Easy Meal Prep - Day 20 of 30 - Things That Make My Life Easier

Each day I talk about one thing that makes my life easier as a neurodivergent mother raising neurodivergent kids while going back to school full time in my 40s.

If a recipe has more than eight ingredients, there's a strong chance I won't make it. Because I'm lazy? I'm just not that interested in food. I like food. I appreciate food, but it doesn't rule my life. I am perfectly content eating the same meal three to five days in a row before switching.

But Jaren, are you meeting your nutritional goals?

Of course. I weight lift, so I have to. I need food that is healthy, balanced, and just good enough that I'm willing to eat it for days on end.

Okay, but six ingredients? Do you even have tastebuds?

Annoyingly, yes. This is one of the reasons I don't go to restaurants anymore. (Why pay a bazillion bucks for something my baby daddy and his family make even better? That's one of the benefits of being on great terms with your ex and boy, am I lucky.) But I also have very sensitive taste buds and require less salt that some people I know. Matt. <----said baby daddy

Jaren. Girl. Do you even season your food?

I'm not that white. I use some salt. Joke only! In the last year I began to use all kinds of herbs and spices to flavor my food (I live in a very ethnic melting-pot-of-a-neighborhood). Weirdly, it's easier for my brain to make something that contains three main food ingredients and seven different herbs and spices than is is to make a meal that requires ten different big ingredients. Why? (Someone tell me, please).

So right now, I'm making one recipe from pinchofyum.com's 22 freezer meals (not an ad, I swear). It's called Cauliflower Curry and contains lentils and curry and other fun stuff. Not too many ingredients - and I can dump whatever veggies I have in the pot if I don't have cauliflower. It's so easy, so tasty, and I'm not exaggerating when I say I've been making this pretty much weekly for 6 months. Also, you can add chicken. So good.

How do you get through the week? What are your tips and tricks? I want to know!

-Jaren