Dinnertime is never easy around here. The lack of time and finicky children drive me insane. I used to love cooking. Steve and I did it together in our little galley kitchen in New York City mixing up concoctions with curry powder from Little India downtown and fresh veggies from Ahn’s around the corner. But that was when the kids were young and the jobs were less intense.
On Sunday, I made a summer pasta with grape tomatoes, broccoli, and basil from the garden. I added garlic, parm cheese, and a little chicken broth. I held back on the red pepper flakes, because I thought that this was one meal that all four of us would like. I liked it so much that I plated it in a nice bowl and took a picture.
NOT. Ian walked into the room and said, "eeew. That’s gross. I want Ian’s pasta." Ian’s pasta is pasta with some Barilla dumped on top. I liked the boy better when he was completely mute.
And then the boys have the nerve to hate different things. I made bologna sandwiches for the boys for lunch today. One boy got bologna with butter and American cheese (never swiss or Muenster, never mayo, never lettuce). The other got bologna with lettuce and mayo (no cheese except Cheddar).
When I was a kid, we ate what was on our plate, and we liked it that way.
Last semester, things were really hairy, because I worked so many hours. We did a lot of Boston Chicken. My mom dropped off tubs of chicken and rice.
Ian is also a problem, because he might decide to dash outside with his brother while I’m cooking. But he can’t be trusted by himself outside. That’s when the rice burns.
Leslie Kaufman has some tips for making dinner after work. It has to be done in 15 minutes and the kids have to eat it.
I can’t cook over the weekend and freeze things, because I usually work then or have family events. So, my repertoire is more white trash.
Meat — Primio sausage, hot dogs, and ham steaks. (They can be pulled out of the freezer and thrown in the pan. Morning defrosting kills me.) Burgers (The problem with burgers is that you have to buy the meat the day before you cook it. Food safety issues.) Fish sticks (Trader Joe’s are the best.)
Starch – Couscous (The best because it takes 5 minutes, but it makes a huge mess on the floor.) Baked potatoes (nuked). Rice (You can thrown in half a cube of chicken bouillon. In a pinch, Trader Joe’s has frozen rice.) Pasta (butter or jarred sauce)
Veggies – Always have washed lettuce in the spinner. Carrot sticks. Broccoli. Frozen veggies.
Apt. 11d 
You’re in the suburbs. You have counter space. Buy a rice cooker and quit whining. And, by the way, you can shake adobo over a chicken, put it in the oven with some red potatoes and go away for an hour and three quarters and come back, total time invested five minutes.
LikeLike
Trader Joe’s really is key for us, and we don’t even have kids yet! Try their instant mashed potatoes that come in a box- they’re quite good. Frozen food we like: Trader Ming’s white chicken sesame noodle meal, chicken chile verde burritos, veggie lasagna, pesto pizza.
LikeLike
Dave S, in my opinion you’re being unnecessarily harsh. Cooking challenges change in the summer, when you can’t reasonably have the oven going or you’ll heat up the whole house. Nor can you leave the kids outside unsupervised with a grill going.
Elizabeth at Half-Changed World talks about the “Ellyn Satter division of labor”: the parent decides what and when, the kid decides if and how much. I find this a stress-reducing approach.
LikeLike
I _think_ Dave is joking.
My kids are incredibly picky.
Did you really eat everything on your plate? I certainly didn’t, and my mom could have written your post, with aversions, different for each of us, to peas, bananas, yogurt, cheese, lima beans, cashews, peanuts; requirements (one notable one was peanut butter sandwiches with hamburger buns;I believe I ate that for a year for lunch. I would have freaked if she tried to give me peanut butter on something other than a hamburger bun).
