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.

Portabello Mushrooms with Tomato and Mozzarella Cheese

I've read a few times how Portabello mushrooms are like steaks to vegetarians, but I couldn't understand why. I've wanted to try cooking with portabellos for sometime, but felt intimidated by the size of the mushroom cap. So the other day, when we went to get our groceries, I decided to just grab a pack of 2 caps to try cooking for lunch the next day. I mixed and matched it with whatever I had in the fridge, and it turned out so good, the guys wanted me to cook it again next time. Here's what I did:

Ingredients:
2 portabello mushroom
salt & pepper
McCormick steak seasoning
1 tomato, diced
Mozzarella cheese, shreded

1. Preheat oven to 395F.
2. Scrape out gills from underside of mushroom cap. Rinse clean.
3. Season with salt and pepper and steak seasoning.
4. Spread out tomatoes on the underside of mushroom cap.
5. Top with plenty of Mozzarella cheese! I love cheese, so I used plenty of it.
6. Put mushrooms on tray, and put in oven for 20 mins, checking every 10 mins.
7. Slice when its done, or eat the caps whole!

This tastes amazingly juicy, its almost like a burger without the bun. A good lunch would be to put the mushroom between a burger bun, and its almost gonna taste like a mushroom swiss! The guys loved it, and I'm crazy over it. I'm quite sure i'll be doing another one soon.. Its easy to make, and very healthy, since all of it is vegetables and cheese. I've always wanted to try cooking with tomatoes, and I believe if I kept eating it, I would eventually come to like it. And I was right! ;) More tomato recipes to come!