Catching up... New year, new changes

It's been a while since I've posted anything. I'm sorry. Returning to this blog with a bang:

Menu planning and prepping!

January started out like almost every other January. Except, this year, I am making some changes. I am a fairly healthy, yet overweight woman in my late 40's. I'd like to maintain good health, so have decided to make some small changes in diet and adding regular exercise to my daily routine.

Adding treadmill walking into my day isn't as easy as it sounds. If I'm working on the computer, it's easy to put off walking on the treadmill "until later". There are so many things that you can use to put it off "until later". This is what I have to change in myself. Doing it, instead of allowing other things to distract me from it. Otherwise "until later" becomes tomorrow, or the next day, next week, next month... until you just aren't doing it and you blame it on being too busy. But, I'm not too busy, just to willing to allow distractions in.

Against all my allegations that fitbit and the like are just "visuals" of exercise, that most probably aren't really doing, I bought one. I need accountability, but no one else has the time to devote to keeping me accountable. Besides, I know me, if it's not quietly in my face all the time, it won't work. The fitbit, is on my wrist 24/7, except shower time, when it charges, and I set up notifications so that I'm always seeing what it records. It's working! I'm walking on the treadmill every day. I'm not sitting as much because it reminds me to get up and move every hour. I love it!

Another change is menu planning, large grocery shopping and prepping meals for the freezer for use each week. With this, I'm also incorporating new recipes: a couple of these will follow in future posts.

Menu planning: I started by only planning a week at a time, then was so excited about it, added on an additional 3 days, making it 10 days worth of meal planning. I made it easy too:

Breakfasts: yogurt, cereal, fruit
Lunches: leftovers from supper the night before
Suppers: ah, lots of fun here - and I can change it up every time I plan! For 10 days worth, I incorporated 2 new recipes: Curried Chicken Casserole and Chili Chicken with Hominy Hash. And every other Friday night will be pizza night.

After planning, I made a shopping list and my husband and one of our sons did the shopping for me! Yeah, I'm a fortunate lady! When they returned home, Tim (my husband) and I went straight to work prepping the ones that we could for freezing.

1.Beef stew: cut and seasoned the beef and put it in a large baggie, cut the veggies (won't pre-cut potatoes next time), seasoned and put in a separate baggie, labeled each baggie and placed in the freezer with the date to move to the fridge to thaw.

2. Chili Chicken and Hominy Hash: seasoned the chicken, placed in baggie. Cut up veggies, drained the hominy, seasoned and placed in a separate baggie. Labeled and dated the baggies and placed them in the freezer.

3. Curried Chicken Casserole: Chopped and seasoned the chicken and placed in a baggie in the fridge. Measured out and mixed the seasonings. and set next to the stove for cooking the following day.

The remaining meals were such that they couldn't be prepped early. However, I did store things in the pantry and the refrigerator by meal, and wrote the date for use on them. I only did this so that everyone in the house would know not to use these items for snacks. Our youngest son, will eat every vegetable in the house if we don't mark them for use. (This is not a complaint)

A lesson learned in this experiment: Don't freeze acorn squash - it turns mealy. Eww. Don't cut up and freeze potatoes with other vegetables - they turn black. Yuck.

All in all, menu planning, shopping and prepping will continue. It is time-saving, schedule-friendly, and budget-friendly!