A new year and a new way of shopping

It's 2011 and in line with one of the goals I wanted to achieve, we've started the weekly, winter bags from Greener Grocer.  Our first pick up will be next Tuesday the 11th and I'm very excited to see what will be in it.  Not only will it help us eat food that is less processed and more natural, but I think it will go a long way in helping us try new ingredients that we would normally be hesitant to buy.

A few months ago we decided that we were going to try and cook one new, never tried before, meal each week.  Needless to say, it didn't last very long.  We quickly fell back in to making the same stuff over and over.  Something like the bag from Greener Grocer will force us to be creative and use those new ingredients.  If we can effectively use the ingredients that are provided throughout the winter, I'm certain we will be able to justify getting the summer bag and using that as well.

Getting the bag does come with a noticeable complication though.  It's available for pick up starting Tuesday, so it'll make it nearly impossible to plan out the meals from Sunday to Sunday.  Although this hasn't always been a 100% effective plan, it's typically been the most convenient.  Currently, we'll plan to pick up the bag on Tuesday and come home and plan the meals.  In doing this, we'll either go to the store a little later on Tuesday evening, or Wednesday after work.  If my creative juices are flowing while picking up the bag, hopefully we'll be able to grab a few delicious choices at the North Market while we're there.  This will no doubt be a challenge in the coming months.  I'm looking forward to sharing with everyone as we get more and more into it.

As for dinner today.  We didn't have anything planned, but there were multiple bags of frozen veggies in the freezer as well as some uncooked frozen shrimp.  I decided that I should start 2011 out right and not just go out to eat like we would have done in the past.   I boiled some spaghetti, sautéed a couple of cloves of diced garlic in olive oil, then threw in some frozen peas, green beans, and mixed veggies.  I added some salt and pepper, red pepper flakes, and then the shrimp.  Warmed it all through and then added a little Snowville Creamery 2% and a little lemon juice to thicken and voilà! 

While it wasn't the best meal I've ever made, it was quite tasty, quick (took only 15-20 minutes), and meant we didn't spend any money tonight.  All the ingredients we had here, and there was even enough left over for my lunch tomorrow (unless Lynette swipes it out of the fridge before I can).  

I often come to the realization that people can, most likely, throw together a pretty tasty meal from stuff that has been sitting in their freezer instead of going out and spending $10-20 every night for a meal.  It's also not a bad idea to purge some of the miscellaneous ingredients into something like this.  It helps free up room for new, fresh food, and it saves money by not letting food go to waste and by not going out to eat.  I'm also assuming that people keep some general amount of food on hand.  If not, then you might want to consider buying a little extra next time you're at the store.  You never know when that big snow storm could hit.  Also, for those of you that claim you can't cook.  On a skill of 1-10, this meal was maybe a 1.5.  The most skillful part was cutting up the garlic, which could easily be replaced just by using a garlic press.

Ok, enough with the food.  We have yet to decide what Mondays will consist of for the blog.  It might just be a posting about...well...whatever.  It's looking like Wednesdays might be a "Recipe Wednesday" and Fridays will be a useful/insightful/informative/interesting website.  I've got some great ideas for upcoming posts.  Some just need pictures to accompany them, others need some more research.  

Hopefully anyone happening upon this blog will find something worthwhile.  Feel free to drop us a line in the comment section and let us know what you think.  Thoughtful criticism is always welcome.

Thanks,

-E