Sometimes, feigning great consideration; I ask my husband “What do you want for dinner?” He feigning equal consideration defers to whatever I want; meaning I have no idea and neither does he. We can actually go on like that for several minutes. Some days it’s a diversion, other times not.
I can’t ask the children, otherwise we’d live on pizza and boxes of orange powdered macaroni and there would be that guilt that comes whenever you see a reminder that you are supposed to empower your family by feeding them healthy food. Clearly those people have never faced a toddler defiantly eyeing a mound of broccoli; scary. And really there is a limit to the number of pizza boxes you can carry out to the trash before the neighbors start looking at you funny. And every time I throw away greasy fast food wrappings I think about the contents that actually went into my family. And I can’t keep talking my sweet husband into taking us out to dinner, because one day we may want to retire and we’ll need that money we are blowing on restaurant meals that aren’t that good anyway.
I must admit I have resorted to crutches. I went to one of those make it, fake it, bake it places once. Here’s the thing; you have to remember to thaw the thing, then you have to cook it (again). Plus the formerly frozen blob is insufficient for the healthy food police. You know you have to make a salad too. So there is every bit as much work and the formerly frozen thing does not hit the table to a round of applause, they whole family eyes the suspicious brown sauce, well suspiciously.
So what’s a busy family cook to do? I don’t need to be super mom. And frankly I am not going for the title for queen of the cardboard health food either. I just want wholesome food the family likes and (big “AND” here) I don’t want it to be the same thing I made last week and the week before and every week before that going back to when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Whew. How hard could that be?
So I made a list. I wanted healthy variety of foods; some beef, pork, fish, healthy vegetables and fruit. I wanted a healthy variety of preparation; some crock pot recipes, but not all, some grilling or broiling may a quick casserole or two, but not my mother’s casseroles, (read no cream of crud soup) but maybe a couple of the classic things she made.
I wanted it to be easy. Not a lot of ingredients or steps in a recipe. Not a bunch of exotic ingredients to find space for and never use again. I wanted the convenience of a premade plan, but the flexibility to change it on the fly if it didn’t work for my family. I wanted to be able to search through recipes easily, but not 300,000 of them. And I wanted things that I could be feeding my family within thirty minutes of walking in the door. Plus I wanted some freshly baked bread. And I wanted a list of what to buy and one of what to make. And I never wanted to throw away the rotting remains of some unidentifiable former vegetable. And I wanted my grocery list sorted by aisle and I wanted to be reminded when something needed to be thawed. And saving money doing it would be a good thing too.
Does that sound impossible? I don’t think so. In fact I know it is possible, because I built it. A space where we can all come together and share ideas that work for our families. A community sharing ideas. Easy customizable menus and best collection of quick recipes on the internet.
So here it is, the Best Thing to Have For Dinner is a PLAN.
To find out how easy it is, go to Dinners In A Flash and click GO.
