Last weekend I was in my friend Nina’s bright, airy kitchen, taking in the expansive view of the Hudson River out the back window, when she motioned me over to the kitchen table. “Please sit down,” she said. In front of me, there was a small pile of cookbooks, some old Gourmet magazines, and a well-loved, yellowed recipe booklet that once belonged to her grandmother. Nina handed me a pad of paper and a pencil. She took a seat next to me and said, “I feel like maybe I should be lying on a couch.”
Her 9-year-old came bounding into the kitchen and thanked me — unprompted! — for the meal Andy cooked for him at our house the night before. We laughed. We talked about last night. He left and she turned to me again, a serious look on her face.
“OK, Nina,” I said. ” What seems to be the problem?”
She took a deep breath. “I just can’t get organized when it comes to grocery shopping” she said. “I really need help.”
Because of my line of “work,” I seem to land myself in these kinds of dinner heart-to-hearts all the time. I imagine my friend Kate, a psychologist and the world’s best listener, helping her friends through stress and anxiety and deeply personal issues, offering them comforting advice with phrases like “That’s normalizing.” Not me. My patients’ issues — at least as they present themselves to me — tend to center more on pork chops and grocery lists. Last year, at pick-up, a mother of three approached me and said “I get angry – really angry, when my kids say they don’t like the food I’ve spent time cooking for them.” She paused then added, “Sometimes I have to get up and walk away from the table.” About a gazillion times a month I hear this complaint: “We eat the same things week after week. I can’t seem to break out of the rut!” Last year, after a book talk I gave at a local school, a mother asked me: “What do you do if you don’t know how to make sauce?”
But of all the issues that can face a dinner-maker — no time, no skills, no inspiration, no help with the cooking — Nina has the big one down: Family dinner is the house default mode. She and her husband (who both work from home) and their two kids sit down to a meal together every night.
“What are you so worried about?!” I told her. “That’s the hardest part to nail!”
She didn’t quite see it that way. “I guess. But I never have a plan when I go shopping,” she told me. “I never seem to have what I need to improvise.” She led me to her pantry and, Vanna-White-style, swept her arm across the shelves. There were three full bags of panko breadcrumbs, about a dozen bags of pecans. Nina told me she hits the supermarket once a week for the kids’ school lunch and breakfast staples, but on that shop doesn’t ever think about dinner ingredients. “Honestly,” she told me, “I don’t really think about dinner until the moment I’m standing in front of my refrigerator at 6:00.”
I had a sudden urge to rewrite the first line of Anna Karenina: Every unhappy family dinner-maker is unhappy in his or her own way. But instead I started scribbling some strategies that I wanted her to put into play immediately.
Strategy 1: Think about dinner before you have to make it. It’s not exactly breaking news, but if the goal is to make dinner something to look forward to — as opposed to one more task in between “pay taxes” and “schedule root canal” on the to-do list — you need to plan ahead. And planning ahead comes in all shapes and sizes. It means on Sunday, you look at the schedule for the upcoming week to determine which nights are going to be home-cooked meal nights and which ones are going to be storebought dinner nights. (And which ones are going to be Moo Shu pork in front of American Idol.) It means on a Monday or Tuesday morning taking two minutes to ask yourself: What can my 8:00am self do to help my 6:00pm self? Marinate something. Chop something. At the very least, decide on something. Get the momentum going.
Strategy 2: Try something new once a week. Nina’s kids eat almost any meat and love salmon, but they don’t love things mixed together, and could use some help expanding their vegetable repertoires. We looked in my upcoming book for some salmon recipes that were familiar to the boys, but different enough to feel like she was busting a rut. We also looked for interesting ways to upgrade the vegetables so the grown-ups could get a little more joy out of the steamed broccoli. I always feel like the trick to trying something new is to introduce it gradually — and preferably when there’s something else on the plate that is universally loved and embraced.
