Week 4 - Make Mealtime Matter

So by now you've made some changes to the way you plan, shop, lunch. This week has more to do with the way you actually eat. If you are going to spend all of this time thinking about food - what kind of food you're eating, what you're going to prepare, what it's going to cost you - you might as well take a little time in your day to enjoy your food.

I know we're busy and people's schedules are all different. But I don't think it's too much to ask to take one meal a day and do nothing during that meal but eat and enjoy the company of those around you. For a lot of people this will be dinner. For some breakfast. For a very few others, lunch. But pick a meal and then try to really enjoy it every day this week.

If you are part of a family, sharing a meal is the perfect time to force your kids to tell you what happened at school ("Nothing!") and to check in. Eating dinner together, as a family, also can go some ways to ending Mom-as-Short-Order-Cook-Syndrome. If everyone eats together, you may stand a better chance of prepping one dinner instead of four. Eating together also gives you a chance to model good behavior, just as eating pasta standing up over the sink models other behavior for your kids.

If you are living alone, find ways to share meals with friends, but if you are eating alone simply taking the time to eat off a plate and turn off the TV can be a wonderful, peaceful break in your day. When I was working in Seattle's Pioneer Square, I find a wonderful, urban park with a waterfall and made a ritual of eating there every day. Maybe you have a similar lunch spot near your office?

If you are a couple, try making meal time a time to connect. I'm way too grumpy before coffee to do this with breakfast. The only person I allow to talk to about anything substantial before coffee is Chris Cuomo of ABC's Good Morning America. My husband and I spend our share of time eating pizza and watching our Netflix, but dinner can also become an opportunity for romance. Light a candle and you'll look much more beautiful as you eat - even if what you are eating is not yet quite so beautiful.

Week 3 - Pack your Lunch

Since I have become under-employed I can walk to my kitchen at noon (or 11:01 - breakfast has no meaning to my stomach) and rustle up lunch. But for most of you I'm guessing lunch is like it used to be for me - a somewhat harried affair involving lines, $10+, and, sometimes (I'm not proud) the hot/cold lunch buffet. (Btw, while we're on the subject, how come at every one of those places is there something that looks like General Tso's chicken but doesn't taste like the General Tso's you get at a chinese takeout place - but all the hot/cold buffet GT-esque chicken tastes the same? It leads me to believe that there is somewhere a mega-supplier of the stuff that delivers it through pneumatic tubes.)

I digress.

Look, I know how it is. Sometimes going out to buy lunch is your only escape from cubby-hell. Bringing lunch is like advertising that you are going to work through lunch, that you don't take lunch. It's depressing.

But, bringing lunch will save you major money. While you're packing your lunch, think about a cloth napkin. Keep real silverware and a cheap but real plate in your desk (as long as you wash them - euew.) The whole process will help you to start seeing food as something nice and nurturing and civilized. Let's face it, the hot/cold lunch buffet never made you feel that way. It always made me feel like I was crashing a weird and poorly planned multi-cultural wedding.