Restore Rhythm: Eat Smart
“When we’re busy, taking time to cook a healthy meal is often the first thing to go” (103) Rebekah Lyons wrote in her chapter about eating smart. This past Friday, while my kids and I were in the kitchen, preparing lunches for our day at our homeschool co-op, I glanced over at my youngest child. Eleven year old Matt was standing with slumped shoulders and a pouty mouth, staring at my dry-erase meal planning calendar on the wall. “Are we not going to eat in the month of February?” he asked in a melancholy voice. With 14 basketball games in the planner within a week, (six of them out of state in Fort Wayne, Indiana), all of the games coached by the two parents of our family, plus almost 30 other commitments throughout that same week, figuring out ideas for meals - much less time to make and eat them! - just wasn’t top on the priority list, to put it mildly..
My kids are a bit spoiled in regards to food; their mom loves to cook, and she also has developed a really effective system for being motivated to feed her family of six. What I do is go through the upcoming month and figure out what time we’ll be able to eat dinner each night. Then I figure out what meal would work out best in terms of a crockpot meal, a rare meal at a restaurant, a casserole, or something you make that night and eat that night. This all comes down to who is home and who knows how to do what level of helping with a meal. I write the plan on my dry erase board, and each night that I make one of the meals, I get to put a small magnet with a Bible verse on that square. It’s very rewarding in a simple sort of way!
But February was presenting many challenges and obstacles to my organized brain, and I’d finally given up trying to come up with an idea for each night, especially when I will end up being away from home sometimes from 2:30 until 8:30 on certain nights. “Without intentional planning, a healthy menu can be difficult to maintain” (103) Lyons writes. She’s not kidding. Fortunately, this too is a season that will pass.
I found my inner cynic rearing its ugly head as I read this particular chapter, to be honest. (Perhaps you remember my inner Eeyore rearing its little blue head in a previous blog post.) This author not only seems to have mastered routines of meal-planning, but she also advocates for a Whole30 diet, which sounds like it’s about as healthy as it is possible to eat while living on this planet. So although my take-away from the chapter should have been an inspiration to eat healthier and to do an even better job of providing sustenance for my family, I think that I read it on the wrong week of the year.
Perhaps all of us can relate to the quote my dad found and sent to me to make me laugh the other day, “Who knew that the hardest part of being an adult is figuring out what’s for dinner every single night for the rest of your life until you die?” I realized as I read this quip and thought about our family’s eating habits that, as much as I’d like to prioritize meals together and eating healthy every time we gather together, sometimes I just have to be content with a little less than perfect. We eat together most nights most of the year, and it’s usually a meal made from scratch. We may have to just make those things our goals at this point.
What about you? Do you enjoy planning and preparing meals? Do you buy organic and create healthy meals from ingredients many people have never even heard of before? If so, good for you! That’s inspiring and beautiful. But if you aren’t that person, don’t get discouraged either. Find a rhythm and methods that work well for your family to keep them well-nourished and to encourage that precious time around the table together.
