Meal Planning
For a really long time, I tried to plan out meals for the week. I’d sit down on Sunday and plan out what I’d cook each night, then make a list of ingredients, then go grocery shopping. I’m a planner, so I love planning aspect of doing that, but then my plans would fall apart when I decided I wasn’t craving chicken on Monday and chicken was what I’d written I would cook on Monday. Or something would come up at work and I’d stay late and not feel like spending an hour cooking dinner when I got home. Or maybe I’d get a call from a friend or my parents offering a last minute dinner invitation.
So to kind of remedy that, last week I still sat down and made my meal plan. But instead of deciding on which nights I would cook each meal, I just picked 3 meals that looked good, bought the ingredients for those, and then decided day by day which recipe worked for me. Since for the most part, I just cook for myself, 3 meals a week seemed like a good goal and would easily be enough for dinners, leftovers for lunches, and a couple nights of leftovers with at least one night out.
Is this rocket science, new, or an incredible idea? Nope, not at all, but I want to document meals here in this space so I have an easy place to come back to for repeats. So hopefully, I’ll be posting weekly meal ideas for each week on Sundays.
We’ll see how long I can keep this up!
A Day at Biltmore
A couple of weeks ago, I got to spend a day in Asheville with a few of my favorite people. As season pass holders, my parents and I head to the Biltmore Estate in Asheville several times a year. For me, it is one of my “happy places,” and its close enough that we can make day trips pretty frequently. Passholders are given two free tickets each year to share with family and friends. The tickets have to be used during January or February, which can be hit or miss weather-wise in the North Carolina Mountains! This year, I invited my grandparents to spend the day with us and take advantage of my free tickets.
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| View from Biltmore House architect’s tour, taken Fall 2012 |
Since we’ve been in the house several times and my grandfather has problems with walking these days (here’s hoping his upcoming knee replacement will help!) we arrived with plans to eat lunch on the estate, shop a little, and not try to walk through the house. Well, we arrived to an absolutely gorgeous January day, with the sun shining and temps in the 50s. Unheard of!
Our first stop was Bistro at Biltmore, one of the estate’s restaurants, for an early lunch. Lunch was delicious as always! I reviewed it on Yelp- you can read about it here. After lunch, we browsed in the winery and a couple other shops before heading to the garden. Even though it was January, not exactly the prettiest time of year for the garden, it was way too nice to not wander around for a little bit. The picture below is the one shot I took all day…and of course it was snapped with my iPhone and posted straight to Instagram.
We ended the day with a stop at the creamery for ice cream and warm bread pudding. Yum!
Days like this one remind me how lucky I am to be able to create memories with my parents and grandparents.
