I came across this meme a couple days ago, and I felt this all the way to my core. All my mom friends liked and loved it and my husband commented, “so true, I’m sick of figuring out dinner”. Ok ladies….. every.ounce.of.self.control.I.have not to explain the error to this thinking. Because here is the thing: For men, figuring out dinner entails either calling ahead and picking up pizza or tacos, or buying pot pies from the meat market. (I won’t lie….those are life). Now I realize this is a generalization….but in general…you get what I’m saying.
Women on the other hand often have to put more than three steps into making dinner. So for this purpose, and to ensure that my husband doesn’t overgeneralize on how rough he has it when he has to ‘figure out’ dinner, I am mansplaining what women actually have to figure out.
The first step of this process takes place days before when we start thinking about shopping lists for the upcoming week. We must take into account the weather, school, sports and work schedules, and outside plans any member of the family may have, and then factor in what is in season, and what is on sale. We also have to figure out what we already have on hand that didn’t get eaten in a prior week. Wait,wait,wait. Why are we talking about the weather in conjunction with grocery lists? As my Arizona friends will tell you, there are no baked foods being prepared in their homes right now. That means no pizza, no lasagna, no roasts, no baked casseroles. At the same time, michiganders will tell you that this week is not a good week for grilling unless you want to get wet or pull your grill in the garage.
Now that we have that part figured out we can think about what meals we will be preparing for the week. In other words, what can I cook that people will eat and that we haven’t already eaten multiple times in the previous few weeks? It used to be, when my kids were little, they would ask what I was cooking and no matter what it was the littles would clap with excitement, and the bigs would do an air punch and a hissed ‘yessss’. I don’t know what changed in the last few years…but I’m still cooking from the same cookbook…and there is no excitement. In fact, I even hear…‘I’m not all that hungry’, or ‘Can I eat later?’. Um no!
The next step to figuring out dinner starts the morning of during the rush of packing lunches, feeding dogs, coordinating rides, delegating chores, finding homework, computers, chargers and trying to get everyone out the door on time. This may mean making sure ingredients like meat are defrosted, that all the ingredients still exist and haven’t been eaten as a snack by revenous teenage boys who needed a midnight snack because ‘they weren’t all that hungry’ for the meal that was prepared the night before, it may mean prepping ingredients and putting them in a crockpot.
My second to least favorite task with figuring out dinner involves the ten minutes between the time I walk in the door after a full day or work and the time I actually start cooking. I will answer the ‘What’s for dinner’ question at least three times. Maybe four if one of the three people besides me who lives here wasn’t listening. This person shall remain nameless, but his name rhymes with snake. The response is the lackluster ‘oh’ followed closely by, ‘I’m not really that hungry’. What happened to the air fist pumps?!? It is the same enchilada soup you used to beg me for!?! But then it is a matter of checking on homework status, chore status, checking in with how the day went, evaluating the mail, checking the last work emails that came in between the time I left my office four blocks away and arrived home while getting a meal served on the table.
Then comes my least favorite part about figuring out dinner…clean up and dealing with the leftovers. While my family knows that they can clean up after themselves, I still do the after dinner dishes, and put away the inevitable leftovers. Yes, I know that in three days I will end up pitching them, but growing up poor, we didn’t waste food. So into the fridge they go.
If only it was as easy as picking up take out to figure out dinner….every night. For weeks, and months, and years.
Hey! Who moved the menu from the Chinese take out place?!?
