the first time i've managed to make everything on my menu plan... as planned.

we had maple salmon, french dip sandwiches, orange chicken, and finally tonight we had bistro chicken.  i know that's only four things but it's only the three of us so we pretty much always have leftovers and honey was out of town for part of that too.  anyways... if anyone is actually still reading this (or just scrolled down and skipped to the end... i don't blame you), take a moment and congratulate me because this is epic.  really.

so a big thanks to my honey for encouraging me in this task in which i have no natural talent, my wonderful non blogging (but should eventually start a food blog) sister liza for her excellent recipe recommendations, and   that guy in the meat department in walmart that helps me figure out what the heck all of those cuts of meat are.

and no thanks to bryan and carolyn.  traitors.