I think one of the things in life that brings me the most joy is shopping.

Yes, it’s shallow.  I know it says all kinds of negative things about me. It isn’t (necessarily) green, it’s fueled by a lust for material goods, it’s superficial, it costs money . . . the list goes on and on.

But I still love shopping. In my family when we start trading stories about the past, we inevitably tell stories about great sales we loved and attended together, like the Sanger-Harris warehouse sales in the early 80s. The Goodwill 50% Off Moonlight Madness Sale With All The Jewelry. That Great Garage Sale in Grand Prairie. The Estate Sale in Highland Park with all the Boy Scout Stuff. The Star Wars Garage Sale. The Sale With All The Candles.

I am a shopper, and I come from a family of shoppers.

Back in the day when I had a larger paycheck I’d happily go into a Target and spend $200 without really thinking about it. I wasn’t in debt, I didn’t go on many vacations, and the stuff made me happy. I bought things that were cool simply because I liked them. I don’t regret the things I purchased. I’m happy I bought cool when I had a chance, because all those past purchases make my current home cool, and that’s important to me.

But I realize I can’t spend like that any longer, so I’m distressed to realize I’m treating grocery stores the way I treated Target. Even though I have a list, I sometimes breeze through the store, throwing things in my cart that I don’t have a planned use for, but that I’ve seen on cooking blogs and may want in the future.

For example, this week the clearance shelf at HEB called my name, and I bought Turbinado sugar for 50% off, and some dried banana chips for $1.00, and matcha powder for $12.00, which isn’t even a good price. I don’t have plans for any of this. The sugar is the most worrisome of the purchases as I don’t bake, so rarely use sugar. It’s taken me well over a year to use a quarter pound of plain granulated sugar, and now I’m buying a fancy sugar?

And let’s not revisit what I’ve spent on kitchen gadgetry.

This worries me. My diet should be about cooking healthy foods that I like enough to actually eat that also won’t break the bank. I’m not sure making it about shopping and novelty is smart.

Then again, making it about shopping and novelty may sustain my interest in cooking. If that sustained interest leads to weight loss then I need to give myself a pass, and not worry so much about the money. If I can break myself of eating in restaurants and drive-thru lanes then it’ll be worth it.

It’s so hard! Some days I congratulate myself on how far I’ve come, other days I want to flagellate myself for all the spent money and the lack of progress. When I cook consistently I do lose weight, but then I get depressed or stressed for some reason, and start eating out again, often for weeks at a time. I re-gain all the lost weight before I can pull myself back on track.

This is really depressing, and I don’t want to deal with it any longer.

I’m going to Village Foods.

I recently wrote about my evolving meal plan and the process of discovering new recipes. But when does this cycle of discovery end? When can I stop focusing on research, and spend my time on something more meaningful?

My goal is to find a month’s worth of recipes I like. This means I need

• 2 rice bowl type recipes (I have 1 so far, but I don’t think it will hard to find another winner.)
• 2 pasta recipes (I have several I like, so I can close this category.)
• 4 fish and side dish recipes
• Enough smoothie variety to make about 20 high-protein smoothies a month. I think 5 or 6 recipes sounds about right. (I have 3!)
• 8 or 9 salads.  4 can have fruit, but the other 4 should have greens/veggies. (I have 3 fruity ones.)

I’m going to cook a different vegan pizza every weekend, since it’s a great way to trick myself into trying new foods.

This is good.  This is a manageable goal, with a definite end point. I like the thought of this time-consuming recipe hunt ending.

I am giving myself permission to fail today. It’s OK.  Really.

My apartment is really drafty and cold.  I sleep right beside the window, and no matter how much I run the heat I’m freezing due to the awful draft. WIndow film kits help, but the three big windows have window sills, and I can’t get the film to stick properly around the sill no matter what I do.  There is probably a trick somewhere, but I haven’t been able to Google it.

So last weekend I tried to make these cool-sounding removable interior storm windows. This was supposed to be a fairly cost-effective project, but I didn’t stop to think that the costs listed on the website didn’t include tools, like a miter box or a saw.  They also didn’t include stain for the wood, wood conditioner, a drop cloth, or a paintbrush.  The project also would force me to remove the mini-blinds in my windows, which means I suddenly needed curtains for three rooms plus window hardware.

My cost so far? $220.30.  Yeah, ouch is right. I might as well run my heat at 80 degrees for what this is costing me. And so far I only have curtains for one window, and I need more lumber and another window film kit. Did I mention I’ve screwed up construction, too?

