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Done like dinner

A super-big thank you to Just-Eat.ca for sponsoring this post!

You know that feeling of satisfaction you get from coming home after a long week and scraping together a barely passable meal out of the dregs of your refrigerator to feed your family? Or how about the sense of achievement you earn spending an hour catching up on dishes and scouring pots and pans? No? Me neither.

Takeout is never a hard sell around here. As much as I truly and honestly do value home-cooked, nutritious food, I’ve also learned that I can’t always do it all. As a work-from-home mom who has a habit of biting off more work than I maybe should, my workday sometimes spills into the after-school hours and I find myself working on the computer when I should be spending time with the kids. It doesn’t feel fair for me to then continue to ignore them for another 45 minutes on those days while I try to get a meal on the table. So we order takeout and I get to help with homework, read stories and admire craft projects brought home from school. It’s not much, but it’s important.

But, man, do I get sick of the same-old pizza and burgers. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to order something different? Maybe something even a little bit healthy?

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And Then We Ate

Today is the first day back to school after the Christmas holidays. The holidays were the first time in, um, ever (maybe) that we all got to hang out at home with nothing pressing to do. (Of course, by “we all” I mean both myself and Ed. God knows that hanging out at home with the kids has been my freaking raison d’etre for the past 6 3/4 years but who’s counting. It is a joy and an honour and apples of my eye and so on.)

So clearly I had time to pre-write blog posts into March and pitch a million different freelance ideas and update my resume and organize the office and the mud room and the pantry and my bedroom closet. “There’s a week between Christmas and New Year’s,” I said over and over and over again. “I’ll take care of [insert important task I’ve been putting off for weeks] then.” Clearly.

Except that our marathon of Christmas festivities includes the 26th. This left only the Thursday and Friday of the week of Christmas which we spent in recuperation mode, trying to find the floor in the the sea of wrappers and bows and packaging and toys and holy hell, do not open that Lego set right here, right now, for the love of god. It also meant chugging back egg nog and cramming shortbread into my face while the going was still good. (I am currently snacking on dry, “sprouted grain” toast, a New Year’s penance for my transgressions.) Then there was the weekend and it’s corresponding social obligations, New Year’s Eve was Monday and Ed was back to work by Wednesday. So that “entire week off with the endless hours of productive fun for me” pipe dream I was selling turned out to be just that, a lie.

And that’s how I wound up doing the week’s worth of grocery shopping at 4:00 pm on a Sunday with a toddler in tow. Did you know that everybody else was also doing their shopping at the exact same time? And in the hipster-parent paradise where I live, at least half of my fellow shoppers also had a baby or toddler with them. Pure chaos.

Irene greeted me at the door, eager to help lug the bags of groceries into the kitchen. “Now we can sort the food!  Colum! Colum! Colum! Colum! Let’s sort the food!”

“Pasta!” one of them said, “What food group does this belong in?”

“Bread and cereal.”

“Tortillas?”

“Bread and cereal.”

“Yogurt?”

“Dairy.”

And so on until every last item was categorized. Ohmigod, they are such nerds.

In the meantime, the kitchen was one level short of being declared a toxic waste disaster zone. Because if you accidentally take half a day off from aggressively fighting the indefatigable front of dirty dishes, spoons, sippy cups and pots and pans you come very close to losing the entire bloody war.

So every last iota of concentration and energy I had was focused on unloading/loading the dishwasher, washing/using pots and pans, clearing out/stocking the fridge all at the same time. I was cooking and cleaning, clearing out the fridge and putting away groceries, helping to categorize every last food item that I bought and fending off a hungry and tired toddler at once.

“Mommy, can I help make the salad?” Don’t even get me started.

I dropped dinner on the dining room table an hour late and started to dole it out. “Colum has more salad than me! I want more! More! Whaaaaa!” Of course she only picked at her salad and refused to eat any noodles with sauce (the horror!). Cooking for four year olds is the worst.

