Shuffling the Menu Cards

I'm not quite so depressed today. He's 18, it's happened, there's nothing left to think about. And our lives didn't change at all over the weekend. I've got peppy Jason Mraz singing about being a Geek in the Pink in the background and I'm feeling pretty good. I've got an overall up tempo playlist today. The Boy says Fall Out Boy is "emo" and therefore by definition depressing, but I'm waaaay too out of the loop to know what emo means, and the FOB songs I'm listening to are fast enough for me. Robbie Williams almost always makes me happy. He has such a huge range of song styles, and I like them all.

I've been having pretty serious heartburn problems lately, way worse than normal. Apparantly I have been abusing my esophogus and it's not happy with me. I've finally given in and I'm going to adjust my diet until I'm healed. The added bonus is that I'll probably drop a few of the pounds I've packed on lately. I've really overdone the chocolate, and I know that's a heartburn causer, so hopefully the thought of extreme pain will be enough to break that addiction. I also know that I can't really handle tomatoes in any form and of course spicy foods are out. That has really been a problem because I've had to eliminate over 75% of my recipes.
I love making menus well in advance. I have all of my recipes on 3x5 index cards with a hole in the top left corner. I have them divided into 4 sets, each held together with a ring clip. One has desserts and appetizers, one has main dishes and side dishes in my regular rotation, one has the main dishes I rarely fix because one or both of the guys don't like them or they are really complicated and usually not worth the trouble or I made them too often and we're just all tired of them. The last one has all the meals and sides for the next two weeks or more, in order, so that I can just get that down when it's time to cook dinner.
As part of my vacation planning, I went ahead and planned our menu for all the dinners until the day before we leave. When I realized I would have to change my diet for a while (read: the Vansome insisted I take care of myself before I burn a hole straight through my esophagus) I had to go through the menu and pull out the things I can't eat. It took forever last night to redo my menu plan! That's when I discovered how many of my recipes contain tomatoes in some form. I don't even like tomatoes on their own, but I cook with them almost every night. Between tomatoes and hot peppers, I don't have a lot of things left to cook. I just don't have bland, good for my tummy recipes. Tonight I'm just making spaghetti with olive oil and parm and tossing some shrimp on top. Tomorrow I'll make chicken and dumplings and we'll get two or three meals out of that. I managed to get a new menu put together to last until vaca, but it really made me sad to put so many of our favorites in the "rarely made" recipe file. I am going to make an exception for some Mother's Day chocolate that I got yesterday. That is if I can convince The Boy to tell me where he's hidden it.