How Many Days Can You Go Without Takeout Food?

To UberEats or not UberEats, it’s a question many of us frequently struggle with. Sometimes, there seems to be endless work and no time to even relax, let alone cook. Before we realize, we have ordered food delivery one week in a row, and we feel greasy and bloated.

Is time so scarce that we’re too busy to cook? Would it be possible to eat homemade meals almost everyday, even if we have to work, say, 12 hours every weekday?

The answer to the last question is, of course, yes - because when there is a will, there is a way! Yet, how can we regulate our energy level to balance both long working hours and a lifestyle as healthy as possible, without feeling exhausted? I gave it a little try, and here is a schedule of my week:

Monday:

Lunch: Didn’t get to buy groceries during the weekend, so I had to order takeout (bimbimbap) for lunch. Bought Whole Foods groceries online to deliver to my apartment.

Dinner: Made stew beef with instant pot and seared some vegetables. No time to make rice, so I ate these dishes with bread. Cook + eat time: 1.5 hours.

Tuesday:

Lunch + Dinner: Yesterday’s leftover + rice.

Wednesday:

Lunch: Finished all leftovers and didn’t make any new food. Frozen dumplings for the rescue.

Dinner: Originally planned to make chicken wings, but I forgot to thaw meat. I quickly thawed some shrimp, then made creamy shrimp and veggie fried rice with the cream cheese in my fridge. Cook + eat time: 1 hour.

Thursday:

Lunch: Yesterday’s leftover.

Dinner: Noodles with green beans and pork ribs, Cantonese style. Cook + eat time: 1 hour.

Friday:

Lunch: Yesterday’s leftover.

Dinner: Ordered takeout from a ramen place. TGIF!

I was still working 12 hours every day, but I cooked three times that covered most of my weekday meals. Eating homecooked meals that contained less oil and sauce than restaurant takeout, I no longer felt greasy and bloated. Most importantly, I wasn’t feeling exhausted by this extra task outside work, as I simplified the process as much as possible. Here are some tips of going through a demanding week, while also having energy to cook:

1. Make simple dishes.

Weekday meals are supposed to be easy. That means using less than 5 ingredients, but also cover most of the nutrition. Usually, I make sure there is one kind of meat, 1-2 kinds of vegetables, and 1 kind of carb. I eat my meals with some yogurt and finish with a fruit. That’s it.

2. Use some seasoning so that simple dishes do not taste simple.

It’s easy to get tired of your own cooking, as it may not be as tasty as you’d like. Having a few great go-to seasoning formulas changes the game. Try a few versions of recipes for the same dish, and pick your favorite one. Here are my usual seasoning combo:

Asian dishes:

Chinese stir fry: soy sauce + oyster sauce

Instant pot meat stew spices: 3~4 tablespoons of soy sauce + 2 star anise + 1 bay leaf + 7-8 sichuan peppercorns + some water

A few other store bought sauces: Teriyaki sauce for Japanese-style fried rice, curry chunks for Japanese curry, and fermented chili bean sauce for Cantonese steamed pork ribs.

Pasta:

Cream cheese/boursin cheese for white sauce, or tomatoes + ketchup for tomato sauce. Also, always have garlic, ginger, salt and pepper in your kitchen.

3. Follow food bloggers and magazines for recipe inspiration.

A key to improving the flavor of your home cooking is to learn from the best chefs. I have learned so much from my favorite food magazines and influencers, and a lot of their recipes become my go-to way of making a certain dish. If you haven’t yet, I highly recommend following Saveur, Bon Appétit, NYT Cooking, RecipeTin Eats and ZoëBakes. I have never failed drawing inspirations browsing these accounts when I don’t know what to eat, and they are a great help for adding variety to my cooking.

4. Use the help of technology.

During weekdays, I use instant pot to make stew meat. It reduces cooking time of an otherwise time-consuming dish from 1-2 hours to less than half an hour. I also try to buy good knifes, peelers and graters, since high quality in these utensils significantly reduce frustration during food prep. Lastly, befriend the dishwasher! This goes without saying, lol.

5. Keep some frozen food handy for a quick lunch.

I always have dumplings in my freezer, in case for a quick lunch. When I finish all my leftovers from the previous day and have nothing else ready to eat, I throw together some dumplings and go back to work. It’s a meal that requires basically no effort.

6. Still have some quota for takeout food.

Sometimes, nothing seems to lift our spirit other that delicious but greasy fried chicken from down the street. In that case, go ahead and order it! Life is too short to not eat as you wish.

All in all, it’s all about balance. When you only have 3 or 4 hours of your own time each day to relax, it’s easy to just lie in the couch and order takeout. However, it is possible to live your life as healthy as possible, even with a demanding job, without having to exhaust all energy inside you. Have some discipline, but also give yourself some room to slack. By making effort to eat clean and take care of your health, your journey to achieving excellence in whatever you are working on in your career and study becomes more sustainable.

The Most Important Relationship

I have been single most of my life, so I spent most of the Valentine’s Days single.

When I was younger, I would be super envious of the people who ended up finding their love, whom they can celebrate Valentine’s Day with together. To love and be loved romantically, what a wonderful feeling that must be!

