Got the book - now to prepare

The new book was delivered today.  Funny, I looked online at my Amazon order status to see if it arrived rather than walking upstairs to look at the front door!  Do you ever do that?

The book is much thinner than I expected.  Only 146 pages.

 I skimmed through the first few pages right to the menu plans that the author has developed.  My first impression is that it won't be enough food for me.  Three small meals plus one snack.  And if it's not enough for me, it won't be enough for Dave.    I tend to eat breakfast, second breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner and then final snack.

I have a visitor from Israel coming into work for three days next week, so I will have to decide whether Dave and I start this plan over the weekend, or if we wait until the visitor is gone.  I want to be a good host for my coworker and take him out to lunch a few times while he is here, especially since he has never been to Colorado before.  But then, if the company is paying for lunch, it doesn't come out of the $4 day budget, does it? 

Also, looking through the book, I see she uses a lot of beans.  There are two problems with beans.  The first is that they take so long to cook!  She gives a timetable that shows cooking times for each type of bean if cooked on the stove, or cooked in a pressure cooker. The pressure cooker is much more efficient, for example, it takes 5-8 minutes to cook black beans in a pressure cooker vs 1 hour on top of the stove.  I don't have a pressure cooker right now.  Well, I do, but it's so old I'd be afraid to use it.  It always made me nervous, anyway.  I think the newer ones are safer. 

The second problem with beans is their sometimes painful and annoying side-effects.  I have learned in the past that if you completely rinse the beans after soaking,  cook the beans thoroughly until they are really soft and add a thumb-sized piece of kombu to the pot while cooking, it can eliminate much of that.

I'll probably wait and do a bit of planning before we begin.    There are 7 days of menu plans included in the book.  I think I'll go through the plans, calculate the caloric and nutritional profile for the week and devise a shopping list.  Based on the nutritional profile of the plan, I'll decide whether to try the author's plan for two weeks, or use her plan for the first week and devise my own improved plan for the second week.  It will depend on whether or not I think the author's  plan is sufficient to meet the recommended caloric an nutritional needs for us.

I'll begin the experiment next Friday.