Making a Meal Plan

Today is my day to make the menu for the week, create the grocery list and clean out the pantry with leftover foods.  I usually make soup for Sunday dinner.  I had a round steak frozen and had planned to make a beef soup with it, but then ate lunch at Whole Foods today and that idea got shot to pieces.  This is because I thought with the temperatures so cold a nice soup for lunch would be great.  I looked at the choices and was disappointed until I saw Louisiana Gumbo.  Yeah, that’s the ticket; something from the old home town.  But the Cajun voodoo was playing tricks on non-suspecting customers.  For you see I knew when I scooped out my first spoonful of gumbo that this was not gumbo.

Carrots, green peas, green beans and potatoes????  Never.  Oh there was okra and chicken and celery and maybe some onions and soggy rice, but no bell pepper and no Cajun seasoning.  It tasted like thickened canned Campbell’s Soup Chicken Gumbo with added vegetables.  I closed my eyes and pretended I was eating chicken minestrone soup.  Then when I went to my recipe for tonight’s meal and saw mixed vegetables, potatoes, steak and tomatoes I knew I would have to come up with plan B.  My husband saw the meat and thought it was a flank steak.  He suggested we grill it.  It was a round steak.  But I have a great recipe for flank steak from Weight Watchers with salt and rosemary patted on both sides and then grilled 3 minutes on each side to desired doneness; heart healthy and delicious.  So I had to run to the store and pick up a flank steak.  I love making a menu and recipes and I love changing things around to fit the mood.

While I was “marinating” the steak with the rosemary and salt I worked on the rest of the week’s menu.  I had to find a substitute meal for the round steak and came up with a pot roast recipe in the crock pot.  Instead of a roast I’ll use the round steak.  Beef is beef.  And the truth is beef gives me a headache.  I’m going to suffer from tonight’s delicious heart healthy steak dinner, but it is worth it.  I’m hoping the mashed potatoes (which came from a box since the bag of potatoes had gone bad…plan C) and the delicious fresh spinach tossed in olive oil and pine nuts and garlic until it was wilted will counter the red meat.

Now I have to go write down on my chalk board next week’s menu, make notes on what I need from the pantry and start thinking about presentation.  Oh and I forgot, tomorrow is Halloween…..Mexican Lasagna is on the menu and I want to make a milk sponge cake in honor of Juliette Low’s birthday (founder of Girl Scouts) which is tomorrow (more on that later)…..and I have the granddaughter all afternoon.  I think I’ll get her to help me prep for the dinner and bake the cake.  She loves to cook with me.  I’ll write about that tomorrow…..can’t wait!

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Journaling

Other than writing, probably one of my favorite things to do is cook.  And even more fun is to write about my cooking.  I found a journal that my grandmother kept when I was five years old.  She was a wonderful cook and although she worked part time in my grandfather’s speedometer shop, keeping the books for him, she found time to cook three meals a day, wash and hang clothes on the line, attend her Monday Morning Book Club once a month, volunteer at her church, entertain on a regular basis, and write in her journal.

In some ways I’m just like my grandmother as I still cook three meals a day, wash and dry clothes, belong to various organizations and write in my journal every day.  My grandmother wrote what she planned to cook, what friends came to her house to polish the silver and help prepare for the party and who attended the party.  She would sprinkle in a recipe for a certain dish or what flowers were used in the centerpiece.  Sometimes she would make a note if the flowers came from her garden or if she purchased them from a favorite local florist, Billy’s Flowerland on Perkins Road in Baton Rouge, LA.

My journals are spiritual and part of my daily devotions.  I throw them out at the end of the year.  At one time I had ten year’s worth of journals packed away in a box.  It took a great deal of courage to throw them away, but I realized they served their purpose when I wrote them and like an old dress not worn in years, I had not looked at the journals since I packed them up.  They were wasting space.

But my grandmother’s journal was personal and intimate and revealing.  She wrote to remind herself what happened that day and by not throwing it out, the journal came to me to preserve.  How pleased I was to read in one passage that she felt it important to write that I had called her on the telephone, not once but at least five times in one day.  She was so proud of me, at age five, to have learned her number.

 I think in some way my personal blog www.prisnasonshartle.blogspot.com  has come to be a journal not unlike my grandmothers; for it is here that I write about the foods I cook, my days with my family, the things that make me who I am. I hope one day my grandchildren will read my blogs and remember me with love as I remember my grandmother.

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