However, as years go by, the definition of love and relationships to celebrate on Valentine’s Day became broader and broader. I’ve since then celebrated Valentine’s Day with my date, and I’ve celebrated Galentine’s Day with my girlfriends. Most importantly, I’ve celebrated Valentine’s Day with myself. I cooked up a wonderful dinner by myself. Went for a walk with myself. Read a book. Watched a movie with myself. At the end of the day, I had the whole bed to myself. Truly, it’s a wonderful day.

When I was younger, I’d be uncomfortable when I was alone. I felt sad and disconnected to the world. Now, I know that it is critical to have time alone and connect from within. I sense my own emotions, energy level, and needs. I ask myself: What should I do to make me happier? And I do exactly that. By providing happiness to me, by me, I regained strength and power.

To quote a role model of mine, the wonderful Diane Von Fürstenberg:

“Love is about relationships, yet the most important relationship is the one you have with yourself. Who else is with you at all times? Who else feels the pain when you are hurt? The shame when you are humiliated? Who can smile at your small satisfactions and laugh at your victories but you? Who understands your moments of fear and loneliness better? Who can console you better than you? You are the one who possesses the keys to your being. You carry the passport to your own happiness.

You cannot have a good relationship with anyone, unless you first have it with yourself. Once you have that, any other relationship is a plus, and not a must.”

Cheers to a great Valentine’s Day, with the love of your life, with your friends, with whoever and whatever that give you love and are loved by you, and with yourself! <3

Rupi Kaur poem print on Etsy

Cheers to a New Job (and a New Path!)

Recently, I started a new job. After doing investor relations advisory for three years, I transitioned into being a product manager. I was so thrilled, I ordered my favorite Diptyque candles and asked the shop to send them to me as a gift, personalized with a card that writes: “Happy New Year and congrats on your new job!” I put that card on my fridge.

As some of my friends may know, I was feeling stuck for many years before this. For a long time, I was in a job that I knew wasn’t for me, and I was trying everything to pivot into a new field. A few months ago, I received an exciting job offer, and I finally felt that I was on the right track for the first time. It’s so refreshing to be on the other end of the tunnel, after all these frustrations and struggles.

In college, I was one of the bright-eyed students who dreamed about working in investment banking. I’ve always been interested in business, and it’s so cool to have a chance to learn how a business is built. However, despite hundreds of applications and networking chats, I didn’t get any offer. I enrolled in a masters program and tried again at recruiting.

This time, an offer came around, taking me to New York to do investor relations advisory. While it wasn’t a dream job, it was what I had at that time, and I had a plan for transitioning into something that seemed more interesting, which was equity research. For a while, I thought I was doing well.

Then Covid hit, and so did my quarter-life crisis. Suddenly, the finance industry didn’t sound interesting to me anymore. I began to struggle finding value in my job, and what I did day-to-day became increasingly unfulfilling. I had no idea what I wanted to do, and I was extremely lost. I dreaded going to work every morning, and was constantly feeling like I was wasting my time, letting my youth slip away.

It was a time of deep reflection, and I explored numerous ways to find an answer. However, I had no luck for many months.

First, I tried to connect the dots as I reflected my life journey. I realized that, growing up, the things I always had the most fun with were all creative. I wrote short stories as a kid, and I was a student journalist as a teenager. However, working in creatives required me to start over, and I was scared by this big commitment. Was that really my calling? Was I talented enough? I wanted to find something that intersects between business and creativity, so that my current work experiences were not going to waste.

As an art enthusiast, I thought about brand management and fashion. Perhaps data analytics in the retail industry? Fashion merchandising? Still, neither sounded right to me.  

Looking around what my peers were doing, I thought about tech. I signed up for a product manager bootcamp, but I was intimidated by all the technical jargons. My first try in product was a failure.

Looks like I was not going to find an answer for a while, I thought. The pandemic seemed to be getting better, but I was still where I was. Eventually, my mind came back to my current role, and I thought about new possibilities in my firm. What was the one thing I wanted to do the most, if I was going to stay? I asked myself. That was when I got started on building a VBA excel template to automate workflows for my team.

Something sparked in my second try in product, and I was hooked. I was thinking about my project day in and day out, and I was constantly dreaming up new ideas to improve my design. Coding no longer looked intimidating, as it was now a tool to solve problems. By googling and asking around for help, I overcame all the technical difficulties. I ended up building something that cut workload by 90%, and I was beyond ecstatic. Finally, I discovered the fun in building a product.

And just like that, my journey in product management began. My template launched successfully last April, and it was another 8 months before I found a new job and officially started as a product manager. Now I am a month in, I’ve been enjoying every minute of it. For the first time in the last few years, I felt that I was finally unstuck.

Most people will get stuck some time in their life, and it takes a lot of work to pull themselves out of the trap. For me, the most painful period was figuring out what I wanted to do for my career. I wanted to find an answer as soon as possible, and I was anxious I was wasting time. Looking back, I realized that as long as I was proactive in self-discovery and trying out new things, no time was lost. By taking on new projects, I discovered new interests. By signing up for new classes, I learned about my strengths and shortcomings. Even in the job I knew wasn’t for me, I made a significant amount of progress without realizing, strengthening soft skills that are important for working in product.

Today, I am thankful that, throughout my years of feeling stuck, I was never actually stagnant, and I never gave up finding a way out. After a few years of trying, I finally pulled myself out.

Readers - have you experienced feeling stuck? How have you forged your own path?

Cheers to a new beginning!

*Picture from Mad Men.