itshalfempty

One of the things I wanted to focus on when I left Square was to learn and build better habits around food - specifically week-night meals. I don’t think I’ve ever really had a reasonable week-night routine. I enjoy food and I enjoy cooking, and of course I want every meal I make to be something tasty that was worth eating. But when every meal takes 30-45 minutes minimum to prep and cook (not to mention meal planning & clean-up time), it quickly becomes a chore that I just don’t want to do when it’s already late and I just want to de-stress from work.

Our week-night routine has varied over the years. Generally speaking, I’d buy groceries to make meals for 3 or so dinners each week, and we’d plan to fill the rest by eating out. It wasn’t uncommon to just not make a meal (or two) I had planned to make, either because something came up and I didn’t have time to cook, or because I just didn’t want to go through the effort. Besides wasting food and money, eating out so much also makes it really tough to meet nutritional goals.

With my new found time, in theory I have all the time in the world to make every meal. And while that’s technically true, I want to use this time to teach myself how to sustainably make food at home. Over the last few months we’ve eaten out significantly less, cooked 5-6 dinners at home each week, and I think there’s only been one meal I planned to make that I skipped. I’d like to continue this forever, and make sure that the way that I’m managing the kitchen is something that can continue even when I return to a full-time job.

These are a few things I’ve learned or changed so far, and I thought I’d share them.

Keeping the kitchen clean

One of the biggest reasons I used to opt for not cooking was walking into the kitchen after I was done working and seeing a messy kitchen. Even if it doesn’t take long to clean up, it still adds a huge mental barrier. When the kitchen is clean, I can just hop into cooking without delay. A clean kitchen is also just more inviting to be in - it’s almost like it would be a shame not to use it.

I’ve gotten into a routine where I’ll empty the dishwasher in the morning, usually while I’m waiting for coffee to brew. Any dishes from the day, including from lunch, can just go directly into the dishwasher. I’ve tried to spend any downtime while cooking cleaning up early, that way it takes less time to clean up after dinner.

Being intentional about meal planning

I don’t cook most of my meals from recipes. In fact, I used to just show up at the grocery store without any plan at all and just pick up things that were on sale or looked good. I’d either have a rough idea for a few meals I could make, or I’d pick up enough things to know that I could make meals out of them later.

There wasn’t really anything wrong with that approach - but it did mean that I was deferring some of the mental effort to dinner time. It also made it really tough to plan out what to cook on which day, given our schedules, and sometimes I would end up with food that I just didn’t have time to make.

One of the first things I did when I left Square was evaluate different tools for meal planning, and different meal planning approaches. Nothing I looked at really worked for me - and what I ended up with is maybe just a more structured version of what I used to do.

I have a simple template for each week that I fill out, just listing meals for each day and a grocery list. I run through our calendars and add any constraints on time, then I fill in meals that sound good based on the weather or how we’re feeling. Sometimes those meals are a recipe, but more often than not it’s a very loose idea (e.g. “chicken and rice bowl + veg” or “steak, sweet potato, veg”).

Having that list of a rough plan and time constraints makes it easy to make changes when I’m at the grocery store. I’ve also found that it makes meals a lot easier to start making, since I no longer need to root through the fridge to figure out what I want to make.

Planning to have leftovers

It used to be pretty uncommon for us to keep and re-heat leftovers. Either we would just eat everything or throw away what we didn’t eat. I have no idea why, and it seems so wasteful in hindsight.

Several of the regular meals I already make are enough food to spread over two meals. So now…I do that. I freeze half of the main component of the meal, which takes the most time and effort to make, and a week or two later thaw and reheat it. Those second meals take significantly less time and effort to prepare - usually just as long as it takes to prep and cook vegetables or some rice.

It’s also sometimes just worth it to make double what I would normally make, because it’s only marginally more effort and time.

I usually plan to keep leftovers in the freezer for 1 or 2 meals each week, that way there are always at least a couple meals in the freezer I can lean on for future weeks when I may not have much time to make dinner.

Baking

I dedcided to bake something every week since I had a lot more time and schedule flexibility. That turned out to be a really good decision! It’s been really fun to bake a bunch of different stuff - I’ve made bread, muffins, banana bread, pie, cinnamon rolls, and more. More importantly though, a lot of baked goods freeze really well – either as dough just needing a bake or the finished product. I didn’t realize just how nice it would be to have a freezer full of goodies that don’t even need much prep work to enjoy.

Craving something sweet? I can bake a couple chocolate chip cookies in about 30 minutes. Or defrost a blueberry muffin.

More than anything though, it’s become clear how little work baking can be. I made banana bread last night, which took about 15 minutes of putting the batter together then another 5 minutes to clean up. Now I have several slices of banana bread in the freezer that only take an hour or so to thaw and enjoy.

Continuous Improvement

I’m sure my process will change a little over time. Most importantly, I really want to continue to build these habits into my day-to-day and continue to reduce the mental and time burden for making tasty and healthy meals at home. The real test will be when I return to a full-time job, but I have some time before I get there!