Finding Joy in Snarkville

I missed the class in girlhood where I was supposed to be able to pull together dinner on a nightly basis without wanting to pluck my own eyeballs out with a spoon (perhaps a slotted spoon).  As the Queen Mum says, there is not an instrument created that can measure how little I care about what we have for dinner.  Truly, if it were up to me (and I didn’t have two boys who’d complain) I’d be happy to eat cereal for dinner most nights.  Alas, since Prince thinks his dinner skills are limited to boiling water or microwaving something, I was elected to make dinner.

But, ladies (or chef in your house), you know that ‘making dinner’ is never as simple as ‘making dinner.’  Let’s be honest, it is planning dinner, shopping for dinner, prepping dinner, making dinner, cleaning up the kitchen, setting the table, serving dinner, loading the dishwasher, unloading the dishwasher, cussing….maybe that last one is just me.  But for some of us, who have no talent for turning loaves and fishes into a meal, we lather, rinse and repeat this every single night.  After way too many years of this, I have gone on strike.

I no longer want to keep doing something I started out disliking and ultimately have come to hate.  I do not want to make dinner ever again.  But again, I fear that the demanding people in my house will not handle the cereal dinner or you make it yourself plan.  Until I can teach Duke to cook dinner for me, I’ve been forced to find another plan.

After a wee bit of search on the net (oh, interwebs, how I love thee) I’ve found that there are other people out there who are like me.  They too hate to open a cabinet and produce dinner.  They too seem to have demanding people in their house who like eating and thus, they have begun a trend of ‘Cooking Once a Month.’

At first the thought of standing in my kitchen all day from morning until dusk cooking was like trying to imagine water torture or bamboo shoots under my nails.  I could not wrap my head around it — until I heard that magical phrase, ‘the rest of the month is ‘THAW and REHEAT”  Wait, no 30 minutes of prep daily after I spend a  day in the kitchen?  Why, no, why do you ask?  Well, I’d tried the Dream Dinners concept where you prep your food ahead, but you still have to cook it — which was often a multi-step process of dinner making.  The good thing was that at least the meal was chosen.

Well, in my research, I found a step-by-step manual in cooking this way for 2 weeks worth of chicken.  In theory this plan was designed for finding chicken REALLY on sale.  But I wanted to give it a try to see if I could actually do it and if this would work for us.  And yes, I’m aware of the fact, we will be eating a ton of chicken for the next two weeks.

Yesterday, I went grocery shopping.  I had a big list, but with careful shopping I spent less than my normal weekly shopping on what should be about 2 weeks of meals.  I’m excited as I lay everything out last night and note that I’ve bought good for us things I’ve never bought before — like 5 pounds a fresh carrots or fresh veggies at all.  I had 26 POUNDS of chicken in the fridge ready for a big day of cooking.

This morning I woke made coffee and breakfast.  I took a good shower and even put on my tennis shoes for my day at the stove.  I kicked the boys out for a day of fun while I cooked.  I cooked solidly from 10am to 4pm.  While one dish was being made, I prepped the next.  I made my own chicken stock that I turned into soup, I roasted chicken and turned it into burritos, I baked 4 dishes in my oven at once.  I made notes, know what I’d change if I do this set of recipes again — but mostly, I’m sure with some tweeking, I’ve found my answer.

I loved this big cook and while I’m truly bone deep tired, I’m thrilled to know that my freezer and fridge are stuffed with good foods.  I don’t know if we will love all the recipes as none of them are tried and true for us…but it was a proof of concept and a start.  Now I know this is getting long, but I wanted to share a few things I learned today:

1. I don’t mind cutting up large amounts of veggies if I can do it all at once.
2. I need bigger pots.  (In prep, for today, I bought an 8 qt and a 12 qt stock pot.)  But I need to look into larger skillet and saucepans.
3. I have two large sets of large bowls — and I used all of them at the same time.  I know I was shocked too.
4. I need to figure out freezer storage solutions.  Still working on that.
5. An empty dishwasher AND a sink of warm soapy water keeps me sane.  I ran the dishwasher only once WHILE cooking and it is running now for the second time.  Otherwise I handwashed the pots and such as I used them — this really means that other than the fact I’m too tired to put all the stuff away, my kitchen is as clean now as it was when I began.
6. My hands are SO dry from the hot soapy water.
7. Despite careful planning and large amounts of chicken later — I have two leftover chicken breasts that I did not use.  I’ve bagged them and frozen them for next time — but I’ve not a clue what I’m going to do with them.

Now to plan a few meals that have beef, just to stop us all from clucking.  Also, wondering how to tell Prince (who I’ve already told not to buy me anything for Christmas) that I think we NEED a freezer.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 25th, 2008 at 7:12 pm and is filed under Mental Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.