Eating well when you have one of those days

It's been a week since I posted my menu, and as suspected, things got off track. They always do, because that's just life. When people talk about eating at home, they often say that their life is too crazy to be able to cook or stick to a menu. Well, deal with it. It's not a choice between cooking Martha Stewart meals at home or eating junk. You might have noticed that most of my meals and menus were pretty simple. My pineapple pork roast, for example, takes less than five minutes to assemble and can be done a day ahead. Make some rice as a side dish, along with a couple of in-season vegetables steamed or stir-fried, and you've spent less than half an hour cooking.

But I digress -- Getting back on track about being off track, here is what we do when a day gets too crazy or plans change. Yesterday was a good example of plans changing. Mike wasn't home last night, and he really wants to be home for pizza night, so we didn't have pizza last night. Katherine and I went to the Little City an hour away to do our monthly grocery shopping, and we got home too late to do anything fancy for dinner. So, we resorted to fast food -- lentils and rice. Jonathan sorted and rinsed a one-pound bag of lentils, then put them in a pot with water to cook, which only takes about 30 minutes. As long as it's on "low" on a small burner, you don't even need to be in the kitchen to watch them. Once they're done, they can sit until you have time to deal with them. Katherine came along a little later, chopped up an onion, fried it in oil, added a one-pound bag of our frozen tomatoes and the Indian spices, and dinner was ready. I love to buy the boxes of masala spices at the Indian grocery store because they include about a dozen spices and nothing else -- no MSG or "natural" flavors or anything I don't recognize.

Since Mike is out of town, and he is the croissant baker, that also means we didn't have croissants for breakfast. Since I wasn't in the mood to cook when I woke up -- yes, it happens -- I made smoothies. Blend together a banana, cup of homemade yogurt, frozen strawberries, honey, and 1 tablespoon of wheat germ. (That makes one serving; multiply as necessary.)

I'm not quite sure what we'll be doing tonight, since I thawed the turkey, and Mike was hoping to have pizza tonight when he gets home. So, we'll have to talk about it. If we have pizza and a movie tonight, then we'll just have the turkey tomorrow night.

I'm thinking that my two-week celebration of food might actually wind up lasting longer than that. It's hard to believe that it's been two weeks since I started this. I still have so many things I want to write about -- snacking, drinks, zucchini recipes, serving food, and the movies Food, Inc and Fresh.