Hi. I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.
And I'm Sarah Hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer, and course creator. We are two working parents who love our careers and our families.
Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun. From figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to the best of both worlds. This is Laura. This episode is airing in early November of twenty twenty four.
And while perhaps much of the news is political related, as we all know, this is a fairly non political podcast, and so for our United States listeners, you can know that it continues with that we are going to be discussing a week of meals. So we know from lots of listener feedback over the years that anytime we talk
about meals, I don't know, people get very excited. Meal planning is one of those topics where we all feel like if we just had the perfect meal plan, life would run smoothly, like there would be rainbows and butterflies. It would be no problems whatsoever. It's really as simple as a meal plan, right, Sarah.
Oh, yes, the meal plan fixes everything. No, but I think it's partly just because it's a commonality. Like everybody has various challenges, but everyone has the challenge of deciding how they're going to feed themselves, perhaps deciding how they
are going to participate in feeding their family. And it is one of those areas where when you hear how somebody else does it, even if that sounds completely untenable to you as an entire package, you might be like, ooh, but that snack sounds delici and I think I'll copy it. Like it's an area of ripe for getting inspiration from others.
Absolutely, I mean, we all eat and we all sleep, I mean pretty much. And so these are the commonalities of the human experience for all our differences, we do, in fact all eat, so we can unite around that at least. So we decided to do one hundred and sixty eight hours of meals. Sarah. Have you you've tracked your eating before, haven't you?
No? I actually do it fairly regularly. It's a habit, like I do it on my daily planner. Just how I track my media and like to some extent, how I spend my time during the day, and I don't track any of it perfectly, not the media, not the time, and not the food. I certainly don't have any measurements
at all. It's qualitative descriptions only. But I find that it just like helps me see where I'm maybe like needing more protein, or like if I haven't eaten a vegetable in three days, or I felt terrible on my runs, and I can look back and figure out like I do have a good amount of cars the day before or something like that, And I think there is an element of, like you manage what you measure, not that I'm measuring, but like just the awareness helps me sometimes
make better choices. So funnily enough, Laura, like we were choosing the days to do this, and you were like, we're doing this day, and then all of a sudden, I realized, like, I don't care what day she picks because I already kind of like have it, so it was very easy for me to report back.
Yeah, we chose the week of September thirty through October six to record, which is not right before this is airing, and it's not even right before we recorded it. It's that I was traveling the week that was before it, and so I was going to be eating the vast majority of my meals and restaurants, which, as you will see from what I'm talking here, is not the norm at all. Now, I do travel on occasions, so I guess the idea that there is no typical week comes
up here. But I felt that that would be a particularly non typical week and wouldn't really so much of anything. But Sarah, you thought we should do one hundred and sixty eight hours of all sorts of things we could track all sorts of things.
Yeah, Because as I was writing this down, this spawned the idea that that would be a fun and very on brand series for you since it was one of your best selling books, one hundred and sixty eight hours. So I was like, okay, one hundred and sixty eight hours of our media consumption, one hundred and sixty eight hours of sleep, habits, screen habits, movement, connection times, outfits, spending.
That would be good, that'd be juicy. I don't know, Like I would listen to like one hundred and sixty eight hour podcast where I got to snoop on what others were doing in various categories.
So see the problem with outfits is that this is audio, so we'd have to do that more on the blog or as a video format. Perhaps there could be a video companion, a video companion to this. Yeah, I was thinking of that. The spending. I mean, how much of your spending is weekly? Though, I mean, I'm feeling a lot.
It's a snapshot, it's a snapshot in time. I mean, yeah, let me time it so that I'm not like, you know, I'm just kidding, like buying something ridiculous. But I don't know, I would totally actually, So they're Sarah, the blogger who writes at Harry Times. So I just interviewed on Best Laid Plans. She's been doing a spending series where she gets pretty granular with her blog readers, and I find
it fascinating. She even had a category best purchase of the day and worst purchase of the day, which I thought was eye opening. And yeah, I don't know, I mean, I don't know that we're necessarily the ones to do this, but I mean I always feel like you should create the podcast that you would want to listen to.
