Why I Don't Cook

I have never enjoyed cooking very much. It is such a thankless job. I don't get inherent satisfaction from it, and I've never been very good at looking in the fridge or cupboard and figuring out a wholesome, delicious meal. When I was single, I would make a casserole or whatever and unless it was truly awful, I'd eat it until it was gone, mostly to avoid cooking again.

I expected when I got married I'd have to turn over a new leaf and start cooking. Turns out my Hubby is a much better cook than I am, and mostly enjoys it. However, he's usually gone, he's always busy, and somehow or other his enthusiasm for cooking has waned.

The girls have added a whole new horizon to the cooking landscape. Thing 1's accepted main dish dinner menu consists of Cheese Pizza, Chicken Nuggets, German Pancakes, and broccoli. If served very infrequently, she will not object too much to Baked Talapia, and bow-tie pasta with butter on it. But if these things come around more than once a month or so, she'll shut down and stop eating them for a couple of months. Thing 2 is much more willing to try new foods, but of course she has developed an intolerance for Thing 1's top menu items. So what one eats, the other doesn't want to.

We eat out a lot. Much more than is financially or calorically responsible to do. So I decided it's time to bite the bullet, so to speak, and look at that new leaf again. With both girls in the school until 3:00 most days, there aren't too many excuses not to make dinner anymore. Over the past couple of weeks I have actually cooked several meals. A couple, anyway. And we've eaten out less.

Today I made Chicken Pot Pie. It took much longer than I thought. My crust didn't turn out so hot, the broth was much too runny, all in all it wasn't my best effort. And of course Thing 1 was HORRIFIED when she saw what was for dinner. She spent the entire mealtime trying (unsuccessfully) to negotiate with me for dessert - in our house if you don't eat dinner you don't get dessert - (eat it or don't but stop NAGGING me!) and walked away from her plate having only eaten the broccoli. They say your children won't starve themselves, but she looks enough like a holocaust victim already it pains me to see her skip dinner. I let her have a piece of dry bread.
Thing 2 didn't like the pot pie crust, but was okay with the "soup" inside and had two servings of that.

To justify making this pie, I ate probably twice what I would have or should have.



Now what am I going to do with 3/4ths of a mediocre pot pie that no one but me will eat?

And what am I going to make tomorrow night?