Hello, you're listening to the Lazy Genius Podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi and I'm here to

help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't.

Today is episode 199, seven ways to get out of a dinner rut. I'm pretty sure there

are some major ruts happening in this community. Most of you live in the United States. Many

of you have kids. All of us are living in varying degrees of isolation still because of

the pandemic and all the things. Yet we still have to eat. We still keep making dinner. But

it feels like it's getting harder and harder, right? It's for me. So let's try and find

a couple of solutions here. Before I give you the seven ways, I think it's very important

to share why we're probably in a rut. It helps you name more specifically what the problem

is and it hopefully will give you a chance to be kind to yourself. One of our very important

lazy genius principles. Instead of beating yourself up that you're cooking the same five

meals over and over again. So real quick, there are two main reasons I think that you might

be in a rut in this particular time. The first is circumstantial. We're home more.

So we're likely preparing more meals at home than usual. On top of that, we are depleted.

For people are depleted. All of us have way fewer reserves than we usually do because

of how hard this last year has been. We're also very tired. At least I am very tired.

I hit a wall way earlier in the day than I used to and it very much affects the energy

around making dinner. And when we're tired and depleted and don't have a lot of margin

for rest, our ability to make decisions plummets. It's like we can't choose one more thing.

We just cannot do it. That often happens in relation to dinner in regular life, right?

But then you throw this pandemic into the mix. And even now it's winter. Texas was covered

in snow and like blacked out across the state. We've had ice storms. We've had even more

...