I had planned for dinner tonight to be meatball subs, but the kids were hungrier than I expected last night and ended up eating all but 2 of the meatballs. Which normally wouldn't be that big a deal, it takes exactly 7 minutes to make them, cooking time included since I make them in the microwave. I could easily have made up another batch of meatballs, but the buns I had been planning to use up had little mold spots on them this morning. They were perfectly fine when I looked at them last night, but not this morning. Well, I do have bread rising, but my afternoon is too full to make buns this afternoon. I will make them tonight after supper.

I am a little miffed at myself for not getting the buns used up in time. These ones happened to be store bought, and they were made in the bakery, not on the shelf. I did that to avoid as much of the junky stuff as I could, but that also meant few preservatives and I didn't even think to store the buns in the fridge like I do with my homemade ones. *sighs* When I throw out a bun or two that I make myself it is not nearly so expensive. I mean, I don't like wasting food, period, but if I have to, ten cents worth is much better than $1.50 worth (there were five buns left out of a twelve bun package), you know?

I looked at my menu plan to figure out what day would be best to swap with. Normally I would just do the next day's meal, but tomorrow's meal is much more labor intensive because there isn't a ton on the adgenda tomorrow and I can easily accomplish a more elaborate meal then. Tonight DS has tae kwon do so I need a meal that is faster to get on the table, which was why I had planned for leftovers. The easiest meal to swap out with will be Saturday's, which I planned to do beef tacos on. I can make a pizza on Saturday instead and make the tacos tonight. Technically I could make pizza tonight as I have dough in the freezer, but we just had it the other night and I really am not in the mood to have it again this soon. So tacos it is.

I found two super easy recipes the other day for fast lunches that I might do on the weekend with leftover chicken. Variations on a theme, really. One is a bacon, chicken and cheese quesadilla, and the other is a wrap with chicken, bacon, cheese, baby spinach and tortilla. DD said she would be interested in the wrap to take for lunches to school, so she might have that on Friday. I buy these mixed salad greens that I really like that have baby spinach in them. I am not a huge fan of baby spinach so I usually pick it out and have the kids eat it anyway. I mean I'll eat it if it's served to me in a restaurant or if there is a chance it will go to waste if I don't, but it's just kind of...eh to me. The kids love it. So it works pretty well most of the time.

My daughter mentioned last night while we were sitting at the dinner table how happy she was that we were eating real meals again and how much better the food is. We got a lot of takeout when we were sick, but we've gone many days now without getting any. Part of the takeout problem was that I just did not feel good enough to be cooking, but part of it was I had no meal plan and I basically could not even think one out. It's one thing to robotically follow something that was already planned out when you are ill and another to come up with it in the first place. It's like all common sense dribbles out your ear when you're sick with a head cold.

I think I should probably come up with some simple fixings to keep on hand for easy meals on days like that and have myself a list of them made up so I can just open a document and go, "Hey, I have that. That's easy. I can do that," instead of going what's the healthiest option I can get delivered through my car window? Or worse yet, the one that involves the least amount of driving.

I know my focus on eating cleaner, healthier, more humanely raised food gets very blurry when I am sick. I wonder if it's true of vegetarians or other people that eat a certain way as well. Most of the time you are good and you eat according to your ideals or whatever, but do you just say the heck with it and go for the cans of Chicken Noodle soup and toasted cheese sandwiches from your childhood when you just feel rotten? I need to get better at this, but part of it is still new to me.

Not too much else in the financial arena. I will make a small credit card payment today of $87.50. I accidentally charged something on the wrong card and need to get the balance back to zero.