Given that, I can’t really complain about anything food-related with my own children. When my sisters and I were all into our thirties, I found my mom in the kitchen trying to pick peas out of a dish she had made (for me), and nuts out (for my sister), to create an individual dish for each of us. At that point, I realized that something was very wrong and we had to grow up :-). It still hasn’t made me eat peas, but now, I try very hard not to make a face and act depressed if my mom does make a dish with peas.
bj
LikeLike
I, too, have had great disappointments. Did I marry my husband because of his brilliant wit, his ability to provide well, or his incredible ability to telepathically commune with all techno-gadgets – no. I married him because he has was born and bred in a Mediterranean kitchen. When our children were very young they happily consumed their Greek diet with passion – but now, as they hit school age this has diminished dramatically.
The government issued a report telling us what we all knew – that the billion dollars a year on education nutrition was not working. Have you seen what French school children get for school lunch vs. Americans (sign me up – yummy). As a country, we need to rethink food. I love when we go to Europe and see the big signs posted in the fast food place saying that it is recommended that children only eat fast food once a week.
One of my children was diagnosed with wheat intolerance this year. At first, I was depressed as we cleaned out the cabinets (we all went gluten-free in solidarity) but now I am happy about it. It has forced us to re-evaluate food and what it means to us as a family and as a culture. My other children happily gave up McD’s in solidarity with their wheat challenged brother and I no longer have to step on or covertly throw out all those stupid plastic toys.
Saving Dinner by Leanne Ely (she has a website SavingDinner.com) is a fairly decent cookbook for time strapped families. It is broken up by seasons which is helpful for shopping.
Susan, NYC
LikeLike
I, too, have had great disappointments. Did I marry my husband because of his brilliant wit, his ability to provide well, or his incredible ability to telepathically commune with all techno-gadgets – no. I married him because he has was born and bred in a Mediterranean kitchen. When our children were very young they happily consumed their Greek diet with passion – but now, as they hit school age this has diminished dramatically.
The government issued a report telling us what we all knew – that the billion dollars a year on education nutrition was not working. Have you seen what French school children get for school lunch vs. Americans (sign me up – yummy). As a country, we need to rethink food. I love when we go to Europe and see the big signs posted in the fast food place saying that it is recommended that children only eat fast food once a week.
One of my children was diagnosed with wheat intolerance this year. At first, I was depressed as we cleaned out the cabinets (we all went gluten-free in solidarity) but now I am happy about it. It has forced us to re-evaluate food and what it means to us as a family and as a culture. My other children happily gave up McD’s in solidarity with their wheat challenged brother and I no longer have to step on or covertly throw out all those stupid plastic toys.
Saving Dinner by Leanne Ely (she has a website SavingDinner.com) is a fairly decent cookbook for time strapped families. It is broken up by seasons which is helpful for shopping.
Susan, NYC
LikeLike
The nearest TJ’s is an hour away, so let us not speak of it. 😛
My kids are similarly finicky. We have the 8 year old making her own dinner, which is usually yogurt and applesauce and occasionally a piece of toast or English muffin. The 5 year old is more difficult for one main reason: whatever we make him, he changes his mind about. Make him chicken nuggets? “I WANTED HUMMUS!” Rinse, repeat ad infinitum. It’s his way of fucking with us.
We make rice in the microwave. 1 cup of brown rice, 3.5 cups of water, a boullion cube (we use vegie)-in a microwavable pot, no cover, 30 minutes on high, 5 minutes to sit there and finish absorbing. Perfect rice if your standards aren’t extremely high. No worries about burning.
Btw, I started a blog (should be a link in my info) if you ever want to check it out. I have a fandom blog elsewhere, but I need to do less tv fandom stuff and more political/social commentary stuff for my own mental health.
LikeLike
I sometimes buy a large quantity of hamburger, form a bunch of patties, use Glad Press and Seal wrap, package them individually, put them in a freezer bag and then freeze them. Take them out of the freezer and throw them in a pan.
LikeLike
We’ve started grilling chicken breasts on Sunday night, doing a couple extra, and putting them in the fridge for pasta or salad w/sliced chicken later in the week. That way we are outside playing while the grill is going and have dinner outside on Sunday, and have meat for at least one meal early in the week. We, too, love our rice cooker (my 4-yr-old LOVES rice), and often pair it with beef and broccoli, which can be cooked in about 10 minutes. The trick is to buy thin slices of steak when they are on sale – they cut easily when frozen and cook up beautifully. The only other ingredient in the dish is oyster sauce!
