However, cooking for a young family requires structure, planning, and thought. I have to know what I'm going to make, exactly how long it will take me, and when I need to start it. I have to cook around playing games, reading books, and in general fighting the urge to sit down. I can't cook whatever I want to eat, because I have to try to make it something my kids will at least attempt to eat (not that they're picky, but I still find some things limited). All spontaneity is gone. I cook best by inspiration, which can happen at any time. But when dinner needs to be on the table by 5pm, there's just not a lot of time to wait for that inspiration.
Thankfully my family is pretty easy to please, so my boring, easy-to-cook food is normally met with excitement by at least one person. Yet I miss the days of scouring cookbooks, looking for something good for dinner.
I have many times tried to make a menu plan. I'll spend one night looking through cookbooks, and come up with a list of meals to make for a few weeks or a month. But I lack good follow-through skills, so the necessary ingredients don't always make it onto a grocery list. Or, a frequent problem for me, I'll skim the recipe instructions, noticing that it will need 20 minutes to cook yet miss the 30 minute step earlier on. So I'll start dinner, read the whole recipe, and realize I don't have enough time to make the meal, then have to default to an old boring recipe.
Of course, food allergies and intolerances have made menu planning and cooking much different for the past 3 years, and I'm sure that contributes to my burn-out. We recently have been experimenting with tomatoes, and it seems Erik and I can tolerate them better now. I'm seriously really excited to be able to make spaghetti again, and that certainly qualifies as an easy, boring food to prepare. Spaghetti, lasagna, pizza sauce instead of pesto sauce on pizza (we've actually already done it, and I prefer pesto sauce over tomato sauce now), chili, and many of my long-time favorite foods containing tomatoes can once again grace my menu. We're trying to take it slow, though, and not add too much too soon.
As I was typing this, Carl complimented me on tonight's dinner. He said he had 3 servings because he loved it so much. And here it was tonight's dinner getting me thinking about how I didn't like cooking right now, and how I was bored. I guess it's possible that I should just learn to be content with the boring for now, and find some other place to be creative. Like baking. I made the best-ever gluten free, dairy free, and egg free cinnamon rolls last night. And baking allows me that inspiration, and I can wait until I have the time and energy. I can start it at 7 pm if I feel like baking then, and make something standard (banana muffins) or something new and challenging (I'm still working on good gluten free, egg free carrot cake).
The one beautiful thing about any cooking or baking that I do is that I always have a helper ready to go (if he's not asleep, that is). Anders loves helping me do anything and everything in the kitchen. Sometimes it slows me down, but most of the time I love his company and his eagerness.
On to a picture. I didn't take any during the day, so I went out to take a few shots of the flowers. This time of year the daisies in the back are beautiful and big.
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| From April 2007 |
I wish that a picture would capture smell, because this is my favorite time of year on the orange tree.
The blossoms are just beginning, not all of them are open yet. But the smell hits me as soon as I open the front door. The smell of the orange blossoms is second only to jasmine flowers in my mind. Ahhh, the smell of spring.
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