Mack Eats

Over the past year plus that L and I have been together, I've been doing most of the cooking. I've always loved cooking but I hated cooking for one, so when he came around I was super excited to start making much more delicious and extravagant meals. Now, it's still hard to cook for two and not have enough leftovers to feed a small country but I'm getting better and better all the time. When I plan meals, I try to keep a few things in mind:

• We try to eat 2 veggies (or fruits) at every dinner. 
• We try not to eat the same starch multiple times during the week, and I try to make at least two stach-less meals per week. This is directly related reduce the rate our waistlines are growing!
• I don't like meals without meat. I have nothing against vegetarians. More power to you. It's just not for me. I love meat. I firmly believe we are supposed to be omnivores and that our anatomy fully supports this claim. I do try to limit our meat intake to much lower than average. For example, 1 chicken breast is enough to feed both L and myself at dinner.
• We don't eat the same thing twice in one month, if possible. We, as humans, spend so much time eating that I believe its worth putting that extra effort into meal planning to make eating an adventure.
• I like sauces. I tend to at least double the quantity of any sauce in any recipe I cook.

Luckily, I have a job where I "can" research grocery deals and recipes while "working" and am able to plan my meals and shopping list ahead of time. Some of the strategies I use here are:

• I buy chicken breasts in bulk, prefrozen and prepackaged from BJs. Before we joined, I was buying 3-4 huge packages of generic, boneless, skinless chicken breast whenever it was on sale for $1.98 at the grocery store then trimming, packaging, and freezing them myself. The Tyson frozen chicken breasts at BJs are usually $2.10 - $2.20 per lb. I decided I am extremely willing to pay the extra $0.10 per pound to not have to do it myself. 
• I buy other meat on sale in larger quantities than we need and freeze the extras. 
• We live about 2 miles from the NC State Farmer's Market so I try to make it there to buy my produce but that doesn't always happen, especially with our extensive weekend traveling.

I've been struggling with a way to organize my recipes for quite a while. I tried a spreadsheet. I tried writing them in my planner. I tried printing them. But all these methods have various problems. L and I have another blog, Mack Spirits, that chronicles our adventures in home brewing. Over the past few months, I have found myself constantly referencing the blog for my recipe for Spent-Grain Bread. Then, today, it clicked! I should start a food blog with the purpose of organizing my recipes! Brilliant!

My plan at this point is to add text versions of the recipes I currently have in rotation to the site then add pictures as I recook the meals. I'm also planning on putting up the recipes in the quantities that I cook the food-- for two people. They will be easily upped, though for a family of any size. I might even start saving my meal plans on here so that I don't have to carry around a piece of a paper all week!