Cooking Dinner

4/20/2015

Dinner.  It occurs every evening and for all the years that I've been married we ate at 6:00, with few exceptions.  

As a teenager, I cooked dinner for the family during the week.  Mother would leave some meat out to thaw, and I was to cook it.  Oh, and potatoes, which if my memory serves me correct, we had most nights.  So over the years, I've cooked hundreds of meals and frankly it's getting to be rather boring.

You can cook hamburger meat, pork, chicken, fish or my famous "one pot wonders". If it's winter, then a stew or soup makes a good meal.  I've used the slow cooker, the frying pan and the oven to cook dinner.  While I like all of the meat I mentioned, could somebody come up with a new recipe.  I don't want a seventeen ingredient recipe, just something relatively easy and tasty would be good as well!  I don't think that's too much to ask.

I watched first my grandmother and then my mother lose their zest in the kitchen as they aged.  Both of them were good cooks, but as they grew older, they cooked less.   Neither of them put much store in presentation (frankly, neither do I), they were about food tasting good and making sure there was plenty.  Maybe I'm losing my "mojo" when it comes to cooking!

Since Jeff and I will be in Baltimore this afternoon, we'll probably eat our dinner out, which will give me an additional night off from cooking.  I cook pizzas on Sunday - end of discussion.

I actually like breakfast for dinner and Jeff makes the absolute best scrambled eggs I've ever eaten.  I remember when we were first married, there was a breakfast at the YMCA, and Jeff volunteered to cook.  When the eggs were served, both my son and I knew that those were Jeff's eggs!

The other problem I have in the kitchen is making too much food.  After cooking for my family for many years, I have yet to fine tune how to make less of something.  How many pork chops do I really need to cook?  I generally cook 4 or 5, but 3 would probably be the right number.  Baked potatoes - I always cook at least one extra because Jeff likes to eat them cold.  If you haven't tried that, they're actually quite good - particularly if you slather butter (for me) or mayo (for Jeff) on top!

P