First of all, the pine I purchased was about twice what it should cost since it’s “premium,” but it was the only wood in the correct size so I didn’t have much choice. I couldn’t find anyone in the store to cut the wood for me, so after a phone consult with my sister I purchased a miter box and a saw, wrongly believing I could cut the wood myself. Once I toted everything into the house I realized the 8 foot pine I thought I had bought was only 6 foot, which is good because I could barely fit the 6 foot into my car, but bad because now I’m short wood. And it was cold last weekend, like 40-something degrees, so i tried doing everything indoors, including staining the wood with whitewash.

I’ve been spoiled all my life by a father with serious power tools. In the old days I’d drive over to his house and with the help of his bandsaw would have cut all the wood in about half an hour. But I don’t have that luxury any longer, and the circular saw I could rent scares me. I resorted to using the saw and the miter box atop a flimsy card table, which didn’t work too well.  After twenty minutes of fighting the saw, I managed to cut a piece of wood about three inches too long, so I had to cut it again. (Yes, I measured.  Twice.  Not sure what happened.) I moved to a sturdier surface, but sawing still took for freaking ever, and I’ve gouged my sturdier surface in the process. (An Ikea Expedit bookcase on its side.) The saw doesn’t like me. It only wants to saw one way. And all this crap online about “let the saw do the work?” No one says what to do if the saw doesn’t want to work.

Did I mention I’m allergic to pine? Pine furniture isn’t bad, but the dust makes my hands swell. About a decade ago I accidentally touched pine sap, and my hand went numb in a matter of minutes. This is almost as bad. And I’m still in the house, because hello, cold, so the dust is everywhere. I thought I could handle it for a day, but two weekends is a little much.

After my third cut I gave up temporarily. Just for last weekend.  But this weekend, after reassessing my options and lack of capital, I decided to throw in the towel. I could rent a reciprocating saw, but I’d still have to buy more wood and curtains, a window kit, and window hardware.  Say another $150. It’s not worth it. I need to quit throwing good money after bad and admit this isn’t going to happen. I’ve failed interior storm windows.

As you may remember, I’m trying to decrease the amount of time I devote to food research/preparation/shopping/etc. Meal planning eats a huge chunk of my time.

Meal planning is difficult because I’m trying to find recipes that

• I’m excited about tasting
• Maximize groceries I have on hand
• Won’t take forever to cook
• Don’t require specialized equipment or ingredients

Getting a perfect score on all four vectors isn’t easy, but I do have a few techniques I’m trying out.  For starters, I’m using Plan To Eat to help me corral my recipes and visually plan my diet.

I’ve also adopted “day of the week” dieting to help me keep everything straight in my head and to make recipe selection faster.  This is how my current pescetarian plan looks:

BREAKFAST on weekdays consists of a hard-boiled — no, hard-steamed egg, a smoothie, plus a bit of random whatever to keep the edge off.  This is a great way to use up that Graze subscription I haven’t talked myself out of canceling yet. (I like the snacks, but I’m not eating them as much as when I started the subscription.)  Weekend breakfasts are celebrations of bacon and eggs, and roasted new potato “fries.”  I also get one day a week of McDonald’s, so I can sleep a little late.

LUNCH on weekdays is a salad. I’m exploring salads in two books to expand my repertoire, Salad of the Day and Salad Samurai. I make one from each book every Sunday, and split each salad into two large 24-ounce  Mason jar-sized portions.  I leave one day alone, so I can go to lunch with co-workers or escape the office.  I’m not scheduling lunch on weekends, which might be a mistake.

DINNER, the centerpiece meal of the day, is where the “of the day” cooking comes into play.

• SUNDAY: Pizza night, because I have a little time on Sunday to whip up a crust if needed.
• MONDAY: Leftover pizza, because no one wants to cook on Monday.  It’s also a no-cook day due to other commitments.
• TUESDAY: Fish night, since current research says we need Omega 3.  Recipes will be sourced from Pinterest.
• WEDNESDAY: Freezer night, since I need to eat all this stuff.
• THURSDAY: Pasta dishes and rice/grain dishes on alternating weeks.  I want to play with fakes, like spiralized zucchini noodles and cauliflower rice, too.  I’ll have to think about how to work those in.  Maybe once a month for variety?  I’ll source these recipes from Pinterest. These dishes will probably be my freezer meals.
• FRIDAY: Cookbook night. I bought Mark Bittman’s Kitchen Matrix, hooked by its premise of learning how “how simple changes in preparation and ingredient swaps in a master recipe can yield dishes that are each completely different from the original, and equally delicious.”  Hopefully this book will help with my lack of a mental recipe database.
• SATURDAY: Free meal.  I can eat out, or order a pizza, or have a dozen donuts.  It’s my day, and damn it, it’s usually my favorite meal of the week.

