Late Winter Meals, Novels, Preventing Injuries

Colcannon

Meal prepping- making quantities of meals to refrigerate or freeze for the future- is quite a thing these days, as it should be, being a practical and time-saving format of home cooking. For most of my cooking life, I have not been a meal prepper, preferring to cook a meal every evening that we eat for dinner, with leftovers for lunch the following day. Rinse and repeat. 

But these days I am a semi-meal prepper because it fits my hybrid work schedule. I have settled into a pattern of 2 biggish cooking sessions every week, one on Sunday that feeds us into mid-week and another on Wednesday that takes us into Friday. Friday evening can be a pantry/fridge-cleaning meal or take-out. It is wonderful to have meals ready to heat and eat on office days.

This week's cooking was hearty, cold weather fare. Winter turned to Spring this week, at least as per the calendar. In reality, the weather is swinging wildly and the season changes hourly. On Sunday, I made the lasagna and enchilada casserole and a pot of pinto beans and rice. On Wednesday I made colcannon and radish sambar (not pictured). I added a romaine lettuce salad and veggie sticks (cucumber, carrots) to round these out. By mixing and matching this food, it fed us all week for lunches and dinners. 

1. Colcannon- Because of St. Patrick's Day last week, cabbage and potatoes were even cheaper and more abundant than usual in the grocery store. V brought home the biggest head of cabbage I've ever seen in my life. I'm talking comically big. Even after 3-4 cabbage dishes, I have half a head in the crisper. Anyway, I leaned in and tried colcannon, an Irish dish of mashed potato with cabbage. I used this recipe but made it in the instant pot, which was dead easy. I served it with veggie meatballs (from Aldi) topped with barbecue sauce- it was so good. The picture is of a lunchbox with still-frozen meatballs! 

Spinach lasagna

2. Spinach lasagna- This is a favorite in my family always, although this time my son inexplicably decided he did not like it. Ricotta, frozen chopped spinach and oven ready lasagna sheets make it quite easy, for a lasagna, anyway. It still requires making a sauce and making a filling and layering everything together. 

Enchilada casserole

3. Enchilada casserole- I had a few corn tortillas stashed away in the freezer, and also had some fresh tomatillos from a rare trip to the Mexican supermarket. I made salsa verde and used it as the sauce for this casserole. The filling was a bunch of vegetables and soy curls. 

I have plans for some of that never-ending cabbage tonight. I'll post it next week if it works out! 

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There's a whole stack of books I've been devouring and this week is all about the fiction. I read this novel for the PS 2025 Reading Challenge Prompt #14: A book about a nontraditional education- Never Let Me Go, a 2005 novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. 

(Possible spoilers ahead...) The narrator of Never Let Me Go is a 31 year old woman named Kathy. In this book, written in simple prose and in the first person, she reminisces about her childhood and schooling and interactions with fellow students. The nontraditional education here is what appears to be a pleasant English boarding school, but turns out to be a school that provides an upbringing to "clones" who are created for the sole purpose of donating their organs to other humans, with their lives ending after a certain number of donations. 

This book is shelved in the science fiction genre and I don't feel that it is an accurate characterization. I had more questions than answers about how this whole cloning system in this fictional dystopia works. (Turns out somebody on reddit had the same exact questions as me!) These questions were so distracting that I didn't particularly like the book when I was reading it. But it left me feeling deeply uneasy and I thought about it for days after. This was an interesting feeling- a book that affected me after I closed it much more than it did while I was reading it. 

The second book I read was also set in Britain, but is less of a dystopian read and more of an escapist novel- You Are Here by David Nicholls, published only last year. I read this book for the Read Harder 2025 Challenger for Prompt #9: Read a book based solely on its setting. The setting that attracted me was the English countryside. This witty, romance-lite book is about two lonely strangers, each reeling from a failed relationship, who are thrown together on a coast-to-coast "ramble" (hiking trip). It was fun to join these characters on their trip through geographical features (crags, moors...), pubs and various lodgings, bad weather, and various complications. If you're looking for a light-hearted read, I recommend this book! 

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Today's moment of fitness discusses something we'd rather not think about- injuries. In the last few weeks, I heard of two serious exercise-related injuries. One of my childhood friends tore her ACL while "doing some stunts in the gym" (no idea exactly what, and I'm afraid to ask) and needed surgery to repair it. The dad of one of my local friends- a fit gentleman in his 70s- was on a group bike ride, crashed into a hard-to-see barrier and had major spinal injuries (he is in rehab and expected to do well.) News like this is always sobering. 

Exercise, an activity where we are purposely and intentionally stretching our limits and subjecting our bodies to controlled stress, certainly has its risks, but they are far outweighed by the benefits. Of course, everything in life carries risks. Even the most mundane of activities carry a chance that things can go wrong. Not exercising is riskier in the long term. Exercise risks can't be eliminated but there are ways to minimize them. 

1. Warm up and cool down. Start each workout with dynamic stretches (e.g., arm circles, leg swings, high knees). End each workout with static stretches. Start and end each run with a brisk walk. 
2. Use proper form and technique. Improper form can lead to tears, strains, sprains. Proper form can be learned with a trainer, or with exercise videos, watching carefully and practicing, ideally in front of a mirror. 
3. Start slow and progress gradually. This is a big one. We get excited and impatient; we want results fast, want results NOW. It is only human to be this way, but it is a huge risk factor for injury if you go too hard, too fast. This is my main problem with trendy gyms like F45 fitness, Orange Theory fitness, Crossfit. They often emphasize boot camp style workouts, with high intensity and a fast pace. You're doing complex movements, and doing them fast. It is a competitive and hyped-up atmosphere with instructors urging you to keep going and smash that workout. It is a group setting where your form is generally not being watched closely. All of this comes with a higher risk of injury, and this is especially true for people who are older and/or deconditioned (i.e., not accustomed to exercise). These gyms are popular for a reason. They can make exercise exciting, and they often build devoted communities of exercisers. But they are intense and that's not always a good thing for every person.
4. Pay attention to intake of water, food, electrolytes. Being dehydrated and depleted makes you fatigued which can lead to everything from dizziness and fainting to just impaired reflexes/ judgement as you exercise. 
5. Use appropriate gear such as well-fitting shoes and safety equipment. This is a reminder to myself. I went running two days ago before dawn (dawn is late these days because of daylight savings time) without any lights on me, and felt unsafe as I was crossing streets- I don't think cars could see me at all. Clearly, I need visibility gear.
6. Rest and recover. Don't work the same muscles hard every day. Rest and recovery time is what allows your body to respond and adapt to exercise to make you stronger. 
7. Curb your ego and listen to your body. There's no heroism in finishing a race if you feel intense pain in the middle of it. There's no point trying to lift an impressive weight if you're not ready for it. It is a learning process to figure out when to push yourself and when to draw back and stop and rest. We can't always get it right but we can keep working on it. 

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Are you a meal prepper or do you cook on a daily basis?