Romantic Reflections is dedicated to thoughts and musings of Living your life in a romantic fairytale
Busy Day … Must Eat
“Ordering in is easy and convenient, but is it the best choice”
Your life is busy. Very busy. At the end of the day when you come home from work feeling tired and hungry, you just want to eat some food and relax. Thankfully there are numerous food delivery services and options available, so you pick up your phone and place your order, knowing that food will be prepared and at your door in about an hour.
You sit and wait, flip on the television, and perhaps munch on a bag of potato chips to fill the void until you are presented with a container of food at your door.
It was fast, you didn’t have to get off the couch to cook, and you now have something fairly warm in your stomach to alleviate your pangs of hunger.
“Dinner” is over and you throw the remnants of styrofoam packaging and plastic cutlery in the trash; You are temporarily feeling full, and after a busy day wasn’t it worth it to just relax and order in?
As you debate your answer, ask yourself a few questions:
Did I enjoy the quality of my dinner and did it make me feel happy and content?
Was the food truly fresh and healthy, or was much of it processed and “factory prepared”?
Was the time waiting for delivery faster than cooking a healthy meal in the kitchen?
What was the financial cost and value of the food I received?
Did ordering in create romantic time with my partner, and fill us both with love for each other and improve the quality of our lives?
If you are being honest, truly honest…..the answer to the above, all of the above is … NO!
Better Choices … Happier Lives
Restaurants offering delivery services are not to blame, not in the least. If you take a look at their business model you will understand that they are doing a very very good job at providing the door to door prepared food delivery service that so many people are asking for and are in the habit of using. Their business objective is to prepare and deliver as many hot meals to as many homes as possible in a very small window of time … and have it there FAST!
This presents many challenges that they have worked out beautifully to satisfy a very demanding objective, while trying to keep costs as low as possible and maintain a profit margin that allows them to stay in business. With preparation time being a premium, much of the ingredients in your delivery meal are pre prepared and highly processed enabling the restaurant to assemble your meal in a production line factory model … cook and heat the food as necessary, box the food up in insulated containers and packaging, and deliver it as quickly as possible so that it may arrive to you as warm as it can be..
The quality by nature simply cannot be as high as a freshly preared meal, and each component of food that is processed lowers the nutritional value of the ingredients and when consumed on a regular basis creates a less healthy you.
If you think for the moment about the number af people involved in preparing your dinner, the cost of leases in factories and restaurants to create your meal, and the vehicle and fuel costs of delivery, it is a marvel that the restaurant can provide you with your meal at your door for the cost that they do … but it is much much much much more expensive than if you were to prepare a healthy fresh dinner in your own kitchen.
The health benefits and financial savings of preparing healthy fresh food far outweigh the convenience of placing your order and answering your door, and you know that after eating a healthy fresh dinner you are far more satisfied and content, making you much less likely to snack on unhealthy food later in the evening.
We are concerned with your health, happiness, and finances, and want you to limit ordering meals in, because when you do, you are going to find more time for love and romance in the life you share with your partner leading to a healthier and happier you.
The Couple That Cooks Together Stays Together
Many people are daunted by cooking because they don’t take the time to sit back and pre plan how they are going to cook a meal but it’s really quite simple, and when you are organized in your thoughts and cooking methods, you will be preparing delicious dinners quickly and easily … while loving every minute of it!
We will of course be writing at a later date on kitchen organization, how to prep and when to prep, cooking times, shared duties of partners and more, but for now we want to tell you it can be done and done easily. You can have a beautifully prepared, fresh and healthy dinner each and every night of your life for the same amount of time you spend waiting for delivery. What’s more, you will have a more romantic and loving life with your partner in the process … not to mention that your “love bank account” will be bursting with the extra money you save.
As with everything, cooking each night instead of ordering in is a life change, and for it to become second nature and stress free, you need to take small steps at first to get started.
Dinner preparation is an activity that you should be sharing with your partner and looking forward to at the end of each day. Instead of arriving home feeling exhausted, you should be arriving home excited and energized with the prospect of entering the kitchen with the one you love. You are spending time preparing beautiful food together, sharing conversations about your day at work, and squeezing, caressing, and kissing each other every time you brush past one another during your cooking routine.
