Update #2: it's still foggy as frick up in here.
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Today's random story of the day is about meal planning. At one time I had great ambitions for family dinner, so great that I started blogging about it. Over time the reality of having to have dinner on the table immediately if not sooner than the end of my work day so that kids could get to their nightly activities became too much. The other issue is the difference in palates. If I never eat another bite of mac n'cheese or chicken in my lifetime that will be too soon and my husband has no interest in eating a lot of the things that I'm into and the kids fall somewhere in between. By this spring I'd gotten to the point where I truly despised everything dinner related and once the kids' activities wrapped up for the summer I quit making dinner. Sort of.Where we've landed at is that I cook dinner on Sunday nights and keep a certain level of basics in the house. On weeknights the menfolk pull something repetitive out of the arsenal and get it on the table for themselves. Hubs is in it 100% and the kids have varying degrees of enthusiasm. I keep a stash of meals that I want to eat and nuke something up and join them.
Finally this week there was a huge breakthrough in meal planning. As in the hubs planned a meal in advance! On Tuesday night he decided that he would make stir fry the next day. He checked to make sure we had the ingredients and took chicken out of the freezer to defrost in the fridge.
Wednesday: oops that's the night when the boys have dinner with their mom.
Thursday: oops his work scheduled a 5:00 PM all hands meeting on short notice. That's the first time he's had to work later than 5:00 since???? (I think it's happened twice in the nearly-a-decade that I've known him. My work tends to spill over into the evening but the hubs usually gets his wrapped up by 4:30).
At 4:30 hubs took a work break to get stepson #1 to work on marinating the chicken and told him to start cooking around 5:45 if he wasn't out of the meeting by then. Sure enough the meeting kept going strong, and the flaw with the plan was that #1 wasn't sure how to get things going and I wasn't aware of anything else that we had to do that night so I steered things in the direction of emptying the dishwasher and cleaning up the dishes that had been left on the counter. When it got to be after six and hubs still wasn't out I started working with #1 to get cooking.
It turns out that stepson #2 had a one-off activity that I wasn't aware so there was a deadline for getting dinner on the table after all. Hubs was finally released from Meeting Prison (one of the topics was the temperature in the office. Most of the company is remote). Dinner was finally on the table 15 minutes before wheels up time.
And in spite of the chaos, it was a wonderful 15 minutes. We had a good conversation and the fellas enjoyed their stir fry (pictured) and I enjoyed the last portion of the soy curl stir fry that I made last week. Hubs and #2 got on the road and I headed out to walk the dog.
Hubs plans a meal and then family scheduling plus work wipes out his grand plans yet somehow we have a great dinner anyway. The exact same thing that used to drive me bonkers and led to me giving up on the dinner gig. I had to laugh at the irony.
Oh my, I guess I am quite lucky that a) my husband and I are pretty compatible when it comes to food and b) we don't have another two people to consider in our meal planning. I can see how it can get complicated real fast. I don't blame you for kinda giving up on the whole meal planning thing (not even factoring in the scheduling issue). I am glad though that your husband decided he wanted to cook a family dinner and - despite some hiccups - he (and all of you - haha) pulled it off and it was a pleasant 15 minutes :)
ReplyDeleteIt was a team effort!
DeleteLOLOLOL THE TEMPERATURE IN THE OFFICE.
ReplyDeleteThat cracked me up. I like how you've adapted! I...make dinner every night, but fortunately my kids are literal garbage disposals and will eat pretty much everything, with some modifications (younger son loathes tomatoes, so eats pasta just buttered when I make a tomato sauce, that's the only example I can think of). I have always said that when my husband retires, that will be the day I retire from cooking meat. We will see if I hold to that though.
I have a tomato hater in my house as well! The thing is that I'll take the chaos over not having the chaos. When the boys are grown dinner time will go a lot smoother but it won't be nearly so entertaining.
DeleteWhat a great reason to hold a meeting really late in the day! I hope your husband was suitably engaged and participatory!
ReplyDeleteMeal planning in our house is so stressful. I am so glad we don't have any additional people to add to our eating neuroses!
I'm curious - with a small crew do you and your husband eat the same things at meals or different? When it's just me and the hubs sometimes we'll eat the same thing and sometimes we do "fend for yourself" where we eat different things but sit down together.
DeleteArgh i hate the dinner questions. The husband and I have quiet different ideas of a great meal and since he hardly eats anything I always do what fancies him. I hate it. It's no joy most of the time. I refuse to cook daily but when I am not its ordering in. Not always the healthiest choice.
ReplyDeleteI am amazed at the time you have dinner though. If we manage to get food on the table before 8pm there is someone sick or something. It always seems like at 5.30 we can finaly work without meeting interruptions. Very interesting how different we all work.
All of our evening activities go really late so that's why we eat before. I like to think that we're in training for early bird specials in retirement.
DeleteUgh... dinner. I think I've said this before, but I wish we could all just take a pill that would give us all our nutrients instead of having to deal with dinner (most nights, that is- Friday is takeout night so I'm happily eating Chipotle right now.). In spite of all the mishaps, I'm impressed that your husband TRIED to make a stir fry on a week night. Glad you had a wonderful fifteen minutes!
ReplyDeleteYES!!! Although if a pill was an option I feel like the events would start even earlier. Friyay is takeout night for us as well.
DeleteI love the fog picture. Looks like fall. I realize more and more I am not a planner especially when it comes to dinner. I usually go shopping and let the store inspire me.
ReplyDeleteI used to be a planner...and then once I started blogging I realized how ridiculous it was. We keep a stash of easy to prepare meals and wing the rest of it.
DeleteI think you know how I feel about dinner. As in, I talk a big game on my blog, what with planned etc. and yet so many times I just give up and eat cheese and crackers or break down and buy a frozen pizza. It's... not good. But I hate making dinner. HATE. Glad your husband's stir fry came to be. It's so nice when you can enjoy something without having to do any of the work.
ReplyDeleteYES!!! I like cooking, I just hate it on our schedule and having to compromise between four different sets of taste buds. And frozen pizza is an excellent dinner BTW.
DeleteI have it really, really good. No one else's likes or dislikes or schedule or activities to consider. That said, there are still nights when I think (at 6:45, when I'm putting together dinner), 'what on earth do I actually want to eat?". I do eat the same breakfast and lunch every day (hi, boring) so dinner is where I get a tiny bit of variety.
ReplyDeleteOh! I ordered soy curls on your recommendation and shall report back on them. :D So that will be another dinner option. (Whew)
What you said! I love my family and our crazy schedule but it definitely makes for some difficult nights.
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