Busy day, busy week, busy weekend.

So it's Friday afternoon in my office and I'm tired. I've had a busy week at work with a ton of meetings and guests in from out of town. I've also had late nights of work dinners and of course, watching the World Series. The weekend looks equally busy. No matter how busy I am, I will definitely find time to plan my meals for next week and get the shopping done. I would literally freak out on Sunday night if I hadn't done this some time over the weekend. I like to get up on Saturday morning early (it helps if you are the morning person in a house full of "night" people) and have a cup of coffee and plan the menus. The first place I start is our house calendar. I make sure I have down anything we need to know for the week including any evening activities. Then from this I plan what to cook each night. If I'm really feeling organized I even look at the grocery store newspaper ad to see what's on sale. I have a few favorites and try to find some new ideas from friends and magazines. If I have a work function, I pick meals I know my husband is comfortable cooking and write those in on those dates. From there I make a grocery list based on these meals, then add the things I need for my son's packed lunches, breakfast for all of us and any other items I need. I learned a tip from the Barefoot Contessa television show and divide my grocery list up in sections on a big piece of paper. I have Produce, Meat, Grocery, Frozen, Dairy and Other (cleaning, health and beauty) as the sections. This makes it so much easier to get all the items as I have a terrible habit of getting all the way home without some essential ingredient. The helps (but does not entirely stop this from happening. After the grocery store, I make sure to put everything up and I clean all veggies and fruits before putting in refrigerator. I know it's a pain when you are doing it, but it makes things go faster during the week and you are more apt to eat an apple than something bad for you if it's all clean and ready to eat - okay - I'm still more apt to eat the candy bar, but someday this might really work.

Spending this time over the weekend really does help and when I figure out what I'm cooking next week, I might update this blog - or I might just go to the grocery store and then home for a glass of wine.

Easter Dinner

I absolutely love having a "Special Occasion" dinner at our house! Easter is one of my favorites. I have special decorations including my Williams Sonoma Easter Egg Plate - since it really wouldn't be Easter without deviled eggs. This year I got it in my head that I would make a Crown Pork Roast, even though I had never made one before. I ordered it from my neighborhood Whole Foods. When I picked it up, it even had the little hats on the pork bones. Too cute. I made my husband and son look at it and they were a little less impressed with it then I was! I had found a recipe on Epicurious.com for a Crown Pork roast with Onion stuffing and it really did turn out well. The onion dressing had a TON of onions in it, so much so that it started to worry me that it would be too onion-ey! Luckily, it was just fine although my son told everyone at the table it smelled like White Castle hamburgers! Which admittedly, it did! One a side note, as an Ohio native, I'm very proud of the fact that my Texas born son know what White Castle hamburgers smell like. It is the first stop we make when we go home to Ohio.... The rest of the menu - Spinach Salad with roasted strawberries, Green beans with butter and celery salt - the celery salt added an interesting flavor, mashed potatoes and of course, deviled eggs. For dessert we had Creme Brulee. The kids (my son and my two nieces) were given the Creme Brulee torches and allowed to have at it. Fortunately, this was not the recipe for disaster that everyone thought it would be, although the smell of burning sugar lingered in our house the rest of the day.

All about me!

So how self indulgent is this? I'm absolutely sure that people in cyber space are dying for wit, wisdom and cooking tips from me! First of all, I'm not that Julie in that there is no way I'm ever going to cook through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I did buy the book, but really just to make it look like I was a serious home chef. And although I've never cooked anything from her cookbook, I took enough high school french to say Beef Burgundy as Boeuf Bourginon with a perfect french accent.

So why should you listen to anything I have to say (or write)? I am a decent cook and one who manages to feed her husband and son most days during the week a decent well cooked meal that's ready pretty quick. Also, I have been known to have a quick wit and some people enjoy my sense of humor.

But mostly, I'm probably like you in that I always have too much on my plate (food included) and struggle with balancing home, work, family, friends, two dogs, two cats and an enormous pile of unwashed clothes that are planning a hostile take over of my home. I should eat less, work out more - you know the drill. So welcome to my world!