June

I have a love/hate relationship with dining out. I love not having to plan the meal, and clean up afterwards, but the cheapskate side of me hates paying 4 times as much for a meal that I can make at home. Every once in a while I will make a commitment to eat out only once a month, but then I find myself on the run and find grabbing something while I'm out will be easier, so I rarely stick to the commitment. I usually eat breakfast out once a month, and lunch and dinner 2 or 3 times. Carlomagno apparently ate out almost every meal. During the month of June she learned to love cooking and to plan her meals better. I find that planning meals at the beginning of the week is the best way to avoid eating out. We always have plenty of food in the house, sometimes we just don't have the gumption to figure out what to put together into a meal. I still have some of the organic vegetables I froze over the summer in my freezer, and when I plan meals, I can be more deliberate about using them.

Carlomagno discusses the siesta - eating the big meal in the middle of the day and resting afterwards. This lovely custom is still practiced in some European and Latin American countries. I wish we did it here.