Is the Lenny Letter’s Guide to Cooking Homemade Meals Realistic? Let’s Find Out

I love cooking. I just made another batch of slow cooker beef stew yesterday, and I’ll be eating half of it this week and freezing the other half for later.

So I was super excited to read the latest Lenny Letter (the twice-weekly newsletter from Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner), because it included an article titled “Shop Like Your Mom,” in which Sally Sampson of Chop Chop Kids gives her 23-year-old daughter a grocery list and recipe guide designed to provide her with enough homecooked meals to last the week.

Sampson’s shopping list includes 28 unique items which she claims “should cost between $50 and $75” total. This estimate feels a little low, especially compared to my recent grocery store receipts:

• On December 30, I bought 23 unique items and spent $85.19.
• On January 9, I bought 19 items and spent $77.18.

Sure, there are a few items on my list that aren’t on Sampson’s, like store-brand facial tissue and Yellow Tail wine, but we’re mostly dealing with the same stuff: cheese, yogurt, oats, a few cuts of meat, a lot of produce, some beans.

So I’d bump Sampson’s estimate up to $75–$100 per weekly shopping trip. YMMV. (Do the kids still say “YMMV?”)

The part of Sampson’s plan that you’re either going to find difficult or exciting—depending on your relationship to cooking—is that Sampson uses these ingredients to make a brand-new meal every night. Lunch is generally made out of the previous day’s leftovers, sometimes repurposed into a salad, but each dinner is made fresh.

When I write that, by the way, I am surprised at how strongly I react to the idea that I need to make a new dinner every night instead of making one big thing of stew and eating it all week. I mean, my family made a new dinner nearly every night when I was growing up. Why does this suddenly feel too arduous to handle?

Maybe it’s because when I’m done with the workday, the last thing I want to do is to start a curry that takes 90 minutes to put together. I want to have a dinner ready and waiting for me, and the closest I can get is by making a bunch of food in advance. It doesn’t feel realistic for me to make a new meal every night and clean it all up afterwards.

Do other Billfolders feel this way? Do you take time every evening to cook something new, or do you make it through on reheated stews, Amy’s Organic Meal in a Box, or takeout? Is it different if you don’t live alone, and have other people who might be less willing to eat beef stew four days in a row?

I could write a few more paragraphs about just how hard it might be to cook every night, but I have a Best Self goal that says “stop speculating about things and start finding out the truth.”

So, next week, I’m running Sampson’s entire plan, soup to nuts. I’ll let you know how much it costs, how much time it takes, and—most importantly—what it tastes like.

There will also be food pictures. I promise you.

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