Inspired by my time with my brother over the last two weeks, I came home with a renewed passion for a deeper Food Practice with Jon. I shared with him that the structure of the day opened up such a lovely rhythm to the day, and it also lent itself to more face to face time with my brother.
Being that both of us (Jon and I) work from home, we have both been challenged by how to best manage our time and fit in all the things that are important to us. So after some dialogue we came up with the idea of creating weekly menus together for each meal of the week.
I want to say that this is something that we feel will work for us. Remember that we live together and work from home, so we are usually together 24 hours a day (we really like each other). This means that we are together for most of our meals, whereas other couples, where one or both partners work outside of the home, are usually only together for dinner.
A lot of this for us depends on having a normal sleeping schedule, which we have finally gotten back on track with. So with that in mind, we have committed to sitting down together once a week, preferably over a yummy breakfast and come up with the menu for the entire week. This means that we pick recipes, or old favorites and decide when we will eat them that week (breakfast, lunch and dinner) so that the groceries for that week can be purchased.
Being that there are 21 meals in a week, and if we eat three times a day, we had to have a very real conversation about how realistic or even desirable 21 meals would be. The reality is that Jon eats breakfast and lunch at Cafe Aroma about twice a week, and together we go on a date night to eat out about once a week. On occasion we both go to Cafe Aroma to work which puts us both there for 1 or 2 meals that day. The other thing that came up for our consideration is that often there are left overs from dinners we’ve made, so I will usually be the one to eat them for lunch the next day or they are used to create another meal entirely.
All of these factors came up, and I must say that it was a wonderful conversation to have and it cultivated our Food Practice tremendously. It really made us conscious of what exactly we have been doing with our meals and we were able to really identify how much we miss out on each other when we eat on different schedules. In discussing the idea of having a regular structure to our days, the pleasure in choosing meals together, and choosing date nights with places we could go, became really juicy.
So our Menu planning looks like this:
1. Sunday Morning: Over breakfast we go over recipes and ideas as to what we want to eat for this week.
2. A date night or two is chosen and we consciously choose where we want to go and why, thus eliminating any last minute “I want to eat out, don’t know where to go, lets just go to the first place we come to” type choices.
3. Meals which we will be apart for, we each handle separately.
4. Room is left on the weeks menu for cooking leftovers that are either eaten as they were originally made, or reconfigured in some way.
5. Write up the menu on a lovely graph.
6. Organize shopping list on a lovely pad of paper.
7. Finish breakfast and go shopping.
8. Special note: All of this can change and is subject to the flow of our lives. I believe its important to make commitments to action, but allowances for the spontaneous occurrences of life are important to remaining present and thriving with any practice.
This is just a brief (!) outline of part of our Food Practice. There is much more that comes with this and I’ll be sharing it as time passes and this is in fact a brief jumping off point for a chapter of the book I’m writing for couples and their Food Practice. I really want to hear from single couples out there (couples with no children).
How many meals do you eat together?
Who cooks most of the meals?
How did you decide this?
Do you plan the menu together?
Share, share, share.
How many meals do you eat together?
Steve and I eat dinner together, usually, and we also eat all of our weekend meals together., which i guess adds up to eleven meals together, but there are occasional bagel-breakfasts together, too, so maybe its more like about ten to fifteen meals per week. There are the occasional evenings when our dinner plans don’t coincide, but typically, we eat at home together.
Who cooks most of the meals?
Often, the way things work out is I whip up a vegetarian meal like pasta, rice, or chili tacos, while Steve makes salad and guacamole. And, probably about once during the week, we will go out to La Casita. During the weekend, anything is fair game: eating out for a decadent breakfast at cafe aroma, or relaxing and staying in for veggie burgers and home fries…with salad and steve’s awesome tahini, if I’m lucky!
How did you decide this? We sort of worked into it, I suppose, although it isn’t perfect and I tend to like eating a late dinner (I feel like I’m in Spain or Italy if I do that, thanks to some groovy exchange student lived with back in my Berkeley days), whereas Steve likes to eat an early meal (he’s famished after work). There are plenty of times when our meals don’t quite sync up, but we try. It’s so romantic to cook together!
Do you plan the menu together?