And I would.
Totally listen to that.
You would totally listen to that. All right, Well, well we'll see. I gotta say, I mean, I've been tracking my time for nine and a half years, and for whatever reason that seems fine to me. I actually did not particularly enjoy tracking what I eat. I feel like I just do not want.
To think about it particularly. It's uh, I don't know, totally fair. I think tracking different things is very individual.
Yes, and I track workouts to a degree, well partly just because I do it on my timelog, right, but I've never recorded what I eat on the timelog, even though you would see that I was eating dinner or eating lunch or eating breakfast or whatever. But yeah, all right, well maybe I we'll do a week of sleep that'll come on. That'll be the other common experience. I don't think we do a whole podcast out of it.
Maybe I was gonna say, I don't think that's a full episode.
That would be a segment, and then that's one where we do a longer question where I get on my soapbox again about something. We'll see if we come up with that. But all right, well, let's go ahead and get started with Sarah's week of meals. So remember this is end of September beginning of October. We'll notice some certain themes. So Sarah wakes up right in early Monday morning, September thirty, what does she put in her mouth?
Well, you're gonna be really bored by my record. It gets a little a little repetitive. I've spoken about my morning routine before, but I run pretty early, and I learned from nutritionist extraordinaire Meghan Featherston that a very easy pre run fuel is to eat some gram crackers. So I've been doing that for like more than a year now, and so my day on Monday started with four squares of Trader Joe's crams and then I went on my run. Oh, I had coffee every day, just assume there is coffee.
I drink my coffee black, and I put ten grams of collagen in there, which also I think was a Featherston hack. So I learned everything from her. Okay, So that's that's the morning. Then went for my run, came back, and my usual breakfast when I'm driving the kids to school is to eat a perfect bar in the car because it's pretty substantial and very easy to eat in
the car doesn't make a mess. So I drove the kids ate my perfect bar and I must I wrote apple, so I must have had an apple afterwards later I don't know.
Let's get credit for the fruit here.
Yes, give me credit for my for lunch. This was a work day, like a patient care day. Every day is a workday and during the week for me, but only Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are in office workdays. So on that day, I heat it up some leftover chili and ate some pita chips and string cheese, and then
for dinner, which I did not cook. So our nanny generally does a lot of the prep and the cooking of the prep dish meals, which is a like a recipe subscription service that I've been using for a million years. They do sponsor bestlaid plans, but I mean I would one hundred per like I rely on them at this point. So anyway, so we had like a beef vegetable and rice stir fry, and I ate that like between dance pickups.
So there's a dance pick up at six and a dance pick up at seven, and the studio is about ten minutes from our house, so I have like this awkward bit of time. So Genevieve and I ate while before I went and got Annamo, and then I wrote, I usually have a miscellaneous category of random things I snack on, either after dinner or throughout the day, and I wrote down apples later cookie, which actually our nanny had purchased and left on the counter and said to
eat them, and it was delicious. There's going to be a fall flavors vibe here.
Yeah, I have a question here? Did everyone eat since? I mean, when we originally thought about doing this episode, we're like, well, let's talk about what our family eats over the course of a week. But then you know, we realized, like, not all the meals are together. I don't really know what my big kids are eating a lot of the time, they're sort of in the kitchen making their own stuff. But did your whole family eat the beef rice and veggie stir fry or yes?
Was that? And that was actually a very popular one. It was made with like ground beef, I think, and it was like very soy sauce Asian flavors, which is always a win for my kids. So Genevieve and I ate it at the same time. Anna all was a dance, so I think she ate it after and Cameron, I don't remember. He might have been with us, actually I think he was.
And does your husband like eat it when he comes home? Oh?
Yeah, he's never home during the week during like when we would be eating dinner, like.
He does eat when he comes home.
Oh, I'm sure he ate the same thing, but he probably heat it up. He probably, if I had to guess, got home at like seven thirty or something like that and had the same thing.
All right, Well, we're going to take a quick ad break and then we'll be back with more of this week of meals. So we are back talking what we ate over the course of a week. So, Sarah, I suspect that the second morning also involved Graham crackers.
