Cooking dinner is part of the housedaughter equation of expectation which looks something like this: Desperate Housedaughter + free time + no job + vague household skills = dinner. Each and every night, I receive two phone calls, usually in this order:
4:30 PM - Dad calls. "Housedaughter, what's for dinner tonight? I'm on my way home on the train."
Me: "Dad, WTF? I'm so sick of getting these calls about dinner! I can't make dinner every single night! I already do all the laundry, 75% of the dishes, [blah blah prattling and whining about all the housework], so I don't feel compelled to make dinner, AGAIN!"
Dad: "Fine I'll eat bread for dinner."
Me: "FINE!"
5:30 PM - Mom calls: "Housedaughter, what's for dinner?"
Me: [Turning red with rage] "PFFFTTTTTT WHAT?"
Mom: "What. Is. For. Dinner?" (She's adorable and thinks I didn't hear her. I love optimists!)
Me: "Thanks, I heard you. Tacos. From last night."
Mom: "Ok, I'll just eat a muffin from the grocery store."
Oh dear. I try hard to avoid the carb-loaded dinner fate for my parents, but let's be clear - I hate cooking. Baking is fun and enjoyable, but cooking, NOOOOO! I don't find anything about it fun. So when dinner is laid squarely on my shoulders all the time, I get exhausted.
In the last 7 days, I've made dinner a shocking 3 times! BBQ burger/veggie extravaganza, tacos, and spaghetti and meatballs (well, I only made the meatballs). When my Dad makes dinner just once every 3 months, he gets mad if we ask him to make dinner again during that time. And I laugh at him copiously. What gives, people?
It's good to be a housedaughter in a way, because now I know (unless I married some super rich dude who regularly bought me Prada and we had a prenup) that I could never be a housewife. The expectation of dinner is just too much for me. It tosses me over the edge. Alas, I must now take my leave of you to go make my breakfast oatmeal. Let me confess that cooking breakfast is an exception to my cooking hatred. I make a delicious breakfast, so come on by anytime before 10 AM! But please don't ask me to make you dinner. Ever.
Buy a Purdue Oven Stuffer Roaster (a big chicken). Take it out of the package. Put it in the sink and take all the innards in the little bag out and throw them away. Rinse off the chicken and dry it with paper towels. Put it in a baking pan big enough to hold it. Spray it with Pam. Salt & pepper it and stick it in a 350 degree oven. Let it cook until the little button pops out. That's it. You can throw some veggies around it and cook them at the same time or nuke some potatoes.
ReplyDeleteYou have roast chicken the first night, chicken tacos the next, a package of salad greens with cut up chicken on it the next, or chicken sandwiches. Easy and you get at least 3 meals from it. The next week, do the same thing with a beef roast.