My Soup-a-Day Habit-Building Challenge|Part 1
As a new years resolution and experiment I decided eat soup each day in January. I was partly inspired by a Ted Talk by Matt Cutts about habit-building Try Something New For 30 Days. I also wanted to cook more for my family as pre-Christmas we had ended up eating a lot of beige food due to my feeling uninspired, tired / busy and little one seeming to want to exist on a diet solely of potato.
Why soup?
- Light, nutritious food for my husband who wants to eat well
- Different flavours for my little one to try
- Easy and quick
Some things I thought might result:
- Learn from process of doing one thing repeatedly
- Easy inspiration around a single theme (reduce decision-making)
- Learn new cooking techniques
- Feel healthier
It’s twenty-one days through the month. Here’s what happened so far:
I made a soup every-other day (ish)
So, firstly how’s the habit-building going? It turns out I’ve made soup 40% of the time. I’m generously calling this every-other day (ish). Here’s the list of 8 soups I made up to the 21st January.
My Mum’s Tomato & Carrot Soup
Butternut Squash Soup
Parsnip & Cheddar Cheese Soup
Brussels Sprout & Cauliflower Soup
Anything-You-Have Coconut Curry Soup
My Mum’s Tomato & Carrot Soup + Broccoli
Turns out that cooking from scratch every day isn’t a habit I’ve mastered yet. Mid January there was a hiatus of a few days where I didn’t feel motivated. I could have predicted this and in fact my husband did warn me “you like to make things hard for yourself!” and bought a bunch of supermarket soups for off days. Good back-up!
What got me out of the slump was having the opportunity to browse in a Japanese food shop while my toddler was napping. We have a family trip to Hong Kong and then the Japanese Island of Ishigaki coming up so I found myself hankering after a noodle soup.
I plan to redeem myself. I’ve calculated that if I eat a soup a day, every day until the end of the month than I will reach 60% of my goal which feels a decent achievement.
Discovery — a no-peel Butternut Squash hack
I’m out of time to write, but can’t resist sharing that one of my favourite revelations is that you don’t have to peel a Butternut Squash to use it. Just bake the whole thing in the oven. No fuss, no mess (unless like me, you don’t put it on a baking tray and your oven is anointed with squash — whoops!).
Honestly I’m slightly ashamed to say that my mind was blown by this hack.
I’ll post what I learned by cooking a soup-a-day and if I made it to 60% in at the end of the month. Wish me luck!
