Last January, I made a resolution to cook one NEW recipe every week. That's 52 new recipes people. It definitely wasn't easy and frankly, kind of got to be a pain in the butt after about 6 months - finding new recipes is not as easy as you would think! At first, it was easy but really there are only so many recipes on Pinterest that look appealing and also fit all of my "criteria". To me, that means nothing that's going to take me hours to make (or create a zillion dishes to wash - ain't nobody got time for that!) is relatively "healthy" and contains mostly raw ingredients (very few canned, prepackaged or frozen items, although I have gotten a little more comfortable with frozen fruits and veggies - as long as there are ZERO preservatives, coatings, chemicals or other ingredients listed) and also looks GOOD!
I will say that I learned a lot. I feel like I have gotten to be a better cook. I also learned just how amazing it is to meal plan WAY in advance. The first week of the month, I would sit down and make a meal plan for that whole month - including the 4 new meals for that month. This made making the grocery list each week WAY easier! Instead of trying to figure out meals and what was needed for them, all I had to to was just pull up the recipes I had already picked out and make a list of needed ingredients. SO worth it you guys.
Researching new recipes took some time - so it really paid off to get that out of the way for the month all at once. I pulled a lot of recipes from Pinterest and the internet (sometimes I would crave some random combination and just google until I found a recipe I liked - for example goat cheese and salmon!) I found a decent number of recipes after digging through some old (unused) recipe books that have been sitting on our bookshelf for years and years. I also went through some old emails my mom had sent me when I was in college. Many of them contained multiple recipes, where I had only tried one at the time. These were great to look back on. Thanks mom!!
I also learned that it is super helpful for me to have designated nights for different types of meals. I did this first of all to break up all of the chicken meals. We tend to cook a LOT of chicken around here and I don't know about you but I prefer to not have chicken 4 nights in a row. I also want to make sure that we are eating a variety of proteins. Here's what that looks like for us: Monday - Chicken; Tuesday - Church Small Group; Wednesday - Shrimp/Fish; Thursday - Chicken; Friday - Ground beef, ground turkey or pork; Saturdays and Sundays were kind of wildcards or eating out days. Sometimes leftovers bumped the back a day and that would also help fill the weekends too (on the rare occasion that we are at home and have no plans).
We had a lot of good new meals, a few not so good (although nothing that was just repulsive) and I have definitely added many to our regular rotation! Here are some pictures from the very last new recipe!
Many of you have asked for this recipe - so I have included it in a follow up post HERE!
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