MEAL PLANNING

I am a BIG fan of making lists for… pretty much everything. If it’s not on a piece of paper or written somewhere digitally, it’s almost as though it doesn’t properly exist in my mind. My brain is often scattered so the only way to get my ducks in a row is by putting them in lists. And perhaps, sub-lists, sometimes color coded if something shiny hasn’t distracted my attention elsewhere.

For my meals last week I had cooked up a batch of chickpea, squash and kale stew, my go-to quick & easy lentil soup and a chickpea, tomato and cucumber salad. This week the main features are chilli, a leek and chickpea soup (genius) and a mexican twist on spaghetti squash which had enough flavour depth to make me feel like I wasn’t missing out on anything.

Planning out my 3 meals a day (+ snacks) every week has been very beneficial for my bank account and my organization. I also make notes of which days I need to stop for more groceries and which days I need to cook what (working around my evening workouts). I have to admit though, these past 2 weeks I feel as though all I do is work, work out, cook, eat and sleep. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing if I had a maid to clean up after me every day!

16 more days to go [and for the sake of honesty on this blog, I will admit that tomorrow I am allowing myself to have a cheat meal. It is my boyfriend’s mother’s birthday and we always go the 3 of us to a great restaurant and I had already commited to the dinner before starting the challenge. Luckily we are heading to Manitoba so the meal shouldn’t be too far off from my current ingredient limits. Side note – I can’t wait!