I recently went through a week where I made a new-to-me recipe every single night. I didn’t realize I’d done this in my meal plan until about Wednesday, when I noticed I was continually looking at my phone for reference, as opposed to all the recipes that have become standard in my rotation over the years which I’ve memorized and adapted.
It could have been a case of my subconscious telling me, via meal plan, that it was sick of our days all looking so very much the same. Or maybe all the foodie people I follow on Instagram posted especially good recipes that week. It was probably just a fluke. I don’t know. I guess I needed something different in the routine of the day. I cooked my way through a Thai chicken curry and a simple Mexican chicken and rice skillet and a black bean soup which we ate with a generous amount of tortilla chips. (The kids preferred the tortilla chips solo.)
It occurred to me while making one of these meals how easy this came to me. I like cooking. I regularly pour over books about food, follow a ridiculous amount of those aforementioned food-related accounts on Instagram, tend to enjoy meal planning, and spend a good amount of time each day thinking about food. I’ve made dinner almost every night of the week since my husband and I were newlyweds. Then, it was because we didn’t have much money for eating out. Most nights I found a way to turn chicken breasts and onions and bell peppers into stir fries or fajitas or rice bowls or pasta.
Fridays were, and still are, the exception. I almost always take a day off each week. “I don’t think I’ve ever cooked on a Friday night,” I heard my grandma say once when she was well into her 80s. That sounded to me like a pretty good #lifegoal. Before we had children, or really before we had our third and were outnumbered by children, we used to go out on Friday nights.
When our twins were born, they followed us along to Friday night dinners. We ate at 4:30 or 5:00, in near-empty restaurants, before we needed to be home for the bedtime chaos to begin. We’d request a booth and they’d rest next to us in their carseats. As they grew older they sat with us — their tiny-for-their-age bodies swallowed by cavernous high chairs, held up by the blankets we brought with to stuff around them. I’d order grilled chicken and broccoli, which we chopped up small, and they ate by the tiny fistful.
Now we don’t usually eat out on Fridays. Instead, we order takeout after the kids are in bed. (At home date nights: highly recommended. Mostly because you can eat Thai food in your sweatpants and have no need for mascara.)
The point being that Friday nights aside, the vast majority of evenings find me in the kitchen.
Read the rest about finding a safe space to fail over on the Twin Cities Mom Collective.