Well, This Hasn't Gone As Planned ...

If you remember, less than a week ago I was all excited about my cooking experiment.  Well, that hasn't gone as planned.  There were a few factors I had not planned for, and one factor I had, but not expected as bad as it would be.  


The thing I had sort of expected were leftovers.  There have been a lot.  And I mean A LOT!  Even with cutting recipes in half and sometimes into fourths, I still have leftovers for days!  I have frozen some, and enjoyed some of the other left overs, but mostly I am sick of them, especially if it wasn't a good recipe to begin with.


Other things I wasn't quite expecting, though I should have were how unpredictable my nights can be, especially when I am on-call for work.  Every night since I started the experiment I have been interrupted while making dinner and have had to take care of something.  This can be difficult when cooking at home because usually it means turning off the oven/stove and moving on to take care of the issue.  The other thing is I have found myself not to be hungry after cooking.  The first night I thought it was because I was tasting things as I went, or would grad a bite of this or a bite of that as I was chopping veggies.  The next two nights I paid more attention to this and would not allow myself to snack while cooking, and only doing 2 taste tests.  That still didn't make a difference.  When I made the quiche (no snacking or tasting at all) I was still not hungry after cooking it.  So after it cooled it was wrapped and promptly put into the fridge.  I do wonder how much of the on-call interruptions play into not hungry aspect.  Hmmmm.


So to compensate, primarily for the left over issue, I have decided that I am only going to be cooking on the weekends and once (most likely on Wednesdays) during the week.  So this will drop me from 7 days of cooking to 3.  I did some altering to the meals I had planned for this current week.  Tonight and tomorrow I will have leftover quiche, but over the weekend and next week there will a different schedule.  So here is what you can expect over the next week:


One Pot Chili Mac & Cheese
Breakfast Casserole
Skinny Mexican Pizza
Jambalaya
Biscuits & Gravy Hot Dish
Crock-Pot  Thai Chicken
Bradsticks
Banana Cream Cake


This seems more manageable and allows me to factor in leftovers for some meals, as well as eating with students in the commons on some nights.  Probably tonight or tomorrow I will post the recipes and reviews for the last few meals I have made.