Sunday Summary - 5.14.2023
Happy Mother’s Day!
We are back from our babymoon in Maui that was short, sweet, and incredibly necessary! Bryan and I haven’t taken more than a half day off since Christmas, so time in the sun celebrating our last few months of “just us” (and Nash, of course) was just what the doctor ordered.
Reading
Half Way to You by Jennifer Gold
If you don’t have a trip on the horizon but you’re itching to explore more of the world, pick up this book. It’s about a podcaster who gets the rare opportunity to interview a reclusive author. After a not-so-stellar first interview with said author, the podcaster brings up an unexpected link between the two of them that ends up forging a bond and revealing details about BOTH their lives that have never been shared before. This book takes you to the Pacific Northwest, Greece, Italy, Fiji, and more. It’s a captivating read that earned 4 stars from me!
Happy Place by Emily Henry
I RARELY purchase books, because I’m a loyal Libby user; however, popular books and new releases usually have a waitlist a mile long. To avoid the line (because I was so excited about this release), I decided to pre-order the Kindle version of Emily Henry’s latest book that just so happened to release the day before we flew to Maui! It was a cute read, but Book Lovers remains my favorite. If I were to power rank her books, here’s what they’d be:
Book Lovers
Beach Read
Happy Place
People We Meet on Vacation
This one follows a group of friends determined to make the most of their last summer at a beloved lakehouse — loveable characters, great plot, and several laugh out loud moments. Highly recommend!
Watching
The Last Thing He Told Me on Apple TV+
I got Bryan hooked on this show after hyping up how good the book was. I’d say it follows the original storyline pretty closely, which I was VERY excited to learn! Considering I just recently finished the book, all of the details are very fresh and I was a little worried they’d go crazy with creative liberties. I’m happy to report that while there are a few here and there, the overarching storyline is almost identical. For fans of mysteries - add this to your watch list!
Listening
She did a great job with the summary of her own episode, so if it ain’t broke…
“Typical personal finance advice works particularly well for people in a certain position (with good salaries, education, or inheritances), but it’s mostly useless if you’re not earning enough to make ends meet. To make matters more complex, the way some government assistance programs currently work can paradoxically make it harder to get ahead in the long term.”
I found this episode incredibly enlightening! If you’ve watched the show Maid on Netflix (or read the book), this episode does a deeper dive into some of the challenges that the main character, and thousands of other real people, face everyday."
Thoughts on Cooking
I had a REALLY interesting conversation with friends the other night about how our families approach dinner differently. It all started with this picture of my “snacky dinner” that I was oddly excited about.
Long story short, Bryan was out of town for a couple of days this week for a work trip. While Nash and I missed having him around the house, I got excited to pick through the fridge and pantry to “graze” at dinner time like I often did in my pre-married life. Since we usually cook around 4-5 times per week, it was fun to shake things up and to dirty way fewer dishes! When I painted this picture for my friends, a long discussion began where I learned several things about our weekly dinner routine…
Lesson #1: We are regimented dinner people.
Let me be totally clear — Bryan does NOT make me cook. I actually really enjoy it because it’s a great way to clear my head, it’s something away from a computer screen, it’s cost efficient, and it’s healthier for us overall. Dinner is also our guaranteed time together everyday, and we like sharing a meal and catching up on the day. Reserving our restaurant meals for random, busy nights, spontaneous invites, and weekends serves as a great reason to get out of the house after spending the workweek at home.
When I share 4 recipes in the Sunday Summary each week, those are the meals we’re actually cooking! I swear!! We genuinely eat the food I talk about weekly — I’m not just randomly searching 4 meals on the internet.
Anyway…the big takeaway from my conversation with friends is that we are way more regimented than I thought, and we cook defined recipes more often than most people. Here’s what my friends do:
2 of them shop and cook about as often and as many meals as we do, but both of them use grocery pick up or delivery. We typically go into the store. (Well, Bryan does — he shops for us most often! Thanks B!)
1 of them grocery shops regularly, but she does so for just a few meals because her schedule is more unpredictable than the 3 of us whose daily responsibilities are more routine. She and her significant other rarely ever eat the same dinner even if they do cook at home, because they crave different things and just roll with it. THAT was the most interesting tidbit to me!
