mommy, what’s for dinner tonight?

Have you ever stopped in the middle of a busy day at the office, felt your tummy grumble a little bit, and wondered, “What’s for dinner?” Then you realized, in your utterly outstretched and overworked brain, that you’re the one who has to figure that out and cook it for the whole family? And as far as you can remember, there’s nothing in your fridge but mayonnaise and toothpaste?

One of my favorite publications on Substack is The Dad Mag by Jack Neary. For any busy parents out there, I suggest you read it. Lots of great tips and advice.

Recently, Jack posted a short blog about how he prepares the meal plan for his family every Sunday and does food shopping in advance, as a way to help relieve his wife of some of the mental load (he also interviewed me, but that’s another story).

To me, this is a perfect example of the type of habit that’s great to put into practice at home (and it’s something I would genuinely like to apply in my own house, if only I had the ability to cook edible food).

For those of us who work in corporate (or, really, any job), this type of responsibility split is probably second nature: a clear delegation of duties, repeatable habits, and a weekly cadence, with both partners onboard and in sync. It’s a recipe (forgive the pun, which was absolutely intended) for success.

Talking about the hero parent

Taking this further, in IT, there’s something called “hero syndrome”. A hero worker is a person who carries all the tribal knowledge, learned experience, and legacy information in his or her own head, and is the person everybody turns to when things go wrong. The hero worker is sometimes referred to as a “SPOF” (Single Point of Failure), and while we all love superheroes, it’s an IT anti-pattern.

The “hero worker” is something to avoid: it creates bottlenecks, it’s stressful, and it usually results in burnout for the person who has all the info. Yet at home, we tend to accept it as a given that one of the parents will be the “hero” (hero moms and dads, please raise your hands ✋✋).

Why do we allow one person to carry all the mental load at home, when we wouldn’t accept that at work? That’s actually one of the main reasons I built beanies.family - so that load can be made visible and shared, and those principles of sharing responsibility and mental load, that go without saying at work, can also be applied at home.

In other words, Jack’s plan is a concrete example of how we can help “hero parents” reduce their mental load, at least a little bit.

So, how do we actually implement Jack’s meal plan idea, and relieve your partner (or yourself) of some responsibility?

Jack’s post inspired me to take the meal planner concept off the shelf, wipe off the dust, and actually build it. It took a few rounds of testing, trial and error, and review rounds, but I’m happy to finally introduce to you, hot off the (proverbial) press: the beanies meal planner!

The goal of the meal planner is for you to never have to be distracted again in the middle of a busy day wondering what the family will eat for dinner (or who will cook it). Everything is laid out, as far in advance as you’d like, in beautiful, gorgeous, beanie fashion:

who in the world eats scrambled eggs for dinner?!

Once the schedule is created, simply share it with your significant other, your cook, your helper, or just print out that beautifully arranged schedule and smack it onto the fridge, for the entire family to see and behold:

does this mean the next time my kid asks me what’s for dinner, i can just tell him to read the fridge?

So in summary, beanies now has a fully featured meal planner, complete with drag and drop to easily create sumptuous weekly meal plans that can be duplicated and edited anytime, and a beautiful, exportable weekly meal plan summary. How cool is that?!

Fine. Since that’s not enough, how about this: what good is a meal planner without an AI-assisted recipe reader?!

Some of my favorite recipes are either on YouTube, bookmarked on my browser, or cut out Bon Appétit cooking magazine articles my mom has kept stored in the kitchen drawer since 1984 (the year of our lord).

Remember how we now have an app with private and secure AI? Well, now you can simply share those recipes with beanies, and bam! They magically appear in your cookbook, perfectly formatted, preserved forever, and ready to be added to any meal.

Add a recipe link, a YouTube url, or just a bunch of recipe text, and the beanies family cookbook will read it and add it to your cookbook. Or, even better, just share the YouTube link to beanies directly:

if only everything in life could be this easy

Now are we good?!

So, in summary, again: beanies has an awesome and useful meal planner, and AI to easily read and store your favorite recipes in your secret family cookbook, all at the tap of a button (or the drag of a mouse)!

So now I’d like to know: what do we all think of these new foodie features? Does this actually help to reduce the mental load, or has it just become another chore? Tell me (or just join to have a chat) in the beanies.family discord.

Now, if you don’t mind, it’s my turn to do the food shopping, and for once I’ll actually know what to buy before I even get to the supermarket. That’s my Christmas miracle for today.

Let’s get meal planning, and have fun cooking, my beans.

greg