Libertiste

One of the most important ways to stick to a lifestyle change — whether it’s a diet, better habits or a tighter budget — is to plan for slips. At our house, those slips on the way to a thriftier lifestyle often come on weeknights, when we’re both tired, and neither of us can even think up a meal, let alone stir up the wherewithal to cook it. These are not the evenings when I want to unwind by chopping a pile of vegetables. These are the evenings when I want two things: The Simpsons, and some combination of starch and fat. Those evenings don’t come around too often, since we both love to cook, generally — but they do come, reliably.

In the old days, we’d take our exhaustion as our cue to order some Thai food, or a pizza. So temptingly easy — one phone call, and Pad Thai or a giant circle of bread, cheese and sausage just appears. But at $35-$40 a pop (for the Thai — pizza was more like $22), it quickly added up on the credit card bills.

So what if I told you that you could have easy food just as fast, or faster, at a price reduction of literally 900%?

It’s stupid-simple: Keep frozen pizzas on hand. Yeah, they’re not great for you, but be honest; sometimes nothing else will do. Safeway makes good ones, and they regularly go on sale for $3 or $3.50 — for a large.

I know this sounds obvious, but the reason I’m writing about it at all is that often, when we try to make a change for the better, we go too far, too fast. We could have a larder stocked with nothing but rice, vegetables and dry lentils (and to be honest, at the very beginning I envisioned something similar), and darn if it wouldn’t be cheap, but on those worn-out, end-of-the-rope nights, where would we be? The temptation to call for delivery would be even worse. We’d be like frustrated kids, rebelling against our authoritarian selves who stocked the cabinets with the strictest of intentions.

In exchange for a few nutritionally imperfect meals (actually, I probably consumed fewer calories in pizza than I did in full servings on Pad Thai), our reward has been hundreds of dollars off our credit card bills. So remember, an important part of planning to be good is planning to be bad. It pays.

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It happens to everyone: You buy produce with the best of culinary intentions, then you reach the end of the week and there it sits, wilted and sad (or even judging you, if you had Depression-era grandparents) because your plans changed or you just never got around to it. If there was a cookbook or a Web site that was all about uses for wilted fruits and vegetables, I’d be all over it. (Seriously, is there one? If anyone knows, tell me.)

Buy-one-get-one-free is often my undoing. I encountered it again last week: What was I supposed to do, turn down a free pint of grape tomatoes? Five or six days later I discovered that, as I suspected, I had an appetite for only one pint, and the other pint gradually turned raisiny and unappetizing.

I got this idea after making Ellie Krieger’s Penne with Roasted Tomatoes, Garlic and White Beans* for dinner last week.  You will need:

• 1 pint of depressed and wrinkly, but not moldy, cherry or grape tomatoes (depressed and wrinkly regular tomatoes work too)
• 1-2 tbs olive oil
• salt

Preheat oven to 450.

Slice tomatoes in half, or quarters if you’re using bigger tomatoes, and scatter in a foil-lined pan. Toss with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Bake, uncovered, for 40 minutes.

Ta-da, that’s it. Enjoy immediately with pasta, or — I like this more, because it enables me to procrastinate further still — lift out the foil and put it on a plate to freeze in a single layer. Put the tomatoes in a ziploc once they’re frozen. They can now be heated up and unleashed on the pasta of your choice, whenever the whim strikes. Months from now, if need be.

* Delicious. We finished it with a little extra olive oil at the end.

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