It’s possible that everyone is like this, but I’ve often felt like my personality is defined in opposites. For example: I’m shy by nature and pathologically incapable of keeping my mouth shut (meetings, classes, while other people are talking); I’m borderline dyslexic, but read faster than most people I know; I’m afraid of all sorts of things (including the dark) but the sports I like best are the ones that include a rush of speed and adrenaline (dinghy sailing in high winds, downhill skiing in fast conditions). You get the idea. The last few years I’ve been struggling with another contradiction, one that sometimes feels like it might involve the key to my own happiness and other days makes me feel like I’m letting my life drown in a sea of minutiae (melodramatic, did I mention I’m melodramatic?). The issue is planning versus spontaneity. Namely: weekly planning of meals.
I know, total let down. On and off for the past year or so the DC and I have sporadically planned our meals. This involves deciding who is going to make what for supper and when in the upcoming week. This then leads to only buying the groceries we need for the week. It saves time, assures a bit more equality in the kitchen, avoids waste (from all the times those lovely fruits and vegetables rot in the fridge because I bought them without a plan) and means that I’m more likely to delve into my various cookbooks for inspiration instead of just making the easiest, fastest thing I can think of because I’m tired and hungry and out of time. I know people who swear by this system.
My problem is I can only maintain it for short bursts of time. Then a week comes up where I decide to not come home for supper a couple of times, maybe I don’t feel like cooking what or when I planned or I never get around to buying the ingredients I need. “No big deal” the planners out there say to me. “Just start again the following week.”
The thing is, I am a wagon faller offer. Whether it’s flossing as regularly and rigorously as my dentist assures me I need to or keeping track of (and limiting) my food intake or keeping my receipts in some sort of organized manner so I can track my spending habits, once I stop, even for a day or so, I’m finished for a good long time.
Somehow once I get away from my routine there’s a large part of me which is thrilled by the freedom and the possibilities that lie before me. “I don’t need a plan” I think to myself. “I am a creative, fly by the seat of my pants kind of person. Routine is my enemy. Spontaneity and chance are my friends.” And all of these things are true.
Sometimes…
Increasingly I’m having to face the fact that to be spontaneous I need to have some room to breath and if I don’t plan, if I don’t organize, my time is eaten up in a muddle of aimless activity. More and more I’m having to call on my latent, organized, list making self, just so I can have some room to be spontaneous.
There’s pressure to adopt this distressingly mature realization. This semester I have a weird schedule at work and four out five days I don’t get home until after 6:30. It’s important, if I don’t want to eat at an ungodly hour every night, that I plan ahead. I’ve been attempting to embrace the slow cooker as a solution (mixed results have ensued – more on that later) and I have ideas about some sort of casserole plan that entails me arranging the ingredients ahead of time so I can just pop said casserole (or whatever) into the oven when I get home. Last week this didn’t pan out, but this week I’m crawling back up on the wagon.
And I had a good moment when in search of an onion quiche recipe for Monday night I found Nigella Lawson’s “Supper Onion Pie” (a version of the recipe can be found here)in Domestic Goddess which isn’t a quiche at all but more of an onion upside down pie. I was excited because I haven’t cooked this recipe before and rarely get around to Nigella’s savory dishes.
As of this moment I have now cooked the onions, grated the cheese and mixed the dry ingredients, so tomorrow night I’ll hopefully come home, crack an egg, mix in some milk and mustard and have dinner in half an hour or so. Tres exciting! It feels spontaneous! It feels planned! Mostly, quite honestly, I feel a little tired.
Speaking of spontenaity: since I was in the kitchen anyway, and feeling a little down for reasons unrelated to food or menu planning, I decided to mix up a batch of Monkey Bread from Smitten Kitchen and while this does indicate a falling off the wagon in the whole “watching what I eat” portion of my life, it was unplanned.
The Monkey Bread was fine. Needed a little more salt and a little more exctement. The Nigella pie was phenominal. Ate the entire thing phenominal.
The monkey bread was delicious – I swiped a bit on my way out yesterday and it was just what I needed to fuel me all the way home.
I have become a menu planner, and I find it relieves a lot of anxiety and really helps with the whole “watching what I eat” thing. I draw up a plan for the week on Friday (including a “leftovers” night and an “order-in Indian” night) and then buy groceries on Saturday. Because I leave the house so early every day, I reserve the slow cooker for Tuesdays, when I’m at home and have time to assemble things in the morning. I usually put one or two new things on the menu list, but we also have one “random vegetable and tofu stir-fry” night and one pasta night, to keep things simple.
Now that I’m working the early schedule, this works really well. Last semester, when I was often getting home at 7 pm, it kind of fell apart, and I learned instead to stock the freezer up with stews, soups and chilis, so that most nights all I had to do for dinner was to instruct the Fiance to put rice on when he got home, and then throw something in the microwave when I arrived.