Thoughts on cooking this week

Okay, so it's been over a year since I've posted any new recipes. I've been busy with everything else in life. When I last posted, we had recently moved back to the States. A few months later, we moved house again, I had my fourth child, and ever since then I've been so busy with baby and older boys and all their activities, that I barely seem to have time to cook, let alone come up with, remember, write down, and post new recipes. I think I need to try to get back into it though, because I feel out of touch with my cooking these days. I've been in a rut, not knowing what to cook, and then I feel like I'm always cooking the same things. I've also resorted to a lot more ready meals or fast food than I would like.

A few months ago, I thought about trying to get a menu figured out for at least a week. I spent a while looking through Pinterest and my cookbooks. When I was finished, I didn't really have anything to show for it. I asked my husband to help think of ideas of meals to make. He didn't think I was serious. He told me that I've been doing this for the past 10 or 11 years, how could it be so difficult now to come up with ideas for what to cook. I lost it! I'm sure I was sleep deprived with an infant, and overwhelmed with everything else I had to do. I told him to try figuring out what to cook for our family every day for 10 years and see how he does! Until he did that, he couldn't understand! Okay, now I realize that I overreacted, but that's how I felt at the time. I have mommy brain: sleep-deprived-distracted-scattered-in-every-direction mommy brain. I have three boys and a husband who all have different tastes, and dislikes and desires for dinner food. I have to find a way to feed my family healthy, well-balanced meals that they will actually want to eat! That is not an easy task, and it gets more difficult as my boys get older and are more influenced by their peers at school (who apparently all eat packaged junk).

I look back fondly and longingly to the days when I could prep for a meal while my babies took their naps, and then quickly finish it up at dinner time. I think I had more time to plan and prepare. My boys weren't so picky, maybe the ingredients I had on hand were easier to use. I just had more time I think. Now I have school drop off, playgroups and volunteering, school pick-up, sports and scouts. My boys are getting to bed later now as well, so I don't even have as much time in the evening to plan and prepare. The list goes on. I know it sounds like I am complaining, whinging as they say in England. I guess I kind of am, but really I'm just trying to figure out why I struggle now, when before it seemed much easier. Things change, and I have to adjust. The past few months have been more difficult an adjustment than I anticipated I think.

I've discovered Pinterest a few months ago, and my clipboards are mostly food related. The last board I made is entitled "Weekly Menu." The idea is to change the contents weekly, to put recipes on it that I want to make for each week. I put a few recipes on there, and then I got sick, so I only used one or two that first week. I used a couple more this week too. It would be nice if I could keep up with this idea, but we'll see.

This past week, I managed to use my crock-pot once, on my really busy day: Thursday. I got all the ingredients together out on the counter the night before, and managed to get it into the slow-cooker before leaving the house at 7:15! It was a vegetarian sweet potato and quinoa chili. My boys all ate it, and didn't really complain about it. They don't even normally like sweet potato or quinoa, so I consider that a success. I figured if I cut the sweet potato small enough, they won't really notice what it is, and it worked.

I made a couple of other meals like that this week, where I basically hide veggies and other "undesirables" into something they usually like to eat, and they will eat it. I put veggies and tofu into my taco meat mixture. My husband didn't even seem to notice the tofu, so that was a success. Today I made mini meat loaves, where at least half of the volume was not even meat, but a mixture of veggies (including bell pepper and zucchini.) Every body ate it, and enjoyed it! Success number two. I don't really remember what else I made this week, although one day we did have frozen fish sticks, but that's okay. All in all, this week went pretty well. My cooking wasn't perfect. I made some mistakes here and there, but I didn't burn anything! Hopefully I can remember what I've made that works, and find some new recipes to add to my artillery. Hopefully I can start using this blog more often, to help me remember all this, and someday I will have this cooking thing down to a science (at least for a little while).