Creative Flexibility + Bison Meatloaf
On doing what you can, when you can — in life and in the kitchen.
It’s a funny thing, being a parent — especially with young kids. Your time, so often, doesn’t feel like it’s entirely yours. During Kiddos’s waking hours, I spend a lot of time playing with her, trying to get het to eat, get her dressed, change her diaper, clean her up. Then, I’m at work1, and then home, making dinner, doing bedtime with Kiddo and Mrs. CWD, eating dinner, cleaning up, and finally, ideally, spending an hour or so reading and unwinding before bed.
Don’t get me wrong — I love doing this and find it exceptionally fulfilling. The little moments — like Kiddo giggling after she gets up too early and turns on the lights or Baby CWD smiling and cooing while playing with a rattle — they make all the “hard” parts worth it. But, it does force me to be a little more creative in finding time to myself.
During the week, I have really two opportunities for “me time:” in the morning, before everyone wakes up, and on my drives to and from the office.
Pre-dawn is typically dedicated to working out2, but I like to use my commutes to catch up with friends and family3. I called
the other morning, who picked up and told me he couldn’t talk because he was working on his own newsletter, and didn’t want to get out of the flow. Still, he was kind enough to indulge me for 3 minutes and 47 seconds — during which he told me I need to rebrand Cow We Doin’4 and I told him he needs to work on his creative flexibility.Almost a decade ago, I played around with a ketogenic diet. While I ultimately dropped it5, it did inspire me to think about the concept of “metabolic flexibility.” Essentially, when you are metabolically flexible, your body can use whatever fuel sources you give it to optimize performance. I think, if you really want to consider yourself “fit,” you need to be able to not worry about what you’re eating — you can fuel for life with carbs, with fats, with whole foods, with junk food. You want your engine to run like a Land Cruiser, not like a Ferrari6.
What metabolic flexibility is to fitness, creative flexibility is to creation.
When you are creatively flexible, you don’t need ideal conditions to come up with new ideas, with new inspiration. You can flip seamlessly between deep work and light play, witty banter and serious conversation. You drop in and out of writing, of sketching, of computation, and find your output no worse for the wear. Creative flexibility gives you the opportunity to pick up a phone call from a friend and give him more than four minutes of your time7.
This isn’t to say that periods of intense focus aren’t needed or aren’t helpful for creative production — there’s a reason many artists sequester themselves away when they are trying to finish their work. But I think, in general, society puts too much pressure on setting the ideal conditions to “get things done8”. It’s probably a good exercise to stop yourself, every once and awhile at least, when you’re in the flow, shift gears, and then try to seamlessly pick back up where you left off.
Having more creative flexibility leads to more flexibility in other aspects of life — it makes you stronger, more resilient9. Creative flexibility lets you bounce between the left and right sides of your brain, between introversion and extroversion, between problem sets and poetry. Creative flexibility is what allows Mushashi to be both a master swordsman and a poet10.
Creative flexibility is also what allows you to cook up a decent meal even when you have an infant wailing in one ear, a toddler wailing in the other, and a dog hovering at your feet waiting for food scraps11. Creative flexibility is what gives you the chance to make something like impromptu meatloaf, like we did after receiving among other cuts, 90 pounds of ground bison a few weeks ago12.
Let’s give it a shot. Crying children optional.
Preheat your oven to 350(F). In a medium bowl, add a bunch of ground beef — bison if you have it — and season with salt, pepper, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, and any other flavors you enjoy. Mix loosely with your hands, then add in some diced onions and garlic13. Mix together some more, but don’t go too crazy.
Crack an egg on top of the mixture14, mix it into the meat, add some breadcrumbs15, mix one last time, and shape into oversized lumps16. Slap them down on a baking pan and throw them in the oven for 25-30 minutes, until the meat is cooked through (155(F) is a safe bet, but if you prefer you could go to medium rare-ish).
Enjoy with a knife and fork, or toss this on some toasted bread with cheese for the world’s greatest meatloaf sandwich.
There you go, folks. Meatloaf. Like I said, we kind of threw this together last minute, so it’s not a traditional meatloaf by any means. But I think it gets the job done, in the spirit of creative flexibility17. It’s quick, it’s easy, and gives you all the latitude in the world to mix and match ingredients. And if you have kids, they’ll probably love smushing up the raw meat18.
I’ll let you take the weekend to find your own best meatloaf recipes and share them with the world19. We're having an Easter ham on Sunday, but maybe lamb is more up your alley. As always, get outside, maybe think about throwing some wildflower seeds carelessly into a bare patch of dirt near your house, and add some maple syrup to your coffee. Just about the end of sugar shack season!
Despite my best efforts, my full time job is not writing newsletters and cooking brisket.
There’s something immensely satisfying about doing something hard before 95% of the world has even gotten out of bed. As Grandfather CWD would always say: “You never regret it when it’s over.”
Many of you have gotten a call from me between 9-10am on Saturdays as I make my weekly trip to the grocery store.
We’ll get into this discussion at a later time, but Sam told me I’m “too good a writer” to write under the title of “Cow We Doin’” — the “ideas and topics are too powerful and important” to go under such a cavalier newsletter title.
I’m flattered — and, thanks, I guess?
If you have any suggestions for a new name, please let me know.
I found it really difficult to get enough calories in while eating mostly fats and a little protein.
By this, I mean be able to run on whatever grade fuel you give it — regular works just as well as premium in a Land Cruiser. Your actual performance, though, should always be like a Ferrari!
Not that I’m bitter, Sam.
This goes for a lot of things. You shouldn’t need a dedicated “routine” to get to sleep each night, or get ready to work out, or even wake up. You, ideally, should just be able to “do it.” Kelly Starrett wrote a book called Becoming a Supple Leopard — the title referring to the fact a leopard doesn’t need to stretch and warm up before killing its prey. It can go from lounging to pouncing without transition. You should do the same, if not necessarily the killing.
Clearly my interruption of Sam didn’t hamper his writing too badly — the final product is terrific — so maybe he’s more creatively flexible than he think. I won’t even tell anyone that I edited it for him ;).
There’s a tremendous scene in the novel, Mushashi, where the eponymous protagonist notices the precision of the cut on a flower — and instantly realizes that whomever made that cut must be a master swordsman. It takes real creative flexibility to pick up on that and to make the requisite connections to get from a florist to a blade master!
Mrs. CWD is, of course, right by my side, helping.
I’ll be writing much more about this in a later post.
We also added some leftover roasted veggies we had, since why not.
We used a duck egg, of course.
Either store bought, or you can drizzle olive oil over some old bread, season with garlic and onion powder, throw in a hot oven for 10-15 minutes, then break up and toss into a blender and let it whirl until pulverized.
Traditionally you’d pack this all into a loaf pan — hence meat “loaf” — but since I’m lazy and like more of a crust on the exterior of the meat, I do these more like giant meatballs. Whatever floats your boat.
In retrospect, this is kind of just like a giant mushburger — and there’s nothing wrong with that!
Cover your ears (eyes?), Gma!
Skip the breadcrumbs if you’re observing passover!
Or better yet---the junkyard dog that is truly the Best Dog Ever.
Yours and mine.