Meal planning tips

Do you hate cooking? Does anxiety strikes when you have to cook a meal? Do you often open your fridge only to blank stare and not know what to do with the ingredients inside? Well, you're not alone. I often feel like that too!

Where I stay now, is very different from Singapore. None of the food places are within walking distance. Its quite costly to eat out. The simplest meals are a minimum of USD$10 per person, not including tax and tips. You'd still have to drive miles and miles out to reach to the town to get the better food. Sometimes, after adding all the costs and inconvenience up, its still better to cook and prepare whatever I'm craving for at home.

Having to cook all 3 meals a day, and sometimes supper too, can be quite tiresome. I have to keep looking and searching online for new ideas on what to cook for the husband. I'm quite fussy in what I put in my mouth, I need colours and variety. I hate repeating dishes so I try to find new recipes all the time to prevent that.

I find that meal planning really useful, as I have the entire list of meals I will be preparing the following week, therefore, on the weekends when I go out to get my grocery, I know what to buy. I have this weekly planner pasted on my wall that acts as a whiteboard, so I can just fill it up on weekends and see what to defrost and prepare on the night before.

Side note: Club Sycamore is what I call my house, because we throw the most "happening" parties in this area! Or at least what I try to make myself believe.

I used to print weekly planners online, and plan my meals ahead, then draft out my grocery list to bring out on my weekend grocery trips. That way, when meal times come, I won't have to tear my hair out to think of what to cook later.

I also take photos of the food I cook, and load it up to a folder on my Facebook. From there, I can see what I've cooked before, and if it turned out good, I can use it for inspiration for future meals when I run out of ideas. I will be posting my meal plans and recipes on this blog in the future as well. I figured if that help me, I'm sure it can help someone else as well. Plus, its also another way I can use as a reference when I need new ideas.

I have been trying out several recipes and writing them down to create my own recipe folder, where I experiment with new recipes and improve them to suit my own palette. Hopefully it will eventually be good enough to share on my blog. I haven't got to the stage of developing my own recipes yet, so I still do get alot of inspiration from other blogs, and my ever - growing cookbook collection.

I have alot of upcoming plans for this blog, and have been slowly changing the layout and planning out the things I want to write about and share here. Tried and tested recipes, travel tips and photos, and reviews of products I've been given to test out. I also plan to do a blogging marathon soon! There's like tons of things in my head I want to share here, and that blogging marathon will force me to post everyday. If you have a particular topic you want to hear my views on, feel free to drop me an email, or leave me a comment!

Check out my "Unfinished Biz" tabs to see my upcoming endeavors I hope to achieve.

Follow me on Twitter @natxwang to be updated on my latest posts, and my daily nonsensical ramblings.

Windows Live Writer ate my post!

Darn it! I typed an entry earlier on, and saved it, then went about to do my own things. I came back, wanted to edit it, and add some pictures, and the damn software just wouldn't start. I've restarted my laptop, ended some applications, tried to update it, but just wouldn't work. I read somewhere that Live Writer was good, that it could help upload photos faster and such. But no, its not working for me. It ATE my post! I forgot how I wrote it, and having to re-type it makes my creativity flow into the drain. ARGH.

Anyway, just wanted to showoff update on my new kitchen additions. After our little arguement, I went off to buy the needed groceries, and went on to check out the cookwares section. I needed a roasting/baking pan and a cooling tray badly, since my previous one just rusted it way out. The cheaper brands are always like that, they get rusty so easily. I didn't mind paying more to get a better brand, with non stick capabilities, that might help stop the rusting too.

I headed out to the Wilton section, and checked out the trays. I've been wanting to get a tray for to make the Pandan cake I've been craving for, but I guess that's gotta wait. I wouldn't want the Hubs to kick me for buying new equipment every week. The food has to taste awesome to justify the amount I spend to update my pantry. While I like my food to taste good, I still want to keep on experimenting with new ingredients, and new dishes. I have the choice to blend into the community I am in now (the USA), so why would I want to keep on cooking Asian dishes, day in day out? I want to try new stuff, I want to try food that they cook for meals here, of course, the healthier versions.

I picked up my stuff and left. Spent about $14 on the trays, and another $40+ on groceries. More spices, and new trays to bake, and grill, and experiment in! 

Yup, take a look at the picture in the tray, and I guess you'll know what I'm really excited to experiment next. =D 

I heard that they manage to find mutton/lamb in Costco and we're heading out to find out this weekend. I'm really craving for mutton curry, which my Ananth's mum always cook during Deepavali. As most would know, I'm not a spicy food eater. But the meat is something I'm craving. What did I say? I'm a CARNIVORE. I couldn't find any alternative curry paste here, so I thought I'd try out this Thai paste, unless I can find some at the Indian shop that we're going to check out this weekend.

I've been using alot of herbs and spices in our food recently, after reading that its healthy, brings good flavour, and most of them are anti-oxidants! I use up cinnamon in at least 2 dishes per week. And nutmeg is a new addition to my spice rack. I've been encouraging the Hubs to join me in eating oatmeal, and he's slowly but surely eating more of it.  There was a glimpse of excitement when I added 2 tubs of it into the trolley. So I'm looking to experiment with oatmeals and different toppings. I bought nutmeg after reading alot of people use it as a topping. I personally love cinnamon to bits but Hubs is the total opposite. He hates it and finds that it has a strong smell. I'm hoping he would love this instead. I'm sneak some into his next bowl of oatmeal and see how it goes. ;)

Great shopping haul for the kitchen!

I had an amazing kitchen shopping haul this time. The friends were commenting on how funny it is that I traveled hundreds of miles to buy kitchenware to cook. They were loading up on branded clothes at the factory outlets.


Here's what I got:
- Japanese egg cooking pan
- Food scale ( I couldn't get one in the entire Mountain Home, and boy am I glad to get it on this trip, finally I can start baking!)
- steamer pan
- egg molds
- donburi pan
- knife/ scissors sharperner

These may seem like minute items, but they add up to big scale differences in my kitchen... Will try to take some pics to show you how they look like. I'm actually pretty psyched and crazy about using them already! ;)