Finally, I've had a great day. It's amazing how I feel like I can accomplish anything after some good exercise. Today, I did a 1-hour spin class and then climbed for about 45 minutes. While my climbing skills have been somewhat lacking lately, I did finish a 5.10C that I'd been worried about because of a rather tricky part. While I didn't do it perfectly today, I figured out what I did wrong so I can do a better job the next time. My plans for the rest of the week include a short run tomorrow (20-30 minutes), a flag football game, runnning stairs (twice to the top of the local parking garage), and some weights for the arms on Wednesday, another short run on Thursday, and some bouldering on Friday. Sounds like a good plan for this week...
Food has been an interesting topic for me lately. My local co-op has been having "recession fridays", with 10% off of everything the first friday of every month. I have now decided to only shop once a month, and supplement with occasional trips to the farmer's market, which in Sacramento is a thing of beauty. This has been great for me in two ways - it's forcing me to plan my meals well in advance, which helps my time management and means I waste less food, and it also means I'm spending less every month on my grocery bill. However, I'm going to have to get a bit more serious about really planning meals. And this is going to have to be my long-term memory for food planning and recipe storage. So I'll get started with April!
The plan is to make two different dishes every week, with each dish providing four meals (I'm single, and I tend to make foods I love and don't get sick of). The remaining meals during the week will consist of either a frozen co-op meal (Amy's Indian!), a tamale from Primavera Tamales, or the occassional meal out (Daphne's!). On weekends, I'll scrounge the pantry or share meals with friends. March has turned out fabulously - I spent $80 on the first recession Friday and another $10-$15 at farmer's markets. I will finish out this week with homemade whole wheat bread and salads picked fresh from the garden, with lettuce, carrots, and radishes grown in my community garden plot, and canned beans, which I'm trying to incorporate for more protein.
April is the next one to plan. I'll definitely have some polenta with some kind of topping, perhaps some more salads, bean and vegetable soup (recipe to follow soon), bean and vegetable pot pie (recipe also to follow soon), and black bean and cheese quesadillas with tomatillo sauce (made fresh with tomatillos from my garden last fall and frozen for just such an occassion!). I also have some frozen zucchini soup that will need to be used up soon. I've become a huge fan of freezing vegetables. I rescued some vegetables from a friend's fridge while he was on vacation, chopped them up, and froze them in zip-loc bags (which I rescued from people at work who were going to throw them away). So those will go nicely in my soup. I'll also be making an asparagus and leek (and maybe mushroom?) quiche for Easter dinner. Yum! I'll have to remember to get some cheese for that at the co-op this Friday.
I'll get some recipes up soon. In the meantime, happy eating!