Archives for April 2009

A few years ago, I started having a weekly tip smackdown on Tuesdays and after a while I got sick of it and petered out. But I’ve been missing it for quite some time (Oh how I love harvesting your minds for ideas!) and so I’m starting it up again. Today we’re talking about one of the never ending chores of family life, feeding the people so that the people can live.

I get sick of making dinners but unlike Tip Tuesdays, I can’t just discontinue dinner. Someone might notice. Someone might complain. Someone might call the authorities.

So I try to make it as easy as possible. Here are a few of my tips.

1. Make a plan. If I wait until dinner time rolls around, things will get grim. Boxes and cans that should really be saved for the apocalypse due to their shelf-life, lack of nutritional value, and imperviousness to nuclear radiation are often brought out and combined in unappealing ways. These meals can involve canned meat. They never involve happiness and satisfaction.

First I have a list of emergency meals I can make in a pinch. These include scrambled eggs, quesadillas, sandwiches, spaghetti that I boil and then pour the bottled sauce on top and let the noodles warm it, pancakes, etc.

Then I plan a week’s worth of “real” meals and shop for them. So, I’m never left wondering “What’s for dinner?” and even though I may decide not to really cook one day, I can use one of my fall-back meals.

2. Form a Dinner Co-op. I’ve talked about dinner co-ops and super swapping before on this blog. I’ve done this off and on for years and I love it. It’s really saved me during this pukey part of the pregnancy. Once a week I’m forced to cook a really nice main dish for a few other families and deliver it to their homes. Then the rest of the week warm delicious meals magically arrive at my door and all I have to provide are the veggies to go with them.

We all buy matching pyrex and tupperwares and pass them around as we cook so we never worry about getting our dishes back. We have a scheduled drop-off time so we know when we can expect to be fed. Once a month we send a list of the meals we’re planning on making to the scheduler, who makes a calendar for the month, spreading out the foods so that we get a good variety each week. When you’re only cooking once a week, you bring you’re A-game so we get some really delicious food. We save money buying in bulk. I don’t have to worry about dinner most of the week. It helps the kids feel a sense of community as we deliver and receive meals from various families. Each night they ask who the dinner came from. It’s like a commune but with more frequent deodorant usage.

3. Have an emergency back-up plan for crazy times in your lives. I found this in the form of a book by Mary Jo Rulnick. The book is called The Frantic Woman’s Guide to Feeding Family and Friends. It does all the planning for you, complete with shopping lists, recipes, meal plans and preparation tips for every season of the year. It’s really a great resource even if you don’t follow all of her recipe plans but if you do, it’s like a brain vacation for dinner preparation. She does all the planning and all you have to do is follow her daily instructions for shopping, prep and cooking. The recipes are simple and it’s the perfect answer for those times in your life when you just don’t have the energy left to plan one more thing.

She also has great general tips on saving time and effort in the kitchen and sections on what to do with holiday leftovers, an entire week of ham recipes and an entire week of leftover turkey ideas.

So here’s the part I like best about Tip Tuesday, the part where you leave your tips in the comment section. What do you do to make dinner time easier or more enjoyable? Do you have any simple meal ideas you can share with us?

I was lounging around on Sunday, napping upstairs in my room when Dan went downstairs to help the kids with something. An hour later, I wandered downstairs and found them like this:

Playing the eternal game that makes everyone cry but then beg for more.

The apron is because he had washed all the dishes before starting the game.

While he washed the dishes, he had them clean up their toys, using a game of Sorry as incentive.

I’m really starting to like this guy.

And I have the ability to bear children.

So I’m pregnant, right? The cuteness of the babies being born in my area recently, combined with the slow decline in my all-day pregnancy sickness is causing me to be more excited about the 5-inch little guy growing in my gut.

There are great things about being pregnant. My favorite one is that suddenly my potbelly is all part of the cuteness that is a child-bearing woman. Soon I will get to feel the baby move inside and be sure that’s what I’m actually feeling, which is something that never gets old.

I don’t like the sickness but the rest of it is pretty darn okay. I love the kids’ excitement. I love how tenderly Dan takes care of me. He becomes downright gallant. I love imagining the baby and planning for it.

In regards to Lassie and how similar we are, I will tell you a story. Yesterday a group of friends were playing at a local ball field with our kids, confused by the appearance of this strange golden orb in the sky but intrigued enough by its warmth to venture outside to experience it.

The kids ran wild and the moms drifted in and out of conversations, everyone sort of taking care of everyone else’s kids. Suddenly I looked up and saw one of the three-year-olds standing at the top of a cliff-like rock wall about 2 stories up, sort of wobbling back and forth and grinning. Her mom was across the field with my children. We all sort of yelled at the toddler to stop where she was.

“FREEZE! I’m coming.”

My inner Lassie came out and I shimmied up the rock wall to where she was standing, happy as can be. I picked her up (not with my mouth) and carried her down almost to safety when I slipped on a patch of mud, twisted my knee and ankle and went tumbling down the rest of the hill. She was scared but fine. My small person was fine in his water bed due to the ample padding I provide but I was in a fair amount of pain.

Then I got home and realized it was my night to make dinner for the families in my dinner group. So I spent 2.5 hours on my feet making chili and cornbread, only to be reminded by Eve that we were going to have a pizza dinner that night with our preschool group. At that point my ankle was in ridiculous pain and I wondered, “Did this ever happen to Lassie?”

I seem to remember her limping along at times but then the next episode, she’d be fine and well-groomed. Well if today’s the next episode, I am not fine and certainly not well-groomed or even showered. I woke up with a sore throat and cough in my chest. Magoo’s is worse but mine feels like it’s heading that way. And my foot is still really sore. I’m limping around a bit but mostly lying on the couch and elevating it while Magoo watches TV. I don’t remember Lassie ever needing to hold Timmy down while he screamed like death and child abuse, pin his arms to his chest and shove saline solution up his nose so he would stop crying about how bad his boogies hurt.

I’m sure she would have, if called upon. I just don’t remember ever seeing that episode.

Not only did no producer come in and bathe me or brush my hair but I didn’t even get a fresh bandanna. (So I’ve looked it up and can’t find a picture of a bandanna on that collie but I swear I’ve seen one. I think it was red.) The good news is, I have the dinner I made last night to eat today and my kids are very sweet when they’re either pathetically ill or completely physically exhausted. Some other times too.

Laylee spent the day at “Track Camp” at the High School, running laps and learning how to throw a discus and shot put. Apparently they let her use both hands, which I appreciate since apparently they were using the same equipment the high schoolers use. She’s dog-tired but still willing to fetch things for her ailing mother and pathetic little brother.

I hope tomorrow’s episode finds me with a clean shiny head of hair, new clothes and a spring in my magically-healed step.

I have set a limit of four days on this:

It’s been three days and today I gave warning. The Stuffed Animal Utopia of Bliss must be dismantled by tomorrow night.

“But the animals will be so sad.”

“But you set up every toy, stuffed animal, laundry basket, block, doll blanket and interesting-looking household item we own in a mess-like pattern in the living room.”

“But it’s so much fun.”

“But the living room’s the first thing people see when they walk into our house and it looks like the toy room vomited all over my entry way.”

Blank stares. Squinty eyes. Cocked heads. Looks that say, “And that’s a problem because?”

The Utopia is coming down tomorrow.