With all three of us working from home primarily and maybe 95-97% of our meals being cooked in the kitchen, this has been a challenging year food-wise. There have been a few exceptional weeks in there, but as I thumb through my meal planner and find “whatevs” interspersed with sandwiches, nachos, “quick dinner,” and lots of blank pages I know that 2021 is the year that my meal planning strategies completely fell to the wayside.
The kitchen was filled with fresh baked goods, ingredients, 30-minute meals, and plenty of yummy stuff so it was by no means a failure. I may not have sat down every Sunday and carefully mapped ingredients to meals, but I did still work from our CSA every week and every sandwich was made with homemade bread. For 2022, i have decided to forego my usual Hobonichi Weeks as a dedicated meal planner and instead use an itty bitty Hobonichi A6 Weekly Calendar. It is significantly smaller and I’ll have a lot less than my usual full page for notes, but given how underused most pages in 2021 went that may be okay. Perks? It is smaller (about the size of a field notes), lighter and will fit in the back pocket of my everyday planner so no need to carry an extra planner around if I get some ideas on the go!
I’ll have a spot where I can jot down quick recipe notes (those do still happen!) or put together quick lists, but mostly I think I will spend the remainder of this year (and next) making sense of how my cooking has found a new rhythm led almost entirely by what we need made.
How did your cooking change in 2021? Did you cook more/less?
Do you keep a meal planner/log?
aneelee 