I’m concerned that there will be lots of moaning and complaining posts while I identify what’s wrong and what most needs to change. I’ve got a few drafted but held back on publishing because I noticed the tone. This post is to say I am aware this is happening and see it as part of the process.
I’ve got to find what I’m unhappy with before I can work out what to resolve. It’s too much to change it all at once. This is a journey with a winding path and many choices along the way. What is right for me might be different to what works for others. Equally, something that has worked for someone else may indeed work for me. I’m interested in hearing other solutions.
Please be patient through these unhappy posts, once I sift through the various problems, I can find one at a time to tackle. It won’t be like this the whole time.
We eat a main meal every day. For years it’s been the same question every dinner time – what to cook tonight? Sometimes best before dates help with the decision. Sometimes it’s time or energy constraints. Sometimes it’s the “only” thing left to eat! The key feature for most of my last 20 years, that’s me making those decisions most of the time.
There is scope for a discussion about the merits of this arrangement, how it came to be like this and hence the subject of the blog. In my household, I want to change this default setting.
With my lad, we’ve been discussing the idea of having a meal plan. On the surface, a brilliant idea: have a list of what we’ll be eating during the week. Whoever is cooking just has to cook the next thing on the list.
So far, the only reliable way to get this to work is one of two options: 1. I think of what to cook, buy and write it up or 2. I cajole the family into sitting in the same space and giving their attention to help decide what we should eat each day. Do you see any problems there? I do. In my experience, that’s me that will end up doing all or most of the work. Even in option 2 which sounds like there will be more input from the others, here is my work for it: pestering to get people to turn up, be ready with paper and pen, remind people when we are meeting, add items to the shopping list, write it all down, remind each person when it’s their day to cook and on it goes.
I can see as I list this out it looks and feels perhaps a little petty. Remember this is just one of many things that have defaulted to me. For whatever reasons that have made this the pattern, I find it easier to get on and do this work rather than enlist someone else to cook.
We don’t have a meal plan. We have got an allocated chef for each night. For real, most days I have to remind the person. On the days that the person themselves remembers, I have to help them choose what to cook! In my mind, neither of these tasks should be on me anymore!
Last night, my son had a brilliant idea towards the meal plan concept. I want him to be on board and involved with almost everything, not just food (he’s 16). So I like to incorporate his ideas as much as possible. Some will work better than others I’m sure. By using the ideas as part of the process to sharing the load, he will be valued and involved. The suggestion was that each day could be given a theme. The most likely being a country or area as a good type and style inspiration. For example, Italian or Thai.
Each day can have a theme
This will help immensely to narrow down the choices of what to cook. I hope we can implement this from our next weekly shop.
sharing the load 