One of the hardest things of adult life is deciding what to cook for meals. When I was younger, I had a whole bunch to things to cook for the family. Even though we had the same four or five meals fairly often, it was always interspersed with other things. Our menu was varied.
Some people have specific meals for specific nights. At my son’s house, Friday is pizza day. When they all sick one time, Daughter sent them pizza on Tuesday so no one would have to cook. That totally messed up their eating schedule. Even my grandsons complained about “it’s not pizza day!” Apparently some food schedules are set in stone.
I’ve never had a meal schedule, but then I don’t like anything being scheduled like that. I like variety and convenience. However, I’ve begun fixing blueberry muffins every Sunday morning. They’re more like blueberries with a little muffin holding them together. That’s healthy, right? That’s the extent of my food schedule.
Knowing what you’re going to cook on a specific night must take out a lot of the stress of deciding what to cook. That’s nice, but I still can’t do it. Most nights at my house are “fix it yourself” night. We usually have plenty of leftovers and using imagination gives variety in what we each fix ourselves. When there isn’t enough to make anything, I either cook something or we eat out. If I’m craving something, I make it or go buy it. Leftovers are the name of the game at my house. Make or buy a big batch of something and eat on it for days.
All the recipes I made when I was younger have been discarded with Hubby’s dairy intolerance. No cheese, no cream-of-something soup, no milk, no butter, and so on. That pretty much wiped out my collection of cookbooks and recipe cards, so my options are severely limited. That leaves meat, potatoes, and vegetables but not lettuce (any kind of lettuce gives Hubby heart arrythmia), BBQ, Chinese food, and Mexican food sans cheese and sour cream. Pizza with no cheese just isn’t the same.
If you cook on a schedule or plan your meals out, more power to you. I wish I could be like you. To those like me with a haphazard method of planning meals, hang in there. At least we’re not starving.