Wherein I ponder (*shudder*) "meal planning"


One of the reasons I like to travel, aside from all the relaxing and adventuring, is the chance to reevaluate my life at home. I find that the perfect formula for quality self-reflection is geographical distance + routine change + not having to clean my house.

On our recent family trip to Traverse City, while I wasn't busy chasing Bea or trying to convince her that stagnant, bug-infested pool water is not awesome for drinking, I did some thinking about life-stuff I want to change. First, I realized I need to get out of the house more to work on my dissertation. I also decided I need some new challenges on my horizon that don't involve academia or baby. As soon as we got home, I signed up for a 10k and a class. (In my next post, maybe I'll talk about my experience so far training for my first run. As for the class--well, it has some tangential ties to my research, but it's mostly just for me; the idea of studying a new language sets my nerd heart aflutter.)

I also thought about how I need to do more scheduled activities with Bea. Following her around the house while she opens cupboards and sticks her foot in the cat's dish fills me with desperation and ennui; that really had to change. Since returning from the trip, I've taken out my art supplies and we've made some pictures together. It's wonderful. It's something we can do together that we both genuinely enjoy. Granted, she always wants to draw with three pencils jammed in each hand, which is annoying, but really, the child's 15 months old, so I can't get too worked up about it.

                                   Bea scribbles, and I fill in the occasional triangle until she wrenches the pencil out of my hand.

Finally, I thought about the eternal, vexing question of What to do for Dinner. With a small kitchen, a small child, and very small windows in which to cook, I have to be deliberate about choosing and shopping for meals. Justin works late, at least for now, so the task of dinner falls mostly to me. Granted, he takes over some of the cooking on weekends and is always fine with ordering in, but there are usually a few nights a week when I am duty-bound to plan a civilized, decent meal for the three of us. Before Bea was born, this used to be a pleasure (cue music and the corking of wine) but these days it's not always my favorite thing.

So, yeah, meal planning. Meal planning. Meal planning. A bleak phrase. It's so far from my usual strategy of wandering the sample area of the grocery store, popping bits of olive into Bea's mouth, waiting for inspiration to strike. Sometimes inspiration will come, but often it's just in the form of a lame rationalization: c'mon, toast and eggs is a great dinner! Hey, what's wrong with cheese and a baguette for dinner? It's romantic, in an impoverished kind of way! Or, what if I make a ton of guacamole-- like six avocados' worth? That totally counts, right?

I've lately been calling this condition Dinner Block. And just as blocked writers need tricks for clearing their cognitive hurdles, I need a system. For no particular reason, I decided that Mondays would be a grain-based dish (rice, quinoa, etc.), Tuesdays would be pasta, and Wednesdays salad. Thursday-Sunday would be kept open for going out to eat, ordering in, making dinner-sized sundaes, or using the new oyster knife Justin got me for my birthday to have an oyster party. Monday-Wednesday are, hands down, the toughest nights for me, so those nights need a system.

So, okay, so grain, pasta, salad. GPS.

After we got back from vacation, I launched in immediately. The week started with a Sunday trip to the farmer's market. My usual farmer's market M.O. is to wander around, surveying the produce and just buying what looks good. But this time, before we left, I sat on the floor for a good 20 minutes, waist deep in a nest of cookbooks, thumbing around for recipes to fit into the GPS slots.

And you know what? It was so, so fun. Before long, I'd filled a few notebook pages with ideas, and as I built up a collection of recipes my GPS categories suddenly got more flexible and interesting. Inventing and justifying culinary taxonomies is a fun thing if you haven't tried it. (What? You haven't tried it?) Are Mark Bittman's lettuce and rice noodle-stuffed spring rolls a salad, a pasta, or a grain? Couscous is a pasta, right? Is tuna salad a salad? For a real trip, take a look at the salad section of Nourishing Traditions. The crowning jewel? "Meat Salad."

The fun continued at the market, where I tweaked the week's dishes to reflect what I found. Monday's grain recipe was still kind of up in the air (something with farro?), but I'd settled on Tuesday's pasta of fresh tuna, radishes, and celery. When I didn't see any celery, I snapped up some kohlrabi instead, just because it looked good and crunchy. Wednesday's menu was a roasted corn salad with tomatoes and feta, so I grabbed an armload of unshucked corn, which Bea and I had a blast peeling a day or two later. I also happened to notice a bunch of mint that would be delicious in the corn salad, so into the basket it went.

So far--and it's just been a couple weeks--the creative constraints have made for some fresh, seasonal meals. While we're not eating anything radically different, I feel more relaxed. It's like I've outsourced the dinner decision-making to my more uptight self so I can turn my attention to something else. I also like to think that since I master-minded this little system, I can dump it at will and go get calzones. Calzones are a grain, alright?