New Priorities

How important is it to re-evaluate priorities and change them? Is it something we do to break up the monotony of life? Is it an obligation we have to someone else? Or do we find a new interest or rediscover an old one? Do we pay lip service to the idea, or do we actually follow through?

I woke up Saturday morning and remembered my promise to Hal yesterday. I will cook something for dinner here daily unless there’s a special occasion. I love to cook, but sometimes I just get lazy and can’t find the discipline to get the job done. I suppose it’s boredom, but that’s no excuse for not preparing our food in the freezer. After all, I bought and stored that food for just such an occasion. We have canned goods that need to use before they go bad.

After I woke up, I went to the kitchen and brought out some chicken breasts. I thawed them and put them into some marinade, so they’ll be ready to cook for dinner. I scoured the cupboard and found some canned kernel corn and baked beans to prepare. Finally, I diced up some onion with our fancy dicing device and spiced the corn and baked beans. Then I pulled two frozen pork chops out of the freezer to thaw them for the next round of cooking.

It took me less than thirty minutes to finish the prep work in the kitchen. Now all I have to do later is fire up the Ninja Foodie grill and cook the chicken. That will take less than thirty minutes, so we’ll have dinner this evening with some wine.

When I checked the freezer, there was still plenty of food. We have some frozen fish fillets from Costco to prepare in the air fryer. We also have bags of frozen broccoli to microwave. There is no shortage of food here. I aim to empty the freezer as much as possible before buying more meat, poultry, or fish. The last items are more snacks than meals. We have a few Impossible Burgers left and some popcorn chicken to eat. There are also frozen hash browns in the freezer. It will take a while to get through everything we have, but we’ll save lots of money.

The whole process I described has inspired me. I was getting lazy, but since I promised to cook, I have a goal to meet every day. I will find the discipline to carry through because I promised Hal, and I never want to disappoint him.

Setting new priorities is never easy; well, we might think it is, but talking about it is very different than actually doing it. Hal isn’t the nagging type, so the focus to keep my promise is all on me. I accept the challenge. As long as I keep a positive attitude about the new priorities, everything will be fine.