Ah, the dread question.
First of all, family dinner as a performative nostalgic spectacle is definitely a tool of the patriarchy. Also, things are so much easier than they were 11 years ago in most respects.
But still, there is the question of what to feed everyone. Every single day. And! We are almost never all home at the same time. Bah.
Here's what's working right now:
1. A compulsory dinner on Friday, even if that's grilled cheese sandwiches on the Blackstone, so we can sort of touch base and hear about everyone's week and do something fun to kick off the weekend. (Coop sometimes rides the bus home with friends on Friday because it is the one night he doesn't have dive practice, but we still make him come home for dinner because we are terrible)
2. A fun dinner on Saturday. Maybe that means Ben and I go out and everyone else has pizza. maybe we all go out. Maybe we have a quick dinner and a smorgasbord of movie snacks-- you get the idea.
3. Big dinner on Sunday that will yield leftovers for a couple of days: burgers but make extra burgers and a huge salad and cut up tons of veggies to eat with dip, pot roast with potatoes and carrots, huge pot of spaghetti sauce and lots of meatballs with stuff to make meatball sandwiches with the leftovers, double the pork chops with extra sides, etc.
4. Ben makes Tuesday's dinner on Monday and also grills a bunch of chicken what we can eat in salads and wraps for a couple of days.
5. Skating by on leftovers and breakfast for dinner until Friday when we make dinner and start with whole process over again.
What about you? How are you answering the dinner question lately?
WHY do people need to eat three meals a day??? I was telling my husband I wished we only had to eat like once a week and he said that sounded awful because eating is so much fun. And I was like: YEAH, but it also takes hours and hours each week to buy, prepare, and store food/meals and it takes seconds for my kids to inhale it.
ReplyDeleteCan you tell I am over meal prep lately? And I have no idea what to make for supper tonight? I think a quick risotto because my kids like it and it's a bit relaxing to prepare. We shall see...it might just be toast and fruit.
Yep, I'm over it. When I get the motivation to cook, I'll try to make enough for leftovers. Otherwise we scrape by with odds and ends, usually a salad for me, sushi for my daughter (Wednesday is $5 sushi at Sprouts) and hoping that my daughter will get fed somewhere else. Last week they had pizza for the band before the football game- PERFECT. Right now I have no idea what we're having tonight. Sigh.
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