MISC TASKS: On Saturday mornings I do grocery shopping, and on Saturday afternoon/evening I have a new rule that anything I haven’t eaten from the week before needs to be preserved somehow. Frozen, dehydrated, whatever. If I don’t have any preservation cooking to do, then I can cook something weird, like banana vinegar or an artisan vegan cheese, or something from Modernist Cuisine at Home.

DISASTER NIGHTS (we all have ’em) are what freezers are made for.

DISASTER WEEKENDS: I also spend at least one weekend a month away from home, which pretty much wrecks my diet. I arrive home to an empty kitchen late on Sunday night, and I won’t have time to shop until Tuesday evening.  Last year I limped through that week, eating fast food, and waited until the following Saturday to get back on track. My trips always turned into seven day diet disasters that undermined all the good habits I’m trying so desperately to establish.

My plan is evolving as I write, but I’m thinking I need a frozen breakfast solution.  It could be something I make myself (Quiche? Waffles? Egg sandwiches?) or some Jimmy Dean Egg McMuffin clones. For lunch I can buy two convenience salads on the way home.  I drive right past a grocery store, and while it will be late and I’ll be exhausted, I’ll have to find the energy to buy two salads.  Monday’s leftover pizza can become an Archer Farms flatbread crust topped with roasted veggies from my freezer.  Tuesday’s dinner, prepared after grocery shopping, can be a frozen fish entree.  HEB has a pecan-crusted tilapia I like.

This feels complicated.  Heck, It is complicated, at least for a non-cook like me. It took me two and a half hours to write this post! But this plan has the flexibility I need, and contingencies for all the disasters I encounter on a regular basis.  I think this might work.

Writing my post on how much time I spend on food and cooking helped me a little better.  I cooked two meals that same evening.  I didn’t care for either of them (in fact I deleted both of them from my recipe book). The good part is that I froze one meal, and portions of the other. I’m glad my mood improved; it provided a cushion for bad news on Wednesday.  My local grocery store, Village Foods, is going out of business.

I loved Village Foods. It was an oasis of calm for me, quite unlike the noise hurricane of the larger popular grocery stores in town. I could park reasonably close to the store, and never worried that I’d hit some fool in the parking lot since the fools all seemed to shop elsewhere.  I usually shopped on Friday nights when the store was pretty much deserted. I could read labels without worrying about blocking traffic, and chat with cashiers who had time to treat me like a person. The store was small enough that if I realized I forgot an ingredient located on the other side of the store, walking back for it wasn’t traumatic.  If that had happened in the football-stadium-sized grocery stores I’d be on the verge of angry tears.

Since I felt unhurried and un-pressured at Village Foods I made smarter choices. I took more time to think about what I was buying, and how my food purchases would impact my schedule, my waistline, and my budget. I felt like Village Foods was a partner in my diet struggles.

Village Foods hit the right balance between natural/organic and standard grocery store fare. When I lived in a larger city I shopped at Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, or Central Market. They’re good, but but they often didn’t carry the grocery store brands I wanted.  (Trader Joe’s lack of selection was especially disappointing.)  “Normal” stores like Kroger’s or Albertson’s often left me wanting the more exotic selection of the gourmet stores.  Village Foods managed to hit the sweet spot between the two, and did it with with neighborhood charm.

I’m also going to miss their awesome clearance section. Almost every time I visited I’d pick up a new-to-me food, or a much-loved food on closeout. Even last night, when the store is going out of business, I found freeze-dried pomegranate on the clearance shelf. I didn’t even know anyone made freeze-dried pomegranate.

A new Aldi store will take Village Food’s current location. Aldi can be good, I shopped Aldi when I lived in Maryland, but I’d have to also shop elsewhere to get everything on my list.

Village Foods isn’t going away completely.  The pharmacy and natural foods will be relocating, but since I’d have to shop in two places I’m almost certain not to visit often.  Tackling the behemoth HEB will wear me out, I just don’t have the energy for two shopping trips.

This is a post born of anger and frustration.  I’ve felt for months that my work habits are slipping.  I no longer spend my evenings playing with new technologies, or investing in my work projects to keep everything afloat and on schedule.  Even adjunct teaching is hard, and I only have a handful of students.  My portfolio sucks, I don’t create art much any longer, I don’t read as many books, and I hate my life.

After letting this anger unexpectedly and unfortunately boil over into my professional life, I took a step back and asked what brought about this change.  Why do I no longer do the things I want to do?

The only answer I could come up with is that I’m exhausted from cooking and (failed) dieting.

Before dieting I would go to a restaurant, order, and go home to get on with my life.  Total average time per meal:  45 minutes, or 15.75 hours/week.

Now it’s much more complicated and time consuming.

In other words, cooking is like a second job.  No wonder I don’t have time for anything else.

