Meals – a case study

One of the most difficult things about being human, or any living being, for that matter, was how to solve the problem of feeding ourselves for the duration of our lives.

Providing meals is a laborous process. It was when we were threshing our own wheat. It is now despite convenience “food” and take-out. Many people have discussed the cognitive load, unpaid labor, and disproportionate burden this places on women. I’ll dig up those more articulate commentaries and link them later. What I wanted to do here was lay out a specific outline and time of what that has looked like for me. If it’s useful as a reference for others, please use it.

But before I begin, a note on context. I am writing this from a perspective of a midwestern white woman who lives in a middle-class suburb outside of a major city. I have more than adequate financial means, am able bodied, and have access to grocery stores and food options and have a professional job. I live with a man however we do not have the same values regarding food. The household only contains the two of us; our children are grown and live separately. We do not have any major health concerns or dietary needs or restrictions. There is a food allergy that can be accomodated by avoidance; one where a mistake is dangerous but not life threatening. I am largely the person who determines all the decisions regarding meals. I do like to cook and like to feel appreciated for my cooking or baking abilities.

So with that in mind, this process actually starts with calendars. Before I can determine meals or menus or grocery lists, I need to look at schedules. I need to review physically where we are going to be on each day (work from home vs commuting), review appointments and their times and locations, note any other obligations. Then I need to figure out what the time margin is for any given day. I ask myself questions like, do I have time to cook on a given day? How much time is that? If I don’t have time, how far in advance do I have to prepare? How many days do I not have time to cook and are they next to each other? How much time do I have on the weekend? For any time that I do have, what might be reasonable to be able to do given the events of the day? Should I plan on fully reheating something? Will I have the energy and interest to simply assemble and cook? Will I be to tired to cook even if I have the time? Where can I ask for help? Will there be anyone available to help? What is the limitations on that help (time, skill level, knowledge, etc.)? Which if any of these days should I consider not cooking, but ordering out?

The next step is then start to work through various cookbooks, online recipe sites to see what meals might work for which day. In this process, I’m considering what my time available is but also what is my skill level. Related considerations are: how familiar the recipe is, how long it might take relative to my skills, what am I interested in having, what is my partner is interested in or willing to eat, can I adapt something to account for our preferences, does the recipe need to be adapted for quantity, do I want to try something new (a food or cuisine), do I want to try something new (attempt a new skill or technique), or how complex or simple the recipe is. While I’m doing this, I’m also starting to consider what is in my current pantry and freezer as preparation for the next task.

From there I can finally start to work on creating the grocery list. I make a Google Keep list to slot them into days (I make a two week list and it helps me remember what I planned for what day). I take a good look at what I have in my inventory and what needs to be purchased. This is also the time that I consider what might be used as leftovers for lunch for my partner. The meal planning at this point doesn’t usually include lunch plans for either of us. I’ll also look for breakfast and lunch ingredients for myself. These don’t require planning as I have the same thing every day. At this step my partner gets involved and adds his lunch and breakfast items, any snacks he might want for the week. I also go through and look for needed refills for pantry staples and household items (cleaning supplies). I also review any convenience foods that I might have that I can use as backup in case the menu plan gets derailed.

These three steps take somewhere from 1.5 to three hours. We have been doing curbside pickup for about two years before COVID started. We have a grocery store that has a resonable app that allows us create a list easily enough. But as the order gets made, I re-evaluate the menu because of costs, the availability of what I need, and my willingness to make more than one stop — if I even have the time to make one. I also have to make sure this gets done by a certain day and time, referring to my calendar for availability relative to pickup time options.

Once the order is placed, the pickup and subsequent stops usually take about an hour and a half. Considering supply chain shortages and worker wage issues, staff have been overworked and stores are chronically without support. That means longer pickup/checkout times. There is also the issue of getting notifications of out of stock items. There is a short amount of time to determine if the subsititutions will work. If they won’t work then I have to figure if the items can be gotten at my second stop, and if still not what I can do about remediating the menu again. At this point food finally enters my home.

Now is when the “cooking week” starts. About six hours of one weekend day is spend prepping food that will be assembled and cooked later, as well as fully cooking a few meals that I can just reheat. I usually work from home two days a week and those are currently scheduled for Monday and Tuesday. These are the assemble and cook days. As Monday is our date night and Tuesday is family dinner where the kids come over or we go to them, I still try not to be in the kitchen overly long those days. Wednesday through Friday I commute, so I try to find meals that just need simple preparation or just reheating. Typically cooking on Monday/Tuesday takes about an hour, Wednesday through Friday can take from 10 to 45 minutes. If it’s just reheating, I’ll get help with the oven or having boiling water ready. And of course there is the cleanup time as well for any given day. Any weekend that we have plans will cause conflict as it cuts my weekend cooking or preparation time. And in some cases where we are having people over, it adds an extra day of meal prep as we usually subsist on grazing and leftovers otherwise.

Currently I’m running this plan over two weeks to try to cut my workload. Current rough time of cognitive and physical time amounts to 19 to 20.5 hours of labor, all unpaid. Also this time can easily go up when schedules change or unexpected events happen. Several hours of work sometimes need to be redone if an ingredient has gone bad, is used without knowing, or a thousand other conflicts arise that makes a meal unfeasible to eat or prepare. And if anyone is reading this, yes there are other “optimizations” that I probably could incorporate and inequities that I could address. But at the age of 50 I’ve tried most of them and they aren’t sustainable for the context I’ve presented.

That context is important. My workload presented here is for someone who has fewer barries that most women and family groups. This is a rough starting number attaching time to specific tasks for us to see. Imagine if you will, any living situation where there are accomodations that need to be made for diet, ability, age, etc. Imagine more accessibility barriers to food or food support (thinking of the WIC program in Illinois). Imagine not having an education regarding healthy food choices. Imagine not have a cooking skill set or a food culture that supports healthy eating. Imagine having limited time for any of these activities based on competing priorities of work and family. Imagine how much harder this work is because of society expections and judgements, patriarchy, racism, classism, and any other systemic -ism. Imagine simply not having enough money to have agency in this arena at all.

Feeding people is hard work. It’s no less hard that when we came from community farming cultures, just differently hard. My goal here was to, again, present a case study that outlined the labor and costs, both visible and invisible. Hopefully this clarifies for some what that the actual, full labor looks like for “simply” being fed and leads you to a place of compassion and understanding.