NaNoWriMo and cooking

On the one hand, participating in NaNoWriMo has forced me to be a lot more organized about dinners. (Everybody around here fends for themselves for breakfast and lunch.) I can't do my daily shopping trip and still have time to write. I can't make things that take more than about a half hour to prepare. So I've been making a weekly list and actually following it (a first!).

Typically we have things in one of two categories - super quick, or super long (crockpot). Super quick possibilities are shrimp, seared tuna and/or scallops, roasted chicken with salad and bread, steak... I love all these things! The only problem is seafood needs to be eaten the day you get it, so I can only do that on shopping days. We try not to have red meat more than once a week, so I can't do steak too often. You're seeing the problem, I know!

Super long crockpot things aren't my speciality. I grew up in Florida, so we didn't do a lot of the "comfort food" foods like pot roast. In fact, I'm pretty sure my mom never in my life cooked pot roast. And pot roast is a red meat, as is my favorite recipe for the crockpot, Italian beef sandwiches. Really all my best/favorite crockpot recipes involve red meat. So you are seeing problem number 2.

Cooking in Uganda... maybe we'll do this! (Thanks Keren and Bosco!)

And now, I am having half of my kitchen redone. It will not involve my main appliances (I will lose my old spare fridge for a couple of weeks though, which is bad with Thanksgiving on the horizon), but it will involve all my food storage. Pasta. Rice. Cereal. Baking supplies. Syrup. Snacks. Crackers. OK, not cans... but pretty much everything else will be relocated to... somewhere... from which I will have to pull reasonable meals for my guys.

*Sigh.*

I really love to cook. I do. I really don't like trying to figure out dinner every night (cakes and pies and big celebrations are way more fun!). I think my crockpot is going to get a lot more use these next two weeks. Hey, can you cook a turkey in there??