Start of Summer Dinners

It's like I've fallen off the wagon. The semester ended and I've stopped meal planning. We're still eating. I'm still thinking of food. But because I am not driving an hour round trip, because my days have more flexibility to them, I haven't been good about the planning and I've also been a little lazy when it comes to what we're eating. Warmer weather does that to me. It makes me chop up a cucumber and some tomatoes, rip apart some fresh mozarella, open a tin of beans and slice some bread and call it dinner. Also, I've been letting Nuala drive my car to school so I'm home without a car and so I haven't done a big grocery shop recently. I might walk to Bestway and pick up a couple of things, but mostly we've been doing pantry eating which is something I love.

But today my mother is coming over and the pantry is lean. So I've plotted out a menu and I'm going to put my sneakers on soon and walk up to Harris Teeter. I confess that I love being able to walk to the grocery store. I grew up a block away from one and we were always walking there. My mom had one of those old granny carts that she could load up and drag up the street. Walking to do errands was so much a part of my childhood that it's one of the things that brings me happiness as an adult. Sometimes, during the semester, when I'm driving around on a Friday or Saturday to hit all the places I need to stop, I sit at a red light and want to cry. Everything seems to take twice as long when you're driving- which I know really isn't true, but with walking I'm moving and it keeps me from going to0 crazy and buying vegetables that will probably rot in the crisper or junk food that we really don't need to eat. 

So it's summer and I'll be back with my meal planning and meal reeling, but for now I'm just kind of going with the flow and keeping it all simple and spontaneous. Mostly.

Last week's dinner with Grandma: Tacos