Post Vacation Bearings, Regained

I've had a bit of blogging break this past week. We were on vacation, but it was a staycation in that we were still local. But it was the best kind of staycation: where you still get to spend lots of quality time with people that you love. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law and their kids came for a visit!

My sweet nephew blew out four candles on his birthday cake. There was a piñata (with candy, of course). I made some gluten-free treats for people to share: a batch of coconut almond macaroons and dipped the bottoms of the cookies in melted semisweet chocolate, and a couple of batches of ice cream. Speaking of which, I'm getting ever-closer to my ideal batch of home-churned vanilla ice cream. There are still a couple of tweaks, but I will probably post it some time in the next month. Also on my docket of promising recipe developments, which I took a stab at making for the first time this week: green tea ice cream.

Now that we've reluctantly said our goodbyes for now (and my four year old has already complained about having nobody to play with, ha!), I'm left a little overcaffeinated and a little oversugared (though I did manage to avoid getting gluten-sick). Top of my agenda is getting back into simplified naturally lower-carb eating.

And...this means...back to menu planning. I took a few weeks' break, and it was nice to be willy-nilly for a while and cook up stuff on the fly, but I also think that not planning leaves me a lot more vulnerable to eating technically legal junkfood. This means the menu plans will be back to a heavy emphasis on lower-carb whole foods meat, veggies, and eggs, all cooked in healthy fats.

So, look out for the return of the menu plans  - and starting this coming week, packed lunches for my husband!