When you’re feeling overwhelmed by teaching, it’s easy to get into some bad habits. You keep hitting snooze and don’t make time for breakfast. You’re too busy during the day to eat a snack (if you brought one) or to get lunch from the caf (because you didn’t pack one). You’re so hungry and exhausted at the end of the day that cooking seems impossible, so you get takeout, yet again. You feel like you are constantly in survivor mode, so you permit yourself another can of Coke from the staffroom vending machine.
This is what a really bad time teaching can look like for me. But good weeks are also possible, and they start on the weekend. One important way to think of self-care is doing things for future you.
Saturday mornings, I go grocery shopping. I try to get there between 8 and 9 a.m. This works for me (I don’t have kids) because there are few other people in the store and often the shelves are really full and still have the nicest produce left. I also like to get the day going early because I have plans for the afternoon (to be detailed in a future post).
It’s very important to eat breakfast before going to the grocery store–if I’m hungry, I tend to come home with all sorts of stuff that looked really appetizing but we don’t need. I eat breakfast while I plan out my meals. Following advice from Jordan Page (funcheaporfree.com), I “shop” my own fridge and pantries first to see what food I need to use up and plan meals accordingly. Her other money-saving tip is to look at the front and back pages of the grocery store flyers during this process so that your meals work with what’s on sale, but… I think I’ll consider that an opportunity for future growth.
Sunday mornings, I put on some podcasts and make as much for the week as I can manage.
What do I make?
- Breakfasts for the week: I am not very interested in most standard breakfast food and this was a meal I was skipping. Now, I like to prepare things like a bean or lentil salad, roasted vegetables, a chicken pie, boiled eggs, bagel with salmon spread (ambrosia as far as I am concerned), or a cucumber salad. I have historically done a bad job of getting enough vegetables, so I try to get 1 or 2 servings in at breakfast. I cook a selection of these foods in advance so I just have to assemble a plate in the morning. Hot tip: slice your bagels in half and stick them in the freezer–they don’t go mouldy and you can pop them right in the toaster!
- Lunches for the week: In warmer months, I’ll prep salads or wraps. Using baby spinach instead of lettuce lets you prepare all five salads at once because it doesn’t wilt or get rusty. I just chop the cucumber and add the salad dressing the morning of. For colder weather, I like to make one dish meals, like Spanish rice, Cuban beans, chicken biryani, or some other recipe I’ve concocted to use a starch, a meat and some vegetables. I’ll make a pot of it and divide it into easy-to-grab containers right away.
- Snacks for the week: I need one for recess in the morning, one for right after school, and a back-up in case I’m working late after school. I like to have a fruit or vegetable and some protein. Some combos: Royal Gala apple + cheddar cheese cubes, peach + smoked almonds, cucumber + hummus, raspberries + raspberry Greek yogurt. The backup is supposed to be simple to eat on the bus or walk home. I pre-cut it and put it in small containers to pop in my lunch bag.
- Any dinners I have time for. I’m trying to see if there are ways I can pre-prep some of the items I will cook, but failing that, I need meals that can come together quickly so that I am less tempted to just buy something.
I’ve been pretty good so far this school year with this strategy. I love having good snacks available and I’m getting better about reminding myself to eat them at appropriate times to give myself breaks during the day.
I’m trying not to pay too much attention to fat content or number of calories, but I am trying to pick food I will enjoy eating and that will help me keep my mood more even during the day. This week’s salad turned out really fun: baby spinach, Persian cucumber, cherry tomatoes, strawberry, pecans, cranberry goat cheese, some croutons, and a raspberry vinaigrette. So certainly not the most healthy, but overall better than many other choices I might have made. I don’t mind having the same meals all week because I know I’ll have something completely different next week.
The biggest challenge is when other plans come up on the weekend. For example, I’m my school’s debate coach, and many of the tournaments have been taking place on a Saturday, which disrupts the groceries. There are also family and social events that I want to prioritize. When I don’t have groceries, I can’t prep the meals on Sunday. I’m going to make an effort to get around that by shopping on a week night if I know that Saturday is occupied.
This is a wagon I hope to stay in, because it makes the ride a lot less bumpy.
Lemon Day Planning 