Secret Ingredient: Novelty!
Some silly things I do to zhuzh up the monotony of mealtime
*sexy saxophone music plays*
Hello.
*sexy saxophone screams with ecstasy*
Would you like to….spice up your eating life?
*White horse gallops past; Kenny G riding sidesaddle; he makes full eye contact while taking a bite of a giant, roasted turkey leg; the saxophone wailsssssssssssssssssssssssss*
AND SCENE!
There is lots of advice online for how to spice up your love life with your partner, like this totally normal tip from everyone’s favorite relationship advice website, Astroglide.com:
15. Have a Nerf Gun fight.
But what about spicing up your eating life? I’m not speaking literally — this kind of “spicing” can be done with even the blandest of meals — I’m talking about zhuzhing up your day-to-day eating routine to add little nuggets of joy to your life.
I am talking about NOVELTY.
I frikkin’ love novelty, and after reading this Psychology Today article I know why:
“A sense of novelty activates the dopamine system directly. As a result, it enhances mood, positive outlook, motivation, and goal setting. A positive sense of novelty has also been shown to increase creativity in dealing with stress, lower perceived stress and anxiety, and lessen depression.”
Novelty can be simple. Novelty can be free. Here are some little things I like to do to add some novelty to my days, through the lens of food and eating:
Change of location
Have a picnic! This can be planned, but spontaneously deciding to pack up your dinner on a sunny Tuesday evening and tote it somewhere outdoors will shake up your body’s little snow globe of happy hormones even more. Grab a blanket and head to a park, a beach or just your own yard.
A couple weeks ago I invited a bunch of friends to a weeknight potluck picnic in the park. It was a super low-lift hosting situation: I told everyone to bring a dish and their own environmentally friendly plates and cutlery. I didn’t have to clean my house before or after!
I recently ate a pancake breakfast on my front steps, with a friend, to break my very first post-colonoscopy fast. Hi, I’m 45! The perfect age to talk about my colon to strangers! I never eat on my front steps — it was novel, it was kinda fun.
Ditch Your Car
Getting an e-bike has changed my life — bike riding brings me so much joy and actually makes me want to run errands. Riding my bike to meet friends for dinner, or riding to the grocery store to get ingredients to make a meal at home, gives me a micro burst of novelty that improves my day.
Walk to dinner! Sometimes, instead of meeting a friend at a restaurant, we’ll meet up a mile or so away and walk there together. The walk becomes a part of the hang, I get to move my body between sitting all day at work and sitting in a chair for a meal, it feels good to walk after dinner and my brain benefits from stepping outside of my normal routine.
Plan a Weekday Adventure
I am lucky to live in Seattle, where I can get off work at 5pm and by 5:30p I’m paddling around Lake Washington in a rented kayak and marveling, “It’s like I’m on vacation but I LIVE HERE!” We are also blessed with a ferry system, which means I can have dinner on an island after work and still get home at a reasonable work-night hour.
A few weeks ago after work, we walked on a ferry to Bainbridge Island & had dinner at Pizzeria Bruciato and the week before that I checked off one of the squares on my bingo card: ride bikes to Bainbridge Island and have lunch at Proper Fish.
There is something thrilling about planning a little trip around a meal, and riding a bike onto a ferry is very fun! So. Much. Novelty.
After lunch we rode over to see the Bainbridge Island troll and then to a trailhead to do a little hike.
Theme Dream
Mama mia, do I love a theme! If you’ve been following along for awhile, you know about my Color Club dinners where three friends and I cook monochromatic meals, with outfits to match.
This would be a super fun thing to do with kids to make a weeknight dinner extra fun.
I go HARD on the themed dinners and parties. For the past six years, a group of friends and I have met once a month for a Country Club potluck: we are cooking dishes from every country in the world in alphabetical order. We just finished the last E, Ethiopia, and next month we’ll cook Fiji.
You could do a hot dog night recreate regional dogs from around the country; you can choose a letter of the alphabet at random and only cook things that start with that letter; you can wear pajamas and do breakfast for dinner. THEMES = NOVELTY!
Dress the Part
My friend Jess and I went to the opening party for Molly Moon’s newest ice cream shop on the Seattle waterfront. We ordered matching $5 earrings for the occasion, a tiny novelty that upped our joy factor (I have always loved twinning with friends!) & it ended up being a good conversation starter. We also bought matching corn on the cob earrings. They are ridiculous. We love them.
If all of this sounds silly and/or frivolous — that’s the point! There are so many terrible things happening in the world, and in our country, find tiny pockets of joy where you can!
New episode of Your Last Meal and The Leftovers is out now with humorist, author and Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Dave Barry!
Dave’s new memoir is called “Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass: How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up” and it’s true! This man does not seem 77 years old! We had a super fun conversation about ketchup and lobsters and Hitler (now do you want to listen?!) & I hope you like it:
XO
Rachel Belle
My daughter home schooled her children. A world map still hangs above the dining table. As they studied the history and culture of other parts of the world, they listened to the music of that area, and ate the foods common to those peoples. It provided them with a rich understanding of countries they may never visit, and certainly how folks with different values do life.