By Margaret
I am honestly and continually surprised at how much time and energy I spend making sure I have food in my house to feed my family.
Most Sunday mornings find me cutting out coupons and looking at sales. Composing my menu. Making my grocery list. And early Sunday afternoon going to the SuperTarget as well as the local Homeland. And good God almighty I'm tired of trying to come up with good, healthy, stuff for my family to eat. Something everyone will eat. Something that can be made in a reasonable amount of time. And something we haven't eaten once a week for the last eight months.
I go through this EVERY week. And on those weekends when I don't go to the grocery store over the weekend? I can almost guarantee my week will be hellish and we end up eating Taco Bueno three nights in a row.
You'd think, after doing this for nearly 20 years, I would be better at it, able to accomplish it without it taking the whole damned day. But, no, it seems to take most of the whole afternoon and part of the morning.
Throw a high maintenance 4-year-old into the mix, and a hormonal pre-teen, and by the time I make it home I want to bang my head on the kitchen counter.
I tend to get in ruts. We've had roast every week for the last month. I think everyone is getting tired of it. But somehow when it is good, we have it again and again and again until it's not good anymore.
Cheese Dip is my fall back meal and I try to always have the provisions necessary to make it. It's not good for us, but when neither David nor I feel like cooking we can toss Cheese Dip into the microwave and call it done in about 10 minutes.
Several times I've gone to those places where you put the food together from their ingredients using their recipes and season it to your family's liking. I LOVE that! I still had to go to the grocery store or SuperTarget to buy snacks for the kids, juice, milk, sandwich meat and bread, but it was more of a quick trip than a major trek. But NONE of those places are open on Sunday and it is hard for me to get there on Saturday or on a week day evening when they are open. I tried having them make the food for me and picking it up, and that was okay, but there really is an advantage to seasoning the food yourself.
My husband does many things; he cooks, he cleans, he irons, he gets up with the kids in the middle of the night. Now if I could just get him to plan the menus and shop for the food, my life would be complete.
Margaret is a forty-something attorney with two adopted children (ages 4 and 12) that she is raising with her husband, a stay-at-home dad.
Cheese dip for dinner? Wow. You must be like the most popular mom on the block!
Posted by: Antique Mommy | October 24, 2006 at 11:16 PM
I'm all about grocery delivery. I use Peapod once every 2 or 3 weeks, have a weekly produce delivery and hit Costco and Trade Joe's about once a month.
Now the discussion about pleasing everyone - well that's a different story. To be honest - I make one meal for my family and if they don't like it they get PBJ after they've had a couple of bites of whatever - or left over mac & cheese or whatever... There's nothing more frustrating that making a nice meal and hearing "yuck!"
Posted by: maria | October 24, 2006 at 12:47 PM
I always feel like a bad mom and wife because sometimes,I don't care if anyone eats a meal!
I am on a fairly restricted diet because of my diabetes and pancreatitis. I made a YUMMY low fat taco soup recipe which I ate for dinner last night.
I knew Rich would gag when he saw it so I made him a pastrami sandwich.
Lillianna barely entered the kitchen when she smelled it so she got pasta with lemon/chicken broth.
There is rarely a meal that I can make that will please the 3 of us.
Even when I make my home made chicken soup....
I eat chicken,veggies,noodles and broth.
Rich eats chicken,broth and extra noodles,no veggies.
Lillianna eats broth,noodles and carrots only! No chicken or celery.
I hate food shopping. I hate cooking. For me,being a short order cook is very tiring but we simply don't like the same foods. I can't force them to eat what I eat and I clearly don't want them to starve.
What's a mom to do??
Posted by: Robin P | October 24, 2006 at 10:28 AM
I can totally relate.
Trying to get everyone to eat healthy and not take up a ton of time and fit in a budget is insane.
I have given up on trying to accomplish all three at once. Depending on a number of factors I aim for maybe two of those at a time. Healthy + everyone will eat it or Budget + doesn't take long.
That is why I love the spinach and pesto frozen organic pizzas. They accomplish a little bit of all three at once. Doesn't take long, better for you than Pizza Hut and is cheaper.
Hang in there!
Posted by: Maria P. | October 24, 2006 at 01:25 AM
How about you make the menu's and the grocery list and he does the shopping? Maybe he would appreciate the time alone as a stay at home dad.
My husband took over the food shopping years ago, bless his heart. We were terrible shopping together!
Posted by: Amy | October 23, 2006 at 11:43 PM