Revelations

It is my ideal to have a home-cooked sit-down family meal made of fresh, local food, plenty of veggies, and fish 2-3 times per week.

It is strategic when I do menu-planning, grocery shop weekly according to plan, prepare a make-ahead meal on Sunday for later in the week, and put the Farmer's Market on my calendar at work for every Thursday fromMay through November.

It is practical when I get the family fed, hopefully a reasonably healthy home-rprepared meal several times a week, with a fair amount of fruits and vegetables (often from Safeway), with little reliance eon junk food and take-out.  

The truth is I'm a working, single mom, with a full-time demanding job.  Sometimes the menus are not so well-planned.  Sometimes the weekly shopping is late or incomplete.  Sometimes I'm tired, and the kitchen is hot.  Sometimes the thing Dear Daughter wants to hear more than anything else  is, "Let's put on pj's, order pizza, and watch a video." (She is so thrilled, and this is a definite value trade over my ideal every once in a while).  Sometimes I need a treat and we go out for Mexican food, and I get a margarita. Every once in a while, we'll get an invitation to join another family at the pool on a Sunday and the make ahead meal is a no-go - another good value trade (and truth is that make-ahead meal doesn't get made all that often anyway). 

So what's my measurement of success?  I am certain to fail against my ideal.  It will never happen, and measuring myself against that is only obnoxious and demoralizing.  Against my strategic goals?  Well, certainly these help me strive for my ideal, and this gets accomplished some of the time.  But how did I do on a practical level?  Making the best of what life dealt that week?  Recognizing a good value trade even when it was in conflict to my ideal? On average,  did I - with my ideals in mind and strategies to realize them - make a healthy meal more often than not? On the balance does my family eat a good quality, balanced healthy diet?  Is takeout and junk food kept to a practical minimum?  I know when I'm slipping, and our takeout quotient is out of whack - it's usually externally driven.  Then back on track, back to plan, back to basics so I can succeed on a real-life level.