The Cooking Rut

A while back I posted about the dinner rut - when you keep making the same few dishes for dinner, until you're so sick of these dishes that you just want to scream. Well - I've lately found myself in something similar: The Cooking Rut. I come home from work, and I just Don't. Want. To. Cook. At all.

Now - this is due to a lot of things. Some of them:

• Work. I feel blessed to have a job that I love (and a husband that understands my geeky tendencies), especially when I have something really cool to work on - which has lately been the case. But the fact is, sometimes I'm much more interested in what I get to play with at the office than cooking tonight's dinner - especially if it's something boring from the dinner rut.
  
• Grad school. Even with a partially online class, I have to set aside so many hours each week for reading and schoolwork, which is draining. Sometimes I just want to relax with a glass of vino afterward and not worry about dinner.
  
• Other commitments. My weeks lately have been insanely hectic. Between work functions, appointments, last-minute vet visits, and social plans I sometimes have two days in any given week when I'm actually home. That catches up to a person.
• I ballooned up over the holidays and since I already ordered a bridesmaid dress for this summer, I want to be sure not to rip the seams. I've been pretty good, but focusing on healthy meals tends to go into the dinner rut danger zone.
  

But.... wah, wah, this is the real world and everyone has to deal with that stuff, right? Unfortunately neither my budget or waistline will allow for eating out at every single meal, so that means sucking it up and cooking.

First - here are the convenience tips NOT to do:

• Don't rely on convenience food! I've been guilty of this in the past and I'm trying to be much better about it. It's very tempting to just pull out a box of Bell and Evans chicken or a box of Starfish Cod with a bag of tater tots or fries, nuke a frozen veggie, and call it dinner. And once in a great while, that's fine. Once every other week, though... that's just asking to gain weight. Especially if you're like us and break out the deep fryer for fries. It gets pricey too - I love Bell and Evans, but 8.50 for a box of chicken tenders that the two of us put away in one sitting...
  
• Similarly, don't rely on takeout! When Cheesecake Factory and other restaurants started putting calorie counts on their menus, I was shocked. I always order fish dishes - and my favorite salmon dish there was over 1600 calories! It's not worth it.
  
• Don't get over-ambitious. Buying $20 worth of produce intending to make a stir fry that takes an hour in the middle of the week? Not gonna happen. Don't even try.
  

So - here are the tips that I'm trying on for size to get out of the cooking rut:

• Make ahead, make ahead, make ahead! There are a ton of really good dishes that make good leftovers - and freeze well. Sure, you can get sick of a crock pot full of chili day in and day out, but we have some containers in the freezer to pull out for an emergency. Same goes for rice and beans, risotto, jambalaya, stew, etc. Heating something up in the microwave or on the stove top isn't that time consuming.
  
• Have a few "emergency" staples on hand. For me this tends to be frozen fish fillets or frozen shrimp (thaw for a quick thrown-together meal), tons of frozen veggies (easy to add to any dish), and carbs.
  
• Have a go-to ingredient that you love, and can add to any meal as a motivation to cook. For me this is Frank's Red Hot. I can put this on everything (fried rice, popcorn, pizza, you name it). It might just be my favorite food. I promise myself hot/buffalo sauce on something, I'm more likely to cook.
  
• If possible try to offload and have someone else cook once in a while. If we do breakfast for dinner my husband's all over that - and I get a day off.
  

What are your tips to throw together a quick meal when you Just. Don't. Feel. Like. Cooking?

The Dinner Rut

Gluten free or not, we've all been there. The dinner rut.

Whether we methodically plan our menus out each and every week before heading to the grocery store with our list in hand, or choose to fly by the seat of our pants and just figure it out at the end of the day, we get to the point where we've been making the same old, same old stuff for more meals in a row than we'd care to count. Symptoms of the dinner rut include:

• Opening a moderately-stocked fridge and woefully exclaiming "There's no food!"
  
• Having a discussion with significant other/friends along the lines of "What do you want to eat?" "I don't know, what do you want to eat?" ... ad nauseum.
• Throwing your hands up in the air and making poor food decisions - usually involving going out for high-calorie, fat-ridden foods... or, as my husband and I sometimes do, having a "screw the diet" night and eating something like cheese and crackers or queso dip and chips for dinner. Not always a terrible thing if it only happens a couple times a year, but when you're in a dinner rut it can happen enough to pack a few pounds on.
  

One of the problems with the dinner rut is, there really are options, but - at least in my case - I'm too busy, lazy, or whatever to realize them. I get into the habit of making the same few meals every week... and let's just put it this way, there are only so many ways you can make a roaster chicken that way before going nuts.

When I've found myself in dinner ruts before, it's usually been super-busy weeks when I'm only home to sleep or scarf something down really quickly before running another errand - and by the time I realize I'm in a dinner rut, it's usually bad enough that my foodie creativity is zapped and I listlessly flip the pages of the weekly grocery ads saying "nothing looks good!"

So, then, how to get out of the dinner rut? Here are some ideas that have worked for me:

1. Buy a new cookbook and resolve to try one new recipe from the cookbook each week. I am in the process of doing that now -- and hey, while some of the meals are flops (like the pork tacos I made a couple of weeks ago), others are really good. And still others are OK, but I can think of how I would modify them to suit my tastes more. Usually that involves adding/modifying seasonings - I'm a spice and salt junkie.
2. Switch up your typical grocery store. I like to shop at the Asian Market occasionally to pick up veggies that I might not see elsewhere.
   
3. Set aside a certain portion of your grocery budget each week for interesting stuff. I have a pantry stocked full of stuff I can use when I feel like it - and looking at it will sometimes spark a creative dinner idea. Some of the stuff I like to keep on hand:
   

• Sushi rice, wasabi powder and seaweed for sushi rolls. Spur of the moment cucumber, shrimp, or gluten free crabstick rolls, anyone?
  
• Rice paper wrappers. Useful for summer rolls if you have vermicelli on hand, or if you want to be bad fill them with cream-cheese based rangoon filling and fry 'em up for poor mans' rangoons.
  
• Risotto. I'm not talking instant, pre-packaged stuff, but high-quality rice that can be used to make an awesome Italian dish.
  
• Different pasta than usual. I just bought some Pasta Mia! lasagna noodles and plan to try a lasagna one of these days.
  

OK, that's all well and good, but notice that just about everything on that list is carb-heavy. What about getting out of the dinner rut in a way that's healthy??

• Pick a new veggie that you haven't cooked a lot with. Say, kale, eggplant, cauliflower... something that if you make at all, you only know a handful of ways to make it. Look up the veggie online to find new ways to make it. One of my favorites? Mashed cauliflower - you can't tell the difference between that and mashed potatoes.
  
• Take advantage of coupons and specials. See that monkfish is on sale but never tried it? Well, now's a good time to do so!
  
• On a day off, pick one of your favorite recipes that you never make because it takes too long. For me, this is my mom's shrimp creole recipe. It's unbelievably yummy, and pretty healthy for you - there's a bit of olive oil in it but the rest is just shrimp, veggies, and tomato over rice. Nothing bad there! It always takes a few hours to simmer everything down, but it's worth it in the end -- a lot of the times I forget how much I really do love it once I take the time to make it.
  

What about you? What are your dinner rut solutions?