Possibly this is the meaning of life

We seem incapable of having actual food prep habits. I've given up hope that anything will stick, long-term; constant flux seems to be the nature of things and I am beginning to believe that ours is a life of constant attempts. Then again, we do have some hard-and-fast rules: for instance, when one of us cooks, the other must wash up.

The thing this week is that, after weeks of letting me toddle off to do the grocery shopping by myself, my Hub came with me. This resulted in a spectacular blowing of two weeks' worth of grocery money all at the same time, because I wasn't watching the grocery cart all the time and he kept adding stuff. Two kinds of juice instead of just one for his post-workout drinks, for example. Two bags of chicken breasts. Two containers of cottage cheese. (The man loves protein, what can I say?) Three bags of frozen vegetables instead of our usual one.

On the up side, before we left for the grocery store, a few things happened. First, I went through and tidied/rearranged our cupboards, so for once we can actually find all the things that we have in there, and I had a pretty good idea what we had before going to the store. Second, we started batting around ideas for meals while we were still at home, so we'd a) be able to go through some of the stuff we already have, b) not overbuy in areas we're already covered (um, anything grain-related), and c) not have to do that pesky thinking thing when it's time to cook. I made a list of possible meals on the kitchen whiteboard (an invaluable tool; we write our grocery needs on there as they come up) and off we went.

All meals written up there are on a three-part construction: protein, whole grain or fiberous starch, and vegetables. So we've got salmon, wild rice, and asparagus; pork chops, sweet potatoes, and green beans; shrimp, wild rice, and edamame; chicken, sweet potatoes, and green beans; meatloaf (containing oatmeal) and spinach; chicken, spelt, and broccoli... yeah, it goes on like that. For some reason it keeps slipping my Hub's mind that the vegetables are necessary, so he'll make protein and grain/starch and then forget about the veggies-- or, if he's packing lunch, he'll forget to toss in a container of frozen veg. I'm trying to drill this one into his head, for both our sakes.

I rearranged the freezer so that the veggies are all in the door-- at least, all the OPEN veggie bags. Bags of frozen berries (my favorite dessert) go there, too.

My Hub made meatloaf, which is great. He used extra-lean ground beef, oatmeal, chopped onions, and I forget what all else, but this was his "good-for-you ingredients" version. Last week's lunch was lasagna (whole wheat noodles, fat-free cottage cheese, homemade tomato sauce, lean ground beef). We end up ordering pizza (whole wheat crust) about once a week, or (now that we've stocked up) my Hub eats one of his frozen pizzas and I get one of my South Beach frozen pizzas. Generally we eat oatmeal for breakfast. Altogether, this is pretty awesome; we seem to have found a nice balancing point where we're concentrating on making sure that the food we eat 90% of the time is healthy stuff, albeit being healthy stuff that we happen to like a whole lot. Consumption of white bread, potatoes, white rice, chips, crackers (now that the shit that was left over from the Superbowl party is gone; I have SO learned my lesson there) and sugary treats of all sorts has fallen to an all-time household low. It's not perfect, by any means, but it's stable, it doesn't involve a lot of thought, we're not stressed out by it, and we're happy-- that last being, I think, the most important thing that can be said for any diet.

My Hub went to McDonald's yesterday, where he purchased a Happy Meal-- complete with those apple dipper things and a little 8-oz. thing of low-fat milk. I have done this myself, often, since that's actually the size of a proper meal, and it's cheap as hell-- but I never expected to see my Hub do it. I'm so proud.

I may be losing weight again, now that the Superbowl leftovers are in the past and I'm back to the gym. It's the wrong time of the month to check to be sure, but I'm guessing by the end of the week I'll have an answer. Things seem to be shaped a bit differently, that's for sure. If my guess is correct, I'll be edging past 15 pounds lost to something like 16 or 17. Not bad.

Also... ::sigh:: I'm going to call the doctor about my stupid shoulder. It's been six weeks, I've been very, very gentle with it, and it still hurts. And this time through, I've made sure that the "flexible spending" medical savings account has enough cash in it in case they want to charge me my entire deductable for one damn shoulder. Feh.

Most excitingly, though: I made mini-quiches last night! Yay! Haven't done that in a long time. (Mental note: next time, either grease the muffin tin properly or use those wretched paper cups. D'oh!) I threw chopped-up Canadian bacon, spinach, and goat cheese in there, poured in EggBeaters (with which I'd mixed a bit of Frank's Red Hot sauce, dried basil, salt, and pepper), baked at 325 degrees for 30 minutes, and voila! protein for my mid-morning snack! I've been trying to make do with protein-less options for the past week, and it's been murder. (Doesn't help that during PMS I am a raging ball of hunger.) Once my body gets adjusted to being fed every three hours, it WILL be fed every three hours, or else it will be ANGRY, and apparently several pieces of fruit will not suffice, it wants PROTEIN.

We continue to close in on my get-off-of-Zoloft date. I'm staying on it through March, but I'm guessing that anytime after Easter is fair game. Yay!

Oh, God, do I need a nap. I stayed up an extra hour getting those quiches made last night, and it's hitting me now. Oof.