Gone Shopping

• Posted on Dan
• in Berkeley, family, food
• on March 28, 2012
• 3 Comments.

Back in November, we showed you a bit of our day to day life.  I was planning to just update with a relevant photo, but then I realized this how reflective it was of our life week to week.  I hardly think of our life and work as anything but routine.  However, recently we’ve intentionally developed a weekly pattern to manage our busy lives.  Naturally, it surrounds food.  Of course.

Probably one of my favorite activities is planing our weekly dinner menu for the week.  Let’s not pretend here, I actually have very little to do with this process, and I’ll explain why later.  I still however think it is an incredibly endearing part of our routine.  Kristin surrounds herself with our favorite seasonal cookbook, a few other recipe books, a folder full of recipe clippings, and the computer open to several recipes she’s bookmarked online.  Sifting through recipes, she manages to piece together a series of meals that manage to use up anything currently fresh in our house, doesn’t overtax our schedule by requiring us to cook everyday, and eliminates any feeling of redundancy with a nice balance of leftovers, new dishes, and tested past favorites.

Why do I exclude myself from this activity?  I tried to help in the past!  I really did!  The sad truth is this is simply a skill I do not possess.  Kristin has even encouraged me to work on these elusive weekly meal planning skills, to little noticeable progress.  I do have a few skills that work in my favor.  I will eat anything!  (Except the flesh of a coconut.)  Sure, I possess the skill to pick out recipes that sound tasty, and identify the things we do or do not have in our cabinets.  But honestly!  Do you want to plan what someone else will be required to eat for a week?  If you’ve met Kristin or perhaps picked up on some subtle hints in our blog, Kristin LOVES food, and she has these hunger urges that frankly strike fear into me when trying to predict them 7 days in advance, let alone a couple hours prior to forks up.  My only other offense here is my ability to prepare a 3 course meal without a recipe and making up flavor profiles in my head just from scanning our cabinets – a skill Kristin has yet to realize she likely has that would otherwise render me all together useless in the kitchen if she ever executed it.   Hmm… I should get aggressive here and start baking without advanced notice.  A baking rebel going off schedule!

With nightly activities taking over the middle of our week, another favorite part of my week is our weekly Wednesday lunch dates.  Usually we head out to a nearby place each week.  Sometimes we stay home to cook Wednesday brunch because that’s just how much we love brunch.  It has been a pleasant reminder to take advantage of all the benefits we share from my working out of the home and her working so close to home.  I know we won’t always be this lucky.

And then the routine of weekend errands.  “Actually we’ve got a nice little Saturday planned. We’re going to Home Depot… then maybe we’ll hit Bed Bath and Beyond… I don’t know! I don’t know if we’ll have enough time!”  OK, I actually haven’t stepped foot in a Home Depot nor Bed Bath and Beyond in over a year.  But since I said our routine follows food, there have been weekends where it seemed we went to Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Costco, and the Farmer’s Market each for very specific grocery needs.

  The Control Center.   I’ve mastered baking fresh tortilla chips in Kristin’s absence.

Hippie Proof.