Even though I cook dinner every night, I will never be one of those mothers who blogs about the food I put on the table. First of all, I haven’t managed to find the time to get pictures up  on the blog,and food writing without pictures falls as flat as the pita bread I attempted to bake last month. Which brings me directly to my second reason: I’m proud of very little of the new food I make. Like all cooks I have my repertoire, and I suppose I’m okay with what’s in it, but my attempts to shake things up often end up in me having to make soft boiled eggs and toast for everyone (except for Bennett, who doesn’t eat eggs). There are of course some notable successes, City Kitchen’s Pretzel Chicken was a huge hit and I’ll be making it again for sure. I got that recipe, and many others (including a ridiculously easy one for turkey chili), on http://www.dinneralovestory.com, a delightful site which makes me feel like a competent parent just by reading it.
Although, there is something rather intimidating about all of these ‘family dinner’ sites. I’m all for the family dinner, but very few of them explore the dark underbelly of the family dinner. From what I gather, they’re fine telling us what to eat and how to eat it (check out these Rules!!), but I want to know what really happens when you spend hours preparing something and someone storms away from the table because his brother upset him, or when someone does what she does every night, and spills her drink all over the person next to her and all over the food in front of her, when a toddler slides out of her chair, hits her heads and melts down gloriously all over your Chicken Cacciatore, when someone refuses to try something new or makes gagging noises that make his siblings piss themselves with laughter, but send his parents into a homicidal rage…
Oh well, I suppose I’ll have to do that it my next post.
I recently read a post about the ten easiest things to make for dinner, and this got me thinking… I don’t ONLY want to know what’s easy to make for dinner, I want to know what people make when the thing you make fails. I put way too much garlic in the Caesar dressing last night and ended up making another round of eggs and toast, and serving Bennett the leftover turkey chili. So, what do YOU make for dinner if and when your dish flops? In other words, what is YOUR soft boiled egg and toast?

Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 15, 2011