Cooking should not be looked at as a task, but rather a pleasure that relaxes you at the end of the day and provides you with intimate one on one time with your partner, allowing you to have romantic conversations and share loving thoughts and feelings.
This is a special opportunity to share dedicated adult time while the two of you are working together to achieve the common goal of preparing a healthy, delicious, beautifully presented dinner for yourselves and your family.
Food is love, and your kitchen should be thought of as your second romantic boudoir, not an industrial location to be avoided and used only for removing take out cartons from their bags. When you cook together each night your kitchen will be filled with love and memories of shared conversations, romantic hopes and dreams for the future, and stolen kisses … many many MANY stolen kisses.
It’s sounding better already isn’t it!
Healthy You, Healthy Love, Healthy Life
You may notice that in our writings we often refer to health, attractive body image, and fitness. We are not fat shaming but wanting to encourage everyone to be better to their bodies and have a healthier life. There is no advantage to having extra weight on your body, and in fact the exact opposite is true. By carrying extra pounds on your frame, you are forcing every part of your body to work harder. Your heart, lungs and other organs have to work harder to keep your body functioning and the extra unnecessary weight you are carrying creates added stress on all your joints and skeletal system with no added benefits to you, your life, or happiness.
Think of your body as if it were your car, and the effect that with your foot pressed to the floor with a trunk full of bricks would have on the life expectancy of your vehicle. You would have to repair and replace parts more frequently, and your vehicle would not be as available to use and enjoy as it would spend more time at the garage being repaired, until finally it must be sent off and replaced completely. Your body is no different than your car, and the better you treat yourself and your health, the longer you will live with the highest possible quality of life. Isn’t this your overall goal, to live a long healthy, and happy life?
You may be asking what obesity has to do with ordering food, but it truly goes hand in hand. Our increased consumption of fast food and processed food has created an epidemic of obese and overweight people in our country. In the past 40 years we have seen national averages of obesity rise from under 6% of the population in 1985 to nearly 30% of the population in Canada being obese in 2021. Remember that is just obesity, the percentage of the population that is overweight in Canada is currently 68%. We are eating more fast food, drinking more soft drinks, and consuming more processed food, all behaviours that are having a negative impact on our health.
If you make a conscious effort to cook more heathy food in your own kitchen, you will find a huge change in your overall health, and if you are feeling healthier you will be happier, have more energy, and feel much more loving with your partner.
Guaranteed.
When You Deliver Happiness
There is no doubt that reducing the number of times you have meals delivered to your house will improve your life by making you healthier and happier, and giving you the opportunity to share more romantic moments with your partner.
Cooking healthy meals at home with the one you love will not take any more time than waiting for the delivery driver to show up at your door, and by cooking healthy meals with your partner each day you will have the opportunity to spend more quality time with the one you love, fuel your body with fresh and healthy food, and save an incredible amount of money to put away into your “love budget”.
Reducing the amount of processed food that you consume will have the immediate health benefits of increased energy and natural weight loss, and most importantly will lead to improved overall health that will ensure a far better quality of life now and in your later years. If you take care of yourself and your body throughout your life, your retirement years will be spent enjoying life and doing the things you want to do, rather than spending your days repairing your body and recuperating from a less than healthy lifestyle in your younger years.
When you make the change and organize your life to cook each night with your partner, it will not take any more time, and you will find that the kitchen becomes your favourite room in your home as it is the place where you spend quality time with the one you love, having the opportunity to talk, laugh, and share intimate little squeezes.
Take note of the amount of money you currently spend in a month on takeout, delivery, and fast food, and you will be amazed at how much money you can save and divert to things in life that make you happy. Money that can be spent on dreams and goals that you share with the one you love, instead of disappearing into the void of daily expenses that give you very little satisfaction and limited convenience.
The cost of delivery is a cost too high as the savings of a very small amount of time is negated by the negative impact to your health, detriment to your financial well being, and loss of the opportunity of the most important thing in your life … special quality time with the one you love.
A healthier and happier life begins with you, and rediscovering the romance of preparing delicious, healthy dinners with the one you love will lead to the loving romantic FairyTale Life you dream of.
Romantic Reflections is a collection of thoughts and musings intended to add little touches of love and romance to our relationships creating a fairytale that will last forever.