Strategy 3: Give yourself at least one From-the-Freezer night. Whether it’s thawing something homemade or chucking in the storebought default dinner you picked up at Trader Joe’s. Nina’s go-to in this situation is Trader Joe’s Mandarin Chicken. (Note to self: That stuff looks goood.) Don’t put pressure on yourself to cook something from scratch every night of the week. I don’t have to remind Nina, a sustainability consultant, that the name of the game is to create a sustainable dinner system.
Strategy 4: Be your own sous chef. Make something on the weekend (or at least a Sunday dinner) that can carry over to one meal during the week. It doesn’t even have to be a bolognese — though that would be nice. Even a five-minute homemade salad dressing will end up yielding some seriously happy dividends.
Strategy 5: Go out on Thursday or Friday night. No matter what your dinner issues are, you’ve earned it.
Above photos shot by Jennifer Livingston.
I love this! I use a similar weekly planning strategy, but am always hoping to improve it. Your tips and many in the comments will be great to work into my current system.
I’m a big fan of making extra and freezing it; it comes in handy on the unplanned nights. Another thing is with leftovers- my goal is always to “re-do” our leftovers so that it’s not the same dish. For example, pan-seared fish and veggies one night becomes fish tacos another night. Soup one night becomes soup over rice with poached eggs another. The little changes really make it more interesting.
Thank you!
Jenny, thanks for a fabulous post. Even though I love to cook and eat, I find 2 kids, 2 jobs, 4 busy lives means reaching for a frozen pizza far too often. I am excited to follow your plan and to keep reading!
One of my most favorite posts that you’ve ever written! Love it!
Fantastic post! And I’m lovin all the commenters’ suggestions too. I’ve been supporting families to transform their picky eaters into food-confident kids for years now and I fully agree – having a plan is so important. As the saying goes…if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. While it feels like meal planning takes more time & energy – it actually saves way more time than it takes – and it also saves so much anxiety – you know, that dreaded feeling that builds all day when you don’t know what you’re going to make for dinner.
I have some advice for the woman who shared how angry she gets when kids don’t like what she makes. It’s very natural to put a lot of love into what you cook for family and when they don’t like the food, it feels like they are rejecting you. Picky eating is very normal for kids – it isn’t them rejecting you. For many picky eaters it has nothing to do with you – they’re just honestly scared of trying the new food (or they honestly don’t like it). Before you cook your next meal, take a quiet moment and brainstorm all the many non-food ways that you can express your love for your family. Write them down and keep them nearby (or make it a memo on your smart phone/iPad). Pour your heart and soul into these ways. And, cognitively remind yourself while you prepare each dinner that your job is to plan, prepare and provide food. As long as you’ve done that, you’re a fantastic parent! Them liking what you’ve made – that’s outside of your control.
This is a brilliant post! Definitely will be using some of these recipes! I recently started meal planning and grocery list making and it’s a great way to watch your money as well as your health!!
I wouldn’t mind if you did this more often:)
I loved reading this post. I plan my meals weekly and close friends are always asking for advice on how I do it. It does take effort – I typically sit down late Saturday night and go through my recipe books/blogs and generate my list. It feels so great coming home from the stores Sunday morning knowing I have ingredients for roughly 7 meals. I like my kitchen well stocked!
I’m making the salmon tonight and I am so excited to try it!
Hi Jenny,
I discovered your blog a few weeks ago, and absolutely love it! I am still reading my way thru the posts and comments, your writing style is so engaging and full of humour, I feel like you’re talking about my life! Like you, I have been a diary keeper/list writer/meal planner for years, originally “hiding my condition” for fear of sounding too weird; but boy did that compulsive organization come in handy when my kids were born. That was 15 years ago, and I swear for me it’s been the best way to cope with the stress of juggling full time work/kids/home! I know it soulds odd, but I think of the time spent menu planning and grocery shopping as essential to keep our family life happy: watching the budget, making sure everybody is well fed, and with the food issues sorted for the week, I can focus on other stuff !!!