What's On the Menu?

For the most part, my husband and I are pretty healthy eaters. I get a lot of great recipes from Eating Well, Cooking Light, and Women's Health. As you probably know, it's more expensive to get fresh produce instead of canned or frozen, and you can greatly increase the costs when you buy organic produce. However, I don't consider produce a luxury - I consider it an investment in my health and well-being. And I just love unloading my cart - I have apples, bananas, lettuce, carrots...so colorful and it definitely gets me excited about eating well. I especially love unloading my bags from the farmers' market!

The worst thing about having all of the luscious fruits and vegetables in my house is they have a short shelf life, especially my organic produce from the farmers' market. Nothing is more sad than putting beautiful peppers in your fridge, forgetting about them, and a couple of days later, they're mushy. I have filled up my compost bags with more forgotten fruit than I care to admit, and I realized I had to do something to stop wasting money and great, healthy food.

My solution? A small dry erase board on my fridge. And how does that solve the problem? It serves as a reminder to me what EXACTLY I was going to do with those tomatoes. If I can plan even further ahead, I like to arrange my meals for the week in order of how long the produce will keep. Plus, I love it when friends come over and are impressed with my meals! Someone sees I have "blue cheese turkey burgers and sweet potato fries", we might get into a discussion of how to get the fries to be crispy rather than soggy. It's amazing how many good conversations I've gotten in because of my menu.

My menu for this week:

Besides remembering what to do with the food you buy, knowing how to store produce is key. Check out this article on how to store produce from Martha Stewart. What doesn't she know?