Food; Week 10 + 7 (epilogue)

Well, it's been 7 weeks back at work now...time to write about how I've incorporated all of my new ideas, tricks, and recipes from 10 weeks of cooking while being a stay-at-home dad. Surely all of this time spent in the kitchen has paid some dividends, right?

Not really.

Unfortunately, my big post-leave finding is that it is really hard to make any significant lifestyle changes when you work 40+ hours and have 2 kids. I emerged from my leave with the best of intentions...I was going to plan out meals for the week on Sunday, do all my shopping on the weekends, and continue to make a lot of the types of meals I was making while on leave. But the reality is that this has not happened. I'm lucky if I spend more than 30 minutes making anything, my slow cooker has gone idle, and even my panini grill looks at me with sad eyes because I've been ignoring it.

Not that I have lost interest in the issue of food--I just have not found a sustainable way to continue to cook it regularly like I was a couple months back.

I have noticed that all things organic and local seem to be hot these days. The NYT recently ran this interesting article about the unsavory/competitive side of keeping things local in Portland, OR, and WBUR recently rebroadcast this interview with Mark Bittman (who writes NYT's The Minimalist blog) about eating sustainably, organically, and well.

So we'll see what happens. I have been disappointed in my own effort the past seven weeks; I know that if I am more disciplined (and make food shopping more of a priority) I can turn things around a bit. I might not get back to where I was, but arriving somewhere between where I am now and where I was would be nice.