1 of them does “snacky dinners” more often than she cooks, because she and her husband enjoy it and she tends to gravitate toward recipes that have niche ingredients that get expensive quickly. She also uses a food subscription box every now and again.
We decided we’re going to share grocery lists with each other to figure out how each family tackles groceries and weekly meals, because we were all pretty fascinated by how different we were and didn’t even know it. We’ve been friends for more than a decade, mind you, so the fact that we just learned this about each other is wild.
Lesson #2: Our weekly meals are cost efficient.
In an average week, we spend somewhere between $150 - $180 on groceries for two people. If you’re like my friend in the last bullet point, I’m here to reassure you that grocery shopping for full meals doesn’t have to be crazy expensive! Here are some facts about our weekly groceries:
We shop at Whole Foods and buy their store brand products almost exclusively. We’re also Prime members which gets us additional $$ off a check out. The last time I went to the store, I saved $16 just by buying what was on sale and scanning our Prime code, for example.
We typically cook 4 meals per week that make ~4 servings each.
We always have things like yogurt, berries, and cereal on the list to cover our breakfasts, and we do our best to keep bulk pantry staples like oatmeal and granola bars handy.
For nights when we have to work late or just don’t feel like cooking, we do our best to keep frozen options from Costco or inexpensive, delicious things like Amy’s burritos on hand.
Once you add up the 8 meals from recipes and enough breakfast food to cover 8-10 morning meals for both of us in a week, we usually get 16ish meals out of the $150 - $180 spent. That equates to about $10ish dollars per meal, which is a pretty hard threshold to stay under when eating out nowadays. (We also always have a condiment or pantry staple we need to replenish every so often that would knock that total cost per meal down a bit, but that math is a little involved for this example.)
I realize this was really random. I hope you found this remotely interesting, though, and maybe it could serve as encouragement to eat at home a bit more often to save a little dough! If you have a different way that you approach cooking for 1, for 2, or for a family of 10 that you feel like we could benefit from, let me know!
Weekly Favorites
Since these shorts came in a few weeks ago, I think I’ve told everyone in my general vicinity about them…and may or may not have purchased 2 additional pairs. On my mission not to purchase actual maternity clothing, I took a chance and ordered these online, because the stretchy, crossover waistband looked promising. They did NOT disappoint!
I sized up (usually an XS and purchased a S), and I think they’ll last me through the rest of this pregnancy and still fit great afterward! They are flowy and flattering, and I’m excited to mix and match these with breezy tees all summer. I have white, olive, and coral! Fair warning: They are short, so I’d size up one size regardless of your stage of life for more coverage!
I lived in these last summer, and I wore these 90% of the time we were in Hawaii. I also wear these to walk Nash around the neighborhood, and they don’t rub or get uncomfy either. The stone color goes with everything, but it does get a little grody over time. I find throwing them into the shower with me and using my wash rag to clean them every now and again works great, though. These are super comfortable, and they come in 25ish different colors if a lighter color isn’t your thing!
While I was ordering the shorts, I also threw in this fluorescent pink pullover. It’s the perfect weight for “summer air conditioning,” IYKYK. Outside temps have skyrocketed, so I live in sweatshirts indoors to balance out the necessary AC. The fun color of this particular pullover earned me a lot of compliments on work calls this week! My co-workers were very impressed that I was rocking color, since my wardrobe is pretty neutral across the board. Also, my favorite Peloton instructor, Callie, said that wearing bright colors tends to boost your mood, and I don’t disagree!
The Latest
If you missed Wednesday’s newsletter, and you’re curious how we were able to travel to Maui on the cheap, give this one a read!
How We Saved Over $4,400 on Our Babymoon Using Credit Card Perks & Points
This week felt different in a really good way. No two days looked the same, and I found myself feeling more motivated and creative than I have been over the last several months. Oddly enough, Jessica Braun put out this video this week that was all about doing things outside of the norm. She had a lot of great insights throughout, too! I encourage you to give it a watch if you’re looking for easy ways to shake up your weekly routine.