For those of you that know me, or for those of you that have been reading the blog for any length of time, (Homemade Marshmallows) you know that I love food. I’ve always loved eating it, but I might love the process of cooking even more.
It’s therapeutic to me after a day of work to cook supper from scratch. Yesterday, I shared about the teriyaki chicken tacos with pineapple-pear salsa we had last night. And then I realized I didn’t share the recipe (based on this recipe).
I’m not the biggest “follow the recipe” kind of home cook. I watch and learn from lots of people on YouTube and have cooked enough to learn some of the basic skills, but I can go from an idea of the end product to the end product without too much time spent looking at recipes. I love being at the grill but also find joy in making a from-scratch pasta sauce. The Asian-sauce section of our fridge tells the story of a recent focus on stir fry dishes from Korean to Chinese, Indian to Japanese.
But every 3 months or so, I get into a little funk with what I should cook. Those funks usually last about a week and then I’m ready to get back into the kitchen. However, one minor change at the beginning of the year really has helped that - and it is something that so many people have probably been doing for a long time. In all transparency, it is something that Rachel has been wanting to do for years!
Meal planning.
I hated the idea of meal planning. I thought it was going to be limiting to me. I didn’t want to be stuck cooking pasta on Wednesday because a week before we said that we were going to cook pasta on Wednesday. But that’s not at all what has happened.
The funk hasn’t really happened since we’ve been having something that looks like a plan. I don’t feel the pressure of making sure that Rachel feels like whatever food I had dreamed up for supper since we’ve already discussed the plan. I also don’t feel the pressure of needing to come up with an idea every night either. And, if we planned on grilling burgers on Thursday but the forecast is for rain, since we’ve planned Friday’s meal and purchased the groceries, we actually can just flip-flop the days.
The process is pretty simple for us. In a shared Google Doc, Rachel and I write down what we want for supper each night of the week. And then the next week we continue in the same Google Doc and do it again.
When we go to plan our meals for the next week, we scroll by months and months of meal ideas that we can pull from and utilize in the upcoming week.
And it hasn’t taken any of the joy out of cooking for me!
So today, I am thankful for meal planning. But more than that, I am thankful for a process in my life that has helped to transform something I already enjoy into an even better experience.
I know that most of you by now are probably thinking - duh! Can’t believe he didn’t know that! But it’s true, I didn’t. However, I do know that we all have areas of our lives where people keep suggesting we make a change and we fight that change. I still have plenty of areas to go, but I know that there can be power in changing one part of the process and the impact can be huge.
So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.
- 1 Corinthians 10:31
How about you?
What’s your favorite thing to do on an unexpectedly nice day?
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