Last night, I made chicken and noodles for dinner. This is a particularly easy recipe which involves chicken and noodles, two things which I loved as a kid. Abby Kate, however, reacted as though we'd heaped rat droppings and arsenic on her plate and refused to eat it. This attitude was immediately picked up by Grant, who refused to eat his chicken and noodles on grounds that if his sister thought it was bad, it must be bad. This notwithstanding the fact that he likes 50 times more things than she does and is in general far less suspicious about what we give him to eat. Tonight, however, it appeared that they were onto me and my plot to overthrow the family by feeding them nutritious and delicious food. [insert evil laugh here]
This is one of the true frustrations of SAHM parenting: what to feed the kids. I think every family has at least one child who would happily live on bread and peanut butter, with a few Cheetos thrown in for variety. In my family, it was my sister who only ate hot dogs and pbjs until she was about 15. In my husband's family it was his brother who ordered a ham sandwich at every restaurant they ever went to, including McDonald's. Except for vegetables, I ate pretty much everything and my husband really shone at the dinner table, which was good for him since he was in trouble pretty much everywhere else. Now we, who always seem to be able to find food we like, have produced a child whose "worst enemy" is meat -- and don't try to confuse her by explaining that chicken nuggets and hot dogs are meat, because it won't wash.
"What is this?" she would ask at every dinner. For a while we fooled her by saying "Roast aardvark." That got her to try sloppy joes and meatloaf. But after a few months of that, she began to suspect that we weren't having roast aardvark at every meal and that some of the stuff we were making her try was, in fact, meat. MEAT.
MEAT!!!!
We considered the possibility that she might be a natural vegetarian, but decided that anyone who ate hot dogs (the lowest form of meat) with as much evident enjoyment as she did couldn't possibly be a true vegetarian. Then, too, we thought she really should show a marked preference for vegetables or other sources of nutrients and vitamins and antioxidants and whatnot. Perhaps if Skittles were considered a food group...
So I spend every afternoon either racking my brain for something I can make for dinner that won't engender prolonged screaming, or gearing up for said screaming as I make something guaranteed to annoy. Add to this the brain damage that having 3 children has caused -- the kind of brain damage that prevents you not only from knowing what to make for dinner, but from remembering what you know how to make for dinner -- and you've got a recipe for stress. I literally had to make a list of things I know how to cook because after my 3rd was born I could stand with a jar of spaghetti sauce in one hand and a package of noodles in the other and think to myself, "What do I do with these?" And I refer to that list often, during those all-too-frequent moments when my mind goes utterly blank, usually when I'm holding open the fridge door at about 3:30, hoping beyond hope that I have ingredients on hand to at least fill stomachs, if not inspire slavish adoration.
And since I am the stay at home parent, this little pleasure falls to me. There's really no question about who's going to be making dinner...it's me. It's always me. So here's my short list (very short, sadly) of things I can make without inspiring a hunger strike:
bacon, eggs and pancakes tostadas cashew chicken (though really #1 daughter eats mainly rice at this meal) grilled cheese and tomato soup corn dogs pigs in a blanket (or fancy corn dogs) chicken nugget kabobs (chicken nuggets and biscuits on bamboo skewers)
And that's it. Certainly I make other things: meatloaf, mu shu patties, cheese soup, the infamous chicken and noodles, hamburgers, fajitas. But these are the select few that allow me to have a meal in peace. Everything else requires a whole lotta Motrin.
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