Oh my lord, how I am LOATHING this question each day. Indeed, what IS for dinner?
Lately I’m uninspired and feeling downright lazy about things.
I used to cook. I used to cook a lot. I’m actually quite a good cook – and it’s something I enjoy doing… or at least I used to.
Breakfasts. Lunches. Snacks. Dinners. Sooooo much work… somebody doesn’t want some part of it… lots ends up on the floor… uch. Why bother? Oh yeah: sustenance = life.
Cooking for two adults can be inspiring. Cooking something everyone will want to eat can be more difficult. Cooking one meal for the small people around 6 PM, and another meal for adults for 8:30ish is making me feel crazy in the head.
The first part of the problem is determining what the children will actually eat – no soup for this one, no chunks of tomato for that one, blah, blah, blah… I will only make one meal for them, and I stand firm in the place of this is dinner – eat it or don’t. But, I will also do anything to avoid having a child waking me up in the middle of the night for a glass of milk or something. That makes me stabby.
Sometimes when I’m on the ball and feeling all Martha about things, I’ll make meatballs and sauce one weekend and freeze batches of it. Then we have lots of dinner things for, like, weeks! But we still can’t eat that every day.
And of course, that kind of cooking is best done when one has a bunch of time on one’s own, and won’t be tripping over small people, dropping sharp knives onto their heads or accidentally severing tiny limbs.
So, when does that time come exactly? Oh right. Never.
Which is the other part of the problem. If I haven’t, say, slipped a roast into the oven at 4 PM, then come 5:25 PM when my kids are asking about what might be on the menu tonight… I’m all, “Um… let’s see…” while I open the fridge. Bad mother.
I’ve been busy helping with the French homework since 3:30 PM, you see (which is no small feat, especially as I do not actually par-lay the French very well at all – thank goodness for Google translator sites…) plus trying to keep the other small person from doing things like colouring her entire body with marker in the shadows of other spaces in the house, away from where mummy can see her. I can’t help my child read if I can’t see the words he’s working on. I must sit beside him. Which means I’m not stirring something in a pan. You see the conundrum?
I’m finding it impossible. I need a better plan. (Besides take out, I mean.)
I’m so very thankful for pasta. And for eggs. They’ve saved my ass more times than I can count.
(One of my go-to meals: shrimp, zucchini and peppers over pasta, with garlic and olive oil.)
Oh, and have I mentioned that my husband has recently decided to eliminate gluten from his diet? Yeah. This means for him, no pasta, no bread, no flour, no breadcrumbs… he can’t eat ANYTHING!! And lest I start saying screw you, here’s some broccoli, I really need to make him something to eat that’s tasty and good for him. I should buy stock in Basmati rice.
We don’t buy many prepared foods. Like I said, I can cook. I make my own chicken nuggets (though we just call that chicken piccata and squeeze some lemon on it) I make soups from scratch, I fry my own fish.
But you really can’t cook salmon fillets four hours before you want to eat them. Um, no. Same thing goes for veggies that require any cooking… there’s a limit to the “in advance” part. You can’t let cooked zucchini “rest.” Overcooked veggies are a terrible thing! No wonder so many kids (and adults) hate them.
But trying to turn out a lovely meal day after day (after day) is becoming such a chore, I’m almost ready to give up eating. Almost. Perhaps there’s a way to tie the children to chairs while I make the vittles? I just don’t know.
How do you feed everyone stuff they like to eat, on time, and with your sanity in tact? Got any go-to recipes to share?
I feel very passionate about reclaiming joy around nourishment. In fact, so important I skipped a rare free morning to draft this. My dream is to bring people to the table with good feelings around them as feeding body and soul should.
I believe that nourishment is more than just food, it also the energy we put around it. The topic of cooking for this generation is so loaded with emotion; it is easy to lose sight of its possible simplicity.
Cooking held volatile feelings for me. I felt the cooking responsibility as being a conflict with me being a modern woman. I carried the baggage of seeing cooking as subjugation. I was perfectionist about the results of my effort. It was overwhelming. My ego could not take it. We went back to eating out each night.
Still, I longed for being at the family table. I went from blog to blog and learned that food didn’t have to rule my life. Everyday people, sophisticated and simple, improve their cooking together. It is valuable and rewarding and a meaningful way to connect as humans which in our modern lives, is tricky.
With spoons and notebooks in hand, I have witnessed the blogging world re-ignite the sincere, humble enjoyment of food. It is possible to have a busy life or different tastes, and still have harmony around eating.
It requires artful compromise and true acceptance of the effort it needs and recognition of the times it can’t all be perfect.
I have written a long post about my experience on my blog because I didn’t want to create a huge comment here but I really hope you will finish reading the remainder. http://www.littlegreenbeing.com
I really like what Nancy an “all kinds of wonderful” blogger said in a recent post: Change the way you look at things and the things you look at will change.
So while do I have the occasional meltdown after a messed-up dinner or have been burned by being overly ambitious, I have learned to laugh more, and chalk things up to experience.
Good luck, and remember, try to remember that it is only food. And a gummy multi-vitamin is very helpful even today for peace of mind.
Namaste.
A friend makes “sloppy joes” out of burger, can of cream of mushroom soup, can of cream of tomato soup, and canned mushrooms. Not the typical recipe for sloppy joes. I take the recipe and add macaroni which is very much like a hamburger helper box of hamburger mac. Add milk, and you have soup (which I swear is a recipe that a local diner uses, its most popular soup).
