Healthy Eating

For most of the past fifteen years, I have made a concentrated effort to cook healthy meals for my family most nights of the week.  I buy lots of fresh produce and lean meats.  I cook from scratch.  My knife skills are pretty good for an amateur.

Most nights our meals look like this:

I spend time on Friday evenings going through cookbooks and Pinterest pins to plan my meals for the week, then head to the grocery store on Saturday or Sunday.  I find that if I invest this time over the weekend, I'm more likely to cook throughout the week.

I won't lie; there are still nights when I throw frozen chicken Kievs in the oven and call it a night.  Or I'll make Polish sausage and pierogi and maybe a veg.  There are nights when we call for Thai delivery.

But most of the time I find myself in the kitchen at 6pm, wielding my knives and my skillets, making dinner for my family.

I don't mind it, really.  I find cooking relaxing most of the time, especially if I know I have all of the ingredients on hand.  Chopping vegetables for sauteeing or steaming is kind of like meditating for me.  I sometimes have music on or the news in the background (no TV in my kitchen), but this is time when I let my mind wander and think about my day.  Sometimes the recipes bring back memories of family dinners past, when my girls were little and they ate pretty much anything I cooked because they wanted dessert later. Sometimes the memories are even older, when I was little and my grandfather would make ribs or a beef tenderloin on his giant Weber kettle while my grandma made salad and twice-baked potatoes in the kitchen.

I think about her, too, when I make meatloaf WITH ketchup on it.  But I don't burn the bottom.

For me, food is wrapped up in emotion and memories, as I suspect it is for many people.  So many traditions have food at their center, and ours are no different:  cinnamon rolls on Easter morning; coffee cake on Christmas morning; a chocolate-frosted lamb cake for Easter dinner at my in-laws.  I look forward to seeing what traditions my girls carry on with them when they have families of their own.

But the best part of making dinner?  If I cook, the other three clean up!

Pizza Night

Tonight was pizza night at the Rench Ranch.

I realized last night when I was making the grocery list that we had not made homemade pizzas since we moved into this house.  Boboli pizzas, yes.  Delivery, too often to mention.  But not for real made-from-scratch dough pizzas?  Nope.

One reason I've put off making pizzas is the fact that my kitchen is short on counter space.  In the old house, I had a huge island where I could roll dough and put out all of the toppings.  Not so in the new house, but I've learned how to make things work when I need to.

My kids certainly didn't mind standing at the stove to put the toppings on their pizzas.  Neither did I.

I love these nights when we are all in and out of the kitchen.  Dinner certainly isn't a chore when everyone is laughing, music is playing, and I have a nice glass of red at my elbow as I roll out pizza dough.  Even better, we each have our own pizza, so we can customize them as we please.

Here's mine:

Pepperoni, sausage, olives, and mushrooms.  All of my favorite toppings.

Saturday night dinners at our house are casual.  I don't go out of my way to make over-the-top dishes.  Sometimes we just have noodles and red sauce or waffles or scrambled eggs and bacon.  I figure I cook healthy, balanced meals at least five nights a week, so I can take it a bit easier on Saturday nights.

I also know that these Saturday nights when we are all four at home to share stories and laughter around the dinner table are numbered.  Molly is a sophomore, Abby a seventh grader.  Before I know it, they will be out of the house, making lives of their own.  I hope they will take some of these family traditions and recipes with them as they do.

And I hope they remember they will always have a place at my table.