Internet friends, any advice for money saving ways to deal with a food rut? Have you successfully figured out a way to get through it?
I go through periods where food seems gross to me (not from a dieting/body image/etc place I promise) and I’m in one now. Meal planning seems so exhausting because I don’t want to think about food.
We do a lot of “snack dinners” with hummus and veggies or pita, soft cheese and baguette and jams, olives, pickles, nuts, etc
ETA this has benefit of the partner who is into eating getting to eat a full and varied meal and the partner with aversions can eat just what isn’t gross to them. It saves N from having to eat just mashed potatoes for days on end when that’s about all I can deal with.
My go-tos when I’ve been too tired to have an appetite or deal with food:
premade smoothie or green juice
plain kefir
cartons of soup, like carrot/butternut squash/lentils
I can chug them quickly and get some sustenance without thinking very much about it. If I rotate among them throughout the course of a day there’s some nutritional variety.
It is as lifesaver on busy weeks too! I will often do it in the lead up to Christmas or on the first grocery trip after camping or vacation. Definitely more expensive than making your own, but tricks you into eating fruits and veggies and feels special.
G and his brother will often bring women fruit trays for postpartum/ their birthday/ Mother’s Day type holidays (especially if they know flowers are already covered). I am very on board with people showing up with a fruit tray for me.
A few questions, kind of invasive, and a long list of suggestions based on my experiences:
Summary
What part of the food seems gross? Eating? Cooking? Thinking about how to adult and properly feed yourself? Being overwhelmed by options and shutting down with indecision? Does thinking about cooking at home feel the same as getting take out?
If it is thinking about preparing food and indecision: Is it possible to make it more of a routine based thing so you don’t have to think about food? Would eating the same thing for 3 days help or hurt?
When you have been in food ruts in the past, how long have they lasted? Do you know what has helped in the past?
I ask because my suggestions will be different depending on what the actual problem is. I have been through all of these and the solution was different.
if the issue is eating sounds gross - think of food as strictly fuel. Make as high of calorie items as I can to shovel into my body and spend as little time eating as possible. PB&J sandwiches are a god send.
if the issue is cooking - get healthier frozen meals, SUPER easy to cook things (like rip, dump, microwave or rip, dump, oven). Casseroles, stir fry, etc. Anything that is less than 10-20 mins of effort.
Thinking how to adult and properly feed myself - make a meal prep plan and spend 2-3 hours on Sunday cooking all of my meals for the week. Cook 2-3 recipes (1 breakfast, 1-2 lunch/dinners). Put in containers that are easy to microwave later.
Being overwhelmed and shutting down with indecision - outsourcing to partner or friends to help with planning and cooking. Finding what else is stressing me out and trying to remove stress in other areas of life because this is a sign I am stressed in more than just my food rut.
I’m annoyed at my husband for deciding he wants to try to make jambalaya for the first time this week. I’m stressed out because our kids are home all week because they have Covid, and it’s expensive for a meal I don’t know if we’ll like! I’ve never had jambalaya before, I don’t love spicy food, and both okra and the concept of this many meats together weird me out, because I grew up in conservative southern Colorado with conservative, middle-class, midwestern parents who didn’t experiment with food.
Also, King Soopers only has frozen okra. Will this be a problem? I have no idea how to cook okra correctly, but I do know it can end up slimy if you do it wrong.
Okra is a thickener in gumbo and jambalaya, so in this case the slime is a feature, not a bug. You can quit worrying about that part at least. Frozen should do fine. By the time the whole thing is cooked you won’t detect the slime in the mix.
Well, that’s one thing I don’t have to worry about. Thanks
I’m hoping I’ll love it, but I can already feel myself being prejudiced against it, to the point where I’m like “ew, GREEN peppers? Let’s use red, please.” Ridiculous, but hard to get out of my brain.
I personally don’t put okra in jambalaya and wouldn’t suggest it. It’s definitely not anything I’ve ever heard of and I lived in New Orleans for 21 years! I would make it without to start, and see if you like that! I am not a huge fan of green or red bell peppers, and I use Rotel tomatoes (very inauthentic haha) because I prefer the flavor of green chile’s to bell peppers. You can use just plain chopped tomatoes too, although some people don’t use tomatoes at all! The beauty of jambalaya is you can put the meats+veggies you like, and eliminate the others, and it’s still going to be really really good!
I am lukewarm on green peppers but in Southern food they do seem to work well.
I would suggest to your husband that he maybe try it without the okra initially? I realize this is heresy to southerners. But I’ve made vegan jambalaya before without it and it was quite good.
I have no firm opinions on okra in jambalaya. I’ve had it with and without. It needs some veggies of some sort in my opinion, but I am aware that reasonable people disagree. What veggies- that doesn’t really matter. What veggies do you have?
It also doesn’t require the thickening the way gumbo does- the rice will do that alone .
Edit- also I was a grown-ass adult before I learned bell peppers come in colors other than green.
These are all good things to think about! I think it’s a combo of all of the things you mentioned. Part of my problem is that my food sensitivities are kind of dumb and complicated, so it makes it hard to outsource any planning for what I can eat, even to my wife. Annoying!
Oh, and the other element is that between some loss of taste from COVID + spring allergy season, I can’t really taste food very well, which I’m sure doesn’t help.
And, you all gave me a lot of good stuff to think about. This week, I’m going to shoot for super easy cooking + grab and go foods, plus eating the same thing for lunch and dinner as much as I can. Here’s my lunch and dinner menu:
Fancy crackers and prosciutto
PBJs
Tayor Farms salad kits (thank you @mountainmustache29) + pre-made single chicken breasts that live in the freezer
Thanks for having this conversation here. It prompted me to pick up some of those prosciutto wrapped cheese sticks while at the store today so that I had an easy food on hand that wasn’t just @marcela eats 7 Hawaiian rolls for lunch.
