Back on track

We've been busy enough for the past few days that I wasn't focusing on the new diet that we've picked for The Husband in order to reverse his Metabolic Syndrome. Yesterday I had some downtime, however, and worked out a new weekly plan. And last night, even though the pantry was close to bare, I managed to find the ingredients to make a really yummy minestrone soup. (With a few insignificant substitutions.) Baked some apples for dessert, which satisfies the sweet tooth AND is a serving or two of fruit.

If all the recipes from this upcoming week go over well, we'll have a good two week cycle of recipes from the www.mediterrasian.com site. I have sufficient cookbooks of different styles (and enough culinary knowledge, skill, and creativity) that I am confident that I can create a monthly cycle. And probably even seasonalize the menus, with different rotations for different times of the year (i.e., tomatoes for every meal in July!!).

Of course, there's a challenge. Because I'm too busy to make two dinners every night, these recipes must also pass the kid test. Now, Susie and The Boy are both pretty adventurous eaters, especially when compared with their peers. And I have a policy that if you don't like what I make, you can make yourself a PBJ sandwich. They rarely take me up on that one. Last night was no exception. They glared at the food, but they ate it. Even finished it! I've been augmenting their meals with a fattier side dish (kids' developing nervous systems need fat...and the kids thus far show no signs of a weight problem). So they had cheese mini-ravioli with butter and parmesan with their soup. I have confidence that the Greek dishes, Middle Eastern, and Indian dishes will go over well. Italian is a no-brainer, and most of my "regular" cooking is French-influenced (but richer than the Provencal dishes on the Mediterrasian diet). It's the Tunisian and Turkish items that I'm less certain of, since those are different flavor signatures and combinations than our usual fare. The kids also have not yet tried Thai, which I really like (and The Husband is somewhat lukewarm about). Susie has a mostly-hate relationship with Chinese food (and The Boy loves it, doesn't that figure....) but she is a huge sushi/edamame/miso soup fan, so we should be able to make Japanese dinners work for her.

The upcoming week will have more of a Mediterranean focus than the first week, which was mostly Asian foods. Fortunately we have a great Mediterranean grocery store (which is just as fun to visit as the Vietnamese grocery, with the added bonus of being able to see sheep heads in the butcher area!). No more Farmer's Market this season, so we'll be visiting Easy Way for most of the produce. I'm pretty sure it's no different than the produce at the regular grocery store, but it's a locally-owned store and I think they turn over their inventory a little faster, so it at least seems fresher. And the prices are usually better.

A whole post about food? Looks like it. Maybe I'll have more to post later.