Post-mortem on Sept. 10-16 meal plan

[eveglass]

Why milk something for only two posts when you can do three? Here are my thoughts on how the first week of meal planning went.


Preliminary thoughts:

• I thought about food a lot – This one came as a bit of a surprise to me, though perhaps it shouldn’t have. Between prepping for the meal plan, getting together my Lufa order, and actually enacting the meals, I thought a lot more about food this week than I normally do. Most days I start thinking about my meals about a half-hour before I eat them. This week, I was almost constantly trying to plan, evaluate, etc. It was weird, and not necessarily enjoyable. I’m not sure yet whether this is because I’m just starting up a new program I’m not familiar with, or if this would be my life as a meal planning. Only time will tell.


• It’s hard to plan a full week ahead of time – While I did try to plan a full week when I sat down last Saturday, that plan mostly amounted to detailed notes for Saturday to Tuesday, plus less detailed stuff for the rest of the week. It’s hard trying to estimate how much food will be left in the house after 3-4 days, particularly since I don’t want to dictate to Marc what he should eat at any given time. It’s much easier to plan in half-weeks, from Saturday to Tuesday/Wednesday, and then from Tuesday to Friday. Maybe I’ll work up to full weeks, but I don’t yet feel I’m there.


• We ate more vegetables this week – This one I can’t deny. Between the roast vegetables, the crudités, and the red cabbage main dishes, I was definitely eating my veggies this week. On the one hand, that’s good, but on the other, I wonder if I wasn’t getting quite enough protein.


• I was thinking about “next week” as early as Wednesday – Even though my basket only arrived on Tuesday, by Wednesday it already felt like the week was almost over and I should really start thinking about next week. I think this is because my meal plan ran from Saturday to Saturday (i.e. the day you can plan your basket, which is three days before the basket actually arrives). So even though I was just starting to dig into the Lufa basket on Tuesday night and Wednesday, it already felt like I should really be planning for next week. (As I mentioned above, I thought a lot about food this week.)


• Lufa Farms’ customer service was very helpful – I sent in some feedback about my basket, both the good stuff but also some of the bad stuff, most notably the “surprise herb” bundle. Much to my surprise, a day later I got a note back from customer service saying they were crediting my account the amount of the herbs. How nice to see a customer service department that’s actually helpful and responsive!

What worked:

• Two new good recipes – Both the new recipes I tried (the warm cabbage salad and the zucchini yogurt dip) turned out to be keepers. So yay for that!


• Red cabbage – The warm cabbage salad worked really well as a “what to do with the other half of the cabbage” meal to complement the Japanese cabbage salad. I’d say between the two dishes I probably got 10-ish servings, which is pretty darn good for a single cabbage. It’s not the sort of thing I’d do every week, but it’s certainly a combo I’m gonna keep in my back pocket.


• Some stand-out tasty food – Most of the food was pretty good, but in particular, the sampler apple, the peaches, cherry tomatoes, bell peppers, and goat cheese all stood out as excellent.


• The “not pretty but quite tasty” bundle – Definitely the runaway best value of the week, so much so that I may order it twice for my next basket. I got about $13-$15 of food for $3, which is amazing. And it was admittedly kinda fun to figure out recipes for the stuff I got.

What didn’t work:

• The plan – As they say, “no plan survives contact with reality.” Most notably, we got some delicious leftovers from Marc’s aunt on Sunday that we’re still eating now, and the potluck I was supposed to go on Friday was cancelled, forcing me to adjust on the fly and make the planned meal for my Thursday game instead. I also felt guilty about going out for dinner when I knew we had a bunch of food at home, which I did not like. Many weeks I’ll spontaneously make last-minute dinner plans with friends, and it felt weird to be beholden to my fridge.


• Too many crudités, not enough dinners – On the one hand, we had 4 cups of cucumbers, 4 cups of orange pepper, 2 pints of cherry tomatoes, and a variety of roast vegetables. On the other, we didn’t really have enough dinner food. We had a lot of snacks, but not much we could really call “meals”. If it hadn’t been for Marc’s aunt’s leftovers, we probably would have been in trouble. I’ll definitely have to plan for more “real” suppers in future weeks. And order fewer raw vegetables.


• Not enough fruit – The peaches were delicious; don’t get me wrong. But there were only two of them, and one of them we ate the same evening the basket arrived. We’ll have to order more next time.


• Bringing lunch to work, especially salad day – I admit, this is the part of the week I liked least. I’m used to buying my lunch every day from the grocery store or the variety of restaurants around my office. I like following my whims. Bringing leftovers every day kinda sucked. I think in the future I’ll bring leftovers if I have them, but I won’t feel guilty about buying my lunch either. Sometimes I just need to have that variety.


• Spring mix – I brought this to work on Wednesday to turn into a salad. It took me 20 minutes to trim off the ridiculous number of stems and tear up the leaves, and in the end it only turned into a single salad’s worth, and a kinda paltry, delicate one at that. $3.75 is too much for a single salad’s worth of greens. Will not repeat. (Still not sure if I’ll skip salads entirely, buy full heads of lettuce from Lufa, buy pre-bagged salad from the supermarket, or buy the ridiculously expensive prepared salads from the place down the street. The jury’s still out.)


• Surprise herbs – I believe I mentioned that these turned out to be a bundle of mint, of which about a third was unusable. Most of what was left went into the zucchini yogurt dip, and the rest made enough for 2-3 mugs of tea. It was… fine for what it was, but I’m not sure it was worth $3.00. If I ever need a particular herb, I might order it (since the prices are comparable to the supermarket), but I don’t think I’ll do the “surprise” one again.


• Surprise microgreens – Once I harvested all the microgreens, I had maybe a half-cup of useable sprouts. I used about half on my disappointing Wednesday salad, and the rest are still sitting in my fridge, unused and probably about to be thrown out. I doubt I’ll order these again.

What I will do differently next time:

• Order more fruit


• Order fewer crudité-style veggies


• Plan for meals with meat / protein, as opposed to just vegetables


• Double-up on the “not pretty but tasty” bundle


• Investigate the non-produce sections of the Lufa marketplace, maybe buy some meat or pasta


• Experiment with prepping larger batches of components that can be mixed and matched (cooked meat, pot of rice, roast vegetables, sauce, etc.), as opposed to full-blown meals. Hopefully this will make me feel less guilty about accepting last-minute dinner plans.