#maybe there are other spheres I can use my creativity & joy-in-projects to pursue

[whentherewerebicycles]

good morning!! we slept in till 7:15 which was so nice—turns out it’s lovely to get up with the sun instead of in the middle of the night haha. my college best friend is on a long road trip so we chatted for an hour and a half early this morning. it was really good to catch up with her and I got a lot of little chores done around the house while we were on the phone (my fave way to do chores lol I can do literally any household task if I have a friend on the phone). it was drizzling off and on this morning but it’s become a lovely clear day so I’d like to get up and get out of the house.

but first I want to chat a little out loud in my public diary!! I’ve been really good about cooking this week and I was thinking that I want a major goal for the next year to be to get into really solid eating and cooking habits… and to really focus on developing a repertoire of simple, healthy meals that I can lean on during (fingers crossed) the first couple years of having a kid. I know that under stress I default to takeout + microwave meals but I’ve made sooooo much progress in reshaping my eating habits over the past five years and I don’t want to backslide too much. I will never be someone who cares deeply about food or is interested in preparing super complex meals, but I know that for me making food is a way of concretely demonstrating care for my body/self, and when I stop doing that it means I’m probably letting a lot of other things slide too.

I’ve also been journaling a lot about what I want the cornerstones of my parenting practice to be—like, those few core things that are so important to me I want to spend a lot of time consciously laying the groundwork for them now so that even if I’m under extreme stress I’m prepared to make decisions that are aligned with those core goals/tenets/whatever. I hope that in general as a parent I can be flexible and decently committed to not sweating the small stuff when it comes to most things, but I want those few foundational things to be really solid, yknow?? and one of those things is food. I had such an unhealthy and confused relationship with food for so long, partly because it’s just real fucking hard to grow up as a girl immersed in our country’s batshit crazy and deeply cruel diet culture! but also I just was so uninformed about nutrition and so limited in my palate (that American monodiet), all of which made me more susceptible to the pressures of extreme binge dieting. I think my parents did a lot of small things right (in terms of not letting us eat much fast food, never allowing soda or other high calorie drinks, placing limits on sweets etc) but I also know they were raised on that same Midwestern monodiet and didn’t have much (or any) exposure to alternative ways of eating.

I really want my kid(s) to have a healthier relationship with food than I did, to have an internalized understanding of the basic nutritional principles behind what they eat, to eat the same mostly plant-based whole food diet I eat, and to be involved in preparing yummy non-processed meals for themselves from a young age. but of course in order to do this I have to really solidify those habits in myself too and equip myself with the knowledge I need to pass that knowledge on! as I said I have made a LOT of progress on that front over the past few years, but I want to make those habit changes even more ingrained and automatic for myself. I was thinking about how to make this into a fun project for myself—like something where I can see tangible progress and create something in the process—and I think I’ve settled on making a little personal cookbook for myself where I try a new simple-to-make plant-based recipe each week, take a photo of the meal and print it out, and write out a recipe card that includes advice to myself (like, tips for simplifying prep or preparing ahead of time to save time or putting a little garnish on it to make it look prettier)… and I’ll also include a breakdown of the nutritional components of the meal (not calories but like: this is a veggie-heavy meal with some healthy fats, or this is a protein-heavy meal but here’s how you can add extra veggies or pair it with a lighter meal earlier in the day). and then I’ll put the “cards” into those clear plastic sheet covers and store them in a binder organized by type of meal. I also really want my child to be involved in preparing food from a young age (I literally did not learn how to do a single cooking thing beyond boiling water until after college) so maybe as I go I can also leave myself little sticky note ideas for simple parts of each meal that a small child could contribute to. that way when I’m tired and frazzled a few years down the road I don’t have to expend any cognitive energy on figuring that stuff out—I can just be like oh ok so here’s where a kid could chop something soft with a plastic knife or here’s where we could pause and measure something out together.

anyway I am having fun working on it already! I haven’t started making the cards yet (I want to test out some possible templates and maybe buy some cardstock paper & other supplies) but I’m having a great time experimenting with recipes this week. last night I had friends over for dinner and I made these delicious sweet potato pita pockets with this lightly pickled cucumber salad liz made for me a few weeks ago… all of which takes about 10 min to prep and 20 min to come together. and then for breakfast today I’ve been trying to find easy alternatives to the handful of processed foods I still eat regularly, so I looked up how to make oatmeal in a rice cooker and made myself delicious fresh apple cinnamon oatmeal without any added sugar or preservatives. I also made that sweet potato chickpea curry earlier this weekend which is a great “make it in bulk and eat it all week” meal that feels fancier and more complex than it really is. and I found this “prepare ahead” veggie power bowl recipe I’m excited to try where you can roast a wide variety of veggies and cook a grain in advance, then mix and match throughout the week based on what combos sound good any given night. I think that doing the nutritional breakdowns will also be a good learning experience for me—I have a health condition which puts me at higher risk of insulin resistance/diabetes and can also affect fertility, and this will be a good way for me to drill myself on the glycemic index & help me figure out which meals are best for managing blood sugar spikes.

anyway it should be fun!!! since moving I’ve found that one way to really motivate myself to explore this new area is to ask myself “what new place will I check out this week?” and then to make it a priority to try a new park. and then on the day to day level too I try to ask myself “what’s a new thing I can try today?”, so I’ll turn left instead of right on a walk and explore where that takes me. I am so intensely a creature of habit & routine that I think it’s really good for me to build a habit of trying new things—otherwise I’ll just do the same thing over and over by rote. I’m the same way with eating so I’m hoping the same principle applies here! if I can build a habit of “each week I try out a new thing!” I can broaden my horizons a bit… and maybe I can even do some “what’s a new thing I can try in this meal?” thinking too to encourage myself to like, idk, try different spices or ratios or make interesting substitutions just to see how it turns out. plus I’ll have a BOOK of things I made by the end!!! like even if I just try 1-2 new things per week for a year that’s 50-100 options I’ll have in my repertoire, and then I can curate that collection however I want.