But, it's Saturday afternoon and the kids are both asleep and the baby food is cooking away on the stove, so I've got a few minutes.
I had a revelation a few weeks ago. It was the same one I'd had a few years ago, so you think I'd have remembered it and wouldn't have had to figure out the same thing twice, but I guess I'm a little slow sometimes. I realized that the same meal every week was stressful for me. It occurred to me that if we just had popcorn and smoothies, which we all love, is pretty quick to make, and not too bad for you healthwise (I'm not saying it's amazing, but it's not awful), for that meal every week, life would be a whole lot better on those days.
It used to be Tuesday dinners that worked me up. Back in Musoma, I had Bible study late in the afternoon on Tuesdays. By the time I got home at nearly 7:00pm, Andrew had been taking care of Zarya on his own for almost three hours, he and I were both hungry, Zarya needed her bath and to be put to bed, and making dinner (or trying to make sure we always had leftovers on hand) was just stressful. I loved Bible study, but on the way home every week I could feel myself tensing up and bracing for this low-blood-sugar racing around trying to do everything at once stressful evening.
Then I discovered the relief of a planned popcorn and smoothies night. We had that combo for lunch or dinner sometimes, but not on any sort of schedule. But as soon I figured out that if we had popcorn and smoothies every Tuesday evening, all of that dinner stress disappeared. Okay, so we were still in Musoma where nothing is really stress-free, because sometimes there was no electricity for running the blender to make the smoothies and the stores periodically ran out of our preferred kind of popcorn, but most of the time the plan worked well.
Skip ahead a year: we're now in Pennsylvania and have two kids. What's stressful about life here, you might wonder. Well, let me tell you, and you might agree with me - Sunday lunch! Seriously, we get home from church and we're all hungry and want lunch NOW, and naptime is the looming deadline, so we really do need to eat lunch soon so we can get the kids down for their naps on time so we don't all dissolve into puddles of hungry exhaustion after having all of that fun at Sunday school/church. Andrew tends to prefer different kinds of lunch foods than what Zarya and I eat Monday through Friday, so figuring out something we could all eat and get it together quickly stressed me out.
Voila - popcorn and smoothies! We had been having popcorn and smoothies for Sunday dinners in PA, but when I figured out a few weeks ago that moving my emergency meal to being Sunday lunch, well, life got a whole lot better. We now come home from church and Zarya and I make the smoothies and Andrew makes the popcorn (for the world's best popcorn, please see the Whirley Pop - http://www.amazon.com/Wabash-Valley-Farms-25008-Whirley-Pop/dp/B00004SU35/ref=sr_1_1?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1434824414&sr=1-1&keywords=whirley+pop) and then we sit on the couch and enjoy ourselves.
So, maybe popcorn and smoothies isn't your family's thing, but I bet you know some meal that is your well-liked, quick go-to meal. Should you find yourself getting stressed out regularly by some meal each week, do yourself a favor and plan your easy meal in advance!
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