Yes, how did you guess? It's going to get really old, you guys? So pre run grams and coffee This time after my run, I mixed it up with half of a Dave's Killer Bread cinnamon raisin bagel, which we buy in like bulk because Josh in particular absolutely loves them, and I had put sun butter on top. I don't know if we were out of peanut butter or I just felt like it, who knows, and I had an apple with cinnamon, and then then this was like a
great day. So this was a day, Genevie. You had a kind of longer appointment that I had to drop her off at so rapped her off and then I went to Starbucks and I got a pumpkin spice latte. And that's what I texted you, is this our week of meals? Because I was so excited that I was going to get to share my pumpkins spice latte. And I don't normally order these, but it was October first, like I had to. And I got it with oat milk because for whatever reason, I like my coffee drinks
at Starbucks with oat milk. Unlike Laura, I don't have any like specific dairy issues, but I really like oat milk. And I did it with one pump of pumpkin spice so that it wasn't like disgustingly sweet, and it was delicious. I was very happy with my pumpkin spice latte.
And then you went to Panera for lunch, and then I just continued on my chain store.
I don't know, like a pattern here, and I picked Genevieve up and then I asked for she wanted to go, and she wanted to go to Panera, so she got her little kids mac and cheese and apple, and I had my normal order, which is one of the chicken sandwiches that are hot, like half of that, and then weirdly enough, I get half the fuji apple salad, but no chicken in the salad because I don't like the chicken in the salad. So yeah, that's my weird Panera order.
Love it, I'm boring it, get it like every time. And then dinner was another preptish thing, and I ate with Cameron and Genevieve again. While Annabel was at gymnastics. She probably ate a little bit before and probably a little bit after. She'll often sort of split her dinner into because gymnastics is five fifteen to eight forty five. So yeah, and this was a chicken. It was like a salad with like cucumber and feta and chicken in
a wrap. It was good, interesting, Okay, all right, Oh my god, this is longer than I would have thought, I know, and Laura and I were like, we.
Could do faster versions of it at some point, maybe we just skipped to dinner.
Well I'll just summarize the rastas that. Okay, So Wednesday, it was another work day. Guess what pre run Grams perfect bar on the car. Lunch was a Trader Joe salad at my work desk that had like slaw dried cranberries and chicken in It's one of my favorites. And then I ate a honey Greek yogurt at some point, and then we had a family Russis ton of dinner
because this was like early October. So we drove to South Miami and I had a glass of white wine and a whole bunch of stuff that I didn't specifically catalog, but just like imagine all like meat, vegetables, like salad, apple, crisp of vanilla ice cream, like all the things.
So I was to say your lunch hack there though, that you buy these TJ's salads, right, and so that is a very quick way to pack your lunch. And we might kind of highlight that for people.
Yes, and my kids actually like some of them as well, so sometimes that is one of their lunches too. They particularly like the caesar salad. Not very exciting, but I had.
A big bunch of them on the weekend, put them in the fridge.
You just have to check the expiration date because sometimes it's like Wednesday or Thursday in the week, and then you have to make sure you have it for lunch earlier than that because it's salad and you don't want it to be all guilty and disgusting. All right, moving on to Thursday, pre run grams again, and then I had some honey Crisp apple granola from Trader Joe's with milk. Later, okay, somehow I went to Starbucks again, not sure why, but okay,
Starbucks oat milk cappuccino. Then I had some leftovers from Wednesday's dinner for my lunch, that Mediterranean chicken salad with a rap and then for dinner it was another prep dish. It was like a simple, simple sheet pan like chicken, broccoli and potatoes, which my kids will eat as long as there's a ton of ketchup on it. I don't remember who I actually ate with that day, but probably
genevieven Cameron actually, because his soccer is super late. And then my miscellaneous was pumpkin Trader Joe's JoJo's like their Oreo version and the quantity was unspecified, but I wrote at least at least too probably more more pumpkin, Yes, more pumpkin. It was a very fall week. Okay. On Friday, pre run Grams Perfect Bar, while driving dropping off the kids.