I’m clearly doing several things wrong all at the same time.  Here is a list of techniques I’m sure experienced cooks have, and that I’m still lacking, all of which impact time on task.  I’m trying to be prescriptive about this instead of just ranting, so I’ve included notes on how I can improve.

• Experienced cooks have tried-and-true recipes to choose from. I’m not an experienced cook, so I don’t have that database yet.  I’ve been working on it for well over a year, and I only have a few recipes that I feel are 1) easy to make 2) healthy and 3) tasty.  It’s also difficult because I’m trying to move away from being a picky eater, so I not only have to try new recipes, I also have to try new foods. I’ve been sourcing recipes from Pinterest and the occasional cookbook. Maybe I’m doing something wrong, and there is a magazine everyone but me knows about? SOLUTION: Clueless. I’m really trying here, but failing in spades.
• Experienced cooks are good at meal planning. I’m using meal-planning software Plan to Eat, which helps. The only real slowdown is when I have to type a recipe out of a cookbook. The only problem here is me — I should be cooking right now but instead I’m blabbing to a blog. I disrupt my meal plan far, far too often. SOLUTION: I’m not sure what to do about this, except find meals that are easy to cook so I face the kitchen with less dread and more joy.
• Experienced cooks have freezers and make freezer meals. I have an irrational dislike of leftovers that I’m struggling to overcome, and one sure-fire way to get past it is to cook a bunch of wonderful freezer meals. Problem is that to date I’ve only found three freezer meals I enjoy, and two of them are pasta. SOLUTION: I need to be freezing at least two meals out of five, carefully picking recipes that will freeze well.  I also need a standalone freezer.
• Experienced cooks use their slow cooker. I hate slow cooker meals. They tend to be soup, or stew, or mush. None of those are appealing. SOLUTION:  I’m not sure how to get around this problem. Maybe I need to invest in a slow-cooker cookbook?
• Experienced cooks know how to shop.  They know what grocery store aisle holds the Sriracha sauce or the liquid smoke.  They have price books, and know a good deal when the see it.  They have that mental database of recipes, so when the store is out of sugar snap peas they can reconfigure their menus in the middle of the produce section. They manage to shop when stores aren’t crowded and a decent selection of this week’s bargains are still on the shelves.  They know from experience which foods are healthy, so they don’t spend twenty minutes reading the label on each mustard jar. SOLUTION:  While these are all admirable qualities, I think the only thing that will help me here is more experience.  I could make a price book, but to be honest I’m too busy reading the labels on mustard jars.
• Experienced cooks buy in bulk. While this isn’t true for all experienced cooks, I’d bet the majority of them buy in bulk when possible.  (Budget, transportation, and home storage are all barriers to bulk buys; it’s important to realize not everyone has these advantages.) I don’t bulk buy because 1) the bulk stores are on the other end of the city, and 2) I get stupid in these stores, buying a ton of stuff I’ll never use, or that will go bad well before the expiration date.
• Experienced cooks have kitchen gear.  They aren’t madly running through their apartment at 8 PM trying to use a wire hanger and a pair of nylons to improvise a steamer basket while dinner burns on the stove.  SOLUTION:  I’m really, really good at researching and shopping online, so all I need to do is pay more attention to the recipes I choose so I’m aware of gadget requirements before I commit to a recipe. (BTW, my rice cooker has a steamer basket!)
• Experienced cooks probably have an audience. I imagine (but have no proof) that cooking for loved ones or even roommates makes a difference. The audience can also be guilted into cleaning the kitchen, which probably helps. SOLUTION:  Get a life. [Duh, like why am I bothering with diets to begin with, stupid self-authored list?]
• Experienced cooks are probably maybe supposedly healthier than I am. Going waaaay out on a limb here, I’m going to guess that people who cook are generally healthier than I am, even overweight cooks. They have more energy because they eat better.  They are able to cook for longer periods of time and also have enough energy to clean up afterwards. SOLUTION: Cook more. Exercise.  Diet.  (Duh.)
• Experienced cooks probably enjoy cooking. I don’t. I enjoy eating, kind of, but nothing else kitchen-related. Cooking is a necessity, not a pleasure. SOLUTION: Brain washing. I’ve been working on this via Pinterest, conversations with Sharon M, and cooking blogs. I tried meal-in-a-box services, and menu-planning services. Maybe I need to kick it up a notch, and watch the Food Network constantly. Or maybe cook more.

I’m not sure what to do next.  Yes, I have a list of solutions, but it seems overwhelming right now, and I have an avocado on my kitchen counter that is going bad as a type. I’m going to leave the list for now, and possibly come back to this in a few weeks, when I feel more sane.