Struggle Meals

Now that we've been doing the social distancing thing for a while, we're starting to settle into a new routine. It's still fairly obvious that we're adjusting to the conditions, but we've done a few things enough times that they don't feel out of the ordinary. These things aren't quite automatic at this point, but they are familiar enough that we can do some of them from muscle memory (incidentally, the "21 days to build a habit" thing seems to be a misinterpretation of research). We're settling into a bit of a groove, basically.

The place where that's the most obvious is with meals. We need to eat three times a day, so we get lots and lots of practice cooking and prepping our food. As a result, cooking was probably the one place where we found an equilibrium sooner rather than later. In a nutshell, we found some staples that we liked, ordered them in bulk where possible, and just kept cooking that over and over again. Oatmeal, rice, beans, miso soup, seaweed, tuna, almonds, and dried fruit are our friends.

Fortunately for us, that's a large enough set of things that we don't have to eat the exact same thing every day, but there's a reason I called them "staples." They form the basis of our diet, and generally provide the nutrition that we need. About the only thing I wish we could add on to that list is fresh produce, but what we have on hand works for us. Basically, we have learned several different ways to combine those items into tasty meals. It's also reminded me that many cultures know how to cook these ingredients into delicious entrees (arroz con gandules, anyone?).

One of my favorites these days is to make a mung bean curry, very much like dal (it might very well be dal in some cultures, but I don't speak from experience). It is quite flavorful, so I am happy to pour it over some rice and go to town. If I feel like some extra protein, I can mix in some tuna to give it a slightly different flavor. Like I said, it's a good way to combine our staples into flavorful meals that keep us healthy.

Still, my favorite part of all of this is that the Mild Wife once quipped that these dishes that keep showing up on our table are our "struggle meals." They are definitely a departure from our previous way of cooking, so I laughed quite heartily when she described our food this way. The best part of this is that these meals aren't just different, they are healthy. My waistline is actually trending in the right direction as a result of eating this way, and not because I'm failing to eat. It's almost like entire cultures who have based their diets on rice and beans for hundreds of years were on to something, you know?

In fact, the Mild Wife and I have talked about keeping some of these new meals in our rotation even after the pandemic-related restrictions are lifted. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? Our shopping is simpler, we can stock up quickly and easily, we don't have to leave the house to get the ingredients, and it's good for us. Struggle meals indeed.