My lunch was social and at the work cafeteria. You actually get free food at my work if you're a physician, which is weird, and I don't partic of it very often because I don't like going to the work cafeteria unless I'm going with a friend, and I also don't like taking the time to go unless I'm meet someone, So usually Fridays are my work cafeteria experiences. And I had salmon, some rice, and I know there's at least one person who listened to this who was like, I
was there, I remember, Okay, anyway, whatever, Hi. We had some buffalo cauliflower, which is like an excuse to fry cauliflower, but it tasted good, and some steam vegetables and then my miscellaneous with some salt and vinegar chips that I'm sure I took from the cafeteria on my way out, and then for dinner, I think pretty much all of us, except for Annabellae together because she was a gymnastics and we had a turkey burger. Well, I don't know if Josh.
Josh might have been there, actually turkey burger with sweet potato fries. We're getting to the end. On Saturday, I was going to go with really long run, but then there was a lightning storm, so I like had a half a bagel with maple butter. I was thinking this is great fuel. And then the run ended up being three miles because there was lightning and I gave up, so after the run I had the other half of the bagel with peanut butter and an apple. Lunch I
made for everyone at home. We all had eggs, toast and string cheese. This is it very not the string chees particularly, but making eggs for everybody for lunch on Saturday is pretty common because our fridge is usually kind of empty. But I know everyone will eat that, so we'll do like egg sandwiches whatever. Dinner, we got pizzas delivered and I got a spinach and verricata version for myself and Josh, and then mushroom for the kids because that's what they wanted, and then we had salad from
the pizza place. My miscellaneous was some cheddar crackers like those kids want like I totally pilfered my kids snacks, and then Jenny's lemon ice cream which was delicious. And then Sunday we're at the end. I had a seventeen mile long run, so I did get the run done that day. I had my pre run grams, and then during the run, I had four jewels because I'm very good at ticking gels during my long runs. And then I had oatmeal and peanut butter and dried cherries after
my run. I usually, even though I'm like overheated on my runs, I weirdly get cold after and then I want something hot, so there you go. Lunch, we went to Trader Joe's all together this day. We picked out everything pumpkin and then we came home and had it for lunch. WHI it was super fun. It's like an annual event. We always do it in early October because that's when they had the peak of their pumpkin stuff, and we had pumpkin samosas, pumpkin ravioli that had pumpkin
filling in it. I did have some leftover salad from the pizza from the night before, and some grapes, but it was very fun. And then I made a note that I ate some cottage juice before heading to Trader Joe's, which makes sense because if I'd run seventeen miles and then was getting lunch, I was probably starving. I also ate some mixed maple nuts from Trader Joe's that are very addicting. And then for dinner, I made a very
easy like pasta with sausage and butternut squash. Although I'm just going to put a side note that I made this because we were supposed to have some salad with beef. And then I opened the package of the beef and it was the worst smell I've ever smelled in my life, and I'm like, okay, wow, that happened. So theoretically I was going to return it, but then I never got around to actually doing that. I still could, though, and yeah, so I had to make pasta.
Pivot when necessary. I guess. Yeah, so you wind up cooking like on weekends, then I mean either you ordered the pizza one night and then you correct.
I tend to cook on weekends, and then our Nannie
cooks during the week. This was like a less leftovers dinners than usual usually like, well, when we do practice, it's not always with leftovers, but when I don't do preptish, often when making like one thing for Monday and Tuesday, one thing for Thursday, Wednesday and Thursday, the practice dinners tend to be super super simple, like like they're just sort of not take terribly much time, so they work to just do each night and then Actually, our Nannie's
very efficient and she will often do everything on Monday and then like be done cooking for the week, which is funny because I feel like I would fail to do that, although she has all day and I do not. So there you go.
Any and so you had a lot of fall flavors. I noticed there were a lot of apples that was a.
Apple seals, pumpkin, pumpkin spice lot days, a lot of fall flavors, lots of carbs. Because I run a lot of miles, I think that was like a probably mid fifty ish miles week. And Trader Joe's and Starbucks I should buy stock, and well maybe I have stock. I don't know. Are they in like the the like like.
