Unintentional Radish Soup

This weeks Smart Busy topic was food. I got the title of the post from one of the women in the class who described getting a box of seasonal fruit and veg delivered to the house, and having no idea what to cook with a bunch of radishes that were in the box.

The result was a bag of unintentional radish soup in the crisper four weeks later.

How many people have had a similar experience? I’ve had many unintentional soups in my fridge in my day, along with unintentional streptococcal cultures and unintentional vegetable jerky.

The question we asked ourselves was: Why don’t we cook?

There are many reasons, like not having enough time, not having the inclination, not being organised or not having the skills. Or, my personal favourite, watching myriad cooking shows has given you unrealistic expectations on what you should be serving up on the plate.

You get unintentional radish soup from not planning your meals and forgetting about the nice, fresh veggies in the crisper. Out of sight, out of mind, right?

The way around that is to plan your meals. I know. We’re not exactly reinventing the wheel here, but sometimes the solution is really that simple.

And remember when I was talking about thriftiness? Meal planning is thrifty. You waste less food and save more time and money by having everything in the fridge that you need and nothing extra.

Here’s the part that we did that I’d never thought of before: We wrote out a ‘master list’ of meals that we loved to cook and eat. It took out so much of the guesswork and made it so much easier to fill in that sheet with meals for the week,.

Here’s the process:

1. Make a master list of meals: Put it somewhere that is easily accessible, and add to it as you go on.
2. Check your diary for that week: What are you doing that will get in the way of cooking? Are you going out for dinner?
3. Check the fridge: Thriftiness isn’t buying three bags of carrots.
4. Fill in your meal plan.
5. Write your shopping list!

If you’re thinking this is all a little too much, I think you should look back to one of my previous posts. Inspiration is for amateurs! Just get off your butt and do it.

If that’s not enough, consider this fact: You can improve your health and vitality in 3-4 days just by changing your diet.

Easy!