Menus what we are eating and why.
What is for Dinner?
My husband and I are moving into a new reality. I stay at home while he has gone back to work after months of working from home. It's been two days now, and I do miss him madly. The pain of separation is slightly offset by me getting my desk and dual monitor set up back from him. There is a new level of planning that we have taken back up. We have to think about making menus for what to eat for dinner every day. Since I am not working, this has become my job. For best practices, I look at it as a three-part system. It's best to look at what you have on hand before starting the menu for the week. Followed by the plan, I wrote this week's dinner menu from Sunday to Saturday. Lastly, with the menu in hand, my husband did the shopping. He hit two stores on Sunday morning before the crowds hit. It's a good division of labor since I am the one doing the cooking. And a nod to my quartermaster efforts during the last year of lockdown to find supplies that could be delivered or ordered for pick-up. I loved having everything delivered. I often thought I might never go to the store again. At the same time, he looks forward to showing off his vaccination status by getting out of the house.
Our goal is to stay trim. While budget and taste play into our menu thinking, we have in mind that food is fuel. I depend on my husband to insist on variety in our menus. I would eat the same thing every day if left to my own planning. I don't want to tell anyone what to eat here. The current popular diets all make great sense for getting you where you want to be. Whatever diet you choose, I have an opinion that it comes down to portion size. There are long-term benefits to eating ketogenic or Mediterranean, for example. But the simplicity of eating smaller portions is the easiest to put into practice. I am all for the easiest solution to get a good habit started. You can always come back later and tweak your diet specifics. Start with eating smaller sizes of what you already eat. I have a debilitating eating habit of considering a bag or box of anything to be a single serving. I am looking at you my ranch seasoned corn chips habit. Fun size is not one size is my new mantra. Whatever it is, eat half, even if you throw the other half away. We often order one thing when eating out and split it. I want to confirm I fall off the wagon all the time. But every meal is a new beginning. Don't let failure stop you from getting a little bit better every day.
Meal Kits and Ready to eat meals.
We tried meal kits, and they were tasty. We found that meal kits gave us ideas about what we could make ourselves with the new ingredients the kits exposed us to. There was a variety that we were missing in our own cooking. The downsides for us were the packaging. Each item, no matter how small, needs its own bag. There are bags of frozen gelatinous matter that have a sci-fi quality to keep it all fresh. It all says to recycle, but I don't see how. The other item was the prep time. For the price, I would rather have take-out. Even with the take-out bag and the extra napkins, the packaging is way less of a guilt trip. On a scale of one to five, five being high value, We would give meal kits a 3.5
We also tried the meals that came fresh in boxes ready to eat. These we both liked. This happened in months 10 and 11 of the pandemic. I had been cooking most meals for most of the period. Vegan spaghetti was no longer a welcome option. I wanted a break. Also, we wanted to try keto meals, at least for dinner. We tried Factor as our meal provider. There were various meals based on the diet type, our option, keto, vegan, paleo, etc. We did five meals each a week. There was still packaging but less of it. The meals were easy to manage with just a microwave and no clean-up. For three or four weeks, this was a good plan. I could see us doing a purchase plan with 2-3 meals per week to reduce our cooking tasks. I give ready-to-eat meals 4.5 out of 5.
In an ideal world for us, I could see doing the ready-to-eat meals along with a planned menu. Now that we can also eat out thanks to the vaccine that can go in our mix too.