The private, like the pretty I don't think so, Okay, Trader Joe's I thought private, but maybe I'm wrong. I hadn't looked it up. So Starbucks is publicly traded.
But yeah, that's probably in my index fund, so I'm probably indirectly part of that.
Yes, I'm I turn out to be supporting them a lot.
I'm so excited. I want to hear your week.
Yeah, well it wasn't that interesting, so a few themes for me. I guess my equivalent of your Graham crackers is the pop tart, So I like the brown sugar cinnamon pop tart. They are pretty good. So if I need something really really quick for a breakfast type thing, I tend to do that. Of course, I'm not always running seventeen miles after eating it. But Monday I had that pop tart with cut for lunch, leftover steak, rice and veggies. I had cooked steak over the weekend, and
so I wound up eating that for a couple of days. Snack. I was at Starbucks while waiting for my husband to be done with a medical appointment, so I was having to drive him afterwards, so I brought my own peanut butter crackers. I eat a lot of peanut butter crackers and then had an oat milk latte because Sarah told me get the oat milk, and she said cappuccino, but I didn't hear the cappuccino part, so I got the
latte and I guess it was okay. I don't know, it's fine, but skipping to dinners, which I guess is the part that's maybe more interesting. Mondays are usually pasta night for us, and I find this is a really good like life hack in general, because if you are kind of typical Monday through Friday work in school schedule, Monday often feels like, oh, you just got into it from the weekend. You're shifting gears like you get to the end of the day. People are tired, like nobody
really wants to be thinking about dinner. So knowing that it is pasta is helpful because most people seem to like pasta, and so even picky eaters can do it as they wish they could have it with parmesan and butter. People who prefer more exciting things on their pasta can have more exciting things on their pasta. I tend to make doctor up a jar of sauce like we get raos raos. However you say it jar of marinara sauce and then mix it with veggies and cook Italian sausage
and put it in. And so that is Monday night dinner basically, And we'll throw that out there as an idea. Tuesday was slightly more typical for breakfast. I almost always have two fried eggs and coffee.
Wait, you skipped your snack.
Oh well, there were pretzels and perhaps some gummy bears. Beers are worth mentioning. Okay, gummy bears are also really good. You can't leave out the gummy bears. I put them high up on the shelf in the pantry because they are so sposed to be mine. But of course sometimes people are as tall as I am and can find them now.
A lot taller, actually a lot taller.
As the case. Maybe I saw someone with the gummy bears that the other day, and I'm like, excuse me, I didn't think those were communal property.
That's very funny. I'm more of a sour patch kid person.
Yeah, I mean they're okay. I like starbursts a lot. I almost never buy them, but those are a fun, fun thing. We're gonna take a one more quick ad break and then I guess I'll be back with the rest of my week. Well, we are back talking our week of meals. You could just assume that I ate eggs and or a pop tart every morning for the rest of this this week, but you know, lunch often leftovers. But I'll talk about the dinners. So Tuesday night, we've
been going back and forth on what we do. Like for a while, we were doing always a chicken and Asian sauce and rice kind of deal, and then people started getting a little tired of that, so we've been experimenting with different things. For Tuesday this week, we wound up doing fajitas, which is another meal that most people will eat in some fashion. We also make caesadillas for the children who do not wish to have meat and
veggies on a tortilla with other stuff. But you know that you have your quesadia and you have fruit on the side. Those of us who eat normal food will eat the fijidas with peppers onions. We have store bought guacamole, so that's another really easy dinner that tends to be a crowd pleaser. So just throwing that out there as another idea of how people can customize.
I feel like that's yeah, like that fajitas, it has moremultiple things that are good, which is a you can like vary it pretty easily, like just by swapping an ingredient or two. B. It's so customizable and see it's quick. So I actually think like as week night like standards go in your rotation, like we I have not put fajitas in there, and I'm I'm hearing this and I'm like that makes so much sense, so good hack.
