Woman in Real Life

With two weeks of meal planning under my belt, I find I am enjoying the process. Outlining what I want to cook for the week and having all the ingredients available kind of forces me to stick to the plan.

Otherwise, I might be inclined to slack off some nights and make less healthy dinners. In my opinion, half of the struggle with cooking is the daily decision-making.

Last week started off with Monday's Curried Chickpea and Tomato Linguine. I used a recipe from Best Health magazine. It was simple to make and I quite liked the curry flavour combined with the pasta.

Can you believe it's Wednesday already? That means What I Ate Wednesday...to me anyway. I'm into stuff like that.

We had an unseasonably warm day a couple of days ago. Well, in the morning anyway. In the afternoon, it turned cold and rainy. All of that is to say that normally, from September to...oh, about May, we have good soup weather around here.

As the day goes on, my enthusiasm for cooking generally wanes. That's why I love the slow cooker. Throw a simple soup together when my energy is high in the morning, add bread and a salad in the evening, and dinner's on the table! On this particular night, pictured above, I paired the soup with a corn muffin, made from a recipe in How it All Vegan. This black bean sweet potato slow cooker soup is based on a recipe in Fresh From the Vegetarian Slow Cooker, a book I highly recommend. I have mixed black beans and kidney beans and added some sweet potato. I also reduced the amount of thyme, because I don't like a strong flavour of thyme. The recipe follows. If endorsements might convince you to try making this, you should know that my kids actually said this soup was good. That kind of high praise doesn't often come from those two...when it comes to healthy meals anyway.