Is Meal Planning the Solution for Insomnia?

My solution for insomnia? Meal planning.

More accurately, meal planning is my solution for not loathing my insomnia more than I already do. Because while planning dinner doesn’t lull me back to sleep, it does make my 4 a.m. wakeup slightly less frustrating.

Previously, I’d roll around in bed getting increasingly angry at my inability to fall back to sleep. Now, I actually look forward to pondering what’s in the refrigerator and what I want to do with it. I know how silly that sounds. But it’s the little things...

One morning last week, for example, I realized I had three heads of cauliflower. We eat a lot of cauliflower... As I considered this in the dark, I started running through my list of favorite ways to prep it.

One is Cauliflower Shawarma. We make this often because the florets take on tons of flavor and are fantastic tucked into pita pockets or whatever flatbread we happen to have. It’s kind of like taco night via the Middle East.

For something richer, I also love our Tikka Masala Cauliflower. The combination of cumin, cashews and tomatoes makes an incredibly rich, thick sauce that really transforms this simple vegetable.

But as I churned all this over in my head, I realized I was craving something more Mediterranean. So by around 4:30 a.m., I’d settled instead on Smothered Cauliflower with Tomatoes and Capers. The name pretty much sells it.

Many mornings I find myself considering broccoli possibilities. We go through five or six crowns of broccoli a week. When we’re in the mood for a little meat, I’ll do our Broccoli Rabe and Sausage, but substitute regular broccoli florets.

We’ve been doing a lot of curry lately. So that got me thinking about our Coconut Curry with Carrots and Broccoli. The coconut milk is so good at drawing out the flavors of the spices and creating a rich, thick sauce.

But that night I actually settled on what has become a classic Milk Street recipe — Rigatoni with Roman Broccoli Sauce. Pureed broccoli creates a wonderfully bright, savory sauce that drenches the pasta.

Often, my favorite mornings are when I consider these recipes and my ingredients, then jump off in my own direction. Yesterday morning, I cooked up the idea of combining both vegetables into one meal.

That night, I started by making mashed cauliflower in the Instant Pot. It’s ridiculously simple. I cut up a whole head into medium florets (size really doesn’t matter), then add them to the pot with about 2 tablespoons water. I pressure cook them on high for 12 minutes, then speed release the steam. To that, I add 2 or 3 tablespoons butter, salt and pepper, then use an immersion blender to puree the whole thing right in the pot. It comes out incredibly creamy.

Meanwhile, I cut broccoli up into florets, then sauté them with olive oil, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper. When they become nicely tender and lightly seared, I take them off the heat and stir in some lemon juice. That’s it. This gets mounded on top of bowls of the cauliflower mash. Since I like heat, Sriracha is a must.

All of it dreamed up—so to speak—as I struggled to doze. Admittedly, if you get stressed by cooking, pondering dinner in the early hours probably won’t help you relax. But I find it oddly comforting to consider the possibilities.

Some people meal plan on the weekends and organize their shopping around a week of dinners. I prefer to go to the store, buy whatever ingredients appeal to me, then spend my sleepless hours dreaming up what to do with them.

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