We do, but it’s very last minute, typically…we just kind of see what we feel like in the moment, which is fun and spontaneous, but it also leads to some last-minute restaurant trips, as you mentioned. We try to eat at home though: it’s wonderfully romantic, as i said, and also, I like knowing how clean and fresh the food as well as the kitchen really is, and if I eat at home, then I know.
Laurel, thanks so much for sharing! I think that the hardest thing for us has been syncing up our eating habits and times. Jon was a much earlier eater then I as well, and he also does big breakfasts, which I never use to do. Over time we have somehow manage to find a common ground. Its almost a dance, and I love hearing about how other couples do it. And yes…I love cooking together too! Some vino, cool music in the background… I think that we are lucky up on the mountain because last minute restaurant choices don't end up being bad. I mean… look at the great option we have. But I do know that there are things we would love to try off the hill that we never seem to get around to, because so much of those choices are last minute and as you know… most times leaving the hill requires a bit of advance planning… or is that because we're old? 😛
Hello lovely people!
This is such a great topic. Chris works outside the home so he eats breakfast at home & packs lunches about half the time. I make sure we have components as well as dishes for dinner. I eat dinner much earlier than Chris though we spend the evenings together. I’m trying to do more planning, and recently decided I’d have a loose plan of having one casserole and one soup per week. These will be based on what’s on sale, what’s seasonal, etc.
Hey you! So great to see you here, hope things are doing well for you. I think casseroles are the best thing ever! I use to think it was some archaic dish, not sure where I got that from, but last year I started making them and they are so easy and make for a hearty meal that is easy to 'accesorize'. Thanks for sharing!
meu planning ,cooking,pantry check its all done by me,,,;-)
Hi Elena!! Another very inspiring post!! I am happy to share a peek into Hansel and my food practice…
How many meals do you eat together?
We eat most of our dinners together. Two nights out of the week Hansel works till 11pm–and so those nights I eat dinner alone–and as for breakfast and lunch–they are meals we generally eat on our own–except for the days that Hansel is off—then we do eat together.
Who cooks most of the meals?
When we do eat together–we always cook together. Hansel eats meat–so he'll prepare a meat dish while I'll make a vegetarian meal for myself that most of the time he shares as well. Sometimes Hansel will cook up a Costa Rican somethin' somethin' that we'll share too–but most of the time it's a fusion of both our meals! Except I don't eat the meat. We love cooking together though–it's alot of fun and some of our great conversations happen while in the kitchen.
How did you decide this?
It just kind of happened naturally. We've always been this way–for as long as I can remember. The only thing we still grumble about is dishes–neither of us are big on doing dishes!!!
Do you plan the menu together?
Sort of. Hansel works for Sprouts–a Farmer's Market grocery store–kind of like a Whole Foods. And we share a car–so I pick him up from work and we plan our menu by what we decide to purchase that day or so from where he works. But, I've been thinking for awhile now to start planning them out might save on time–but also throw a little more excitement into our meals. Many times when we plan by simply choosing what looks good–we don't make many interesting meals. I really am inspired by your menu idea. Love it!
BIG Hugs! BIG Hugs!
Hey Connie love! Thank you so much for sharing… And yes. For the most part we do menu planning together, although there are times when I'll fill in gaps here and there – especially for lunch. I'm finding that just taking leftovers from the previous days and making something new from it, is not only working my creative muscle, but just makes sense in terms of using the food the most we can. No matter what, I always end up with left overs. I do find that, that planning our weekly menus, seems to cut down on food waste because we know exactly what we need for the meals that week.
We used to do this on Sunday morning as well, when we lived in the States. We'd plan out 5 dinners we wanted to cook (I usually cook 3 or 4 of them, my husband cooks once or twice a week), make our grocery list, and go shopping. Now that we're in France, our fridge isn't big enough to hold a week's worth of food, so I usually shop for dinner on the way home from work.
Now, we still cook 5 or so nights a week, but do much less planning. Lunches are usually leftovers or sandwiches, and we go out once or twice. On the weekends, my husband likes to cook a big breakfast, which we eat late, and then we might spend all afternoon braising something for dinner.
We definitely do not eat 21 meals a week! 🙂
You know, I'm noticing that we don't eat 21 meals either. Whats beginning to happen is that lunches as super smaller versions of something I make with leftovers. So its more like a glorified snack on most days.