Taste and See

I think I need to bring menu-planning back.  And probably the monthly goals.  Maybe I'll work on that next week.

In the meantime, I am working on finding ways to get good, healthy dinners on the table quickly, when I teach piano till 5:30 or 6, and have a boy who needs to eat sometime before his 8pm bedtime.

Yesterday, I baked some Italian chicken, which I love, and baked at least twice as much as I needed for dinner.  Tonight, my plan is to saute some of the leftover chicken with some veggies and serve that with some brown rice.

That plan meant I needed figure out something for the rice, because I switched to using the "real" rice, the kind that has to be cooked for 30-40ish minutes.  Thirty minutes of rice-cooking is not conducive to a quick meal, so instead I made a HUGE pot of rice while I was making myself lunch, and it cooked while I was eating.

See?  Isn't that a huge pot of rice? This picture somehow doesn't do it justice, but I'm telling you, that's a lot of rice.  I'll keep some of it in the fridge for meals that we'll have soon, and freeze some of it for meals later. I added a little bit of olive oil while it was cooking(in lieu of butter), so that it would reheat well.

So, that's the plan for dinner tonight.  Does anyone else figure out a plan by working backwards?  I often figure out what I want the end result to be, and work backwards.

I'm trying to get back into the swing of things by cooking ahead again.  I'm looking forward to having a freezer full of easy, go-to meals that are already prepared!