Sometimes the most powerful changes come from having no choice at all. When we moved to Wyoming, our kitchen started as empty as our preconceptions about cooking. No familiar boxes of stroganoff, no pre-made meals, no processed comfort foods – just empty cabinets and a decision to make.
I could have easily filled those cabinets with the same processed foods we’d relied on in Utah. You know the ones – just add water, stir, and dinner’s ready in 45 minutes. But standing in that empty kitchen, I saw an opportunity. Instead of slowly trying to phase out processed foods (which, let’s be honest, probably wouldn’t have happened), we could start fresh. Right here. Right now.
Was it an easy decision to make? Not exactly. Our family had been heavy users of processed foods – ‘it wasn’t even comical,’ as I recently told a friend. Our typical weekly meal prep used to involve shopping for pre-made or nearly-pre-made meals, collecting boxes where you just dump contents in a bowl, add some milk or water, and call it dinner.
Now? Our meals look completely different. Take our recent transformation of a family favorite – Chicken Bacon Ranch Casserole. The old version would have involved several processed ingredients. The new version? Fresh cauliflower instead of tater tots, real chicken, crispy bacon, and a carefully crafted ranch sauce. Yes, it takes longer than opening a box and adding water. But the flavors? Incomparable.
The biggest challenge hasn’t been the cooking itself (thanks to AI helping me transform recipes), but rather convincing the kids that these healthier versions are better than their processed counterparts. It’s a work in progress, but we’re getting there.
A typical dinner now starts with a recipe from my digital recipe box – but the process actually begins days before. Every Saturday, I plan our entire week’s menu, Monday through Sunday. This isn’t just about knowing what to cook; it’s about removing the daily decision-making and eliminating the temptation of processed foods.
Once the week’s menu is set, Monday becomes ordering day. I divide my shopping list between Walmart, Smith’s Food & Drug, and occasionally Amazon, scheduling pickup times for local stores and deliveries for shelf-stable items. This isn’t just convenient – it’s strategic. By avoiding physical stores, I eliminate impulse purchases of processed foods that might catch my eye on the shelves. No more wandering down the boxed dinner aisle and thinking ‘well, maybe just one for a busy night.’
Instead of boiling pre-made noodles for beef stroganoff, I’m searing fresh beef, crafting the sauce from scratch, and serving it over vegetable noodles. Yes, the 45-minute box meal has become a labor of love that takes longer, but the planning system makes it manageable. When dinner time arrives, there’s no question about what we’re eating or whether we have the ingredients – it’s all been planned and procured with purpose.
This advance planning has given me an unexpected gift: time. Those daily minutes (or sometimes hours) once spent staring into the pantry or refrigerator, trying to piece together dinner or running to the store for last-minute ingredients? They’re now freed up for other pursuits. I find myself with more time for writing, keeping up with household tasks, playing games with the family, or working on projects that had been otherwise pushed to the back burner in our previous life. It’s ironic that taking more time to cook has actually given me more time to live.
Here’s what I’ve learned: Sometimes having no choice is the best choice of all. Starting with an empty kitchen meant we couldn’t fall back on old habits. There were no familiar boxes calling our names from the pantry, no processed shortcuts tempting us during meal prep.
Would we have successfully transitioned away from processed foods if we’d tried to do it gradually in our old kitchen? Honestly, probably not. The convenience of those boxes, the familiar tastes, the easy routines – they’re hard to break away from when they’re right there in your cabinet.
But an empty kitchen? That’s an opportunity. An opportunity to fill it with purpose, with whole foods, with new traditions. Sure, dinner takes longer to prepare now. Yes, there are still nights when I miss the simplicity of adding water to a box. But watching my family eat real, whole foods, knowing exactly what went into every meal? That’s worth every extra minute.
Sometimes the best changes in life come from having no choice but to leap forward. Our empty Wyoming kitchen turned out to be more than just empty space – it was an empty canvas, ready for a whole new way of feeding our family.
Tyson Brooks is a 36-year-old creative who traded Utah’s bustle for Wyoming’s wide-open spaces in 2023. When he’s not crafting stories through technical theater lighting or working on his space exploration novel series, you’ll find him in his cozy 980 sq ft home, experimenting with healthy comfort food recipes or discovering how much richer life can be with less. Follow his family’s journey into intentional living, simple cooking, and finding joy in the unexpected.