And the times I've like had to, I've been making my own guacamole, which I haven't done in a long time, but when I would, you know, it takes a lot of time. But it turns out that some of the deli prepared guacamole's from the story, if you get them fresh, they're pretty good. They're not like feeling like it's just a sad substitute for what homemade or restaurant guacamole would be. There actually pretty good. So you know, I do throw
that out there as a easy dinner Wednesday. Our house manager tends to cook for Wednesday night, but we had asked that she do chili as a sort of fall flavors. Welcome to October kind of thing. So there was chili going ou the slow cooker all day. We also had corn bread and then avocado on top of the chili.
I think people also want to know that you went to Starbucks, and I need to know about the outlast Strawberry bar, Like what is that?
Okay? So yes, I am not saying everything that I ate, but I seem to have strawberry aside lemonade refreshers more days than not from Starbucks. And partly that is my kids really like them, so if they go, they want it, and so then I am paying for it, so I want it for myself to Our nanny often likes to go as well, and you know she likes Starbucks too, and so she'll get the kids something during the day
and then bring it home. So it's like, well, you know, if a strawberry aside lemonade refresher is just appearing on my desk at three pm, I'm gonna drink it. So it's great. I really really have a habit of that now, but it's okay. And then the Outlast Rowberry bars. I will throw this out there as another fun little treat for those who maybe don't wish to or can't eat ice cream, but they're fruit bars. They're frozen fruit bars. Yeah, so yeah, be cool, but reasonably good as far as
these things go. Thursday, I did a long run in the morning, so I had the pop tart pre eggs post no lunch because my breakfast was like at eleven AM. But dinner was make your own pizza. This is another frequent thing in our house, so we buy frozen dough. Frozen pizza dough at the grocery store. A lot of places have this in the freezer case. You can look around for it, and then you just thought in the fridge. Everyone rolls out their own dough and whatever shape they wish.
So if somebody's excited and wants to do a long, thin pizza, somebody wants to do a thicker pizza, somebody wants to do I don't know, multiple little pizzas, they can do that. And then you put tomato sauce on mazzarell cheese for people who like that. I don't put the cheese on. I just put top egs on, so pepperoni, red peppers again, a lot of red peppers consumed in this house. Other people have apples. I believe I started, but did not finish a Neshi mini creek ipa with
that pizza, So that was that was yummy. Friday, actually I'm not sure I did. I had it afterwards because that's the night I had choir rehearsal, so I would have had to have had the beer after choir, not with pizza. Okay. Friday was actually Ruth's birthday dinner, so she had requested French toast and breakfast for dinner. However, she wanted to make the French toast because she wanted it done as she wished, so we bought a loaf of chala type bread. She made French toast. I did
scrambled eggs and bacon. We had this with fruit. It was good. Saturday was my only restaurant meal of the week because I took her and her friends out to a local place for brunch, so that was great. I had a omelet with salmon and tomato. Oh this stuff is great. Yeah. And then Saturday night dinner was we still had some of the girls over, so I just ordered pizza for them and my kids, and then my
husband and I had chicken. We're supposed to be chicken wings, but apparently nobody has chicken wings right now, I don't know. We can't find them in the grocery store. So we wound up with like Buffalo chicken strips, which was not quite as good, but you know close. Also apples, Nacho's football food. We were trying to watch probably some game whatever would have been on Saturday, Texas A and M. I assume it was Texas A and M. And then
finally I'm almost at the end here on Sunday. The only interesting thing here is that for lunch, I made myself oatmeal with apples and peanut butter. This is another quick meal if anyone is looking for something you can do quick cooking oats. It literally cooks in like three minutes. Do one part to two parts water, boil it together, and then I put in peanut butter and apples, and.
Did you cut? That?
Makes it really good?
There?
What's that?
Did you cook the apples in there?
I did not actually wind up cooking the apples. I have a little bit crunchy, you know, I want some texture.
I have cooked apples and oatmeal, but beware that you have to use less water if you do that, or it turns us all the water comes out. And then I made like soup by accident, soup by accident, but it does turn them into like apple pie like apples, so yeah, well that's true.
