Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezie!

(image from: http://www.fittothefinish.com/blog/2011/08/easy-does-it/)
Hey, my last posting was in April! That's not as bad as I thought!

Well, it's been a whirlwind with school winding down, again, finally, and Mr. Man out of work then back to work then out of work... blaaaaah Mostly, for me, though, it's been school. The last while I've been working in the school's massage therapy clinic at first just on Saturdays, and then on Saturdays and Wednesdays, in addition to regularly attending all-day classes (ohmigoodnes, a 7hr lecture followed by an 8hr lecture I KID YOU NOT. Without lunch break. It's been BRUTAL) on Sundays...I haven't had much time to myself, to my housework, to my family... so yeah.

Anyway, I finally had my last day at clinic this week (WAHOOOOO!!!) and have only 3 more Sunday classes left, so minus frantic studying and trying to retain and perfect everything by the time I take my board exams.....BOOyah. (That booyah will be bigger after I'm actually DONE classes...stay tuned...) ;-)

Lately, I've been trying to figure out some stuff about myself that has landed me here, writing on the good old, oft neglected, blog today. You may or may not recall (having maybe or not previously read) me posting earlier in the year about learning MY specific nutritional needs and losing a bunch of weight. Well, I'm fine, I feel fine, I'm not here to wo-is-me-I'm-so-fat today, so don't worry about that! Just lately, I've been struggling. I said in my posting before that I can eat whatever I want, I just, usually DON'T eat certain things anymore i.e. wheat, oats, and spelt. And while my general eating habits haven't changed back to how they were - we as a family do NOT have pasta multiple times/week anymore - I'm also not eating, for me, what I need to be eating.

Part of it is, honestly, I'm just too exhausted all the time. I can't do it if I don't have the full week's meals planned out on my fabulous wipe-clean meal planner I made myself. I LOVE having my meal planner all done and the corresponding groceries in my fridge/storage. But some weeks, with school, clinic, a 4yo, an unemployed hubs and a mountain of dust on the piles of crap around the house, I just don't get it done. And those weeks...we eat whatever the heck we can get our hands on.

 If Mr. Man is in charge of dinner we eat Kraft Dinner, almost exclusively. Which I LOVE, but is definitely not wheat-free (nor a bunch of other crazy stuff we shouldn't be ingesting REGULARLY...cheese isn't really powdered flourescent orange, you know). If we're in a hurry and haven't come up with anything else, we grab a burger somewhere. Or instead of taking thirty seconds to wash myself a piece of lettuce to wrap up my fajita I'll just grab the whole-wheat tortilla. So then when we're out and presented with wheat/oat/spelt options only by some lovely folk kind enough to feed us i.e. parents/friends/family, and I go ahead and have seconds 'cause it's delicious...it's not so much a one-off thing.

Anyway, I haven't put a TON of weight back on - I still fit my skinny clothes. I just have some extra fluff... that whole muffin-top thing. Which is...fluffy.... hahaha Little Miss LOVES to play with it! She was sitting in my lap this morning repeatedly 1-2 punching my gut, squealing as her fists disappeared into my bulge. It was hilarious and delightful...but it's not so pretty in a dress!

 So yesterday, I said to Mr. Man: "I've heard a lot of people suggest and say like, once you buy the veggies actually cut them up and leave them ready-to-use in the fridge, so you CAN easily open it up and grab a fistful of carrot sticks/pepper slices/whatever, instead of landing in the pantry for chocolate chips" (which totally happens in this house, by the way, I do eat fist-fulls of chocolate chips if I can't find anything else 'immediate' to munch on). "AND I'm going to cook up soups and stuff we can keep in small freezer bags in the freezer, so we can just grab them and heat them up for quick lunches/dinners etc." I know, right? BRILLIANT!

So this is my new strategy: I AM super busy, and arguably overworked (my own fault, of course!) so why not make my life EASIER instead of harder and prepare what I want/need to be eating in ways that will make it as super easy and speedy as a box of KD to get from my kitchen's storage into my hungry tummy!?

Yesterday I made kale chips to have on hand for snacks, cauliflower-cheese soup to freeze for quick meals, as well as popping a pork roast I'd gotten on sale at the grocery store in the crock pot with Epicure's Pulled Pork packet (this makes a huge amount that we can then keep in the fridge and slowly make our way through as the week goes on! And it's DELICIOUS, and EASY!) for dinner. Mr Man had his pork on a giant crusty bun, and I did not.

 So that's that! That's the plan. Get back to better at what I was doing before, but make it EASY for me to do. Because while prepping 3 meals a day for my family isn't HARD, it's exhausting, and I'd rather be doing a number of things OUTside of my kitchen. And I can do that now because I have prepped a bunch of meals that will be as easy to get read to eat as popping the can open on Mr. Boyardee, but a bazillion times better for me, AND my little family.

To quote LIttle Miss: "easy peasy lemon squeezie!" :-) My new food mantra!