Updated!! Behold, my post-op meal planning menu.

I have finally figured out my meal plan, hallelujah!!

Edit: I had a great initial plan, at least.

This is exactly what I want to avoid if possible while healing large bone.

The initial plan:

• Steak & Pinto Beans with Cornbread

• Marinaded & pan fried chicken breasts with a recipe I just realized never made it on my blog - cornbread dressing with lentils for added plant protein.

• Kofta-spiced meatballs with chickpea flour as my binding flour for the plant protein, with a recipe that isn't on my blog because it belongs to my friend, Chef Abbey - whipped white beans with olive oil. I also just pinned a tahini dressing recipe I'll put up to have on hand with this. Subbed with Split Pea & Kapusta Stew

THE UPDATE: does ground beef smell and taste fishy to anyone else? I started noticing it about a year ago? No other (so far) beef, including cuts like round steak or stew meat. And it's only raw ground beef purchased from the grocery store, Taco Bell tacos and McDonalds quarter pounders still taste the same to me. I don't know if it's perimenopause nose, or a new preservative they're using, or what, but raw ground beef, and the food I cook with it, has that smell of slightly rotten fish washed up on the lakeshore.

So, I started the pinto beans and the meatballs with a pound of ground beef from the local restaurant supply company, thinking if anyone has premium meat, it'll be them. But, I had to deep-six both - even after forty-five minutes of pressure cooking, it's just overwhelming fish smell.

I have always had the augmented AuDHD senses, and sense recall - raw ground beef has never smelled like this to me before. I've been cooking with it since I was a kid, I know what it's supposed to smell like at every stage of cooking... this is not it during any part of the cooking process.

I still have tons of pinto beans, I'm not sure if I want to make the dish with another meat, or leave meat out together.

Meatballs are getting scrapped, and subbed with the Ukrainian Split Pea & Kapusta Stew I made with the sad, forgotten cabbage I found in the back of the fridge.

END UPDATE

I don't usually worry too much about breakfast, plain instant oatmeal or dairy-free yogurt with flax seed is easy enough. But I will probably make a batch of pancakes and freeze them, as well. Frozen homemade pancakes reheat really well in a standard toaster.

And I will, of course, have lots of fresh fruits and veg on hand to eat, as usual.

There, now I know what I'm going to make, that's half done, right?

Elder Millennials know.