To my own complete annoyance, I have a tendency of getting into a food-rut from time-to-time. Either I find a few dishes and make them every few days or so for weeks on end, or things just get so busy that it’s easier to just stick to the one dish each lunchtime than spend time being creative to come up with something new. It doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m eating toast every day, but I’m certainly not getting the wide variety of foods that I know would be of more benefit to me health-wise, as well as keeping life interesting. The reality is, really, I just get into a headspace where everything seems ‘too hard’, or takes ‘too long’ to be worth the effort.

It’s funny, because while all this is going on, I’m annoyed because I actually don’t enjoy eating the same thing day-in, day-out. That’s why the whole ‘Sunday cook-up’ ‘meal-prep’ thing just doesn’t work for me. I know that some of you couldn’t survive without that ritual, but my food habits and tastes are much more spontaneous than that, so having the same meal for every lunch and dinner each week is by far the last thing I could do on purpose.

The wider variety of foods that you eat, the wider array of nutrients you eat. It’s a food mantra that (for the most part) inspires me to try new things, be creative and be mindful of the food I have in my kitchen. So when it hit me that I’ve been having the same gluten-free instant noodles with soup and mackerel for lunch every day at work for the past six weeks, I knew I had to snap out of it, be purposefully aware of my habits and find inspiration to shake things up. Continue reading →