Two, two, two posts in one day. In one sitting, in fact. Something about dawn makes the melancholy take hold, but having purged myself of those memories, I now turn to the more practical concerns of managing a home and family. I.e., time to make that grocery list. Although it remains boiling hot here in southern Alabama, the days are getting shorter and football’s on the tv, so it’s time for fall cooking. Summer food is so fresh and delicious and I love it, melons and tomatoes and squash . . . but because it’s best prepared with minimal cooking, fresh off the vine (er, or out of the grocer’s food cart), as a mom with a day job I actually find it harder to keep up with. Fresh stuff doesn’t stay fresh for long, so my once weekly grocery shop doesn’t usually carry us through the week, but canned or frozen just doesn’t cut it, and it’s hard to prep ahead and freeze food that I feel like eating in the summertime.
Now it’s fall, the season of chili and stew and soup and cassoulet, and the season of the weekend cook-and-freeze-fest has returned. I don’t suppose you all care much one way or the other what our little family eats for dinner, but it is incredibly useful for me to list it out here with links to the recipes so I can refer to it through the week. And it’s part of my little domestic bliss, which is what I largely record in this spot. So, immediately after some existential melancholy, meal planning it is:
Sunday: Mediterranean beef with pasta
Monday: Boiled potatoes with sage butter – I may attempt to modify this to make it less heavy
Tuesday: Winter minestrone. Jumping the gun on the seasons here, but I have a butternut squash I have to use up.
Wednesday: Lasagna. I sort of wing it with lasagna – sometimes it has sausage and pepperoni and a million kinds of cheese, but I think this one will be a little lighter and more vegetable heavy.
Thursday: Thai beef tacos.
Friday: Spicy hawaiian burgers
Saturday: Santa Fe chicken salad wraps
This weekend promises to be a bit slower -though we do have to drive to New Orleans today for a few hours for an important event, which will take up a lot of the day, we are not spending the night there. I put my foot down, and my husband did not need his arm twisted to agree. Sunday I am attending a play – my first live play in a long time. The husband has been invited to join a friend for a day of football. There will be three little boys to care for between them. I’m interested to hear how that goes.
Liam is up now, bee bopping around and begging for chips for breakfast. I have a lot of grocery shopping, laundry, and lounging to squeeze into the day. It’s a glorious fall Saturday in southern Alabama, and I’m off to enjoy it.