The Routine

If you hear about someone being comfortable in a relationship, the implication is that they’d otherwise leave but have gotten used to whatever is wrong. Or they’re too lazy to work on themselves to find someone better. Or they prefer the devil they know to the risk of the unknown. It’s never comfortable in a good way.

But being comfortable with each other is a big part of what makes my marriage as good as it is. Comfort is about safety, honesty, reliability, and trust. We can sit in comfortable silence sometimes for hours. I can safely voice my deepest, sometimes darkest or most controversial thoughts and questions without fear of judgment. I can ask dumb or ignorant questions and get a well reasoned, empathetic answer. I trust that he’ll rinse his mouth out after a beer and wash his hands after coming home because it makes me feel safe (and is actually safe). We can be alone together for days on a camping trip, barely talking to other humans and not looking at our phones and still want to spend time together when we get home. This is the ultimate comfort.

In the last couple of years we’ve taken this comfort to a new level: we have the same meals for dinner every week. It sounds boring. Uninspired. Like we’re stuck in a rut.

But this routine has benefits. After years (and years) of complaining about the other never knowing what to do for dinner, and a higher percentage of our words to each other being about food than I’d like to admit, our food routine catapulted us into a new level of understanding. I know what’s in the fridge after husband does the grocery shopping. We both know all the recipes by heart so either of us can make dinner if the other is busy. We have a delicious meal we look forward to every night of the week and bypassed the “eat whatever’s in the fridge even if it doesn’t sound good” meals. Grocery shopping can be planned ahead without a discussion. There aren’t usually leftovers so we haven’t gotten bored with eating the same thing again for lunch.

It started in the pandemic when we started watching Downton Abbey. I’d found a new recipe I wanted to try and was surprised when husband loved it so much he started requesting it weekly until it became part of the regular rotation. Somehow, it got associated with Monday, which was when we watched Downton Abbey. Also around the same time, we’d started doing weekly face masks, naturally on Monday, and capped off our ultra relaxing start to the work week with a glass of wine and a gummy. 

But we’d still been in a bit of a rut the rest of the week. Most Tuesdays meant tacos, but we made the lazy version of mushroom tacos often enough to get bored, and by the time Thursday came around we were scrounging in the fridge and just trying to get to Friday. We needed a larger roster of meal ideas that we both liked, that weren’t involved enough to take up a whole night, and that we wouldn’t get bored of for a while.

And we got it:

• Monday: Spinach avocado pasta with roasted tomatoes and bell peppers and sautéed mushrooms and chickpeas. Pair with red wine, a gummy, and a face mask. Recently I’ve also been rowing and showering at night to feel extra relaxed, and husband has a shave and sometimes also an evening shower.
• Tuesday: Fish tacos with a chipotle Greek yogurt sauce (recipe from a cookbook my friend gave me forever ago). This is my weekly meat meal to maintain my protein variety and levels.
• Wednesday: This night is our variety night. Sometimes it’s nacho night, my favorite. But we can’t do that every week anymore, so sometimes we have a rice bowl or try something new.
• Thursday: Stir fry with tofu, a mountain of veggies, and a spicy tahini peanut butter sauce. We started making this around the time we were watching The Pitt on Thursdays.
• Friday: Thai takeout and a movie has been a thing since we moved in together. Used to be Thai food and beer, now it’s a glass of wine and a gummy (although we’ve discovered the gluten free Goth Girlfriend and can bring back beer!).

We genuinely love all of these meals and look forward to them each week.

If a holiday falls on a Wednesday, we have nachos. The rodents used to get little bowls of our dinners.

Weekends are still a bit of a wildcard. Pre-pandemic, we’d walk up the hill to my favorite restaurant where I’d get a 20 ounce mocha and a potato mountain (one time an older man at the next table asked how I was going to finish it all and I genuinely hope he watched me polish that bowl). But that restaurant non longer exists and breakfast food has become shockingly expensive. Eating out for four meals every weekend plus coffee has become cost prohibitive. Plus, now that everything has to be gluten free, my options are a lot more limited.

So usually one weekend morning we make our own potato bowls and walk to get a coffee. The other day we’ll have an early lunch instead of breakfast. The goal is to cook half our meals on weekends. We’re still working on a greater variety of restaurants that I can safely eat at and being OK with putting in a bit more effort to eat on weekends or having leftovers, but I’m confident that our weekends will eventually be part of our weekly routine.

If a holiday falls on a Friday, we have Thai food.

Importantly, we have alternates in case this food routine has to be broken. Rice bowl is good for any time we need to swap the usual for a quicker dinner if we have an evening event. In the winter, husband will make chili and I’ll make enchiladas. In the summer we’ll add in salad or pasta salad. A couple times a year he’ll make a lamb stew, my one exception to being pescatarian. I’ll make risotto or lasagna once or twice, and there’s soup and curry and some new recipe I’ll try on occasion.

It’s just enough to keep things interesting, reduces the friction of figuring out what to eat for the millionth time, and gives us something to look forward to: having a delicious meal on the couch with our favorite person at the end of a long day.