Where’s my easy meals?
Recently as life and work became extremely hectic and exhausting, I came across a few revelations in my haze of trying to manage anything outside of sleeping and working, especially saving money through meal planning with the goal on not eating out.
The first is that my significant other should by now know most of the people at the grocery store on a first name basis without having to look at name tags for how often they seem to go on “the family’s behalf”. Now I know that sounds like a “dig” against my significant other, but it really isn’t. Neither myself nor my significant other is perfect, which is great. I don’t want perfection and anyone who doesn’t have baggage coming out of their 20s feels like more work and trouble than what they may be worth as a partner. I am “mom” to two small beings, one with fur and one without fur. To this end, I understand that my significant other was trained from a very young age by his family that the way to feel better is through buying things and food. This can make him going grocery shopping a double-edged sword, with or without a supplied “what to buy” list. So understanding that they are always going to come back with “extras” means I need to try and hold onto anything I may mention to them that we need until I have a full list.
The second revelation is, honestly, meal planning every week was a lot of time for someone like me who loves looking in cookbooks and finding new recipes like a treasure hunt was presented. I was finding that I really didn’t look forward to giving up the couple of hours I was doing every weekend to something that was beginning to be more of a chore than a blessing. Meal planning was supposed to be quick and easy to organize and reap the benefits of knowing what we will be eating at any moment so that no one must answer “what’s for dinner” without having to think.
In addition, using Google Calendar as simply a list of meals to make wasn’t cutting it either. I found a list of irritations using it, despite the software being touted as a great “free meal planning” software all over the internet. I found that
· I was spending a ton of time moving and duplicating recipes. Because unlike everyone else who uses it on the internet who must have perfect memories to just re-create the “event” of the meal each time, my brain doesn’t remember what we ate from one week to another.
· I didn’t want to just put a meal repeating every so often be the meal repeating once a week or once a month. This to me seems a step backwards transporting my family back to the 1950’s where meatloaf means it must be Thursday night or that it’s the 15th.
· If I wanted my significant other to cook, I couldn’t just put “Make X”. My significant other needs explicit instructions to feel comfortable making a recipe as they want to feel proud that the meal is cooked to expectations, even if I have none or little. This also doesn’t seem to be a concern for anyone else as they aren’t needing to put the full recipe in the description of the event in Google Calendar.
I would say in general I was spending anywhere from 10-30 minutes depending on the time of the month duplicating recipes and moving them to the next month or dragging them to the week I wanted assuming the dragging would actually work. So, I came up with the criteria I was looking for to make this process quick and not maddening.
· I needed to be able to have different categories of recipes that I could easily add to and choose from. This needs to be able to come from multiple sources whether it be from cookbooks, websites, or handwritten family recipes.
· I needed to have a way to have the full recipe and links to where to find the original recipe if I needed to back track or clarify something mistyped.
· I wanted to be able to see the calendar and the recipes at the same time to help with when a recipe should be made.
· I wanted to be able to just duplicate or copy and paste a recipe as part of the planning process.
· I wanted to be able to create a shopping list of the ingredients added together and remove any ingredients that I may already have, like salt and pepper.
· It had to be something myself and my significant other could both see and instantly make updates without having to re-sync or let the other person know it happened.
So, the first change I aim to be easy. Meal plan for two weeks at a time where hopefully I will spend the same amount of time planning but see the benefit of not doing more than roughly twice a month. This should also help limit the number of times I tell my significant other we need to “go to the grocery store” which should help with SOME of the impulse buys that are done. I hope it will also as a by-product clear out my stores more than just a week as I was also getting complaints we weren’t always eating things we have.
Now for the planning itself. Whelp, from my search nothing exists with all this functionality I wanted. Sad panda. So, ok what can I settle with to try. In the end I didn’t end too far from where I started. I am now using Google Tasks. Neither Google Tasks, nor the add-on apps, has the ability to copy or duplicate tasks without making them recurring which defeats my purpose. However, I can create a “database” of different lists of task recipes and then use the lists to then find recipes I want. I plan add to my task lists which may take time, but we will see. When I go to meal plan the idea is to look at the lists, settle on a recipe and then copy and paste the full “task description” (aka recipe instructions) into the new event on the Meal Planning calendar within Google Calendar.
I am hopeful that the time I took to set up my 7 lists with roughly 5 average recipes each will then pay the time dividends later. The other benefit that may also pop up is since the Meal Planning Calendar and Meal Planning Task lists are shared with my significant other, he might also feel empowered some day to use it themselves sharing that responsibility as there is interest.
Time will tell.
