I'm Out of Ideas

I usually plan my meals out each week, to make shopping easier and to keep from over-buying and letting food go to waste. (Thanks to Gretchen Rubin, I now know that I'm an "overbuyer," so I'm trying to work on that.) Anyway, yesterday, I looked through the last few weeks of meal plan pages I had saved (I'm also a saver of papers sometimes! Working on that, too!), and I was a little bit shocked to see that every week's meal plan looked pretty similar.

The meal plan generally went as follows: Mexican food, Italian food, stir-fry, Mexican food, Italian food, stir-fry, with the occasional miso soup night thrown in.

Yikes! I'm stuck in a food rut!

So, I need dinner ideas! Healthy, (mostly vegetarian), easy-to-make dinner ideas!

Can you help?



In what area of your life do you need inspiration right now?

Secrets from the Kitchen

Today I made ratatouille in the crock pot. It’s cooking up now, and filling my home with a lovely garlicky aroma.

Mmmm, garlic.

Which brings me to my reason for posting today. Garlic. (Yup, garlic!)

For the first 30 years of my life, I peeled garlic the only way I knew how…the tedious, sticky, now-I-smell-like-garlic way. You know, I cut the garlic ends off and then picked away at the skin of the garlic until it was sticking to my hands and mostly off of the garlic clove.

But about a year ago, something marvelous happened. I saw Gaida De Laurentiis (on the Food Network) peel garlic. The easy way.

Can you believe it? There’s actually an easy way!

Here’s how she did it:

How to Peel Garlic
1. Cut the woody end of the garlic clove off first.
2. Then lay the garlic clove flat on a cutting board,
3. Lay a knife flat side down on top of the garlic clove
4. Push down on the flat side of the knife to smush the garlic clove briefly
5. The skin will now come off easily.

If you’ve never peeled garlic this way, trust me, it will change your life. It’s revolutionized my cooking. (Or at least made me a little quicker at the chopping stage of cooking, but, hey, I’ll take it!)

And it makes me happy to have little tricks to make things easier when I’m cooking. Like today, I actually used my garlic press. Another trick! A minute of chopping saved by a handy cute gadget!

Another little happiness boost!


What little time-saving tricks for work or home do you just love? (C’mon, it’s fun to share your expertise!)