plans

So, for the first time in my life, I'm trying to be good about Meal Planning.

Yes, folks, I'm a 29-year-old mother of two, married for nigh-on 5 years, and I have yet to Plan Meals ahead of time with any regularity.  (Bad little hausfrau!)  I don't know why.  I normally like planning things.  It just seemed annoying and intimidating and, like, requiring forethought and stuff.  And in residency I was so busy and exhausted all the time that the idea of coming up with One More Thing to do would have made me cry, even if it was a Thing that would ultimately have made my life easier.  Exhaustion, it's not logical.

But lately I've been on a recipe-collecting kick, and I decided to Plan Meals so that I would, you know, have the right ingredients on hand when I needed them.  So, like the INTJ that I am, I researched recipes that looked good - planning easier or pre-made ones for the evenings I get home late-ish from work, and including one built in Leftovers day - I told you I'm a planner at heart! - and like a nerd I typed up a list of meals for each day, printed it out, and stuck it on the fridge.

And you know what?  It's awesome.  It makes me less stressed throughout the day knowing that I have the ingredients and recipe I need.  Dinner isn't LOOMING over me all day like.... like.... I don't know.  I can't think of a good comparison.  But you know what I mean.

I also totally stole the "Recipes To Try" and "Recipes We Love" idea from Jen of Conversion Diary fame.  (Link goes to her Meal Planning post.)  Because, like her, I love organizing things - or at least the idea of organizing things - and also I Adore Evernote.  Adore with a capital A.  Except, because I'm apparently way more anal than she is, I have to subdivide my recipes further, so that in each of the two main folders ("Recipes To Try" and "Recipes We Love"), there are *cough* 44 sub-folders *cough*.

FOURTY-FOUR SUB-FOLDERS.

Hi, my name is Emily and I have an Evernote problem.

Anyway.  Meal planning.  It's good stuff.

And also, in order to share good things and to give credit where credit is due, I get the majority of my recipes from:
Smitten Kitchen (her desserts are all TO DIE FOR - her main dishes and sides are generally delicious too, though some are a little fussy for me to attempt)
Pioneer Woman (my go-to for reasonably simple and totally yummy main dishes, among other things)
A Year of Slow Cooking (the best place I've found for a ton of reliable crock-pot recipes that don't all have Cream-Of-Whatever Soup as a main ingredient)
And of course AllRecipes.com.  Because if 600 reviewers say a recipe is delicious, it probably is.  Also, a lot of the reviews give helpful or interesting tips or slight alterations to the recipes.

Probably everyone already knows about and loves those websites.  But I just thought I'd share.