1/27/2019

Exponentially better


I wanted to share a little bit about how our meal planning paradigm has slowly shifted. I recently took a course with the Lazy Genius called The Meal Plan. It costed actual cash dollars, and while I would have gladly paid for it even if it didn't work (because everything else I've already learned from her has been worth it), it did help me a lot and I'm really thankful.

I have complained so much about meal planning and tried many different methods. And while my currently meal planning game is far from 100% right now, it's exponentially better, and I have Kendra to thank for it.

It's awkward, because I want to share, but I don't want to give away for free what she has worked hard on and is part of her business and livelihood... does that make sense? So I emailed her to see how I might do this respectfully. She basically gave me the green light and simply asked that I include a link to the course. There's a wait list currently, but you can sign up to be notified when it opens up again. I highly recommend it.

I hope that by sharing what I've learned, it might help you, and also, I'm really interested in more conversations about food, culture, and family. Perhaps you'll read through the lines to see what I mean, and what I've been thinking and wrestling about lately.

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One huge component of Kendra's Meal Plan is to have in your arsenal a list of Brainless Crowd Pleasers. This is a physical list of meals that please your crowd - your people, your family, you. You draw from this when you are making your meal plan.

It's so simple and obvious that I missed it. I kept thinking about what "normal" families eat (or what they "should" eat, or what kid might like to eat) instead of thinking, What does my family truly like to eat?

Thinking about this turned on its head the question I usually ask. And now, instead of trying to figure out to modify the meals I want to cook/eat into meals my family will eat, I now think about how to plan meals around the foods I know my family will eat.

I can safely say that Kathy, Theo, and Emilyn are more particular and more limited in their preferences than are David and I. Instead of seeing this change as catering to them in a "selling out" sort of way, I am now relieved that when I cook something I know Kathy likes, it usually turns out that Theo, Emilyn, David, and I all love it, too.

And these foods tend to fall in the Asian (and particularly, Southern Chinese and Vietnamese) spectrum.

(Theo doesn't care for tomato sauce, so spaghetti is off our rotation. It doesn't mean we never eat it, but I try to change my default mentality that it could be incorporated with regularity. I'll just find myself banging my head on the wall if I do so.)

Don't get me wrong, I am *happy* to eat Asian food. I just don't usually think of it first when I think of what I'm craving. Ironically, this is because it is like background noise to me, like water to a fish. When I think about what I want to eat, it's Mexican, Indian, or Mediterranean. (Or, lbh, McDonald's.)

But eating Asian? It just doesn't come to mind.

However, when I smell julienned ginger hitting a hot pan with sesame oil, I am immediately transported to my mom's kitchen, Ratatouille-style. The same goes for preparing green onions, cilantro, ginger: the Chinese Holy Trinity.

In our second- and third- generation Asian-American household, I used to think of making bao or steamed anything was a special occasion.

Now I take out the steamer on a weekly basis, and it feels surprisingly natural.

Everyone is happier food-wise, and as the kitchen's chief executive director/operator, I couldn't be more pleased.

This is the game changer.

Yes, it's fascinating to me that where we landed was: what works for us is to plan, cook, and eat more Asian food. But it's maybe even more interesting to me that choosing to "settle" for What My Family Eats (even if it's not what I always feel like cooking or eating) is ultimately way easier for me because it takes the anxiety/pressure off wondering if my family will appreciate the effort I put into meals.

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And so begins what may become a series of posts on food and meal planning. List of our Brainless Crown Pleasers (BCPs) forthcoming.

Tell me about you! How are your food habits similar/different to when you grew up? How has your environment, geography, and intercultural/interracial connections shaped your development of food habits?

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P.S. This article entitled "Our Idea of Healthy Eating Excludes Other Cultures, And That's A Problem"* was an interesting one sent to me by my friend Marla after we talked about intuitive eating and how that could help us better take into account cultural differences.

*Marla, I'm getting self-conscious about referencing an article in front of an English professor... it's supposed to be in quotes and not italicized, right? ;P

P.P.S. I'm happy to report that more than a year later, we are pretty much still using our days-of-the-week mnemonic for our breakfast routine. The slight modification is that Tuesdays may have more tater tots than tacos, and that Friday's Fried Eggs sometimes come in the form of French Toast.

5 comments:

  1. So what's in the weekly rotation NOW? =)

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    1. MEWTON! I had no idea you were still reading this. >.< Hi! And I also heard you have a BABY! (Wait, maybe another on the way, too?!?! Congrats!) Okay, I will be posting more soon to answer your question. Now there's some accountability......

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    2. Yup. Now we have a 1 MO and a 14 MO! :-o Life's crazy right now. You posted/published at a time when I was warming up formula in the middle of the night. HA HA HAH A!

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  2. Man I have so much to learn from you regarding food and planning for it!

    Still trying to figure out our food habits! But a lot of it has been shaped by convenience, the H-Mart (or any ethnic food shop) is a long 45 min - 1 hour drive so the habit of lots of korean soup with rice is nonexistent. I think being in Texas and because of Steven it's been a lot more "burrito bowl-esque" type food, using long grain rice (THAT YOU DON'T WASH) and cook with chicken broth and onion as the base, and then squeezing lime and sprinkling cilantro on everything.

    Recently I've re-discovered my favorite lazy meal of day old korean rice with soy sauce and sesame oil with steamed egg and kimchi if we have it (but Steven thinks it's weird haha). And I make korean rice now more often because I finally bought a giant bag when I went to H-mart 4 months ago lol.

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    1. It's so hard when you live far away from ethnic markets! It makes a big difference when you have access to the staple ingredients you need. Yay long-grain rice (and haha to the shock at the not washing part). This rice sounds amazing, I need more details. Do you cook it in a rice cooker or on the stove, is the onion whole or chopped, sauteed or raw?

      Rice and egg for the win, always. (Maybe tell Steven he's the weirdo.)

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