I’ve always been a planner and list maker. It’s a problem really. I pretty much have an addiction to the satisfactory feeling of crossing things off a list. I’m working on it, I promise.
Add in the fact that I’m the Country Wife here at Country Wife Chronicles and my work-at-home lifestyle and rural living pretty much requires organization and planning ahead.
The past two weeks here at CWC have been all about Planning Ahead.
I can’t seem to remember what our meals were like prior to learning how to meal plan. I’m sure it was a black hole of Hamburger Helpers, mac and cheese, and hot dogs.
I do, however, vividly remember my first experience with meal planning.
We had recently left our professional careers for something new, and in so doing had to drastically revise our financial spending and budget. We lived 20 miles away from town and it no longer made financial sense to run into town on a whim. Every trip and gas expense was accounted for and needed to be worth their while.
In an attempt to try out some gluten-free (GF) baking recipes, I’ve been exploring GF flour blends. Ok, if I’m being honest, after reading a bit about some digestive issues I was suffering from I decided that maybe gluten was having an impact on my intestinal tract. So, in a confident, “I’m going to get healthy” moment I splurged and bought a gigantic bag of coconut flour from Sam’s Club…thinking it would work for a straight up 1-to-1 switch out for all-purpose flour. No, nope, not really. Unless you are going for super-flat and sawdust grit in your recipes. Just sayin’.
Needless to say this massive fail on my part definitely got me thinking that maybe eating healthy sweets just isn’t meant to taste good. So I shoved the coconut flour to the back of my cabinet after a few disappointing recipe attempts and went back to my usual ingredients.