What's on the Menu?

Menu:

Queso y Fruta
Verduras Crudas con “dip” especial
Roscos
Vichysoisse
Ensalada del Mar
Crepes de delicias del bosque con espárragos
Postre de fruta y chocolate
Vino Blanco y Cava

I spend a lot of time thinking about “what’s on the menu.” Out of nowhere I’ll ask my husband what he’d like to eat the next day for our “comida” (our main meal that we eat between 2 and 3pm, as is the Spanish tradition). Or he’ll ask me on a night that we both lay restless in bed what I’m thinking about, and I’ll answer “what I’m going to fix for comida tomorrow.”
“How can you think about food all the time, when you’re not even hungry?”
How do I explain it’s not only the food, but also how to schedule my day in order to fix the food, that I’m planning. It’s all based on the workshops I have, the time a dish takes to prepare, if I need leftovers because I won’t be home for lunch later in the week, and finally any ingredients I might need. Well, and of course, what I feel like eating, since they usually don’t tell me what they’d like to eat when I ask.

When I pick my 15 year old daughter up from school I ask what she has eaten at school (she’s the only one who doesn’t eat at home during the week, because of her school schedule) so that I can pick our supper menu accordingly, filling in the things she missed out on, and not repeating eggs or meat. Our supper is usually like an American lunch: sandwiches, soup, maybe an omelet, a salad, or a pasta dish. Often everyone makes their own, but the proper, healthy ingredients must be there.

I put a lot of my mental and physical energy in this meal planning, and the shopping that goes along with it. This supermarket here for lowest prices, this fresh vegetable shop there where the things are locally grown and, although not guaranteed organic, are more naturally produced and more flavorful. The market with the best fish this week, the butchers with the locally grown meet next week, to stock the freezer. (Luckily all this is affordable and easily available here on the Costa del Sol.) The meals must be healthy, which means no pre-prepared, highly processed ingredients. They must be balanced, which means: at least two kinds of vegetables; not huge amounts of protein; a healthy carbohydrate, and not high in fats. (OK I know many diets say we should eat proteins and carbs separately, but I often serve them together.) And legumes at least once a week. (I learned that from my Spanish mother in law.) I try and get us all to eat at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day, not always successfully but at least it’s a conscious objective. My daughters have been hearing since they’ve been little “You have to eat your green today!”

In my planning I must keep in mind what my daughters like, so that they will fill up on this healthy meal I serve, and not the junk food they can get while they’re in town if they’ve only eaten a little because they didn’t like it. I have tried to teach them to eat everything, but…well if you’re a Mom you know how it goes.

I love to use leftovers. My challenge to myself is how to use something leftover to make a completely new and different dish. My record was at a family gathering where I used 7 things from two previous meals to make the most delicious Shepherds Pie that everyone loved.

This is the veggie pasta casserole that I made for comida this week with ground beef and chicken (broken up patties that thawed when my husband generously defrosted the freezer the night before) and sautéed zucchini and red pepper salad left over from two different meals earlier in the week, plus an array of other freshly added veggies herbs, and parmesan cheese. Not bad for making it up when I went to bed the night before trying to figure out how to feed three adults with three thin patties that had just thawed out by mistake.

And this is my version of a Greek salad I served that evening for supper, with leftover steamed green beans and broccoli thrown in that would have turned bad if I didn’t use them up quick. We had more than our 5 servings of fruit and vegetables that day!

So what’s on the menu for tomorrow? Come back and find out, I haven’t looked in the freezer (nor gone to bed) yet!