So far in the
And can you believe we are on the last day already? Wow! These ten days have really flown!
Today we are going to return to where we began and talk about the key ingredient in every meal plan: flexibility.
Most of the time when I tell someone that I plan my meals for a month, they look at me a little like I’m saying I like to alphabetize my socks in my drawer by brand and color (which I don’t really do, by the way, but it sounds pretty intense) and say something to the effect of, “Well, how am I supposed to know what I’ll feel like eating three weeks from now?”
This question makes me smile for two very big reasons:
1-If you’re like me, you can NEVER decide what you “feel like eating.” Seriously, it is one of those questions that paralyzes me. On a typical day, I don’t like to decide. Back when my husband and I were both working and we had no kids, we ate out a lot more. But the problem was always deciding where we would go and what we felt like eating. I almost always defaulted to whatever he came up with because I just didn’t care all that much.
The same is still true. So when I arbitrarily assign meals to random days, I don’t know that I will feel like eating/cooking that on that particular day. I only know that I typically like to eat that meal, my kids will probably eat it, and it has been a minute since we ate it. In essence, I’m not preparing the same disgusting meal day after day for weeks.
My stepdad was a phenomenal cook. He made delicious meals for our family–and others–all the time. But do you know what? He often got so fond of a new way to prepare carrots or a new salad dressing, that he would serve the exact same thing day after day after day. And y’all, it got old. Seriously, I can’t even think about eating certain dishes because I got so sick of eating it on repeat.
2-Just because you wrote a certain meal down for the 22nd, doesn’t mean you can’t swap it with the meal planned for the 24th. I don’t think a single month has gone by since I started monthly meal plans that I haven’t swapped meals with different days. In fact, I just did it this week! It happens! The key is to be flexible.
When I make a meal plan, I try to anticipate the busy nights, but I can’t know for sure if I will feel up to cooking/eating a certain thing when that day arrives. The thing is, I’m not starting from scratch. I have a whole bunch of meals to choose from. I’ve already got the ingredients for all of them on-hand. And I can easily swap days without disturbing the time-space continuum. Life goes on and my goal of cooking dinner is still in-tact.
So today, as we wrap up our ten-day focus on cooking dinners, I challenge you AGAIN to give this one-month meal plan a shot. Try it! Try it, I say! It’s better than green eggs and ham and you remember how that worked out with Sam I Am, don’t you? It can’t hurt. If you don’t like it, throw it away or adjust it to make it work for you.
If you have a reason why you want to be cooking dinners at home, remind yourself of that reason. Let it push you to give these past ten days of tips a shot. If you need motivation, come back and revisit them whenever you
