When I took history classes, I was always frustrated by the lack of detail. I dislike the “big picture” of dates and generals and battles. My interest in all things, history alike, is more detailed. I want to know how people spent their time, what they ate, how they relaxed, what they wore, what was important to them. What they could expect from a “typical” day. I’m curious about all of you too. How and what do you eat on a typical day? Leave a comment, or write an entire blog post about it. Here’s my routine:
Breakfast
I almost always eat breakfast at the office, so my breakfast starts the night before when I pack it to have ready to grab on my way out the door. I go through cycles of breakfasts. For a while, I had a green monster smoothie and a piece of toast. For a while it was toast with peanut butter and banana on it. In the winter, I’m partial to oatmeal (Kashi heart to heart apple or homemade, using steel cut oats, done in a big batch over the weekend). Right now I’m really into toast and yogurt. I have a sandwich thin with some brummel & brown on it and plain yogurt with something to stir in, most typically fresh fruit or in a pinch, all-fruit style jam. I also love a good cup of tea (or two) in the morning. Green tea with mint is the choice right now. The weekends are a bit more scattered for breakfast. We tend to be racing around and frequently feed the kids an organic all natural POP TART on the way out the door or a bagel or something like that. Occasionally we’ll have more leisure and we make eggs or oatmeal.
Lunch
Lunch is also made the night before. I will most frequently take leftovers from whatever dinner we’ve recently had. When there are no leftovers to be had, I make a sandwich on Sandwich Thins, with Laughing Cow and lunch meat. No matter what I eat, I almost always have a green salad with my meal. I mix around dressings and toppings (strawberries with blue cheese and poppyseed dressing, craisins and almonds with shittake vinaigrette, tomatoes and mozz with Italian, kalamata olives and cucumbers, no dressing needed). I have a special plastic container for my salads with a dressing dispenser. I try not to go out to lunch very often.
Snacks
I’m not a big believer in snacks. I don’t really get or follow the 6 small meals thing because I’m sure for me they’d turn into 6 big meals. I do occasionally have a Fiber One bar, hummus and carrots or pickles for a snack, but I definitely try to avoid snacks!
Dinner
We make it a priority to have a home-cooked dinner most weeknights. Of course, being human if we have a particularly hectic night or a lot of errands to run or something, we may pickup or go out. Sometimes I get all ambitious and double a recipe to freeze with the theory that we can heat it up on a hectic night, but in practice, we are not great about actually using these up and so I don’t do this a whole lot.
During the week, I tend to stick to mostly easy family favorites. I am happy to try a new (easy) recipe on a week night, but mostly, it’s the ones we know well. I save most new and/or complicated cooking for the weekend, Fridays and Saturdays when we have friends and family over (and I don’t care, I will experiment on my dinner guests – we have the pizza place on speed dial if it all goes terribly wrong!) or Sundays which are our (comparatively) slow day. I strive for at least one new meal and one meatless meal per week. I try not to make myself crazy with my own expectations, but it is a struggle on some days … I am a bit too type A for my own good.
A few links:
• My favorite cookbooks on GoodReads
• Annie’s Eats
• The Kitchn
• Everyday Food
• Cooking Light
• Dinner a Love Story
Love it! I think I will write a post about this.