Menu planning is awesome, food today is terrifying

This marks my first week of full on meal planning and so far, I am totally digging it. I love that I can go to the store with a clear picture in my mind of what I need and then go home knowing that everything I purchased is going to get used, and not only that, but that I am going to be eating WELL. As a young adult, I realize that nutrition is not something that I have spent a whole lot of my time worrying about, and while it still isn't tops on my list 'o' priorities, I like to think that cooking all my own food from scratch is cutting out all those nasty preservatives that you get in pre-packaged stuff.

Like partially hydrogenated oils or now, the newest threat, high fructose corn syrup which may contain mercury. MERCURY!!

And the whole peanut butter debacle that's going on right now? Honestly, I am ready to move to a farm and grow/make everything myself. Is peanut butter really hard to make? You know, I think that's something that I could live without if I really had too. I know that there are lots of die-hard peanut butter lovers out there, so please don't hate me for saying that, but if it comes down to getting food poising or living without peanut butter, I think I would be willing to live without the PB in my J. (That sounds totally dirty, doesn't it. I swear I didn't mean it like that. This is a family friendly blog!)

Ok, now that I'm done terrifying you with what may or may not be in your food, let's talk a little bit more about how awesome menu planning is.

For example: For the super bowl I made Jambalaya (for real yo!) for my friends and had a little bit of the sausage, onion and green pepper left over so I decided to saute up the left overs and make myself a little rice bowl. Nothing got wasted, I got to eat something that was so so so so so good and I had the pleasure of devouring something that I made myself which just gives me a warm fuzzy feeling all over.

The one change that I have made to the idea of planning meals from the first time I posted about it. Rather than printing out a calender page and planning out every meal for every day and making myself stick with it, I have started making a plan for 7 meals and then picking from the list everyday. That way I don't feel trapped in a schedule ... and I don't feel bad for wanting to eat Friday's dinner on Wednesday. For lunches, I eat my leftovers and I pick out a group of snacks for the week (but usually my snacks last me a few weeks if not all month). I have also started BAKING my deserts in an effort to avoid nasty chems in my food (I wasn't kidding about that whole "growing all my own food" thing earlier). I have already made a delicious birthday cake, some cupcakes, and a few batches of cookies that may or may not have been a little brownish/blackish on the bottom but tasted delightful otherwise.

How has your menu planning been going? I want to know if anyone else is having as much fun as I am!