LikeLike
I’m a complete idiot in the kitchen. But I do know that rice cookers are definitely the way to go. Wash the rice in a bowl two times, rinse once, drop it in the cooker – two scoops of rice = two cups of water.
Turn it on. You’re done – that’s it. Takes ~5 min to start, 20 min to cook, turns itself off when it’s done. Seriously, if you’ve never tried one – it’s almost un-screw-up-able. Comes out almost perfect. And rice is super cheap.
As for finicky children, I have no idea how it works for everyone – but I made a pact with myself to never have the fights with kids about food. My parents didn’t, I don’t. Life is troublesome enough, and there are too many meals in it. I cook, their choice is to eat it, or not. (If it’s “not”, they usually can have a couple bowls of healthy cereal, with low-fat milk, later that night).
That’s it. No whining allowed. I was a finicky kid too, as was my brother. Neither of us liked vegetables. My mom made vegetables at every meal, of course. Us kids were never consulted on food choices – my mom would probably ask my dad what he wanted for dinner, but the opinions of us kids were irrelevent. It would never have even occurred to us to voice any.
I knew I had to sit at the table while the family ate, and I could eat or not. But bitching about it was absolutely not an option. Of course, my kids do try to bitch about it sometimes, but I try my best to ignore it, and it seems to work.
LikeLike
Dealing with grocery shopping and dinner prep was one of the hardest things when I was working full time. Still, we eat lots of Trader Joe’s stuff, prepared hamburgers from Omaha Steaks, etc. My kids have totally different tastes but I refuse to go too far down that road of cooking individual meals. I do my best to include something everyone will eat (like homemade bread…from the bread machine!) and I try to keep items separate and combine at the table. (The article mentions this also…)
Our pantry door is painted with blackboard paint, and I list tonight’s menu and tomorrow’s upcoming menu on it. This helps because everyone knows what’s coming. My kids are both in elementary school. I wish they liked more variety, but I will not let them eat mac and cheese and chicken nuggets every night. (They still eat stuff like that a lot. On vacations it’s chicken tenders at every restaurant! Oh, well.) I was a picky eater when I was a kid and my parents didn’t sweat it. Now I like everything. I hope that happens with my kids. Right now it seems doubtful!
LikeLike
We also do the menu pre-planning; we usually can do 4-5 days in advance, and we put it on a whiteboard on the fridge door. Maddy’s right, the kids seem to feel more at ease knowing what’s coming. They look at the board way beforehand and comment on things that do or do not sound good, so you have time to work on the kids or adjust the menu. Plus, this whole system forces us to plan a bit more, which means we can make one full shopping list, which means we’re only at the grocery store maybe twice a week. A real life-saver.
LikeLike
I don’t plan meals ahead of time. I think I really need to, but it goes against my nature. I like the blackboard idea.
Yes, I was whining. Dave S is allowed to chide me.
Wendy, I saw your blog. Nice work. I’ll promote it in the next post.
LikeLike
Thanks. I figure it saves you and others from my too-long replies. 🙂
LikeLike
Thanks for your comments everybody. I thought I was going mad with my 4 year old daughter. If given a choice she would eat only bread and milk every day. She refuses to eat dinner on most nights. Trying to encourage fruit was a chore. Her 2 year old brother would eat almost everything put in front of him and he was always healthy. But my 4 year old complains of various ailments. I now recognize that as long as she has a balanced diet over a week, then that is OK. Meat a couple of times a week might be enough. Fruit a few times a week might also be enough. I need to limit taking her to the shops where candies, donuts and icecream are displayed everywhere.
LikeLike
Woderful post! My kid is a picky eater and i have found some really useful information here! Thank you very much for the help!
LikeLike