Meal Musings

(What Edwin does while I cook)

A while ago I posted about my decision to have a weekly schedule of sorts where major housekeeping tasks were designated for certain days of the week. Along with that burst of organization, I've also been more intentional about meal planning. I've been menu planning the day before I grocery shop, and it makes grocery shopping much nicer. I need that focus when shopping. Plus, when I go to make the meal, I have everything I need. Most of the time.

I'm not some one who lists cooking as one of my top hobbies, so sometime during the fall I started getting a little weary when trying to figure out what to cook for supper. I cook a lot more now than I did when Dan and I were first married and living in Baltimore (part of that is because we were part of a 2x per week dinner club - which was wonderful, to say the least), so I started thinking that I needed to expand my repertoire of meals.

I asked for some "Moosewood" cookbooks for Christmas and got two. (Some other dinner club members in Baltimore often used Moosewood cookbooks for some pretty spectacular meals, which is how I heard of them.) If you're not familiar with Moosewood cookbooks, and you like vegetarian food, you should check these out. There are a bunch of different ones to choose from.

I now have the Low Fat Favorites and the New Moosewood Cookbook. I've been using them a lot and am having fun with new recipes.

Dan also gave me a bread book by Bernard Clayton and it has just about any kind of bread you'd ever want to make. Just as exciting are the directions for making an outdoor clay/brick oven for baking bread. If we weren't renting, I'd be really tempted to make one. I always think it's too hot in the summer to bake, but if I had an outdoor oven...

Anyway, I'm excited about new meal options, lots of bread options and dreaming of someday baking bread in an outdoor oven!