Cooking for the family has always been a challenge because I‘ve always had a full time job. It was quite an adjustment for me when I got married three years ago. My husband is one of those people who wants to sit down together at every meal and he prefers home cooking to restaurant food about a thousand to one. I guess he’s got a good point, I mean, why do we get married if we’re not going to do things together? He knows there are times when we can’t dine together; he’s had forty years of work experience so he knows you can’t always do what you would like.
Given that I must work and I also must prepare food for the table, we have come up with some strategies to make my life a little easier. First, I go to work and put in my time at my job. No problem. Second, I’ve found it convenient to do my grocery shopping on my lunch hour and on the way home from work. With the price of gas these days I don’t want to make any extra trips to the store. I like to do the shopping because I know what I want. If he goes to the store, I don’t know what he’ll bring home. Men in grocery stores? Please! All they’ll buy is cake, ice cream, and beer! Third, to make the food preparation easier, I make up a large batch of pasta (he likes pasta) so we can eat out of the dish all week. One cooking session gives us six – ten meals at a time. This is a great time saver and he can feed himself when I’m at the office. Fourth, to make these large dishes of food, I’ve discovered that using simple recipes is a big help. I’ve got a few cookbooks that feature only a few ingredients. Five simple ingredients, mix them together, and I’m through in fifteen minutes, yay.