Writing this while prepping the shakshuka sauce for tomorrow’s breakfast — and yes, I’m making it the night before because waiting 30 minutes for sauce in the morning is not happening. That’s the kind of practical adjustment this whole plan is teaching me.
But let’s talk about week two, because a lot happened.
The biggest change going into week three is the cooking system. Week two nearly broke us in the kitchen. The original plan had lunch and dinner as completely separate meals, which meant I was cooking two different things every single night. It was exhausting. So we went back to the AI, explained the problem, and asked it to restructure things so dinner becomes the next day’s lunch. Cook once, eat twice. The AI said sure and rebuilt the plan around it. That one change alone saves us hours every week.
The food itself had some real wins. Lemon chicken orzo was a surprise hit — the whole family loved it, including my mother-in-law who thought it was some kind of fancy rice. It’s not rice. It’s tiny pasta cut to look like rice, and it’s going into the regular rotation. The stir-fried pork with fresh water chestnuts was another standout. I’ve used canned water chestnuts plenty of times but fresh ones from an online Chinese grocery store are on another level entirely. And the salmon — I had never actually baked salmon before in my life. Googled a recipe, cooked it at 400°F for 15 minutes with a light teriyaki glaze and it came out flaky and tender. The family was impressed. I was a little surprised myself.
Not everything worked. Dan Dan noodles (担担面) didn’t land the way I wanted — I used regular noodles instead of wheat and I think that was the problem. Next time I’d use whole wheat spaghetti as a substitute. We’re also not big on the mouth-numbing effect of Sichuan peppercorns, so we’ve been swapping those out for lao gan ma (老干妈), a Chinese chili sauce with a great flavour and the right amount of heat without the numbness.
One practical tip I picked up this week: when you buy meat in bulk from Costco, pre-portion it into your serving sizes before it goes in the freezer. I bought about four and a half pounds of ground turkey and spent some time dividing it into four-ounce, five-ounce and eight-ounce packages. It takes time upfront but it makes every cooking night faster.
On weight — I haven’t stepped on the scale yet. Week three I’m committing to it. If the plan is working the way it’s designed, it should be about one to two pounds a week, which puts 50 pounds somewhere around six months out. We’ll see.
