My baby saw bubbles for the first time
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Got gas for $2.99 when all other stations are $3.69. I’m sure they will go up soon so I got lucky.
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Cut my hair! So much nicer.
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I somehow purchased and prepped the exact right amount of produce this week, and ate it all before it went bad! A true adulting miracle!
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slow clap
teach me your ways!
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TLDR about produce
This year I really set out to fix my produce shopping to waste less, and I watched a lot of youtube videos and instagram reels about it 
which sounds ridiculous but I really needed some inspiration to figure out a system that works for me.
I have access to really affordable produce since I’m so close to Mexico, and this has always lead me to buying way more than I can possibly get through in a week. I also used to do a lot of “aspirational” produce buying, as if I was going to prep and eat like 15 types of vegetables in one week.
I will preface this by saying I have the time and energy to focus on this right now, and not everyone does. In other times I have lived on convenience items, salad kits and pre-prepped produce and I will probably do that again in the future. Also, I am a habitual eater, and have learned over time that having the same rotations of foods during the work week is what works best for me, and leads to the least amount of waste. I am only cooking for me, so obviously I only have to think of my likes/dislikes.
Some things that have really been working for me:
Have a plan for each produce item I buy, and a set amount of options for each meal. I plan for 3 meals and 1 snack to contain produce. I don’t buy produce outside of this, hoping that I will have a whim and roast a pan of broccoli one day, lol. I also stopped buying things I think are healthier, but don’t really enjoy. I don’t like baby greens, but I ate them because they are good for you. I do LOVE romaine lettuce and iceberg, so I will actually eat those every day. Plus they last longer, and are less expensive, and in my opinion taste good in a broader variety of salads.
So an example of my produce goals for each meal: my goal is to have 1 fruit with breakfast, 2 vegetables with lunch, 1 snack that contains a fruit, and then a veggie heavy dinner. What this usually looks like for me is berries with breakfast, fresh raw (prepped!!) veggies with lunch, and a big salad or bowl for dinner.
Then I think about the varieties I’d like to have for each of those meals. What I used to do is buy every single fruit/veggie that was on sale and looked good, but then I’d end up only eating 1-2 vareties for each meal throughout the week, and waste like an entire prepped melon, or a container of berries. Now I just stick to set options, and if I’m not a fan of one throughout the week, I switch to something different for the next week.
I also try to buy veggies that are multi-purpose and can mix and match with several different meals. So last week I bought 1 head of purple cabbage, 2 heads of iceberg lettuce, a 5 lb bag of carrots, 6 bell peppers, 3 big english cucumbers, 5 roma tomatoes and 2 jicama.
I try to eat according to shelf life as well, so I know if I don’t get to any or all of the cabbage, lettuce, carrots and jicama this week, it’s probably fine, but I want to make sure to eat the cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes in a week.
What last week prep looked like is: I sliced and prepped the jicama and bell peppers to have alongside my lunch sandwiches/wraps. I also pre-shredded the purple cabbage, lettuce and some of the carrots.
For breakfast I always have berries alongside whatever else I’m having, and I know I won’t eat a different fruit in the morning, so now I just buy berries for that meal. I’ll eat an apple later in the day at some point, so I always have berries and apples. When watermelon, pineapple and cantaloupe are in season, I’ll stop buying apples and switch to those to have with snacks.
Last week my lunches were a sandwich or wrap every day. If I made a wrap i added shredded carrots and cabbage to it which was such a fun addition that I would never make the time to do if it wasn’t sitting in the containers already. Then I had my prepped raw veggies on the side.
For dinner I almost always have a bowl, but with the veggies I bought I could switch it up if I got bored. So a few of the days I had taco bowls with the shredded lettuce, cabbage, carrots, cucumber and tomato, and topped with taco meat, beans, cheese, guac, etc. Then a few of the days I had tofu bowls, and again used the same shredded lettuce, bell peppers, cabbage and carrots, topped with tofu, sesame seeds, a chili soy sauce and had dumplings on the side. If I wanted something warm, I could have used the same prepped veggies (cabbage, bell peppers, carrots) to make a stir fry with tofu or shrimp from the freezer. Using the same veg to make different dinners means I got through everything I prepped in the week, but it didn’t feel too tedious
Anyway that’s just an example of what’s been working for me. I still get very tempted when I’m produce shopping and have to remind myself of what I really have time for in the upcoming week. I’m probably not going to make a massaged kale salad on a wednesday night even though that sounds really nice haha. Prepping all of those raw veggies like I described from last week took me about 1 hr, and that’s about the max amount of time I want to put into it on a weekend day. With that prepping, I spent no more than 15 min assembling my meals throughout the week, which was awesome. And because it’s all ready, I’m eating so many more veggies than I used to, since I would never take the time to slice veggies to eat with lunch…it just won’t happen. In the colder months I do tend to make soups instead, and usually prep one big pot with that week’s produce, and then eat it for dinner every night until it’s gone, so it does vary a bit by season.