Just as I finally started to serve myself, Mary started freaking the hell out. She was flinging food off her highchair, spilling milk and throwing forks and spoons clear across the room. I can ignore that, I thought, and took a bite. That’s when she started with the horror movie soundtrack noises. She was screaming and yelling and shrieking at top volume; it was only a matter of time before the neighbours called the police. So I took her out of the high chair and pointed her toward the toy box in the living room.

No such luck. She insisted on being held on my lap and then started clawing at my shirt, reaching her hand down to cop a feel and then repeatedly banging her face into my chest.

“You are asking to be weaned,” I said.

“I think she’s asking to be fed,” said Colum.

I like him. He ate all his dinner plus seconds.

 

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Don’t Sweat the Dinner Hour

“Maaaa-umm….Mom!” It is, invariably, that pivotal point where the pasta must be drained, or the chicken taken out of thelitb9a.jpg oven, or the sauce stirred. I pull back from the pot of boiling liquid just as Colum wedges himself between me and the stove and clutches at my legs. I have to drag him across the room and drop him into a ball of whiny misery and try to rush back to keep from ruining dinner. When Dad finally walks through the door I’m on him to set the table and get Colum started on some milk while I quickly plate our meal. At the table my diligence in cutting and blowing and stirring in ice cubes goes unheeded. “Is too hot!” And the first of many pieces of food is flung across the table. Much pleading and stern talking and then pleading again later, I’m on my hands and knees brushing up 75 per cent of Colum’s dinner and praying that he ate the rest.

The current buzz about the importance of family meals has upped the stress level of the average dinner to an all time high. Not only do you have figure out how to prepare a nutritious meal for every member of your family after working all day (or, in my case, wallowing in unemployment — more tiring than you think), you now have to make sure everyone sits down around a table and eats together. It’s important. There have been studies. If we don’t eat as a family, Colum will be at risk for unhealthy behaviour. And so we do eat together when we can. But does it have to be this stressful?

Here are two reasons to relax at dinner. First, don’t make one meal serve two masters. Dinner doesn’t have to be both the main nutritional event and spotlight on family time. If, as is commonly the case, work schedules dictate a late dinner, why not go ahead and feed young children earlier. They can still sit at the table and eat what they like, but they won’t be so hungry and you won’t be so worried about how much they eat. Or serve dinner earlier and save some for the late comers. You can make breakfast the family meal, or only strive for a family dinner every other day.

Second, realize that a big dinner is not essential. Historically, in fact, dinner was served midday and a light supper was prepared in the evening. The advent of affordable lighting coupled with industrial jobs that took people away from their home during the workday made an evening meal both possible and desirable. Lunch, then, needed to be light and portable and just enough food to tide one over until the main meal. Cheryl Mendelson makes a good case for the restorative powers of a proper dinner on page 35 of Home Comforts, my own personal housekeeping bible. If your dinners are anything like ours can be, though, you know that “restorative” is not coming to mind any time soon. Why not have your main meal earlier whenever possible? (A Sunday dinner at midday is still traditional in many households.) We can, at the very least, make exceptions for young children who shouldn’t have to wait until just before bedtime for a substantial meal.

This is how meals are playing out at our home these days. Colum wakes up h-u-n-g-r-y. I often make a pot of oatmeal or cream of wheat now that the cool weather has started. Colum will eat at least two helpings of cereal and will either have fruit with his breakfast or as a snack an hour or so later. (NOTE: While porridge does stick to your ribs, it also sticks to every other surface your toddler comes into contact with. Do not serve oatmeal if you’re in a hurry.) Then, around noon, we’ve been enjoying soup and a sandwich now that all but the last molars are through. After Colum’s nap he might eat a snack right away or wait an hour or so, depending on how much lunch he ate. Now, if we’re waiting until 7 o’clock for a family dinner, then I’ll give him another snack while I’m cooking. If that’s not in the works, then I try to have dinner served by 6. As a general rule, the later the dinner, the less of it he eats. So, of course, plan your snacks accordingly.

There is value in sitting down for a meal as a family, and it’s a ritual I quite enjoy. We simply have to be careful not to sell the car to pay for the tires as the saying goes. (No? Well, it does now.) A little flexibility goes a long way.