For ages, Quercus and I spent about half an hour of gentle torture each evening, attempting to work out what to have for dinner. Normally it went something like ‘how about [insert something for which we have roughly half the ingredients]?’ or ‘we could have [insert something which involved unfeasible levels of either effort, time or expenditure]‘, and it resulted in us eating a LOT of pasta. Oh yes. In moments of indecision, coupled with the frequent levels of exhaustion which only a new baby can bring, pasta, and particularly when coupled with its accomplice pesto, is one of our best friends.

However, there comes a time when pasta’s gentle glow begins to fade. When its wholewheat loveliness has faint echoes of cardboard. When you realise that you are now nearly entirely composed of pasta, and that man cannot – should not – live on pasta alone.

That, folks, is when you start to consider writing a weekly menu.

I never thought this day would dawn, I must say. There were years – many of them – when such organisation brought forth a mocking yawn and a comment which included more than its fair share of insults, generally of a scornful and have-you-nothing-better-to-do nature. Weekly menus? Whatever next – organised sock drawers? Spoons arranged by size? Grass polished with one’s toothbrush? Yet here I am, openly admitting (at least to the interweb) that I have embraced the inner control freak, and that menu planning has become something to which I actually quite look forward. For one thing, it’s meant that I drew up a list of all the main meals that I could think of, and that, in turn, has meant we’re eating a more varied diet (see earlier comment re pasta). It’s also encouraged me to think about the sorts of meals that I enjoy cooking, and the things that I know Quercus really likes (which, well, basically means it’s hot and edible, come to think of it; although his dear mother frequently admits to astonishment at the things I ‘get him to eat’, Quercus is truly an omnivore*). And, finally, it’s really helped in trying to cut down on what we spend on groceries as it means we shop for what we need, and the devilish lure of offers cannot touch virtuous people like us. Oh no. (Except when the offers relate to chocolate rocky-road biscuits, but let us draw a veil over this and move on.)

This week looks like this:
Sunday: cheese and lentil bake (of which I cannot speak sufficiently highly) with baked taters and veg.
Monday: mushroom and potato pie with cauliflower and broccoli.
Tuesday: chickpea croquettes with brown rice and veg.
Wednesday: salmon, new potatoes and veg. (Detecting a pattern?)
Thursday: three-bean wraps with baked taters.
Friday: sausage, mash and Boston baked beans.
Saturday: leek croustade with various veg.

God, I’m hungry.

* Imagine my delight – last week’s learning-at-work event, at which Quercus ran a sustainable building stall, prompted the first enquiry as to whether or not he was a vegetarian. See? At last, someone else has joined me in my (apparently) vegetarian appearance! At this rate, I should be able to work out some things which prompt such assumptions, and yes, for the record, he was wearing Birkenstocks. I am not the only walking cliché.