The Planner
I don’t do my best work on the fly. Not with test taking or auditions, not with karaoke or cooking. I’m a planner through and through. Can you relate?
Being a planner has its ups and downs. Namely, the downside is that it’s extremely nerdy. But who’s ready with a bandaid in her purse when you need one? That’s me, baby. The primary upside of planning is that it yields better results when setting out to tackle a new task, but this can also lead to intense rigidity.
I can get pretty set in my planner ways, and after a while the sturdy handles of preparedness can start to feel like a cage. I know that for my own good, just like the huge calcium vitamins I make myself take everyday, sometimes I have to test my flexibility to make sure it’s still there.
In this spirit, for the past two weeks, I punted myself out of the proverbial comfort zone by buying groceries and cooking meals with no plan— no plan at all! The experience was at once breathtakingly freeing, debilitatingly terrifying, and mostly, severely underwhelming.
The meals I made were okay, but without a plan, I gravitated toward things I already knew how to make. That’s what surprised me the most about this exercise— each time I went to cook, instead of being driven to create new things, I took the survival route to chow town; and that took away a lot of the thrill that I usually get out of cooking.
Truthfully, I felt a little defeated by my inability to cook at my highest caliber in a complete state of spontaneity. I thought this not-planning thing was going to be a whole new lifestyle for me!
What it really revealed to me is that my planning process deserves far more respect than I’d given it credit for. Part of what planning really is for me, is dream time. My dream world is vast, and without planning to support it, those dreams can’t be brought into the real world. It’s a symbiotic relationship. As a happy consequence of this realization, I don’t nearly as much shame over my planning nerdery as I used to. It’s perfectly okay to need planning in my creative process.
Overall, this experience was certainly to my highest good, and I recommend it (or some form of it in any area) to all my fellow anxious people. It did indeed prove to me that I can still be flexible, and that I can trust myself to make a meal out of almost anything— though perhaps not my most creative or delicious meal. Ultimately, planning and spontaneity can live on the same planet, and I see more of that coexistence in my future.
Additionally, my planner-y ways further showed themselves on Saturday, painting plates with friends at Painted Plate in Olympia (which was the MOST fun)! I spent 30 minutes of our 2 hour reservation looking up inspiration images, and you know what? It paid off big time cause I love my plates!
Sprinkles of spontaneity, like sprinkles on a cake, can be delightful! The bows in the design were unplanned.
In another strong example of planning nerdery from this week, I made spreadsheets for both my vegetable seeds and my flower seeds and I’m going to laminate them. This way, when I go out to plant, I’ll have a dirt-proof reference sheet right there. I love these.
Here’s the best things I cooked this week:
Lentil Salad
Hurrah, this was one of the more creative and delicious dishes I made during my not-planning experiment! I cooked green lentils with a smashed clove of garlic and a bayleaf, then tossed them with orange bell pepper, cucumber, minced preserved lemon and Fresno chili, kalamata olives, mint and parsley. Dressed with minced shallots in red wine vinegar and olive oil, and topped with pita chips because I really wanted a warm pita and didn’t have one.
Carrot Cake Granola
I have Disney Plus’s Donna Hay Christmas Special to thank for this one. Donna Hay’s recipe could feed an army, so I used this recipe instead, and BOY is it delicious. 1000% would bake again.
Pizza Toast
Slices of a French bread loaf, crisped up with olive oil in a 400F oven, topped with pizza stuff! One thing I meant to do, but forgot to do, was scrape the bread with a clove of garlic before topping with sauce and cheese. (Have you tried that? It’s a must for hard-core garlic lovers.) Also, this triangle pattern is my favorite way to cut up toast!
That’s all for this Fryday, see you next time!
Kiya
Carrot cake granola whaaaaat!? 🤤😵