What became mix-it-up! began as an effort to improve the quality of meals in our home, and to put an end to an unfair distribution of labor. In 2016, our family had very few recipes we could reliably prepare, and we relied heavily on packaged food, takeout, and especially pizza delivery.
On top of that, because of my weak sense of smell, my wife couldn't stand my cooking, and I constantly spiced everything she cooked to the point of rudeness.
Then, in 2017, we made a resolution to plan our dinners. At first all of the work was in simply finding new meals that everyone could enjoy, but as time went on and our home-grown cookbook grew, it became a valuable family tradition. With a solid foundation in place, even our daughter gets a say in meal planning. She has learned enough skills that when she sees a meal coming up she's not fond of, she will volunteer to cook something she likes better . . . instead of complaining! Surely other parents out there can understand what an improvement this has been!
Most recently, as our binder-based cookbook went through it's fourth major reorganization, a novel idea struck me. For over a year now, the most difficult part of meal planning hasn't been the meals, but the planning. Sitting down in front of a blank menu every month was something I'd come to dread. Sometimes it would take me an entire weekend of procrastinating to accomplish what seems like a simple task, and this was both frustrating and embarassing. A little reading about how our brains process decision making shed some light on this monthly roadblock, however, and I realized that if I eliminate the decision making, I eliminate the roadblock. And that's how the idea for mix-it-up! was born.
The rest, as they say . . . hasn't made it into the history books yet! We need your help to make mix-it-up! the worldwide phenomenon we think it should be. To that end, we're doing everything we can to make mix-it-up! a community oriented product. You'll notice the Creative Commons licensing on our web page. That's legit. All of our recipe cards link via QR code to a PDF here on this site which is viewable on a larger screen, saveable, printable, and free to give away. Those large print PDFs also rotate randomly as our recipe of the day via the link up top.
If I can get enough support to make this my day job, we've got a lot more planned for this simple little site, and we would deeply appreciate your support.
Thanks in advance,
The Manning Family