Look at me!

I’ve cooked some things!

I haven’t really consistently cooked REAL dinners in a long, long time. Like, since we lived in Texas long time. I mean, we eat things, obviously. But I’ve taken the easy way out, and truthfully our neighbors have fed us a million times over. Basically she cooks so much food every time she cooks, and then passes them along to us. They’re delicious, but not always super healthy. ANYWAY, so not a lot of cooking on my part. I’ve been all out of whack.But then we had E, and I knew I couldn’t keep eating crap. This baby weight will never come off if I still eat like a teenager. And on one fortuitous weekend morning, I got an email from Groupon.

The Groupon was for a year subscription to a meal planning service. These kinds of things are a dime a dozen on the interwebs these days, but this particular meal planning service is slightly different. It’s called The Fresh 20. The premise behind it is that each weekly menu is made up of 20 fresh, seasonal ingredients (and several “pantry items,” from their list of 20 pantry essentials). Each meal is healthy and nutritious, and doesn’t use a bunch of preservative filled ingredients.

This was like GOLD to me. One of my fundamental problems when it comes to making dinner is that I only know how to make a handful of things, and I lack the personal creativity to branch out. When I previewed the meals on this site, my mouth started watering. WE NEED THIS! I told C. It would give me a guide for each week. A guide for grocery shopping. And look! Healthy! And then we could look forward to our planned meals. I am so much more motivated with a plan.

C agreed. He actually agreed! So we purchased our Groupon and signed up. We had to wait a bit to start using it, as we still had meals coming to us from the spouses’ group for C’s residency, but last night, I made my first meal from it!

Southwestern Sloppy Joes. I know. The name “sloppy joes” sounds fundamentally disgusting and UNhealthy. I’m actually not a fan of regular old sloppy joes. But guys. These were amazing. And so NOT unhealthy. Ground turkey! Whole wheat buns! Carrots! Onion! Garlic! Spices! Organic Tomato paste! Cilantro! Honey! This is possibly one of the best things I’ve ever made for C and I. We had a side of grilled corn. It was so delicious.

We don’t necessarily plan on using all five meals from each week every time, but even if it gives us a solid three meals a week it was well worth the $25 for the year. Even better? The recipe from last night had me make double the meat (pre-cilantro and honey) and save half for a SECOND meal this week of Turkey Bolognese Penne. The day I make THAT it will take me less than 30 minutes to get dinner on the table. Bam. Success. The third meal we are going to make this week is ginger shrimp fried rice. The other days we plan on eating leftovers from each meal (they serve four, and well, there’s only two of us), and going on a date at least once. This is the best we’ve eaten in a solid week since we moved here, and I’m SO looking forward to cooking yummy things from here on out.

So yea y’all. Meal planning service. Huge win in this household. NOM.