This weekend, when planning out my dinners for the week, I picked a casserole of broccoli, spinach, and goat cheese for Monday. It sounded tasty and different.
Sunday, when I intended to cook it, I realized I'd left a key ingredient off the weekend shopping list. I picked it up after work on Monday, but rather than making my casserole that evening I failed to make fudge and ate leftovers. Last night, I was bushed and ate leftovers. Tonight, I ate at a Mexican restaurant rather than cook my casserole.
It's time to be honest with myself. When I wrote that casserole on my meal plan, I thought I wanted to make it. But I don't want to make it. And the surest way to kill my own joy is to try to stick to a plan I've lost enthusiasm for.
There are two lessons for my meal planning:
1) Try to more accurately gauge my actual interest in a given recipe.
2) Include in my meal plan an "emergency substitute" that can be made out of pantry ingredients.
Oh, Bob, I do that type of thing a lot. The day when you have the time to make it, something is missing or goes wrong. Three days later, you're saying, I'll make it this weekend. Then some of your fresh produce goes bad and you can't bring yourself to rebuy it... Contingency plans are a must in my household. Every week, I plan for at least one labor intensive dish, one night of leftovers, and 1-2 extremely easy get-out-of-cooking-free meals for when I just don't have it in me.
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