Well there wasn't any sugar in the oatmeal, so I'm doing the apples as kind of the sweetness. Yeah, and then the peanut butter as peanut butter, because peanut butter is good, but other people might add almonds or something to make it crunchy. That would be good too. And then we wound up doing fajitas again because you know, hey, if it was good on Tuesday, why not on Sunday as well? But we often do hamburgers and hot dogs on Sunday and we just didn't that night. So I
don't know themes. I I'm apparently an excellent Starbucks customer. I like repeated meals, like probably every week. There'll be pasta on Monday. A lot of weeks, there's a make your own pizza night. A lot of weeks. There is something feita related. A lot of weeks, there is breakfast for dinner, but you know it's good, and I do wind up starting and not finishing necessarily craft beer a number of nights. So if anyone has recommendations for a favorite craft beer. I would be open to suggestions.
I think we all eat the same things all the time. I've learned that from my job because like we have to look at like logs from like our patients sometimes, especially when they're just they're just diagnosed with diabetes and
they're just doning an insulin. You actually see they'll write down what they eat and how much insulnce you can help them, and like troubleshoot, like hey, you gave way too much and that's for that meal, and you just quickly notice and it's actually a relief to the families because like you have to learn how to count all this stuff. But like maybe kids especially, but I think everyone just has their standards. And as I wrote this out, I'm like, yep, especially breakfast and lunch. I mean, it's
just like history repeating itself. But that's okay as long as you like it. And then what Laura pointed out about how like they had gotten sick of the Asian like rice dish. I like the idea of like you know, like every few months or every season or when something it's old, you can then start to like swap things out. But who cares if it's otherwise repetitive, as long as it's enough variety that you're getting your nutrients that you need.
Yeah, and well sometimes people are like, well I like to have different things. Well so do I. But that's how Wednesday night, if you're outsourcing dinner, that's gonna be a different thing every time. If somebody like has a takeout night once a week, that could be different every week. And that's how you could get variety. And then you know, you can cook something new or different or exciting on the weekends if you wanted, and that would still be like three nights a week of variety and then the
other four. Don't think about it. I mean, I feel like people can talk themselves into these either or things that are just not that helpful. I don't know. I also find that people are really just judgmental about what other people eat. I guess because it is such a
universal human experience. I was, you know, I'm back online, I'm back on social media, and I was on Instagram and some woman was talking about her mac and cheese night with her family, and you know, I think she thought it sounded like a fun thing, like people have mac and cheese and some people put other things in it. And some don't and whatever, you have mac and cheese with fruit. We have mac and cheese like for the kids a lot. But people were just like, you're feeding
your children poison. It's just like why, like why do people spend their precious time on this planet worried that some other family is eating mac and cheese Like I don't know. It strikes me as a waste of effort. Yeah, definitely a waste of effort.
I mean, I it is true like food invites judgment, like if you if you see I'm sure someone listened to us right now. I was like ew or like, oh my god, they go to chain stores and they're not like you know, charts. Yeah, we didn't go to the farmer's market every day. But at the same time, it's just so individual and maybe I should check myself if I saw somebody's food and thought something negative about it, to make sure it's like, you know what, this is
one area where like we can do us. I mean, I guess there are sustainability arguments too to be made.
Well, you know, and maybe you feel better if you eat more fruits than veggies, but you know, tend to throw them in with most of the stuff. I probably could be better about eating fruit earlier in the day, but I do generally eat it at dinner veggies with dinners.
So yeah, Plus we're staying a political on this episode.
And maybe there's strawberries and the strawberry si ha ha, I don't think so. All right, So on to the Q and A. We're going food themed here. This listener writes what are your favorite go to recipes sources?
