The $6.99 Purchase that Saved Dinner
My mundane and magical whiteboard, found in the RSA at Aldi.
I found the $6.99 purchase that saved my dinner game in one of my favorite places on earth: the RSA (“random stuff aisle”) at Aldi. Like one of Stefon’s warehouse raves, they have everything. Sparkly bikini for a 6 year old? Yes. Pot holders shaped like cactuses? Obvi. Special tool kits for cleaning parts of your dog you didn’t even realize were dirty? Aw. Hell. Yeah.
In this case my purchase was far more mundane: a calendar whiteboard with write-in spaces, framed in just the right shade of champagne brass to match the hardware in my city-sized galley kitchen. (The fact that I got so excited over this purchase probably means it’s time to iron out those pleats in my mom jeans and start attending PTA meetings.)
This particular, inexpensive whiteboard called out to me because I immediately recognized it as the missing piece in my (continually waylaid) plans to save my family’s dinner game.
Side note: I have worked professionally as a chef for the last 15 years. And seven years ago, I became a mom as well. Definitely not a professional in that arena, which didn’t stop my husband and I from having baby number two three years later.
Now, if you’re like many people I meet, you’re thinking to yourself — “Wow. Those kids must get some really special meals at home.”
Not a chance.
My tiny kitchen, in all its newfound domestic bliss.
After thinking about and working with food all day, typically the last thing I want to think at home is dinner. So while we weren’t picking up from the drive-thru every night, often the food on our table wasn’t much better from a nutrient perspective. And somehow, it was still incredibly stressful, messy, and time consuming to get it on the table.
I knew we wanted to eat better, and I am fortunate to have honed the skills to execute pretty much any food we want to eat, but the way I cooked professionally seemed to have no bearing on the dinner game at home. Some missing piece was keeping it from all coming together.
Turns out that piece was waiting for me in the Aldi aisle. It wasn’t planning exactly that was keeping our family from the type of meals we ought to be eating. And luckily for us, it also wasn’t access to food. It was just the simple act of connecting the two.
With my (basically magical) whiteboard, I sit down on Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning and write out every meal for the week. Breakfast, AM snack, Lunch, PM snack, Dinner. It goes fairly quickly since my brain is at least 8% full of restaurant menus, and my kids are still relatively limited in the variety of foods they will agree to eat. I do this with my 7 year old so that she has both buy-in and accountability.
(Another incredible aspect of the whiteboard - I’m no longer getting asked what is for dinner. Or if I do get asked, I only have to gesture in the direction of the board.)
Menu strategy session with my sous chef
Habits experts would tell you my stars were aligned here. I had the purpose (great nutrition for me and my family) and the motivation (chasing around dinner ideas daily at dinner time will kill anyone’s soul), I was just missing my method to implement. All I needed was an aesthetically acceptable and quietly inescapable daily reminder.
Luckily I found it, and the plan has become reality. It certainly helps that the meals are dead simple and that one night of dinner is “leftovers” and another night is “dine out.” But it’s amazing how we are following this plan. Following the menu has become as automated as Obama’s suit choices. The easiest course of action is to make what’s on the board, so that’s what we do.
My sense of accomplishment is helping too -- after years of attempted planning, throwing away too much food, and serving our children dinners that were too often started from a box, I finally feel like an actual, put-together grown up in this arena.
Maybe it’s time to look into those PTA meetings after all.