Be Your Own Personal Chef--or NOT

I had this brilliant (or so I thought) idea the other day. You see, I am trying very hard to lose a few pounds which is hard when you love to cook, eat, entertain, and go out to dinner (and lunch).

I want to exercise every evening after work and have done pretty well. Typical day--get up 5:30, make healthy breakfast for Steve, get ready for work, make healthy breakfast and lunch for myself and leave for work at 7:00. I get home at 4:45, unless there is an errand to run on the way home. I start walking of the treadmill at 5:00, walk for 1 hour, get in the car, drive 5 minutes to the gym, the Body Exchange. I work out for around 30 minutes, get home at 6:30.

There is still dinner to prepare so I usually have something in mind, and the problem is my mind is on preparing the dinner all the while I'm working out. I'd rather be cooking, truthfully, but I also need to take care of the body too. Being preoccupied with what I still need to do to get dinner on the table is a pain, and then getting all the stuff out to cook after the couple hours of working out is not much fun. I make a big mess because, of course, as chef I have to make a really good dinner with fresh vegetables, etc. By the time we eat dinner at 7:30 or so and finish up it's after 8:00, clean the kitchen, 8:30 and then I'm too tired to do anything else except sit on the couch and stare at the TV. I'd rather be working on the blog, website, reading, working on my photo album project, catching up on Facebook, etc.

Back to the "plan". I thought, hey--if I can be a personal chef for others, not that I've ever done this, but the concept of going to someone's home and preparing 5 entrees for 4 people during a "cook date", leaving everything neatly packaged with heating instructions, and cleaning up the mess is something I figured I could do in the future, why can't I do this for myself. I would spend a "few" hours on Sunday preparing all the meals for the week! This way I could come home from work, exercise, then instead of being preoccupied with the meal situation I would merely heat up the delicious, gourmet Chef Julia food.

I started with the menu development part. Easy enough. I've been wanting to make some new dishes out of a new book, 660 Curries by Raghavan Iyer. Here's my menu for the week.
Note, the dishes would also be used for some of my lunches and my college daughter would take some meals with her back to the dorm.

Monday:
Chunky potatoes with garlic and peanuts
Roasted bell peppers and lentils
Chicken with red chiles and coconut milk

Tuesday:
Grilled salmon with citrus sauce
Carribean rice pilaf with cilantro, pineapple, tangerine, and toasted almonds
Iceberg wedge with Gorgonzola cheese and bacon

Wednesday:
Arugula and field greens with Asian pear and Gorgonzola cheese
Balsamic dressing
Crab cakes

Thursday:
Pan fried halibut with remoulade sauce
Oven roasted potatoes


Friday:
Chipotle beef tamale pie


So, I bought ALL the ingredients for the above on Saturday. Sunday at 10:15 AM I started cooking. I managed to make everything on my menu, except the fresh salmon and halibut, however I did cut it and wrap it in individual portions. I cleaned the kitchen as I went along so the mess wasn't too bad, but without taking any breaks, I finished at 4:00 PM. That's 6 hours!
I was exhausted--not a good way to spend Sunday.

Although the food looked and smelled wonderful I can't help but think this is not something I can do every week. I've got to come up with another plan and it can't be going out to dinner or getting take out, which is always my husband's solution--very expensive and very fattening.




Well at least for this week we'll eat well.