It’s really, really hard to change your habits. You’ve picked them up from childhood, college, that ex who showed you that microwavable mac & cheese could be breakfast if you are getting ready for work at dawn and will be gone for 12 hours a day. And if you haven’t done a long commute with a toddler, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
If my son wasn’t throwing up in his car seat from the stop-and-go (which required me to pull over, change his clothes and scrape in the crevasses of a chair that is tightly strapped in), he was crying that he wanted to get out of his car seat or that his tablet wasn’t working. One regret and resentment that I had as a commuter mom was that the care I had put into the organic purées when my son was an infant completely went out the window when I was waking him up to put him right in the car, sleep gunk still clinging to his lashes, and handing him an oreo cookie.
On top of the hour and a half commute to day care, from which I then had another thirty minute drive to work, the ride home was just as bad. Meaning that we didn’t get home until at least 6:30pm and the night routine started the second we walked in the door, which left only minutes before bedtime to actually spend time with my son- who was ironically the only person I wanted to spend time with all day long.
Making dinner after a long day like that was hard and depressing. It was time consuming and meal prepping didn’t make it any easier. Meal prepping is great if you have the time, but for me it was expensive with all the containers I needed for lunches and dinners and I was spending one of my two days off cooking all day. It wasn’t sustainable for me so I started doing some research.
I had some problems that needed solving:
- I needed lunches and dinners that could easily be thrown in the oven or the microwave or just needed an ice pack.
- I needed a variety of meals so that I could work toward the vegetarian diet I always wanted while other family members who preferred to stay meat-eaters or were picky toddlers also had options.
- I needed something affordable.
I found delivery in a whole new way that changed my life. When I sat down to actually see how much I was spending on take-out lunches or dinners per week when I was just too tired to make something and the groceries that I did buy, I saw that freezer delivery meals and delivery groceries were actually in my budget.
Here are some recommendations from my research:
Groceries
The closest organic food store was almost an hour away from my house, so I opted to order my organic food online. Post-pandemic there are a lot of options for this!
- Thrive Market
- Misfits Market
- Amazon Fresh / Whole Foods
Prepped Food Delivery & Ready to Cook Delivery with Vegan, Vegetarian & Gluten Free options
- Mosaic
- Fresh
- Purple Carrot
- Hungryroot
- Hello Fresh
- Sakara Life
- Splendid Spoon
- Blue Apron
- Sunbasket
- Plantable
- Factor
As I do actually really love to cook, I also purchased a membership to a local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). This allowed me to pick up fresh organic fruits, vegetables and flowers every Saturday and became a fun weekly outing for me and my son. What I enjoy about the CSA is having something to do with my son every week, seeing the smile on his face when he is running around an open space playing with the dogs that other members bring, having the challenge of cooking in accordance with whatever different vegetables we get each week (I learned how to cook turnips!) and . I also was shocked (and somewhat disturbed) to learn the difference between real organic vegetables and store bought organic. Oh, there is certainly a difference in how long that last begging the question of what exactly is in those ‘organic’ baby carrots in the grocery store. My carrots from the CSA would last a few days to a week, very quickly getting soft in my refrigerator. Meanwhile, my store-bought organic carrots were crunchy for at least two weeks and this concerned me. Now, I visit an organic farmers market for fresh fruits and vegetables with no preservatives once a week and order the foods that I can’t get there.
Try it yourself and see what differences you find in your life and health!
