Prepping for the week

I really need to get one of those metal carts with wheels that you see cute little old ladies wheeling around. I did the groceries this morning; after 3 separate stops and the final climb up to our fifth floor walk-up, my arms and hands both felt like they were going to fall off.

It's so annoying when a grocery store doesn't have 2 out of the 50 items on your list. So after 1 heavy bag of white wine bottles from the TJ Wine Shop which by the way, is the best place on earth to get decent wine and 1 very heavy Trader Joe's bag - I still had to stop by gross Key Food to pick up Ricotta cheese and pastry puff dough.

So two hours later, I'm finally home and happily listening to music, set on shuffle mode. Every now and then I get a nice surprise, like "I'm a slave for you" - a Britney classic pre-WT.

I have all of the ingredients I need for this week's dinners (minus the Chorizo for TAPAS night, I can't seem to find it). I usually spend an hour on Sundays planning the week's menu because it's one less thing I need to think about during the week. I come across recipes throughout the week and save them in my recipes-bookmarks. So all I need to do is go through my bookmarks and I can quickly come up with a plan for the week. I use a sticky note widget in iGoogle to remember what I planned for the week.

I also check to see what ingredients I have from last week that I should use up. For instance, I still have leftover sweet italian sausages that I froze, so I made it a point to look for a recipe that could use some. I'll be making calzones this week, with Broccoli Rabe and sausages... yum!