Food Day

Sunday is Pantry Day.  Sunday is food day.  If Sunday works, the whole week works….

well that is not exactly true ’cause sometimes days get out of hand and the whole plan or schedule goes down the drain.  Sometimes entire weeks go down the drain as well. 

But if all goes well, Sunday is food planning day, and the other days kind of fall into place.  This is nice when Monday is hectic and I have no idea what I am going to do for dinner, or lunch either for that matter, when I run in the house to greet hungry husband, and contractor who wants to discuss pool plans, and my own tummy is growling as well.  Then, what happens if the afternoon falls apart?  Look at the plan.  Oh, soak the dried Chinese Mushrooms.  Make emergency trip to Sears.  Come home to soft mushrooms! Now I can make dinner. 

Of course if there is food in the pantry I can find something to cook and turn out a perfectly nice meal, but I actually enjoy the planning stage, and I enjoy grocery shopping, if I have done the planning that is, but I also enjoy it when I am just at the farmer’s market or store looking for what is fresh and inspiring and thinking of the meals I might prepare.

Sunday is Farmer’s Market day, at least it is for the next few weeks, until Thanksgiving, after which I will be reduced to regular grocery store shopping until May. But for now, the glory of Sunday remains. 

First we go to the Farmer’s Market.  I usually do a brief walk-through, just to see who has what, and focusing on my favorite vendors of course.  Then we buy:  mostly vegetables, sometimes meat and cheese as well.

When we get home I spread everything out on the kitchen island, where I can see it all.  I also pull any remaining produce from the previous week out of the fridge.  If the produce is still good it goes on the island, if it is looking a little limp but still edible it goes in the stock pot.  There is not usually much left over, but sometimes the week gets out of hand and I was to stressed to cook.  Those weeks tend to fall into take-out or quick pantry meals that take little preparation time and no thought.

This is when the fun part begins.  I start to plan.  Of course, I have had a plan all along.  I usually think of what I might make as I purchase things at the market.  But sometimes when I get it all home new ideas come to mind.    As I look, new combinations form: 

I might pull out stacks of cookbooks and think about new recipes to try.  I will probably also search my own recipe database for specific ingredients to remind myself of what possibilities are available, or if I have a specific dish in mind, what other ingredients will be required.

This entire process, planning the week’s menus usually takes me an afternoon, and often a good part of a day.  I know that most would consider this excessive, and although I have always planned the menus and grocery shopping, I didn’t really spend this much time with it until this past summer, when I started trying to plan well-balanced high fiber diets.  But now I am in the habit.  I enjoy the process, I enjoy playing with ideas.  I enjoy making lists.

After I have decided what to do with a particular vegetable, it moves over to the countertop, or it gets washed, wrapped or prepped in whatever way necessary for storage.    Eventually everything has moved off the island, and I have a week’s worth of menus, and all the food has been put away.

During the process, I probably also planned breakfasts and lunches — again that is something I just recently added to the process.  Each  day’s menu has been planned to include a broad range of nutrients.  The recipe database includes nutritional information so that all comes up automatically as I plan the menus.  If a particular ingredient is not in the database, I can usually get it from the USDA website.  Usually, if I watch fiber, and the basic major vitamins, the other things fall into place.  Since I aim for 18-22 grams of fiber per 1000 calories, the menu doesn’t tend to be that high in fat, (especially since I can’t just grab a bowl of FiberOne or All Bran) simply because the fiber/calorie ratio would be too low.  At the same time, I like food and have no interest in a diet that tastes too "brown rice" if you understand what I mean, so although our diet is healthy, it is not ascetic by any means.   I do use cream and butter and fatty cuts of meat, but in reasonable moderation.  There is always room for a lovely pastry or bit of chocolate.  But in order to meet the fiber guidelines we eat a lot of vegetables and vegetables are high in nutrients.  I have found me get more than enough of almost everything in our diet now, and I if something is lacking I can make minor variations to achieve balance. 

We used to down numerous vitamins.  Now I find the only place we are short is in the B vitamins, so we take a supplement.  And probably every other day I need an extra calcium pill, but mostly I meet those requirements as well.  We take fewer pills and we feel better; who can complain about that?

After the dinners are planned, the lunches and breakfasts get added, the nutrition is checked, the menus are rearranged, and everything is checked to make sure I used all the ingredients purchased at the farmer’s market.  A schedule is planned if there are things that need to be done in advance for particular meals.  A grocery list is made for all those items not found at the farmer’s market.  The database is cross referenced to my normal pantry items so the great majority of the list is generated automatically from the menu, especially if all the recipes are in the database.  There is always
some hand-checking necessary. Since everything is purchased with a plan, very little is wasted.  Everything is set, but not set in stone.

Of course, I might change a menu during the course of the week.  Sometimes I am inspired by a new recipe or a change in the weather or an unexpected guest.  Sometimes I am just too stressed or I am feeling particularly culinarily creative.  It all comes with the territory when you are obsessed with food.  But then, if I weren’t obsessed, I probably wouldn’t find this refreshing.

And Sunday is refreshing. 

When I was in high school girls were required to take at least one year of Home Economics, where we were supposedly taught to plan menus.  I don’t think most of my friends still do, it is one of those forgotten arts.  We certainly didn’t consider nutrition beyond the basic food groups.

I don’t think I would have believed that I would come back to menu planning, but I have, and I look forward to it every week.