Ever since I broke my leg in 2022, the household has been adjusting to healthier eating habits.
Back then, it was to help me heal better after the resulting surgery that made me feel a bit like Humpty Dumpty.
Right now it’s turned into a full-fledged family goal that we’re taking small steps to work through it.
The hardest part for us seems to be finding recipes for home-cooked meals that don’t require extensive preparations or specialty ingredients.
While we’re not trying to tackle fad diet trends or making ourselves suffer, it’s still a challenge when news and events pick up in the county.
Busier seasons are both great because they move us quickly through the year and a little annoying when trying to plan dinner every other night.
There’s been a handful of times when we’re shifting plans in the middle of the week due to schedules not overlapping in our favor.
This also goes hand-in-hand with grocery shopping and trying to keep spending down while tariffs loom on the horizon.
Granted, the price of groceries has been grossly inflated since COVID hit, but, it just seems to be getting worse lately and tariffs aren’t going to make things any easier or cheaper.
I try to only go to the store for essentials or special items once a week and, for the most part, tentatively plan meals to be interchangeable for lunch or dinner.
Breakfast is almost impossible to coordinate in weekday mornings because Mike and mom are morning people and I’m not – my breakfast time is hours after theirs!
So, we usually don’t try to schedule a big breakfast event unless it’s a weekend or holiday where my siblings come home for a visit.
Lunches are usually simpler fare and require less work than dinners as well.
When it looks like the week will be too full and random, then I plan for meals that share enough of the same overlapping ingredients so that I can adjust the cooking time accordingly.
Another unfortunate wrinkle in this health shift has been that some recipes don’t go over with everyone so they’re either shelved or tweaked until they become winners.
Some of those tweaks are based on other cooks’ comments, suggestions from friends or a random little epiphany.
And while that process makes me feel like Dr. Victor Frankenstein cobbling together ingredients in the hope of having a dish worthy of a seal of approval from both Mike and mom, I have to admit that it’s also rather fun.
Also, when my sister Ashlee finds new recipes to try, she invariably always sticks to the recipe script and has a tiny tantrum when I deviate from it!
Right now, I’ve perfected roughly three recipes for the household with those processes – but it took me over six months to do it.
That rate on return isn’t super great at first glance and could be discouraging for anyone else, however, it only pushes me to find more recipes to try.
Overall, I’m glad that Mike doesn’t mind being a guinea pig – especially when it’s a recipe mom won’t even sample!
I found about a dozen more recipes to test out over the weekend, so, we’ll see if I can find something they’ll both brave.
You can rest assured that I’ll let you know how it turns out – especially if it’s a total flop.
