My husband and I feel very, very strongly about having the family sit down to dinner together as many nights a week as possible and also not to feed the kids processed foods like budget gourmet and we have done pretty well making it happen for 19 years.
But somewhere along the line I started to lose it when it came to planning and executing dinner. You know something is wrong when your kids balk at pizza - frozen or otherwise. I think we were maybe getting to the point where I threw one in the oven three nights a week.
My husband, noticing the slide away from home cooked food, quickly stepped in and started cooking dinner at least three or four times a week.
At first, I was just tremendously relieved. I mean, I really do like to cook, but I had put in 19 years and I think I was burned out.
It wasn't the cooking that got to me but the planning. I was just so tired of having to figure out what on earth to make each night. Sure, the kids would probably have happily lived on spaghetti six nights out of seven, but I was more ambitious than that.
Now that some time has passed with my husband doing the lion's share of the cooking, I can see there is something deeper at work here than mere burnout. We view cooking from completely different perspectives.
I see cooking as something that interferes with all the things I'd rather be doing. When I'm cooking, I'm not knitting, reading, making art, practicing harp, or even spending time with the kids. (Except for the occasions where they help me cook.)
When he's cooking he is actually playing hooky from all the things he'd rather not be doing. Cooking is a kind of therapy for him that he can lose himself in, whereas for me, it feels like a prison.
Unless I'm making dessert.
Totally different.
I love to bake or make practically any kind of dessert at all.
But I don't very often.
Because I also love to eat the dessert.
Anyway - tonight was one of those overbooked nights where neither one of us really had time to cook - but we don't have a huge food budget either - so I happily introduce to you one of our favorite "almost feels like home made food" cheap, quick dinners.
Voila! The grocery store rotisserie chicken (anywhere from 5.99 - 6.99 depending on whether or not it's on sale) and the take and bake bread (1.29-1.89) (add another .50 for butter or 1.00 for cheese to go with the bread)
Believe it or not, this actually feeds our whole family of five for under ten dollars.
And we throw the carcass into the stockpot afterwards. It makes a terrific stock for chicken and noodles later in the week - an even cheaper dinner - so we often wind up spending about twelve or fourteen dollars total for two dinners.
And, when you're overbooked and underpaid, that sounds pretty good.
Bon Appetit!
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