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woo thank you! + more thoughts on household food management
i really appreciate all this detail! it is helpful!
my husband does 90% of the food shopping for us. i let him know what i feel like eating for breakfasts and lunches and he gets it, and then he is in charge of making dinner. he knows what i like and what he likes, of course. sometimes we’ll talk about it on the weekend for the coming week.
it works out fine — mostly because he seems to prefer to do it all himself! there are some things i would do a little differently, sure, but i’m also just really glad he takes care of it so i don’t fuss.
i think it somehow gets more than twice as complicated when there are two people involved — it’s like there’s your stuff, their stuff, and the communal stuff, so it ends up being at least 3x more complex. that was a real surprise to me when i started cohabitating with a partner. i kept it sooooo much more simple when i was single! much more like what you are describing, though not quite as thoughtful.
i also really appreciate that we are able to compost now, and make use of it especially on weeks when one of us has gotten a little over-enthusiastic at costco. we’ve got maybe one bag of trash a week at most because of this!
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This is so satisfying! Loved reading this.
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Omg apparently I have a great grandmother who was Canadian!
@zygote or others, can you point me towards the resources you’ve been using to apply for citizenship? I have a copy of her marriage certificate and my aunt has her date if birth and parents (who were born in Europe) but we don’t have a copy of the birth certificate from Canada.
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Yes cohabitating with a partner makes things so much more complex! Unless they are resigned to eat whatever you make, then it’s just double the amount of prepping haha. It is nice to have more than one person in some aspects because I feel you can swing more variety, since things get eaten more quickly. I feel like it’s hard for me to get through things before they perish, so that definitely contributes to me eating and buying a lot of the same stuff all the time. Last time I lived with a partner, he ate almost no produce, so that was nice in some ways, because I just did a lot of the same things I do now…but it also led to buying a ton of different foods obviously since we ate almost completely separate meals 3x a day
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Yessss get that citizenship!!
I’d start with the FAQs in this reddit community here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Canadiancitizenship/comments/1p3jcmg/start_here_faq/
You will need to track down the documents to send in copies. Most important will be to prove her birth in Canada (ideally from a birth certificate or baptism record, but can also make the case through other docs like a census/marriage certificate/death certificate), and then the lineage to you (through birth certificates if possible).
The reddit links some resources and has volunteers willing to help search. I mostly found everything through FamilySearch (always free) and a free trial on Ancestry.
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When I retired I gave myself the goal to reduce food waste - this was mostly due to letting aspirational produce go bad somewhere in the refrigerator.
For some veggies that start getting soft I chop them up and freeze them (celery, bell peppers, tomatoes, zucchini (grated)). Or else I make soup, stew, meatloaf, or a casserole. Some fruits I will freeze (blueberries, strawberries), apples I chop and cook into apple filling (spices and sugar), optionally freeze. Bananas get made into banana bread or cookies (optionally make cookie dough and freeze).
Sometimes I will dry things - apples, pitted cherries, cherry tomatoes.
Mostly being more aware means I don’t have to resort to “preserving” them. But this is so much easier when work isn’t sucking up free time.
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Thanks! Looks like we have everything but her birth certificate. It was from over 100 years ago in Manitoba and it seems like we may be able to request that so my aunt is going to submit a request. There’s also a chance another family member has a copy somewhere…
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On the topic of produce miracles! Found a package of blackberries in our drink fridge that had been abandoned for over a week and they didn’t get moldy.
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Wow! Donate to science
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I can recommend this book about leftovers. She also talks about what to do with the dregs in bottles, dying fabrics with veggie scraps, etc.
Tamar Adler - Everlasting Meal
https://www.biblio.com/search.php?author=adler&title=everlasting+meal&keyisbn=&stage=1
She talks about limp produce, off cuts, etc. I have 3 other scrap/left over books and Ikea has one that you can access online, but the Adler book is the most comprehensive I’ve found.
The Ikea book online is here:
https://www.ikea.com/ca/en/files/pdf/58/9f/589f2b5d/the-scrapsbook.pdf
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Adler’s book is so so good.
Also discusses what to do when your food was too salty, got burned, over cooked/mushy. But I think the key thing is the advantage of making sure that your food prep is never really fully from scratch, you’re always taking a bit of momentum from something done earlier.
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I think you recommended this book at the start of the pandemic and it was such a perfect read for me at that time.
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Is it common for people to just not eat whatever is served? The Boy and I take turns making dinner and we just eat the food. If it’s something the other person doesn’t like very much, better have a plan for the leftovers because those are all you. Maybe we just don’t like cooking for ourselves as much as some other people do? We just don’t make the limited number of things that the other person doesn’t eat.
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We have overlapping allergies and vegetarians and stuff but dinner is still generally shared. Breakfasts and lunches and fruit I think we all have different things.
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