How reading an Italian American cookbook changed the way I meal plan
Long ago, I made a promise to myself not to complain about meal planning. Growing up, meal planning was a source of MAJOR contention in my household (sorry, Mom, but it’s true). My mother loathed deciding what to cook. And, unfortunately, asking the advice of a ten-year-old or her meat-loving husband (my mom is quasi-vegetarian) didn’t help much. She wasn’t alone in her plight. It’s a consequence of privilege, fretting over what to cook, but nonetheless, it’s an issue plaguing adults all over the world. One of the Italian food accounts I follow once posted: “I never knew the hardest part of adulting would be deciding what to make for dinner.”
That’s a little dramatic, in my opinion. I never came close to hating meal planning, but I’ve only been cooking for six-ish years. I can imagine cooking every day for thirty years could get a little old. There are so many factors to consider when selecting a meal. Are the ingredients expensive? Do I have most of them in my pantry already? Is it healthy? Does it fit my dietary restrictions? Have we already had chicken this week? Do I have to drive to multiple stores to get the ingredients? Are the vegetables in-season? Is it sustainable? Do I even want that for dinner?
The list goes on.
Bearing in mind my promise not to complain, I tried hard to stay positive about meal planning. For me, the problem was the analysis paralysis. My husband and I love food and we eat pretty much anything. When the options are seemingly endless, it can be overwhelming. I found myself sticking to my “old-faithful” dinners simply because, when I sat down on Sunday to pick the menu, my mind would go blank. There were just too many choices.
Vintage cookbooks help jog my memory. I use them frequently in my daily life and for blog content. My in-laws have an old-school Italian American cookbook, The Men of the Pacific Street Social Club. The book is practically a eulogy for “old” New York (I can imagine my Flushing-born father devouring it, pun intended). The recipes are not groundbreaking; in fact, they’re an ode to humble immigrant cooking. What stood out to me was the way the writer titled each chapter after a day of the week.
Remember those very 2000’s “day of the week” underwear? Anyone else wear those as a child? Well, that’s how Italian immigrants cooked in the fifties and sixties. (To be fair, other cultures probably do this too). Sunday was for big family dinners with plenty of meat. Wednesday was for pasta. Friday meant no meat (Catholic tradition), etc. Many of these customs were carried over from Italy. For instance, in Rome, it is common to eat gnocchi on Thursdays, because gnocchi is thought to be filling, and Friday is a traditionally light eating day thanks to the church’s no meat policy.
I need to do more research on the dinner rituals, but the point is, “What do I eat for dinner?” is a relatively new problem. It’s 2024, and we can order virtually anything instantaneously, no matter the season or climate. We can have Indian food on Monday, Mexican on Tuesday, and juicy, ripe mangoes in the middle of the winter in Michigan. Even just a few decades ago, this was not possible (I explore this more in my December post). The options were limited by region, climate, and even the success of the farming season. The Blue Zones still eat like this today. In Sardinia, they eat minestrone literally every day, swapping out the veggies with each changing season. It might sound boring, but at least they’re not worrying about what to cook.
Earlier this year, I decided I’d had enough of the meal planning cycle. Thanks to a little inspiration from the Pacific Street author, I created a weekly rotation a la 1960’s New York. Of course, there’s room for flexibility (globalization has its perks!), but this is the routine that my husband and I now live by.
Monday - Soup
Tuesday - Chicken
Wednesday - Fish
Thursday - Vegetarian
Friday - Pasta
Saturday - “Flex” night
Sunday - Roast
Let me clarify: in my ideal world, we would eat vegetarian more than once a week. I often make a vegetarian soup on Monday and perhaps a vegetarian pasta on Friday. Saturday is “flex” because we’re usually out with friends or family. Sunday roasts serve two purposes, as we frequently use the leftover bones for homemade stocks that we use in Monday’s soup.
If you want to follow a similar routine, I recommend modeling it after your daily activities. Matt and I eat heavy on the weekends, hence the need for a lighter soup on Mondays. Also, Mondays are busy with work, so throwing a bunch of ingredients into a pot is a quick fix. We prefer buy fish day-of, so Wednesdays are best, since Matt can swing by the grocery store on his way home from the office. And Friday…well, who doesn’t look forward to a bowl of pasta at the end of the week?
We’ve been following this routine for a few months, and it has worked wonders. I now look forward to meal planning, because it’s more like a puzzle than an open-ended question. I actually embraced my inner “Monica” and made lists of our favorite vegetarian meals, soups, and chicken dishes, so I can just pick from the 10+ options each week. With so many options per day of the week, it will take us months to repeat dishes.
“We need finites, borders, gravity, demarcations, shape, and resistance, to have order. This order creates responsibility. The responsibility creates judgment. The judgment creates choice. In the choice lies the freedom.”
This is one of the many brilliant quotes from Matthew McConaughey’s memoir, Green Lights. It might seem a little incongruous to pair this philosophical observation with the mundane structure of meal planning, but I still think it works. Having a framework to lean on each week when I meal plan has made the process so much more fun. I have choices (vegetarian, chicken, etc.) which allow me to be creative. Which of our favorite chicken dishes am I craving this week?
Try it out; let me know what you think in the comments.