Setting Goals: Plan It!

Goal #2. Make a plan

The second of my Three Summer Goals is possibly the most simple. On Saturday--during nap time or after Connor goes to bed for the night--I will plan out our family's meals for the week. I will go through our refrigerator and cupboards and make a list based on recipes and staples needing to be restocked. Then Connor and I will go to the grocery store on Sunday, we will cook our meals accordingly, and do it again the following week. Ta da! Goal #2 accomplished. 

This has been something I have attempted for over a year, and it has always failed in the long-term. I didn't realize how notorious this failure was until a few months ago when I told my mom that we were heading to Detello's (an excellent family-friendly pizza joint down the road) for dinner. Again. She snorted a bit and said, "What? You didn't plan your meals this week?" I sheepishly told her that yes, I had and that yes, again we had veered from the plan.  

Perhaps that was because that week's list looked something like this:

Monday: chilli

Tuesday: chicken? salad?

Wednesday: Bryan's meal

Thursday: leftovers

Friday: out?

Saturday: ??? see what's left

I look at some of these old lists--they are all kept as a cruel reminder of my past downfalls in the notebook that contains my weekly lists--and wonder what I was thinking. On Thursday, what would we be having leftovers of? Thy mystery "Bryan's dinner?" How does one buy ingredients for "chicken?" without knowing what type of chicken is going in the oven, on the grill, or in the wok? This was not a plan. This was lazy.

My new goal is not to simply make a plan, but to make a reasonable plan. One that I can stick to because I have specific dishes, ingredients that will cross over into multiple recipes, and food that can be remade on "leftovers" night rather than simply being reheated. This week's list was much better:

Tangy Rosemary Ranch Skewers with peppers, onions, and potatoes

Black Bean Soup with salad

Smoky Turkey Burritos with corn

Orange Chipotle Chicken with green beans

Four meals that left enough room for a night out or two out and a night or two of leftovers. Two meals that used the same unusual ingredient (chipotle peppers) that does not keep fresh for long. And each meal can sit in the fridge overnight, make an easy-to-pack lunch, or be put in the freezer if we need some flexibility.

Because that's what the old lists lacked. My previous plans were too grand and, frankly, too lame at the same time. Each week I would tell myself that "This week I'm serious. We won't eat out at all, and we won't buy anything new until everything is out of the fridge," secretly knowing that we would probably only make it until Tuesday's Kid's Night at Champps before breaking this promise. It simply isn't realistic for us to never go out and to cook every meal. When it was just Bryan and I, we were more likely to eat in only once or twice a week rather than the reverse. We like going out as a family; Connor enjoys the attention of other diners, and we grown-ups enjoy feeling like our lives haven't changed all that much now that we are parents. During the school year, there are some nights when both of us are too burned out to cook. Rather than feel guilty about this, I have decided to embrace it.

So far, this week has been good. When Connor fell on his head twice in the same day, we pitched the night's plan, took him to Barnes and Noble to play with Thomas the Tank Engine and bought him "noodles and puffs" at Leann Chin. And I felt just fine about it.

Update: Goal #1 is going better than expected. Bryan and I are being very good about working hard for less than an hour each day on our house projects. So far, we have cleaned out Bryan's office entirely (including a lovely boxelder bug cemetery that has apparently cropped up over the last two years), setting up the new wireless printer and putting the old one up for sale, and buying some plants to make the front of our home look a little less like a playground for water-logged toddlers. Goal #1 has expanded itself into a full-blown redecoration and reorganization of our whole house; we have decided to become all 21st century and tweet about it. You can follow us at https://twitter.com/decoratewithus. 

Setting Goals: The First Step

One thing that motherhood has certainly derailed in my life is my ability to set and attain personal goals. Don't get me wrong--I have still been successful at achieving some of my goals--completing my runs and finishing my Minnesota license courses were two big accomplishments in the past year--but the day-to-day goals have become harder to complete. Part of the problem is that I'm setting too many goals (i.e. "During naptime today I will organize the closet, finish all of the laundry, and clean the bathroom!" Ain't gonna happen.)

I have decided to revisit this problem and apply my former goal-setting self to the task. After much thinking and discussing with Bryan, I have settled on three goals to get our family into the swing of things for the end of summer and starting off the new school year right.

1. Organize Our House
This goal falls into the "previously unattainable" category, because in the past I have been too hung up on the enormity of the task. Clean. The. Entire. House. Seems impossible. Buy. New. Organizational. Components. Seems impossible AND expensive.

