This Creator Says “Carmen Sandiego Meal Planning” Is Why We’re All Stressed About Dinner

If you’d rather eat a 5’x7’ rug than have to figure out what to make for dinner again, you’re not alone, my friend. But what if... hear me out... what if we’re making this whole meal planning thing a lot harder than it has to be? That’s what creator Evelyn Ngugi, also known as Evelyn From the Internets or @myinternetcousin on TikTok, thinks may be the case. In a recent video, she posits that Americans’ tendency to want to globe-trot through a week of meals is making it way harder to shop and cook than it should be.

“The reason you’re stressed out about meal prepping is because you’re under the false idea that you need to eat vastly different food every single day,” Ngugi says, standing in her kitchen. She theorizes that maybe we do this because, as Americans, we have access to so many different cultures’ food. But “hitting every continent in the span of a calendar week” via our meals is not something non-American households do, she says.

“You’re out here stressing yourself out because you think it got to be fried rice Monday, taco Tuesday, tikka masala Wednesday... nobody else does that, it’s too much,” she says. “You don’t need to stress yourself out, beloved. Carmen Sandiego with your meal plan — just scale it back, OK?”

She also goes on to say she often sees people comment on meal planning videos that they need variety and can’t eat the same thing every day, and this is where she calls BS. “Yes you freaking can. You do, it’s just prepared by someone else.” (Like that iced coffee order you get every single morning without fail or change? Yeah...)

The comment section is flooded with people feeling lovingly called out and thankful for it. “Without being dramatic, I think you just changed my life,” wrote one, while another said, “No cause same, why do I do this to myself?” Or, my personal favorite: “You’re speaking directly to me, and I don’t like it.”

Lots of users also chimed in about how their parents didn’t overcomplicate meal planning the way we tend to today. “I grew up in a household that ate protein, carb and veg every day. Why can’t I just do that?! It’s so easy? But I’m over here having meatball Monday, bibimbap Tuesday, kebab Wednesday! I literally hate cooking because I overcomplicate everything!”

“As an Indian family, we had roti every day. Then, we started having Fridays as our ‘other’ days: pizza, burgers, pasta, ONE day of the week lol,” wrote one user. “Told my mom once that I didn’t want to make Mexican food three nights in a row, and she goes, ‘Mexicans do?’ So simple but changed everything for me lmao,” said another. So, it would seem Ngugi definitely has a point.

Many commenters also shared their hacks for simplifying meals:

• “Mine is a rotisserie chicken... on a salad, made into chicken salad, on nachos, made into Verde enchiladas with pepperjack... all of these take me less than 10 mins prep.” (This is a great tip, and one that professional chefs use to save money when cooking at home — buy ingredients you can use multiple ways.)
• “If you really need some variety, batch cook and freeze it so you can traverse the world without needing to cook every day.”
• “You also can have all that variety if you’re smart about your ingredients. Rotisserie chicken and rice on Monday is chicken fried rice with leftovers on Tuesday.”

So if you’re sick of wondering what to make for dinner and spending so much time cooking vastly different things, maybe stick to one style of cuisine for the week.