Hi Reader,
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I hope your August is treating you kindly, because mine has been a lot lately.

Between my husband's work schedule shifting around him lately, our community volunteer commitments ramping up for fall, and my own Tuesday choir practice, dinner has become the one thing I genuinely don't have extra energy left for by the time evening rolls around. And that's before my GI issues decide to flare and toss the whole plan out anyway.

So this month, I stopped trying to plan meals and started building a rotation instead. A handful of dinners I already know how to make, leaning almost entirely on the slow cooker, air fryer, and electric grill so nothing requires standing over a hot stove in this heat. No new recipes to figure out, no decisions to make at 5 pm when I have nothing left to give it.

The other piece was letting go of the idea that every dinner has to match. Some nights that's a quesadilla, an air fryer flatbread pizza, a can of soup, or microwave mac and cheese, and I've stopped needing to justify any of it. My husband helps when I need it, and I've borrowed a phrase from parenting circles that's helped more than I expected: fed is best. Some nights, that really is enough.

None of this is more structure. It's less, and it's been a relief. If you're in a similarly stretched season right now, I wrote up the whole rhythm on the blog, rotation, tools, and all, in case it helps you too.
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Read it it here: A Simple Back-to-School Meal Rhythm for Chronic Illness (No Meal Prep Sunday Required)​
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​Until next time,

April Smith​ ​Website | Facebook | Bluesky | Pinterest​

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