Use spaghetti squash instead of the pasta noodles. Basically, I cut it open, take the seeds out, and bake until the strands come apart like pasta. Don’t over cook it or there won’t be any crunch left to it!
I use my crockpot for corned beef and cabbage. Put the corned beef in in the AM and let it cook all day then about 2-3 hrs before you want to serve it, add the cabbage on top.
I’m a fan of casseroles because they make good leftovers, are cheap, and feed quite a few people.
I don’t have any good ideas for young children other than try changing recipes so they aren’t as spicy….
Just some ideas! Happy cooking.
I know. I hear you on the “planning” part. I have a vague idea when I grocery shop about what I’ll make during the week, but if I forget that defrosting-in-advance step, then I’ve got rock-hard chicken breast on my counter at 5:30, which makes me reach for the wine with one hand, and pull out the egg carton with the other…
Oh, and wine is TOTALLY it’s own food group. Nutritious AND delicious. Yes. Lord, yes.
I find it hard to believe you’re bad at anything, Jen. I buy roasted chickens quite often, and use the left over meat for chicken salad, basically. They won’t even eat quesadillas! Ack.
My kids won’t do tacos (yet) either… someone said to prep the meat with chicken stock instead of the taco seasoning… but my youngest is only 2.5 and MESSY. I even tried a nice marinated chicken breast thing with guacamole, salsa, cheese, etc in tortillas – that was a big fat disaster too. Le sigh. I buy a lot of roasted chickens.
People say to meal plan for the week and follow the plan. Well, I made the plan but we don’t follow it, so that didn’t work.
I tried batch cooking with a friend. We got 6 lasagnas that were mediocre because we were both compromising on our recipes. Our cooking styles don’t mesh. And it took too much time and energy.
Then I thought I would use the crock pot more, the adults at least like stews, but we don’t do it.
I bought cookbooks with quick meals, they sometimes work but that means someone has to think ahead and take out the frozen meat and make sure we have the other ingredients.
Oh yeah, my girls eat only four mains; macaroni & cheese, grilled cheese, brown beans and peanut butter and honey sandwiches. Fiona eats five fruits and veggies and Sophies eats five different fruits and veggies, they have carrots, peas and fruit bars (real fruit) in common.
Basically we suck right now at making dinner and I’m fed up. I hope someone offers a solution here.
Argghhhh…..frustration rising, need wine (is wine enough?).
Eggs, pasta, fajitas/tacos, “make-your-own” sandwiches. I HATE cooking. And I’m bad at it so I depend a lot on these things to fill in the gaps.
We use a crockpot a lot but not for chili or stew or soups. Kids won’t eat those. I throw in some cut veggies and a whole, organic chicken for the day and it makes a wonderful meal with some rice or pasta. Then, we have leftover juicy, tender chicken for fajitas, sandwiches, salads for days.
Weird that I’m giving any sort of advice on this because, truthfully, nothing stresses me out more than this as a mom. NOTHING.
tacos! pull the shells apart and…taco pizza! look at me, all creative 😉 it’s easy to do and everyone can customize. that and i can say “cheecken t’ursday” over and over again.
i wish i could do more soups with my kids. i love them and they just flat out refuse to even put it to their lips which makes me nuts. i’ll get them adventurous some day!
Goodness gracious Laura! You sound like a very busy woman… holy smokes. I agree that a crock pot is probably a good way to go with some things, but we’re not really “stew” people. My kids don’t eat chilli (yet), and they’re not big on soups… it’s a pain. I get the rice cooker thing too – so many people I know swear by theirs, but I’m cool using my pot, still. Besides, I have no place to stash rice cookers and crock pots! (Our cupboard space is truly at a premium in this house…)
And I find it amazing that you bake each morning for a PM snack. I think I love you. Can you please be my mum?
As the operator of an in-home daycare, my food day looks something like this:
7:30am – breakfast for my 3 children
7:50am – breakfast for 2 dayhome children
8am – make lunches for 3 children
9:30am – bake for PM snack
10am- snack for 6 babies and toddlers
noon – lunch for 6 babies and toddlers
3pm – snack for 6 babies and toddlers
4pm – after school snack for 3 kids
6pm – dinner for 5
(oh, and somewhere in there my husband and I eat as well!)
I admit, I don’t cook from scratch all that much, I use ‘helpers’. Like last night for instance, we had a delicious meatloaf (1lb lean gr beef, 1 box stove-top stuffing, 1 cup water) that only took me 3 minutes to prepare. The stove top is pretty much dried bread and spices, so I don’t consider it too prepared.
One appliance that is used several times a week is my crock pot. I put everything in there in the morning (or even night before, keep the crock in the fridge and then throw it in the pot in the morning). We might have pulled-pork on buns, soups, stews, chilis, and occasionally my kids’ favourite – Creamy Italian Chicken (this one is a quicky (4-6 chicken breasts, frozen or fresh, one can cream-of-mushroom soup, one bar cream cheese, 1/3 cup italian salad dressing, cook for 8-10 hours on low…serve over rice.)
Oh, and I also love my rice cooker – I hope you have one! So easy to throw in the rice and water at any time and have fresh hot rice whenever your entree is done. No need to watch the rice on the stove or time it.
My husband is West African so right now I am learning how to cook foods from his homeland. I wonder if I can figure out a way to get them to cook in the crock pot? Hmmmm….
Love your posts!