Obsessing Over Dinner

It’s late afternoon and, as is normal this time of day, my thoughts turn to dinner. For the past year or so, I’ve been attempting to plan our meals ahead of time, because this was happening way too often:

Me: Whaddya want for dinner tonight?
Husband: I dunno, what do you want?
Me: I dunno, what do we have stuff for?
Husband: Nothing. We’ll probably have to go to the store.

Followed by a hungry trip to the grocery store where we proceed to drop $50 on ingredients for one dinner plus whatever we see that looks good (which, at 7 in the evening on an empty stomach, is EVERYTHING).

So I’m learning to plan. I’ve actually gotten a bit compulsive about it. I keep a spreadsheet with each week of the year on a tab and I list 6 dinners, then a grocery list broken up into different grocery store departments.

This is not “me.” This is something a super-organized, together, clean-freak type person would do. I’m pretty much the opposite of those things. But here I am, planning meals months in advance and coordinating and organizing them so I can only buy ingredients once and we’re eating what’s in season. I think the only reason I am successful at this is because of how much I love food. I obsessively read food blogs and magazines and compile recipes.

So back to this afternoon, and thinking about dinner. We’re having Thai lettuce wraps. Josh (the husband) is making them. Last time he made them, they were pretty amazing. He roasted a pork shoulder basted with some magical sauce he made up. We sat on the back porch with a pile of lettuce leaves on a plate, a mound of shredded pork, and some sort of soy sauce-cilantro-carrot-chili pepper dipping/drizzling sauce Josh, again, made up. It was spicy and drippy and crunchy and everything you’d want a summer evening’s dinner on the back porch to be.

How much longer until dinner?