Dinner Thoughts: A Meal Planning Newsletter

Grocery Shopping and the Tyranny of Choice

Welcome! I’m Megan Scott, co-author of the 2019 Joy of Cooking, and this is Dinner Thoughts, an often-as-I-can-manage-it newsletter about meal planning. In it, I share my weekly meal plans and thoughts about how to cook sustainably. Read on for specific guidance and tips, galaxy-brained thoughts about intuitive cooking, and literal meal plans that mirror how my household eats every week.

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You may have noticed that I’ve mentioned, more than once, avoiding extra trips to the grocery store as a benefit of meal planning, and that’s because it’s one of my primary motivators.

I don’t even hate grocery shopping. Under the right conditions, I really enjoy it, and any time I travel (especially overseas), going to a local grocery store is always on my list. But in my experience, grocery shopping during the week for random necessities is a complete mood-killer.

I have treated the grocery store like an idea generator, assessing what looks best and deciding what to buy (and make) based on that. Other times, I’ve challenged myself to only buy items that are on sale and then figure it out. That can be fun until it’s … not. And the reason it’s often not so fun is because of decision fatigue.

At my job and in my life, I make hundreds of little decisions every day. We all do. I don’t have a lot of decision-making capacity left by 4 p.m., and the grocery store is a place where many decisions need to be made. Meal planning changes it into a place where I know exactly what I want so I can get in and get out with minimal decision-making. That’s part of the gift of meal planning and one reason why I stick with it even when it feels hard.

We finally used the gochujang Spam this week in kimchi fried rice. No regrets!

A few days ago, Meghan Splawn posted in her Instagram stories a response to a follower who asked for advice on cooking when you hate cooking. I loved her answer so much (the story is gone, but you should follow her—her stories are a delight) that I needed to share it here. The first part of her answer was that you don’t really need to have a good attitude about cooking in order to do it. The second part, and the part that’s relevant to this newsletter, was about removing “pain points” in the cooking process.

If there’s a thing about cooking that you especially dislike, find clever ways to make that one aspect easier. That’s going to differ for every cook, but for me that one thing is unplanned grocery trips and the decision fatigue that goes along with it. Hence, why I spend 30 minutes to an hour every Sunday afternoon thinking about what we’re going to eat that week instead of watching another episode of Silo or playing 30 more minutes of Stardew Valley.

This Week’s Meal Plan

Notes:

• I finally used the gochujang-flavored Spam that’s been haunting my meal planning list for a few weeks. We only needed half of the block—the rest was vacuum-sealed and frozen for future fried rice or kimbap. I wish it tasted more of gochujang, but we added gochugaru and kimchi to the fried rice, so it was utterly delicious

• Tuesday’s dinner is brought to you by The Freezer^TM! Ours is a small household, but instead of halving recipes we often make full quantities and then freeze half. This works best with soups, stews, braises, and pasta sauces. It is SO nice to pull something readymade (that you actually made!) out of the freezer that just needs a starch and a vegetable to become dinner.

• Minestrone is becoming a clear-out-the-crisper move on Wednesdays before we get our CSA box. It’s a very adaptable recipe that can use a wide variety of hearty produce.

• We are craving comfort food in a major way right now. Hence the mid-century-coded dinner of meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and glazed carrots.

• I’m going over to a friend’s place for a sewing circle-ish thing on Friday, so I’ll combine the quart of squash puree from the freezer with half of the gilfeather turnip into a creamy soup that I’ll serve with swirls of pesto (also from the freezer, made in a time when basil was plentiful) and moreish croutons.

This is a Gilfeather turnip, a turnip-rutabaga hybrid. I love a large, gnarly-looking vegetable!

Links!

• Our latest podcast was all about home brew (and cooking with it) with author and editor Emma Christensen.

• This is a fun strategy if you don’t find entertaining stressful. While I know in my heart that I can casually have people over and that they won’t judge me for messiness, I seem to be unable to resist turning entertaining into deep-cleaning my house. In other words, it’s a “me” problem and this is a nice idea.

• This is so smart!

• Inspired by this piece, we invited some friends over for a homemade weeknight dinner.