No More Take-Out

The last Real Simple makeover from the October 2011 issue is called “I Want to Kick the Takeout Habit,” and on the website it’s called “Kicking the Takeout Habit.” Still confused as to why they must change the titles so it’s impossible to find them on the website, but hey I’m a simple girl. This makeover helps Andi Jordan, a married mother of three whose husband does help out with the cooking, but relies too heavily, apparently, on bacon. She wants to get healthier and stop eating so much take-out, but is overhwelmed by the dizzying array of vegetebles at the market.

It was Andi’s overwhelming vegetable experience that made me think she was probably an Organic. This type tends to have trouble with details and a wall of unfamiliar produce can easily induce this phenomenon. Real Simple’s solution for her is to PLAN. Now this is a great solution for Organic Structures, Smart Structures and Classics, but its going to be really really hard for Funs, Organic Freedoms and Smart Freedoms. Why? Because the latter have a hard time with planning. They can probably keep it up for a month or two, but if the planning doesn’t become ingrained and automatic, the system is going to fall apart outside of a couple of months.

Funs, Organic Freedoms and Smart Freedoms like to keep things in their heads. That’s where they plan. The idea of sitting down on Sunday afternoon and planning out the meals for the week on a piece of paper with all sorts of new ideas and details is the LAST thing they want to do with their free time. These types have to stretch their natural preferences ALL THE TIME to succeed in this scheduled world, so meal planning on their off time? Fuhgetaboutit!

In order for Funs, Organics Freedoms and Smart Freedoms to plan meals, they need to slowly and carefully come up with an easy to remember repertoire of meals and sides. It’s why we recommend a site like The Scramble to cooking newbies of these types. Until they know which meals they like and can remember what ingredients go into them? Then it will be hard for them to get a good meal planning system going if they’re also working full time. Not impossible, just very difficult.

But Real Simple’s suggestion for panini night is great, especially for the non-planning types because even if they have gone through all the trouble of planning out the week’s meals, at least they have one night where they take all the leftovers and do something somewhat spontaneous with them. And if they can keep it up for long enough to so that the meal planning becomes an automatic process they can do when they’re actually at the market — no longer overwhelmed because they know what to buy without even looking at a list — then the meal making will probably stick.

But here’s the rub. How long is long enough for the non-planning types to make meal planning and cooking an automatic process? Real Simple checks in with the families after two weeks to see how the routine is going. As if anyone can create a new routine in two weeks that’s going to last! It takes at least 90 days for any person, regardless of personality type to create a new routine that will stick, and for the types who really need to be able to have recipes and ingredients and cooking techniques in their heads before something becomes manageable to do at the end of a long day’s work, let’s double that and call it a day.