Menu envy

So not only am I envious of my friends website, Piece of Cake Kitchen, for it's professional look, but now for the whole concept. I decided that I would try to write a menu, make a grocery list, and stick to it.

After I had this flash of brilliance, we took our weekly trip to the library. YES! I brought home seven cookbooks. O.k. so that was overkill, but as my mother always said, "Better safe than sorry." I was determined to do this.

I plowed through several of these cookbooks to find a few recipes that sounded good and didn't take exotic ingredients like Champagne vinegar - which sent my girlfriend to 5 (count them) different grocery stores. Why I would make anything for a 4 and 7 year-old with Champagne vinegar, anyway I have merged onto the Palin highway time to exit.

There is a wonderful produce market very close for which I am very grateful. The produce is not only fantastic but the prices are great. That's a real key for my family. Particularly, I buy apples and carrots in such quantities that the staff thought I owned horses. Sometimes it feels like I'm living with horses, but that's not the point. My point was that going to two stores is a weekly occurrence.

However, planning a menu, with real live recipes, that I was actually trying to follow (for once) meant not just two shopping trips this week, not three, not four...still guessing? I went to at least one of those flipping stores every single solitary day. Sometimes - with both children right in the middle of making one of those blasted recipes because I didn't have the key ingredient. I have never been so stressed out, gassed out, and planned out in my life.

Hats off to you Sister!! I do not know how you plan a menu, take care of 4 children and a husband, and still have time to manage a website. I'm never planning a weeks worth of meals again as long as I live.

I'm also not going to complain anymore when it's 5:00 p.m. and I have not started dinner, let alone thought about what I might be making. My resolution? Open a box of cereal for the boys, and a bottle of wine for me. It counts as dinner, in some countries!