Everything Happened | vol. 200

Winner winner

I look back now on the months I spent subscribing to a meal subscription service with a kind of compassionate bewilderment. Like all people enduring the 13th month of this thing, I am sick of making my own meals in my own kitchen. But because we have young children and live in a small town with limited restaurant options anyway, we were sick of cooking our own meals before all of this. We’re just also still sick of it.

I don’t know what the condition is where you don’t remember anything unless it is suggested to you, but if you ask me my favorite kind of music I will not be able to answer you because I will forget the name of any song I have ever heard. I think this is why I have always felt so ASSISTED by the creepy AI recommendations on websites. I would like that! Thanks for thinking of me!

The point is that on the occasion that I have the executive function to strategically plan a grocery shop to account for a week’s worth of meals, I have suddenly never heard of food. I will scroll Pinterest boards of recipes and feel astounded that previous-me pinned these tasty looking ideas. My past self, my personal recommendation software. A lot of times the recipes are too fussy or not seasonally correct or I actually remember making them and it being a bust. It is rarely as fruitful as you might think.

I will end up buying the same things every week, some green onions, bagged greens, some starchy veg, fruit for the kids, a tub of Greek yogurt, sack of Babybels, peanut butter, brick of tofu, sandwich bread, almond milk, the usual. The recipe life feels too prescriptive and the lack of recipes feels too freeform. I am somewhere in between yet still hungry 3-4 times per day regardless.

Sure, I can make something halfway decent from the Chopped basket that is whatever we have in the fridge when I open it at 4:45. But no one is ever very excited about it, least of all me.

Of course, Nick also cooks meals around here but the truth is that he has about four he rotates between and the thrill of having not had to plan or execute the meal is quickly lapped by the disappointment of having to eat my 200th pandemic quesadilla.

From the first meal kit that arrived I knew it was not the answer my family was looking for. Nick is Gen X enough to be skeptical of anything that is packaged as a service to improve your life (clearly for impractical dummies!!), and while he is too well-mannered to be a dick about it to me, I have to admit that there can somewhat be an almost ozone-charge to the air around us when I decide to buy a dumb thing. The sharp smell of…..judgement.

Maybe you have also pretended to love something because it seems more desirable, in the short term, than admitting that you were wrong AND you still don’t have a better solution.

The service, which is called H*ngry R*ot, bills itself as a grocery replacement, though we still had to buy things from the store every week. You will get the ingredients for as many complete meals as you want to pay for, plus extra produce and snacks. This presupposes that you want to snack on “cookie dough” made from chickpeas, which I will assume you do not.

It pretty quickly became clear to me that for a vegetarian household, the meals were always going to be a pre-seasoned seitan or tofu and some kind of tub of pre-made sauce. I don’t know what to say about it except that the meals were just kind of sad.

There was one week that we were trying to get excited about a pasta bake, and Nick said, with gentleness, “Is the food just kind of….gross?”

It was. It probably always had been, but there weren’t enough hours of daylight yet for me to see true north. Things are different in the winter. You try to pretend that any food you don’t have to think too much about is better than the alternative. I used to think that. Or I did for a while, because I was cold and also depressed.

After the “this is gross” revelation, I paused the account. By solving the problem of planning meals, it created additional problems, like pressure to use everything up before it went bad and to maintain the cognitive dissonance that it was better than the alternative. Now we’re back to our old system, which is to say, a lack of system. Last night, I made the mushroom and burrata stuffed shells from Nothing Fancy and Nick and I couldn’t believe how good it tasted. It almost felt like dinner could be something other than the worst time of day. I have hope.

yr mate,
Evie
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This is the 200th edition of Everything Happened!!!!! This is the longest I’ve ever kept up a “blog” or maintained an independent creative project. Thank you to everyone who reached out with kind words about my friend Lauren earlier this week. It means a lot to me. Here is the link again for her kids’ GoFundMe.

👇ASK ME ANYTHING👇
For the 100th edition, I did a mini advice column where readers asked questions and I answered them. I thought it would be fun instead to do an AMA, Ask Me Anything. I know that I form parasocial relationships with writers whose work I’ve followed for years and sometimes I am curious about things in their life but it really isn’t my business to ask because we’re strangers!!! Maybe you find yourself thinking similar things about me! Idk indulge me, it’s my newsletter’s bicentennial (definitely a thing). Ask below in the comments and I will reply in the thread.