Caring for yourself:
Remember when I told you I was in a constant state of doing things as if my life were in literal danger, and I was on a mission to enter the new year more slowly and with more intention? If you missed it, you can read about it here. Well, I learned a valuable lesson this week and I want to share it with you because I believe it will help ease anxiety, and this one idea may possibly increase the quality of your life.
A Winter Storm Warning
This week the US faced a major winter storm warning, and like so many others, I set out making preparations. Now, I’m not one to rush to buy milk and bread or eggs, but I am one who tries to prepare to keep my family warm and comfortable if we lose power. So, I while others were out buying toilet paper and generators, I was stocking up on candles and propane for our camp stove.
Then, on Saturday morning – barely a few hours prior to the storm hitting – I realized I probably needed to prepare some food we could easily heat up on said camp stove. I wanted foods that would take minutes to rewarm, not forty-five minutes to fully cook. And let’s be honest, frozen chicken isn’t going to thaw very quickly when the house is cold. Right? I began thinking about what I had in my freezer and pantry and quickly thought up a few meals I could throw together in preparation.
As evening settled in
As the evening hours settled in, another revelation occurred. Our camping supplies were stored in our lower level garage. If we lost power we wouldn’t just have to go find them, but we would have to find them in the dark and freezing cold. With. No. Power. So, my son and I went to get the sleeping bags and camp stove along with the propane from the camping bag. And let me just interject, I’m so glad we did! We would have honestly struggled to get those supplies out in the cold dark of night.
As I settled down for the night and got ready for bed, I found myself, once again, holding my breath as I showered. And I realized that I had spent my day in full fight or flight mode. I had been preparing for the worst – and that’s not a bad thing when there is truly a need – but it isn’t a good place to live.
An anxiety easing idea
As I snuggled into my warm cozy bed, I thought how the day had actually been really good. Very productive, in fact. I thought of so many friends I know who work full time, still care for young adult children, or are simply busy with life. By the time dinner rolls around each evening, they are tired. Many of these friends – in my opinion – live in fight or flight mode. They need a simple solution to ease anxiety.
Can we be brutally transparent here for a moment? Sometimes life feels like we are preparing for a storm warning. Monday morning comes around and we are hit with emails and emergencies and customers and school projects. The washer breaks down, the kitchen sink clogs, the car battery dies, and, and, and…
As I stood in my kitchen on that cold snowy Saturday morning, I never thought once about blogging about this. I would have taken pictures to share with you. But I was in fight or flight mode. I was simply trying to survive what might come. But as the storm came and went, and I was faced with a refrigerator filled with yummy foods we didn’t need, I realized that most of my cooking for the week was already done. And it only took me a few minutes. Honestly! Less than an hour of my time was spent prepping food that morning.
Here’s what I made:
- 1 pan grilled chicken breasts
- 1 pound of turkey taco meat
- 4 1/4 pound hamburger patties
- BBQ smoked sausages
- Roasted Sweet pototos
- I pot of white navy beans (but they cooked through the day.)
Here’s what I planned to make from these items:
- Dinner salad with grilled chicken and/or chicken Alfredo
- Nacho platters and/or taco bowls
- Patty melts and/or crumble the patties into pasta sauce
- BBQ smoked sausage and sweet potatoes
- The white beans speak for themselves
An ounce of prevention
Realizing that not everyone has extra time on their hands, spending an hour in the kitchen on a Saturday morning may not be everyone’s ideal start to a weekend. However, if you were to recoup that hour back four or five times over throughout the week, would it be worth it to you? If every evening you came home knowing there was something in the refrigerator you could pull out and put together for dinner, would it ease your anxiety? Would it transition you from fight or flight mode during the dinner hour? Would it help to ease anxiety?
Let’s take a look at another option: What if you were to make browned ground beef for dinner tonight’s dinner, but browned up an extra pound while you were already there. Then, you froze that second pound of scrambled ground beef? Then, pasta night, or chili night, or soup night would already be half done. The hard work of browning and draining and cleaning up the messy part would already be done. What if you grilled an extra chicken breast, or doubled a casserole? What if you started freezing leftover soup or chili or pasta sauce for one night next week?
What if you browned the ground beef for one night’s dinner, but before cleaning up the dishes, browned up a pound of ground turkey for another night’s dinner. Still one pan, still only one clean up. An ounce of prevention may help ease anxiety around dinner time.
Maybe I”m overthinking
Maybe I’m overthinking, all I know is that once the threat of the winter storm and loss of power passed, I was left with a refrigerator stocked with several starts to great meals for my week. And I’m not talking about a full month’s worth of meal prep. I’m simply imagining if we cooked the meats for the week. Isn’t that what takes the longest anyway?
If your life feels like you’re chasing your tail, stuck in fight or flight mode, or facing a metaphorical storm, and you want to curb anxiety, why not give it a try? It doesn’t have to be an entire weekend morning. It could be while you were already making dinner one evening, or over the course of two evenings. I simply encourage you to give it some thought and see if it might just change your life.
xo, Billie
- If you’re looking for a few great recipes, check here.
