Jan 10, 2017, Updated Apr 09, 2024 We were talking about “resolutions” last time you were here. I use bunny ears around the word because I don’t make actual resolutions, but I do make reflections. I have another one for you that’s been spinning around my mind. Something I realized last year, my first with two kids, is that life will keep on zipping by with just the minimum accomplished unless I plan. Now that my attention is demanded in so many directions, and I’m run off my feet just keeping two little ones fed, clothed, clean and prevented from drinking the bottle of Tylenol or swallowing pen clickers*, if I don’t have an actual plan, entire days are snatched out from under me like sheets off the little paper tear-off calendars. Books are not read. Magazines are not cooked from. Emails are distractedly scanned, forgotten and left unanswered. And I am face-down in a piece of chocolate cake with unbrushed hair and a wild look in my eye. When I was a consulting dietitian I would teach cooking and nutrition workshops and I would say about meal prep, “failing to plan is planning to fail”. That was back when I was freshly graduated from university with an abundance of free time and had no idea how true that really was. Toward the end of 2016, I started actually meal planning (much more on that to come). I started planning work schedules weeks in advance. I have a set number of hours per week with the nanny and now I know on Sunday exactly what I’ll be doing with those, and by Monday I’ll have all the ingredients and props on hand. It feels amazing to be prepared, I get so much more done, we eat better, everyone’s lives are smoother, and I’m loving it. It feels like I more captain of my life and less the frazzled passenger who keeps falling overboard. So that’s an intention to carry forward and expand on in the new year. Plan, plan, plan, plan, plan. This dish was on my meal plan for last week. You could skip the fried shallots, but I really recommend you don’t. They’re so delicious. Serve with hot basmati rice and/or some kind of flatbread. *He climbed the chair and crawled across the dining room table to get the bottle of baby Tylenol, then I found him chilling on the sofa with bottoms up. Thankfully at 3 am after I’d administered it I’d had the wherewithal to secure the child safety cap properly before putting it “out of reach”. On separate recent incident, he actually swallowed a pen clicker. NEXT READING: 37+ Delicious Mediterranean Casserole Recipes
