One thing about me is I love a list. They litter my house, most often on my trusty yellow legal pads. I use them as a way to focus, to dream, to visualize the future, both near and far. They come in handy because I am easily distracted and the world is just so very disruptive, but I can look down at my piece of paper and be back on track.
Another thing about me though is that I don’t love to follow instructions, not even my own. I go with my own whims and intuition and in the process of doing something I realize a better or somehow more compelling route about half the time. I love to be spontaneous, but only after I’ve made the preparations. That sounds like a contradiction, but for me plans are just suggestions or guideposts.
Trust, you do not have to be type A to be a meal planner. I often leave blank spaces in my plans because planning me knows that in-the-moment-me will veer off course when I am too tired to cook or friends invite us over, or maybe we just get a craving for pizza that we can’t resist.
A Closer Look at Last Week’s Menu
I was late to discover we had Superbowl Sunday, Shrove/ Fat Tuesday and Valentine’s Day, and Lunar New Year all in one week. We’ve eaten pretty much all the meat and proteins in the house, so I splurged last week of a rack of ribs (stretched over 2 dinners and 3 school lunches) and pack of chicken thighs. However, we still bought very little and moved through a good amount of inventory. We successfully
Used up a large amount of greens that I had blanched and frozen in the fall in two super delicious dishes, saag and green gumbo.
Finished off a batch of kraut and some frozen corned beef in some very delicious reubens. I even used the end of a jar of pickles in homemade russian dressing.
Used 1 pack of frozen puff pastry to make veggie tarts with a bit of goat cheese & pickled beets from the fridge. And I bought a few mushrooms to do a mushroom version as well and then used up the end of the ham in a few ham & cheese.
When I Dip, You Dip, We Dip
What I am most proud of this week, however, are my DIPS. Besides sharing memes and parenting woes, my sister and I mostly just text each other photos of what we’re eating. And we both have a strong preference for dips and crunchy salads.
She texted me her Super Bowl dip , which I quickly realized I could make a version of with ingredients I had on hand. The ranch cream cheese base of the her dip was so good, I made another version with pickled beets, and now I am completely sold on layered dips as an genius way to utilize strangler pantry items and the half eaten jars of pickles that overflow my refrigerator door. As we feasted on three dips inspired by my pantry contents, and my husband said the food was so good it gave him hope…and that maybe the world was not, in fact, complete shit. That’s the power of a good veggie-packed dip, friends! :)
The Not-Recipes
Butternut Squash Hummus with Calabrian Chiles & Smoked Almonds
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Preserving the South to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.