Then, I went on a trip for a week. Before my trip, I organized and cleaned the house in the most superficial ways, but I neglected the big stuff, such as cleaning out the fridge or taking out the trash. The result? A stinky fridge, a lot of overripe leftovers, and one lemon worthy of a science experiment. Out of necessity, then, the next day, I took my refrigerator to task. I cleaned out all of the bad food and threw things away without remorse. I removed everything and cleaned it with Lysol. I even organized the condiments on our door by--get this--cuisine region. For the curious, our drawers are England (jams and marmalades), America (ketchup, mustard, BBQ sauce, and various salad dressings), Asia (Sriacha, soy sauces, curries and chili sauces), and Mexico (peppers and salsas).

Placing the newly purchased groceries in the freshly clean and sparkling fridge was surprisingly satisfying. I loved having an organization to every part of the fridge, and I particularly loved that everything was earmarked for a particular purpose (see Goal #2, coming next). I took the extra ten minutes to prep my fruits for the week to ensure that they would be used (it is always easier to eat ice cream for dessert rather than cut up the fresh pineapple, but if the pineapple is ready to go in a Ziploc container, there is little excuse).

The entire process took me a little more than 45 minutes, and it got me to thinking. What if I apply this single-task approach to the entire house? I don't have to complete everything, just one or two small tasks per day. Of course, that means that I will not have my completely cleaned and organized home in under a week as I had hoped. But allowing myself "me" time during my day is just as important as having a clean house. And although I know that I want to...

organize the closets, vacuum EVERYTHING, make file folders for documents, print said documents and file them, make lists of our basement "extras," paint the downstairs, paint the bathroom, organize my dresser, make Bryan clean the office, find a spot for our weights, put all the DVDs in the correct cases, sell old clothes and books online, convert my recipes from the file to a bigger binder....

I get no small amount of satisfaction every time I open the fridge.

(Stay tuned for Goals 2 & 3, to include recipes for my new Tangy Ranch Skewers and Orange Chipotle Chicken!)

Meet the Chef

My husband and I moved into our first apartment together in August 2004. At the time, I made one thing clear to him: I DO NOT COOK.

I bake. I will treat you to a restaurant date. I am excellent at ordering pizza, sandwiches, Thai takeout. I will walk downtown to pick up food with you. But I do not cook.

So Bryan took over as the main chef of our household. "What are we having for dinner?" I would ask when I came home from a 10-hour day of student teaching. "I don't know," he answered from the smoky side kitchen in our little two-bedroom apartment, "but it has chicken in it." It turns out it was a sautee of chicken, garlic, red pepper flakes, light beer, and broccoli served over brown rice, and it was surprisingly tasty. I envied him his kitchen confidence and his willingness to experiment. On the rare occasion that I did cook for him--or for anyone, for that matter--it was an all-day affair. I would painstakingly seek out a recipe, list the ingredients, then organize my list by what order I would find them in the grocery store (produce first, then meats, followed by the center-store boxed items, and finishing with dairy and bakery), head to the grocery store for at least an hour to gather the items on my list, spend extra time re-reading, verifying, and consulting my recipe, and always ending up feeling defeated by my efforts and not the least bit interested in eating what I had made.

When family came into town, I would plan our meals out by applying the same research and organization I used in my graduate school studies. There was a restaurant for every occasion in Bloomington, IN, and I was an expert on where we should go at what time depending on our hunger level, attire, attitude, time available and sense of adventure. It turned out that being this knowledgeable about restaurants had a serious side effect: weight gain. By the summer of 2005, I had slogged my way through an accelerated graduate-level teacher preparation program, had worked 30 hours a week at a bagel shop in town, and put on 20 pounds. In July, I decided that enough was enough. I was done with the restaurants, done with relying on someone else to make my meals, done with being overweight.

I was going to learn how to cook.

And learn I did. I joined Weight Watchers and tried recipes from the community boards. I read cookbooks. I watched the Food Network incessantly. When recipes didn't taste quite right, I added a little something that I knew I would like. I mimicked the chefs on my favorite T.V. shows by tasting and adjusting. I learned to relax.

I learned to love to cook.

Now, over five years later, I am the chief chef of our three-person household. After an exciting year in which I scrambled to update my Minnesota teaching license, had a son, almost lost my job, and ran two half-marathons, I started the summer with my weight higher than I'd like and my confidence low. It's time to rev up my cooking engines once again.