Avoid, embrace meal planning: success!

I am sold on this meal-planning gig. Not only did I successfully make three meals last week — counting last night in last week because one of the meals was postponed — but I brought snacks to work every single day. I did not, however, manage to get my tea-making system set up at work yet. I plan to this week. The verdict on the recipes: the meatloaf was great, as usual. The Indonesian peanut butter chicken did not have enough flavor but I think that is because I used regular-sized drumsticks instead of drumettes. Note to self and to you if you are also making this recipe: drumettes are key. The Indian curry was pretty good but, again, did not have enough flavor. I felt like it should be sweeter. FunkyPlaid suggested raisins and I think he’s onto...

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Posted on 24 May 2011 | Comments Off

Avoid, embrace meal planning.

As mentioned in my previous post, I am attempting to exhaustion-proof my kitchen by planning meals out in advance and stocking up on healthy snacks and lunches. I have been resistant to meal-planning because I avoid creating additional structure around my diet so I can act like I still have a little freedom despite the gluten-free stuff. This makes the topic a good candidate for my next “Avoid, Embrace”. So here we go … There are two main issues to address. The first is that while I often want to cook dinner I am also often rushed and/or exhausted. That also impacts my lunchtime and snacking habits; if I am pressed for time and have nothing on hand, I’ll either not eat (and then gobble too much for dinner later) or eat something unhealthy...

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Posted on 16 May 2011 | Comments Off

Avoiding, embracing email: one week later

Here is my one-week check-in for my Avoid, Embrace project on email. So far, the biggest change I have made is in filtering out forwards into their own folder. In Gmail, I used this filter to do the trick: from:(email address of forwarder | email address of another forwarder) to:(-my email address) Do this: Skip Inbox, Apply label "SA/Forwards" I chose to deal with them as “announcements” per ActiveInbox‘s built-in label category, but you can use anything you like. Filtered out into their own folder, I can look at the subject lines and delete accordingly. Now the only items in my “Someday” category are things I want to legitimately do or review someday. This is a huge win! The “Time” labels have been somewhat helpful, but...

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Posted on 16 Mar 2011 | Comments Off

Avoid, embrace the email situation.

Next up in my Avoid, Embrace project: the email situation. Step one: write about something I have been avoiding. My email is now not a tool but a situation. I have ActiveInbox chugging along, filing things away merrily so that I have Inbox Zero. This is nice. What is not nice is the 132 emails that need some sort of attention on my part. (That number increased to 137 just since I started writing this. Yikes.) I look at these emails in their pretty little categories that make sense, but I don’t do anything with them. Clearly, the first ones I need to tackle are my Flagged items. I flag email sparingly; it usually means that if I do not do this as soon as possible today, something Very Bad will happen. There is only one thing here today, and I can get it...

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Posted on 9 Mar 2011 | 2 comments

Avoid, Embrace: Not an epiphany.

The result of my first Avoid, Embrace exercise was not the epiphany I wanted. No great photos were taken. I am only posting this one because it is heavily post-processed. I rushed through this, I admit. I didn’t take any great photos because I didn’t linger. But something good did happen: I didn’t feel bad while I was there. Initially I felt kind of awkward, hyper-aware of people glancing at my camera, but that isn’t neighborhood-specific; I always feel awkward with a big camera. Not feeling bad is a good first step, I think.

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Posted on 12 Feb 2011 | Comments Off

Avoid, Embrace.

So Fancypants McGillicuddy here decides to start a New Project, not like she doesn’t have enough going on at the moment, but it is a New Project and she can hardly resist the lure of the New Project, so fresh and unspoiled by reality, and also she can hardly resist speaking in the third person, at least for a paragraph. The New Project is this idea I have had rolling around in the brainmeats for a few weeks now. Health Month does a good job of keeping me accountable for three daily goals I think are important this month (or did last week when I set the goals, at least): taking a multivitamin, writing in my private journal, and getting thirty minutes of exercise. But there are things I want to track that are more ephemeral, yet still quite crucial to things...

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Posted on 7 Feb 2011 | Comments Off