Cook Off

As a general rule, solo parenting gets easier every time John goes away. When he is gone for a weekend, that can get long, but when it's strictly workweek travel, I feel like we've got this system firing pretty well. Don't misunderstand me, I most certainly appreciate and rely on his contributions to the domestic sphere when he is here but, for the most part, I can navigate the solo life decently and feel pretty good about our adventures when he is gone (hear the sound of me patting myself on the back? Gooooo team me!). Except. Except for dinner. Now, I usually enjoy cooking dinner. I like to peruse my cookbooks regularly. I get giddy when Bon Appetit shows up every month. Giada, Michael, Paula -- they're all regular guests to my home. I have no illusions of being a pro nor do I get especially crazy in the kitchen (except when I go rogue and fire up something with lentils, spinach, and quinoa... and no one eats it so then I go back to baseline). Still, when it's just me and my little people, my cookbooks become horror novels, I can't face the Food Network, and I let Molly get the mail (actually, no I don't since Target has found us and their catalogs seem to show up all the time and it gets spirited off faster than I can say Christmasisn'tforsevenmoremonthsdon'tgetexcited). Instead, I go into food production hibernation. I do know that kids eat free at Ikea on Tuesday nights (although seriously, it's basically free every night), my overflowing freezer (that I usually curse because I have to do the shut and run) can produce some sort of identifiable foodcalleddinner, the farmer's market provides bread, salmon, cheese, and fruit, which I call "city foraging" and the little people are tickled to go along with it, we get special treats like breakfast for dinner, and there are always friends around who will eagerly ditch dinner duty with me if things get especially hairy. I'm not proud to admit that I leave my children's diet in the hands of Swedish furniture designers but there you have it, it's the truth. I didn't realize the extent to which I duck and cover from dinner until today when I contrasted the past three night's worth of meals to what I have hazily planned for the rest of the week (I promise you that I occasionally do something besides think about food) when a certain someone will be back. Can you guess what is all planned and even *gasp* prepped right now? Yup. Dinner. For Wednesday. But, that doesn't diminish one iota for how satisfying tonight's formerly frozen spaghetti sauce was. Nor from last night's Scandanavian fare. Not even from the night before that's chicken soup rerun. It just goes to show that tastiness can be as relative as anything else.
You know what I do enjoy, though? Spontaneous adventures with my crazy monkeys. That is mouthwatering to me all the time.