Carla is listening to Taylor Swift’s new song “The One” on repeat, singing along with it while she eats, no joke, pickles and a muffin for breakfast.

For the first twelve thousand days of this pandemic, I did not do a whole lot of meal planning. Instead, my grocery list consisted of the items we consume most often (mainly chicken, ground beef, fruit, tomatoes, yogurt, lettuce, bell peppers, zucchini, onions, lemons/limes, cheese). And then once I was in the store, I would panic-buy a bunch of things that are versatile and easy to prepare: pasta, chickpeas, black beans, pork chops, taco materials, rice, tomato puree. These ingredients can be combined into a fairly wide variety of meals, and I was pleased that we ended up with a pretty varied if carb-heavier-than-usual diet. Of course, near the end of the two weeks between grocery trips, the meals tended to get a bit more… creative. But still. I had a satisfied “If I am succeeding at nothing else, I am feeding my family” feeling and no one threw up or died from my cooking.

Even though I still get that panicky “you must stockpile food!!!!!” feeling when I’m at the grocery store (will that ever subside?), I have slowly returned to making an actual plan. A lot of that plan is “grill some meat and serve it with a veggie,” but at least it’s a real, thought-out dinner strategy for the week ahead. Knowing I am buying specific things for specific meals helps curb some of that “but what if I NEED this” urge to throw several boxes of pasta into my overflowing cart. (I still have two bags of frozen spinach in my basement freezer because it was on sale one week early on during quarantine and I thought “wow, what an easy way to get veggies/vitamins into my family!” even though I have only ever used frozen spinach TWICE and that was to make spinach artichoke dip.) (Speaking of: Anything AMAZING and tomato-free you recommend I make with frozen spinach?)

Making dinner remains a regular drudgery around here, I think because there is never a day off. Even if we get takeout, it’s such an ordeal. I am the designated takeout-person, so I have to drive and get it, and then my husband and I have a whole routine where I hold all the boxes/containers and he transfers the food to our dishes and then I throw out the containers and disinfect any surfaces they have touched. So even having someone else “cook” for me is A Project. (Plus, I still have to do dishes.) There are no date nights or vacations from the Sisyphean mundanity of meals-and-associated-chores, is what I’m saying. I have ZERO desire to go to a restaurant or even to someone’s house for dinner but I do miss the prospect of not having to consider or clean up my or anyone else’s food needs for one meal. Well. We are likely ALL feeling this way. The overall slog of it all is tempered only by my insistence upon making a weekly Fun Cocktail, which perhaps I will include here as well. To liven things up.

I wholeheartedly reserve the right to stop posting about dinner and/or to stop making dinner (ha) at any time.

By the way, I made a miscalculation and had to go to the grocery store two weeks in a row (grimace emoji) because my husband is on call, which means I really can’t plan on being able to go to the grocery store at ALL until he’s done. Oh well. That means a new influx of fresh veggies for the menu plan! And this time, the grocery store had green peppers! Also, I was able to score two more jars of pickles to feed to the pickle monster. (For those of us who care about these things, I noted that graham crackers were back in stock, with a one-box-per-family limit. And hand soap is now limited one-item-per-family, which seems ominous but I am not panicking. The only thing I CANNOT find is plain couscous. I have been buying flavored couscous and just… not using the flavor packet. This week, I had the doubly difficult task of finding pearled/Israeli couscous; there was one box with a flavor packet, so I scooped it up.)

Dinners for the Week of July 27-August 2 

• Caprese Salad with Balsamic Chicken and Balsamic Dressing
• Chili Garlic Chicken Breast with Roasted Asparagus
• Lemony Cucumber Couscous Salad + Grilled Pork Chops
• Greek Style Grilled Chicken + Tzatziki + Leftover Couscous Salad
• Balsamic Pork Tenderloin with Caramelized Onions and Rice
• Hamburgers + Elote Dip and Key Lime Pie Icebox Cake
• Takeout

Cocktail of the Week:

• Raspberry and Mint Gin Mojito

Note: I have been growing mint in my Aerogarden. It’s getting a little wan but I think I have enough mint leaves left for this cocktail.

What are you having for dinner this week, Internet? Has your meal planning strategy changed during the pandemic?