Welcome to YTF Community, a place to safely share in the challenges and joys of feeding our families. And make all of it easier! This is a weekly members post with timely advice and encouragement that I hope helps offer a little reassurance.
After sharing about losing my appetite while getting divorced, then finding it again as the stress began to lift, I find myself in a totally new food phase: I am actually excited to explore food!
I have literally never in the decade plus of being a parent had any spare energy for food for me, so this has been blowing my mind a little.
The main reason I am excited about this—in addition to how it’s simply very fun and is turning out to be very delicious—is that I can use it as a chance to share more easy meals with YOU that can use to feed yourselves.
It took me a very long time to understand that I am allowed to like different foods for my kids. And that I am fully entitled to taking time to make myself food that I truly want.
But I could never actually figure out how to do this when my kids were younger because feeding kids is SO much labor and energy.
So, since I now have more mental bandwidth to think of ideas, I hope I can share them with you so you can simply take them and make them for yourself—or use them as inspiration for other easy options.
For me, eating food I love is one small way I can regularly take care of myself, and even show my kids that our unique preferences do matter. And taking a few minutes to do this at lunchtime helps me ensure that I’m not just grabbing a handful of nuts and pretending that’s enough to sustain my busy life.
Please know that I am not making a case for spending hours in the kitchen making some complicated recipe—see my air fried chicken tenders (from the freezer aisle) with lettuce and avocado stuffed into a tortilla above.
It’s simply a reminder that we deserve food as comfort, joy, and nourishment in our lives, too.
So here are five of my recent lunches, plus quick ideas from a few of my food-loving friends, to help us all eat more than our toddlers leftovers each day!
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I realized reading this that part of the reason I have lost my love of cooking is because I no longer sit and enjoy meals. I also don’t get to enjoy the process of cooking because I’m just trying to get it done among a myriad of other tasks or issues during my day. It also doesn’t help when you work on something and no one eats it 😩
All true! Maybe there is an option to occasionally sit down by yourself and eat, like during a naptime possibly. I know it’s hard!