Meal Planning: A New Challenge for Me

A blog post from the archives… one of my first when I was just starting my healing journey. I loved cooking and I wanted to eat healthier (and help my mom do the same). And I was so burnt out and needed to add some joy back into my life. Maybe you can relate?

So I signed up for plant-based culinary school. And I started learning how to do meal planning (pretty much a foundational skill for eating well).

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One thing I'm realizing is that if you want to eat healthy, it takes a lot of planning. Actually this isn't a realization at all, I knew this. But actively putting it into action isn't easy. It requires foresight, menu planning, shopping, and dedicating a block of time to cooking on the weekend. But the payoff is immense. 

A week or two ago, I took some time on Sunday to make up a big batch of vegan chili, and it was a great success! I had lunch for an entire week! What a great feeling it was to not have to think each morning about what I would eat for lunch.

This was also an especially welcome change because those days that I don't plan and have no lunch to bring to work, I face two possibilities: eat at the college cafeteria or go hungry. I'm embarrassed to say that there are many days when I've gone hungry. This ends up being a bad plan because at the end of the day I'm too tired and "hangry" to even think of going to the gym or yoga. So it's an all out losing situation for my health and sanity. 

Enter in planning. The vegan chili I tried out was a recipe from Serious Eats chef Kenji López-Alt, "Vegan Sweet Potato and Two-Bean Chili with Hominy". Following my Rouxbe cooking school advice, I first assembled my mise en place--  set up all the ingredients so they'd be easily accessible.

In addition to all the fresh ingredients, one thing that really made this chili a hit was the technique for incorporating the chiles. No chili powder here! Instead I toasted fresh dried chiles that I picked up at La Poblanita, a mexican grocery in Providence. After toasting, I blended them, along with a couple chipotle chiles in adobe sauce, into a purée (with my new Ninja blender that I got for the Rouxbe course- what a great addition to my life!). A couple hours later, the resulting chile was warm, spicy, and comforting. I should also mention that I didn't miss the meat! There was so much texture in this chili, and the flavor was so deep, I didn't even notice the absence of any carne.

This past week, however, the chili was gone and I was left to figure out how to eat again. I didn't do so well. One goal I have over the next couple months is to get better at meal planning and batch cooking. We'll see how I do this weekend...