When I was a child, I never had to decide what to eat. It was decided for me. My mother cooked breakfast and dinner and packed my lunch. I just showed up and something wonderful was ready for me to enjoy. No decisions. No cooking. Just wonderful food to enjoy. Now that I am the mom and have been “the mom” for well over half of my life, I am sick of food. I have to decide what’s for breakfast, lunch and dinner for my family. Even if it’s just lunch for me, I still have to decide. I miss the good old days.
I have food allergies. This means, I have to really think about what I am going to eat and where I will eat it. I have to read ingredient labels every time as the manufacturers are always changing what they use. Since my dinners are all based on each other, I can have a complete shopping list go askew due to one little change in one ingredient.
And, let’s face it - food can be a chore. You have to plan the meal, write out a shopping list, buy the ingredients, wash, chop, cut, slice, dice, sauté, simmer, bake, poach or fry everything, serve it, store leftovers, and then clean the dishes, pots, pans, table, counters, stove, blenders, mixers, cutting boards and so forth. Everything is done just as one of the kids comes in and wants a snack.
Breakfast is easier. I buy several cereals, frozen waffles, frozen pancakes, bagels and fruit. The kids are teenagers and can fix their own breakfasts. The clean-up for breakfast isn’t too bad.
Lunchtime, ah - there is the breeze! I give the kids money for lunch at school and they figure that out. I know I didn’t appreciate my mother when I was a kid. Since I had food allergies and teachers of my time were notorious for making children eat everything on their plates, my mother had to pack my lunch every day. I always had either tuna salad or pimento and cheese sandwiches. Every morning, Mama fixed us toast and packed my lunch. I never gave it any thought until I became a mother myself.
Dinner is more hectic now than ever. I work full time, I go to school half-time, I babysit the grandbaby two evenings each week, and we still have 2 children at home. My husband travels 50 weeks out of every year. We have the world’s messiest teenage human garbage disposals at home. I call them the Yeti. If I have time to cook, it’s generally something uninspired that I grabbed at the store as I rushed home. I have found that the amount of time I spend planning menus and grocery shopping is in direct proportion to the amount of food the yeti eat before I get a chance to cook it. Just this past weekend, as I knew I would be rushed for time, I bought 2 packages of pre-cooked chicken to throw into a casserole. I put everything together, opened the fridge to get the chicken only to discover that it had been eaten.
The kitchen is always, always, always messy no matter what my husband and I do. I used to complain, well, honestly - explode - about the constant mess in the kitchen. Now that my sweet hubby is helping so much with the kitchen and house when he’s home on the weekends, he has complete understanding of my kitchen melt-downs.
Last year, I was so happy to have a new glass top stove. It was the final piece of the kitchen appliances to be replaced. Everything matched and was relatively new. The kitchen was freshly painted. I had my dream kitchen. The older yeti didn’t want to have to wash a pan, or to have me yell at him to wash it, so he decided to cook on a piece of foil. Yep, you guessed it, the foil melted onto the cook top, ruining it, and catching the foil and his food on fire, which he then dropped onto the floor which burned holes in the flooring. We call that “the incident.” Not much later, the same yeti ran through the house, tripped on a cat and planted his face into the side of the kitchen island. He was fine. The island was not.
The yetis have friends over as yetis do. They sit at the kitchen table, eating and playing games or on their laptops. Because of the proximity of the kitchen, they occasionally cook. I have come home from work or school to find that a swarm of Yeti has been, decorating the kitchen, cabinets, floors and walls with their attempts. Dishes, pots and pans litter the counters and table. Trash cans are overturned. The refrigerator and dishwasher doors are hanging open. Yet, neither one single piece of food nor one single Yeti is to be found.
Eating out isn’t any easier. I am limited on where I eat. So, it seems that we eat at the same places time after time. Kids love the golden arches. If I eat there one more time, I think I will turn into a French fry! On school nights, I get fast food and drop it off at home on my way to school. The yeti and I are getting pretty tired of fast food. But, with their schedules,(and the mess they make!) they don’t have time to cook either.
Weekends are about the only time we have to spend with the Hubster. I won’t spend an entire day cooking for the week as this time is too precious. Besides, the Yeti will eat all the food before I get a chance to serve it.
I long for the days when my mother planned and cooked the meals or when I was a full time, stay at home mom cooking all day and the Yeti were too little to wreak their food destruction. Food was an adventure, a comfort and even a bit of an art. Food was enjoyable.
1 comment:
I agree with everything that you have written.
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