My Week on the GROW Method: Part 3!

By Zoe Johannas, Community Engagement Intern

In this thrilling conclusion to My Week on the GROW Method, I discuss how I achieved the last two GROW Method goals while fighting off laziness and cooking great food.

And this brings us to my third, but maybe not final, grocery store struggle. You see, It’s not that I can’t cook when I put my mind to it, but more that I tend to make only 3 things for lunch- 2 of which end in sandwich. While sandwiches are great and all, they do leave a lot to be desired in variety category. No matter how much I think I want to cook myself a well-rounded meal and use foreign items such as colanders, and spatulas, and stove tops, I inevitably wind up using nothing but a fork and a microwave. So to take on the GROW method I readily embraced the cook smart axiom. I felt more than ready to learn some minimum energy recipes that translated directly into speedy prep times. To round out my GROW Method, I less readily, but just as determinedly, I decided to cut down on my meat and animal product intake as well.

Though I eat very little meat besides my beloved cold cut sandwiches, this is really just because I don’t feel like cooking, not because I think about the necessity of saving water and resources. So even though I don’t eat much as is, I felt that I ought to do what I could to be conscious about my choices, while attempting to expand my puny recipe repertoire. Though for a while I feared that this would mean my ham and cheese sandwiches would simply morph into PB&J’s, I instead decided to actually use some of the Oxfam resources I spend my days promoting.

 If you have yet to visit Oxfam America’s Pinterest site, I cannot suggest it more. I credit this site for not only   luring me in with its mouth-watering recipes but inspiring me to hunt down some of my own! With a couple quick clicks I ended up finding some delicious, gluten free and foolproof recipes that allowed me to give the lunch meat a rest.

Though I’ll always have my ham and cheese sandwiches to fall back on, I found new recipes that are not   only giving me some much needed variety in my limited meal set, but also all take under fifteen minutes to prepare. Who knew cooking smart and being incredibly lazy could go together so well? Some favorite new dishes I stumbled across were avocado soup, kale chips, and burritos as a way to eat basically all leftovers. I managed to eat better, cook better, and make better choices at the grocery store all as a result of applying the sustainable GROW Method. 

Applying the GROW Method encourages me to pay more attention to the products I buy and use them to eat better. Every aspect that I thought would be a burden turned out to only help me make better choices. Though I did not have to sacrifice much, I did gain a new awareness of the importance of my choices and how easy it was for me to concentrate on everything but the specifics of my shopping. And while I will probably always wince at the thought of my weekly grocery adventures, I can now safely say that implementing the GROW Method will be the least of my struggles.

Now it's your turn! Tell us what you've done to make the GROW Method work for you! How are you spreading the word to your friends and families? Give us your stories, tips, ideas, and experiences! Send them to actioncorps@oxfamamerica.org and see them posted here!