Keeping It Simple

The one where we get back on the horse... Since beginning this self-imposed challenge (about 5 or 6 weeks ago) to plan, make, and eat meals at home, I have been fighting this silly cold/cough. Two trips to urgent care ('cause after hours is when I would finally cry "uncle!") and a recent trip to my doctor, a round of steroids, a round of antibiotics, and lots of over the counter medication later, I'm just now on the mend. More on that in a minute... Monday and Tuesday we had the best home cooked meals ever! They were home cooked by someone else!! On Monday , we had dinner with my daughter and her husband. They put together a lovely baked potato bar that included this absolutely lovely gluten and meat free chili - but don't make it for those reasons. It was just darned good! Tuesday , another daughter and her husband invited us over for dinner (we could work this system for a while ;)). Our son-in-law's family is Greek and he knows how to cook up som...

Still at it! So much of success is attitude and planning. It is easy when we are tired and out anyway, to just pick up some quick food. It is much easier to keep a "can do" attitude when you have planned for the week's meals! This week: We reran Orange Chicken from Danielle Walker's Against All Grain cookbook. My boys love to eat this one leftover for lunch. Our first try at making Spaghetti with Shallots and Brussel Sprouts from Jenny Rosenstrach's Dinner the playbook  was a huge success. This is a seriously good yet quick and easy meal. I also baked some potatoes with our Sunday dinner to use with leftovers. We had a lovely dinners this week using our roasted chicken (previous post), orange chicken, and spaghetti.  To mix things up we added bell peppers to our chicken to make chicken quesadillas. We also used our leftovers to stuff bake potatoes. For our weekend meals: Saturday we entertained four grandchildren (ages 6, 4, 1, and 1), so we had ho...

These are a few of the hurdles we are dealing with for getting family dinners up and running. #1- Schedule. I have mentioned that Mark plays football, so he is at practice every day until 6 p.m. (home around 7). Assuming Mark is the only one who has an evening activity and we have no other obligations that evening, it is doable. But this school year started with a flurry of "other obligations"! #2- What to eat. I prefer no meat. In my ideal world we would all be vegan, but no one in my family is completely on board with that. The up side is that my family loves most of the vegan dishes I make, but they like meat too. #3- Gluten Free. My daughter can not have any gluten. It is always a bummer if she calls and asks if she can stop by for dinner and we are already making pasta (we have started keeping gluten free pasta on hand), but even the meatballs I make have gluten in them. To address #1- my motto is "just do it". It does not have to be pretty. Just mak...

We are holding fast our commitment to prepare and eat dinner at home. We are trying to work the timing such that if we have to take shifts, they are fairly close together in time and we sit with whichever child is eating at the odd time while he eats. It's sort of funny- at different times, especially when our family was younger, there was no question of eating dinner at home all togethe r. In that haze that distance memory permits, those dinners times were idyllic. I'm going to come right out and confess that it's not really coming together that way now, but I'm going to stick the motto that " practice makes perfect ". We are a family of just 3 BIG kids + parents + grandma (on some days) - dinners should be time of peaceful conversation and sharing moments from our day. Eh. Sometimes, not so much. With or without those sought after peaceful moments, we have managed to accomplish our goal of eating at home whenever possible (even if we have to stretch o...