Someone Else Needs to Plan the Menu

If there is one thing I am always tired thinking about it’s, “What’s for dinner?”  For a person like myself who loves to cook, but is being particularly vigilant about what I will eat until I get down to my goal weight the answer is fairly simple.  I would just have a salad, but I am not alone in this world.  I have a not-picky-eater husband who likes spicy food and a picky daughter who does not and neither of them would be happy if I told them they were having a salad for dinner.

Dinner has become a meal that people thinks need to be something special, all the time.  How has this happened?  Breakfast is easy, there are a couple of choices and almost all of them are considered acceptable in my house.  Lunch, everyone is on their own.  I am never quite sure what my family is eating for lunch and I appreciate that they don’t torment me with descriptions of yummy meals I won’t let myself have.

But come dinnertime everyone wants different things at different times and different from things they might have had in the last thirty days.  I take back that last part about Russ, he is happy to eat leftovers, but I am wary of making too much of anyone thing that it might go uneaten.

I know I have created my own problem because I am a good cook.  I have raised the level of expectation to be a four star meal every night.  I would not even mind cooking at the James Beard level every night if only someone else would come up with the menu, buy the ingredients and guarantee that everyone would eat it without complaint.

I could just start cooking like most of America and make a simple meal of some bland meat, a starch and an overcooked green vegetable, throw it on the table and announce that is all there is so take it or leave it.  The issue is that it would get left and then the snacking meals would take over.

I never want to hear, “What do we have to eat?” again.  I wish I could do away with all extra food in the house so that the meal that is served is the best you are going to get so it would be appreciated.  If I have this much trouble with my forty plus years of cooking dinner I can only imagine the problems most people have.  It certainly is a first world problem since so many don’t have any choice about what they eat and I don’t just mean prisoners.