It’s customary for many of us to think about limitations as being impediments, barriers to overcome. This week, I spent a lot of time thinking about how limitations can be freeing.

This was initially on my mind because, in my never-ending effort to heal my tortuous relationship with time management, I’m reading Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.

I think it’s an insightful book, and I’m its target audience: a person who has trouble letting go of the fantasy that, if I just put the right system in place, I’ll be able to do more than is actually possible for me to do.

(This is a control thing, according to Burkeman.)

One of Burkeman’s main points is that it can be profoundly liberating to accept that time is limited and there will always be only so many things we can get done.

Rather than trying to do it all, we can learn to prioritize, giving our time to the things that matter most. We can stop waging war with ourselves and with reality.

I can think of so many contexts in which this is true. On the topic of time management, I always get more done when I’m busier because time is so unambiguously finite. I don’t procrastinate, I take action without overthinking, and I prioritize well.

When I was writing A Grain, a Green, a Bean, I found freedom in having a formula to work with. Every recipe had to feature a grain, a legume of some sort, and a green vegetable.

This presented me with some constraints, but it was surprisingly helpful; it gave me a clear starting point to work from.

By contrast, I could have chosen any ingredients for the recipes in The Vegan Week. The recipe development process for that book was overwhelming, and at times even paralyzing.

While we’re talking about The Vegan Week, I find it easier to meal prep when I give myself an upper limit of what I’ll make: no more than three recipes for the week ahead, plus one dressing or sauce.

The part of me that wants more dietary variety fights this boundary. But planning around a maximum keeps me from tiring myself out with too much cooking.

The relief that comes from having constraints is of course one reason that diets are popular.

My posture as a dietitian is to push back against the lure of restriction. But I know that creating a few gentle boundaries can be a means of helping clients to feel safely held in their journeys with food, and I try to work with this need.

I find it profoundly freeing to realize when there’s something I don’t know, or can’t do, professionally. It’s always in my clients’ best interest for me to articulate the limits of my abilities as a healthcare practitioner.

None of us will ever do it all or be good at everything we do. I have friends whom I regard as being ten times more efficient and organized and productive than me, and I’m sure they grapple with this same reality.

But isn’t it nice to know how limited we all are, fastened securely by the fact that we’re human?

I’m wishing you a week of feeling at peace with what you can’t do and finding joy in what you can.

Happy Sunday, friends. Here are some recipes and reads.

Recipes

1. Excited to pile butter cauliflower and chickpeas over a tender bed of rice.

2. These tofu skewers with spicy peanut sauce are such a delicious, easy protein.

3. I’d love to make Lindsay’s pear and kale salad with my tofu feta.

4. Jessica’s shoestring sweet potato fries look so delightfully crispy.

5. When I made vegan Wellington with oven-roasted carrots this early winter, I was reminded of how great it is that several grocery store puff pastry options are vegan. I still have a box leftover from recipe testing, and I think I’ll have to use the sheets to make Anthea’s puff pastry croissants.

Reads

1. An informed and informative primer on dietary supplements for athletes.

2. Are pickles and olives are Gen Z’s avocado? I don’t know, but Vox‘s exploration of the question is fun.

3. Editor Astrid Kane’s cousin died of an overdose but saved three lives via organ donation. Kane’s reflection on this exchange is so touching.

4. Eating disorders in adults can be tricky to identify, which means that they often go undiagnosed and untreated. Salon looks at some of the reasons that they so often evade detection.

5. An interesting report on what the weightless environment of outer space does to the human heart.

Speaking of limitations, I have a simple menu planned for this coming week, including a new risotto recipe that I’m excited to share with you.

Last week, I made this sautéed fennel, kale, and lentil dish for the first time in ages, switching up the dressing to include my orange miso vinaigrette.

I loved it so much. If you need a recipe that’s sort of in-between a simple vegetable side and a full meal—something you could serve on toast or with your favorite grain, or alongside some protein at dinnertime—it’s a good one.

In other news, I’ve been making good use of my air fryer in 2025, especially to roast vegetables. I’ll share the air fryer mushrooms that have been part of my meal prep for the past few months in the week ahead.

Have a restful night!

xo