Feeling Accomplished!

Cleaned out, detoxed, lightweight…. oh, you thought I was talking about me?  HA!  Far from it!  I’m talking about…my refrigerator! This morning I spent some time cleaning it: disinfecting the shelves, throwing out the old food, organizing, etc.  It had been put off too long!  It needed to be done!

For many years I created weekly menus, grocery shopped accordingly, printed the menu and stuck it to the front of the refrigerator with a magnet.  The family looked to see what was on the menu for each day, each meal, each week.  If it was Tuesday, and they wanted what was on the menu for Friday…no problem!  We just switched things around.  We never ran out of food, and all the ingredients for said meals were always readily available.  That was then…

….this is now.  *sigh*  I’ve gotten away from that.  Now we find our refrigerator full of uneaten leftovers.  Our freezer was so full you could barely fit anything in it – yet I struggled to find something quick to cook for dinner, or made the same-ol’-same-ol’ for my husband’s lunch every day. Talk about discombobulated!  That was our fridge.

No longer.  This is the new me! (Or maybe the “old” me?)  Back to menu planning it is.  I absolutely love to cook, and when my work is done (which is rarely), I reward myself by spending long hours in the kitchen.  I love it.  I love to experiment.  It’s relaxing to me.  Last summer, I spent those hot lazy days teaching myself to can and preserve food.  I know that I mentioned in my previous post that growing up we preserved our own food for winter.  We did.  But I was just a child, and Mom did most of the work.  I’d seen it done, so I wasn’t a complete “newbie” and I wasn’t afraid to purchase and use a pressure cooker.  Love that thing.  The only stressful part, is cleaning up after myself.  I hate to clean! (Maybe that explains why the fridge had gone so long without some TLC.)

For many years I used software and an app to organize all my favorite recipes, new and old.  I don’t just download a bunch of recipes I haven’t tried.  If I find a new recipe, make it, and it’s a keeper, into the software it goes. I’m passionate about food: good food.

Menu and meal planning was a several-hour process.  I’d pile my favorite cookbooks on the dining room table, along with a pen and paper, my iPad with my recipes in it, and a-researching I would go.  However, a couple of weeks ago, I discovered a software/app called Paprika, both for my Mac (yes, I’m one of those “Apple” people) and for my iPhone, and it synchronizes beautifully.  It has a fantastic menu planner in it, where I can simply drag-and-drop one of my recipes onto a calendar within the program, and violà – print and done!  Now I have no excuse.

Now back to the clean-out of the refrigerator.  I am starting a probiotic regimen, and we’re going to start eating better.  Thus, the necessary clean-out, the menu planning restart, etc.  Although I’ll be tempted to start right away, I’m going to wait until Monday.  I work out of town on the weekends, and the last thing I want is to be going through detox while away from home.  So Monday it is.  I’ll be blogging about my progress through detox.  I’ve detoxed before, and know what it’s like.  This time it may be the same, it may be different; either way, you’ll certainly hear about it.  LOL 🙂