SIZE MATTERS

If you have looked at any of my recipes, you may have noticed that they make quite a few servings.  I tried to scale them back a bit, but I still know many of the recipes create a lot of food.  My reasoning is this – cooking from scratch takes time and if you’re like me, you don’t want to have to prepare meals every day of the week.  My goal is to make enough food to feed whoever might be here for dinner, get a 2nd dinner out of it and most times a lunch or 2 as well.  No, I am not afraid of leftovers – I actually love them.  PLUS, many of my dishes get better with age, at least for a couple days (after that it is totally up to you).

So that’s how I like to do it.  You can either make more or less of my recipes depending on your circumstances.  You can also dial back or go bigger with regards to my spices, garlic etc.  I try to make my recipes on the bold size, but I know that many times I still add a little more as I go.  I also LOVE garlic, so I tend to put a lot of fresh garlic in many of my recipes.  Garlic is good AND good for you – you can take that to the bank.

PLAN, PLAN, PLAN

The other bit of advice I would give to you is to PLAN, PLAN, PLAN.  Meal planning and meal prep will help you stay focused on your dietary goals (which I hope includes eating plant based meals)!  I create our meal plan for the week on Saturday or Sunday, I create the shopping list of ingredients and I shop on Sunday morning.  I have scheduled out which meals will last for 2 nights, which are only for one and I typically reserve one weekend night for eating out.  I stay pretty focused on my shopping list and I am not afraid to visit a couple different locations to save a little money.  Because fresh vegetables are a large part of my list, I tend to go where I know veggies are less expensive, but still fresh.  I rarely have any veggies left other than onions and garlic at the end of each week, so the shelf life in my house is pretty short.

Planning also helps eliminate the last minute bad decisions to just “grab something” or to eat something you wouldn’t otherwise eat.  Now, I do realize I am at a different stage in my life, but even during the most hectic years, we did a pretty good job of staying focused on eating healthy, planned out meals.  Of course, we grabbed meals on the fly just like everybody else, but this was definitely the exception vs. the norm.  It all came down the planning and meal prep.

QUICK RECAP

My goal with my blog so far has been to give you a background on how I got to this vegan place in my life, my motivations, convictions, my shortcomings as a vegan, my cooking style, why I cook the way I do and a little insight into how I make it all happen.  I took a short Vector to another topic and I see some more Vectors on the horizon.  As more people read my blog, my hope is that there will be some interactions which can help direct me on where you would like to see this blog go.  I will add more recipes as we go as well.

Thanks for being here – I really appreciate it.  Keep reading and let me know what you like and don’t like.  I can take it!