Getting organized!

When you don't eat sugar, gluten, dairy or fruit, you essentially have to do all of your own cooking. I try to follow a whole foods diet anyway, void of most processed foods, so I'm used to being in the kitchen. But as much as I love cooking and eating fresh food, it's a LOT of time in the kitchen. And when you're now making ALL of your food, plus food for your toddler, plus food for your baby, plus extra food for a hungry husband...well you can end up talking to your cutting knives cause their only things you've been around for days. And I don't always have the time for that. And when you don't cook, or don't have fresh food on hand at all times, then you end up eating the same lentil chili three days in a row with the same quinoa you've been eating all week and your palette gets really bored and starts to want something it can't have.

I've been working on trying to organize my time over the past few years, but it is difficult. The minute my son got to an age where I felt somewhat in control of my life (control is a loose term), I got pregnant. And with pregnancy came that blessed first trimester where you can barely get off the couch, let alone take care of a toddler and keep the house together and get three square meals on the table. Then the sickness went away, but I just got big. And my back ached, and my legs would swell if I didn't get off them. Then I had a newborn. Enough said.

So now my daughter is 8 months and I have somewhat of a schedule going but I really don't have a lot of time. I need to figure out a way to shop for groceries (within a reasonable budget), cook all my of food, and somehow not live in the kitchen. An intimidating task to say the least. But with all the mommy bloggers out there I have found a lot of tips and planning techniques to try.

There are tools for budgeting, weekly and monthly planning, freeze-ahead meals, etc. Actually, the amount of information out there is also really intimidating. So I am taking a very deliberate step by step approach to it all. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither will my culinary organizational system.

This week I plan to go through all of my recipes and pick out the ones I know are successes with myself and the family. I am the queen of making a recipe that goes over well, and then letting that recipe drown in my Pinterest sea of boards. I tried to organize my boards to have topics like "Beef" or "Vegetarian Dishes" but I somehow managed to make that chaotic and not easy to browse through. I am not an organized person by nature (you couldn't see my bedroom floor in high school or college).

I am going to start old school this week, and then eventually figure out a way to generate a new-age system. I'm going to make a concrete list of all the recipes I know work well, and then I'll put them into three lists:

* Food everyone can eat
* Food only I can eat (more like, food only I LIKE)
* Food I can't eat

The "Food I can't eat" are dishes I serve when we have company staying with us. Or something I know my husband really enjoys and can eat the leftovers for a few days without complaining.

My mom's in town this week helping me with the kids so I am optimistic I can tackle this goal. I'm curious to see just how many dishes I've forgotten about!