Is anyone else tired of thinking about what to make for dinner?

I find cooking dinner for my family during the week exhausting and aggravating. It’s exhausting because I have trouble coming up with ideas about what to actually make. While there are a ton of wonderful online cooking blogs, it takes time to decide on a recipe, buy the groceries, and then actually cook the dinner. The word here is organization, or actually lack thereof.

Let’s just say cooking isn’t one of my true talents. I don’t shine in the cooking area.

My family would agree with this statement, almost too quickly. Although, truth be told, I rock at making salads. In fact, I don’t just excel at chopping vegetables and mixing them together, I can also make a great salad dressing.

It’s the other items needed to complete a meal that gets me into trouble. Every time. Most kids don’t want to be fed salad for dinner every night.

Which brings me to the reason cooking dinner during the weeknight is aggravating. When I do go to the trouble of cooking what I think is a good meal, half the time there’s someone in my family who refuses to eat what I’ve made. And, it’s not just the kids. Sometimes my husband, Jon, either eats just a little bit of whatever I’ve made, or makes a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

If I’m going to go to the trouble to make dinner, the least my family can do is eat what I’ve made. I don’t think this is requesting too much.

I’ve tried asking my family what they want for dinner and I’m usually met with, “I don’t care” from Jon or “pesto or tacos” from the kids. I’m happy making whatever they want, they just need to tell me what they’ll actually eat. And while I appreciate the fact that they like two of my meals, we can’t have the same thing every night.

I admit, I do have a little trouble following a recipe.

For example, when a recipe calls for a ton of ingredients, instead of spending a lot of money on something I’ll only need 1/2 teaspoon of, I make the executive decision to leave it out. How much of an impact can 1/2 teaspoon of something really make?

My family doesn’t agree with this laid back approach.

Yesterday, I went to the store planning on getting the ingredients to make pesto. Guess what happened? There wasn’t any fresh basil. Even I know it doesn’t taste very good to use dried basil. I was forced to go with plan B: frozen pizza.

At least we had a good salad to go with our pizza.

Find meaning each day,

Dara

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