So I mentioned Preptish, but cookbook wise, we have one called Dinner Illustrated that I think was from America's Test Kitchen and came out maybe a decade ago, and it is like my Rider di Ie cookbook, like it just it has everything. I could be fine actually if it was my only cookbook. There are so many things we make in there over and over again. So that's probably
my favorite. And then I usually have like a few others that are out by I have a stack of cookbooks by the toaster oven that I can just like look at if I'm in the middle in the mood to just like figure out dinner for the week from a cookbook or something. And so I really like Dinner in One by Melissa Clark because everything has one dish, so it's like easy and doesn't take up a lot of dishwashing efforts. We had a guest named Claire Tansey who has a book called Dinner Uncomplicated. I still use
that book quite a bit. Actually, there's some recipes in there the kids really like. And then online I just randomly google stuff all the time, just like search for whatever the thing is and then see what looks good. But the sources that seem to come up a lot are simply recipes, often has winners, and then how sweet eats is another We have a lot of salads and dinner recipes because I think she started as like a dessert person, but I never use those recipes, but I use her like staple type food.
Yeah, I was just gonna quick mention. I mean with obviously, dinner creates dishes. Eating creates dishes. We have a new routine in our house that we were trying out where each child has a night where they do dishes and it goes in age order. So Monday Jasper, Tuesday, Sam so forth. So theoretically Friday is Henry. I'm not sure that's really ever gonna happen, but he can help load the dishwasher but you know, the idea is that if it was rotating, if it was like shifting week to week,
we'd never remember it. So we're just gonna say it's this night. And so far, you know, it's been okay. The older children at least are doing it. And then I think Alex does it with help and reminders.
And no one's arguing that they have a sports practice during that time, so they like, can't do it? Are you?
So far that hasn't really come up.
Great.
It may, but then I guess we could swap, but it hasn't really happened yet. So we don't actually really use cookbooks in our family that much. I mean, we have some so many recipes are online these days. We have a few old recipes from family things and such that are printed up or handcopied and all that. But because we were eating relatively similar things on the nights that I am cooking, it's not going to be something
I'd be looking at a recipe for. And even when I do something different, so I you know, I like, can I get credit for I did salmon over this past weekend? Like I cooked salmon and green beans, and but all I'm doing is like putting a piece of salmon in the oven, like I just put olive oil and lemon and salt on it. And you know, green beans you just cook with oil and salt. And I did a side dish of this doll from like it's a lintil dish from the supermarket that you just heat
it up. So that was the side. Like you don't need a cookbook for that. It's all very simple, like for a lot of stuff, there's no reason to make it more complicated than it is. I don't know. I guess that's my takeaway on eating in general. So I don't have a rider Die cookbook. Just not my thing at the moment.
I think sometimes the complicated part can actually really backfire with kids, Like, yeah, you're like, I wish I had just made this really simple. That's actually probably what I like about my rider Die cokebook, because it's like everything's very basic in it. But I know what you're saying, Like sometimes.
And I mean I kind of feel like this too. Sometimes people unnecessarily complicate things with you know. It's like, if you have your crowd pleasing meals and they are reasonably balanced, you may as well do that. Like people are know that's taking the easy way out. So what like, the easy way is probably the better way in this case versus the kids not eating it and you're creating food waste and all that. So anyway, just I'll get
off my soup box again. All right, Sarah, what is your love of the week.
I'm going to go with these maple weave sandwich cookies that I have a funny story about, which is that we bought the Trader Joe's and we love them, and then my husband came home with a box of similar looking cookies from fresh Market that I think really twice the price with a fancier box, and we open it up.
They are clearly clearly the same cookies, Like there's some factory churning it out, and then they're putting the Trader Joe's box on it and selling it for like three forty nine and then the fresh Market box and selling it for seven dollars. They're delicious either way, but I suggest checking out your local tjs for that option.
Yeah, yeah, No. Trader Joys is good that way and Costco. We do some shopping there. Their Kirkland brand is a cheap and often very good. I bet they have them too. Yeah, probably, I'll say maybe pop tarts. Pop tarts could be my love of the week. They're good. What can I say, go well with coffee If he needs quick sugar before getting out and running, I can throw that out there as an idea. So anyway, well, we've been talking a week of meals. We'd love to hear what you are
eating these days, your staple meals, what your crowd will consume. Happily, that doesn't take too much work from you or anyone else. Feel free to let us know about that and we'll be back next week with more on making work and life fit together.
Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can.
Find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.