Social Ineptitude

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Dinners This Week

The thing is, for all my Big Dinner Plans from last week, I think I ended up making dinner twice. And once it was tacos and the other time it was pizza. The rest of it was convenience food from the freezer or from a variety of restaurants. 

We’ve had a pair of painters in the house for going on three weeks (this should be the last week, thank goodness). They are lovely people – quiet and friendly and good at their work. But I am deeply uncomfortable with strangers in my space. Additionally, the painters have been entering and exiting via the garage, which means they go through the kitchen semi-frequently. I find myself feeling Very Awkward about making food, including lunch, and have been unable to bring myself to prep anything for dinner while they are around, because they are either traveling right through the cooking space or working in/near it. (To allay at least some of the awkwardness, on my end at least, I have been bringing in occasional treats – donuts or some other pastry-type thing for breakfast maybe twice a week, cookies a couple of times, and last week I brought them lunch from a local shop.)  (Should I be buying them lunch and/or breakfast every day???? Sometimes I’m not here during those parts of the day, and what if they are just eating what I provide out of politeness???? Also, feeding two additional people one or two meals a day for 15 days seems… excessive???? Or am I being selfish and cheap???????) 

ANYWAY. I have not been making dinner with any sort of regularity, so the list below is highly aspirational. Especially because this is a Call Week, and my husband is unlikely to be home before 8:00 or 9:00 pm on any given day.

Dinners for the Week of October 16-22

  • French Onion Soup: I already possess all the ingredients for this soup, so making it should be easy. But I was planning to make it yesterday and then got too tired from errands/football watching, so it didn’t happen. Hopefully I can drum up the enthusiasm to make it soon, though, because the leftovers are good and easy to heat up. (I do have some minor anxiety about whether my house will smell oniony once I make the soup, and whether that will bother the painters, even though logically I know they probably don’t care at all and just want me to make the occasional muffin available to them and then render myself invisible for the rest of the time they are in my house.)
  • Sheet Pan Chicken with Zucchini: I grabbed some zucchini the other day, thinking it was such an easy vegetable to cook, and I already have chicken breasts in the freezer, awaiting their time in the sun, and having the ingredients to SUCH an easy meal on hand would give me NO excuse to resort to takeout. And yet the zucchini and the chicken remain unprepared and uneaten. Just move the chicken from the freezer to the fridge! Just wash the zucchini! That is 40% of the work right there!
  • Oven Baked Pork Chops with Steamed Broccoli: Pork chops were on sale so I bought some because apparently Me In The Grocery Store is a totally different and much more with-it person than Me In My Well-Stocked Kitchen. I also have broccoli in the fridge I was supposed to eat last week. This is another extremely easy meal that I may still be unable to persuade myself to make.
  • Some Sort of Curry: My husband and I had a date night recently during which we went to a massive Asian market a few towns over. We had so much fun wandering the aisles and picking out fun things to try (my favorite were the wasabi flavored Lays potato chips – yum!). Among the many things we bought were a few tubs of curry. I have some assorted veg in the fridge and plenty of meat options. Maybe I’ll try out one of the curry mixes. 

Time will tell whether I make any of these things, seeing as my intentions are even more halfhearted than usual.

If you meal plan, about what percentage of the meals on your list end up Made And Eaten by the end of the week? 

If you were to go on a food shopping and preparation date, what type of food would you shop for and what would you want to make?

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Out of the Food Fret Frying Pan and Into the Fire

I DID IT. Based on your supportive comments and gentle nudges toward action, I talked to my neighbor about her lovely lunch invitation.  First, I resolved to talk to her about it. Next, I cobbled together a script from several commenters’ suggestions, and I practiced it in the car and in the shower. Then, I waited for the Right Opportunity.

Carla provided me with a very nice segue – she was playing with the neighbor’s dog, and I needed her to come home to eat lunch. So I walked next door to fetch her. The neighbor came out and said hello, and I told her the reason for my appearance. Then I made my little speech: “Speaking of lunch, I was thinking about your kind invitation that we have lunch together, and I was so delighted by the offer that I said yes without thinking, but the truth is, Carla and I have so many silly food restrictions between us it’s not really worth getting into, and I was wondering if we could do something a little simpler, like afternoon tea or lemonade?” When I practiced it, I was Breezy and Casual and I had a little self-deprecating laugh in there, plus I also had a line about how of COURSE we wanted to spend time with her… and I also wanted to offer to bring homemade cookies or something… but it all came out in a rush and I forgot some of it. Oh well. At least I got out the important part which was LUNCH WILL NOT GO WELL.

Her immediate reaction was, “Oh no, sometimes I give Carla food when she comes over!” and so I had to reassure her that I didn’t mean allergies, but rather that Carla is the pickiest person on the planet. (Deftly trying to put the bulk of the blame on Carla’s food restrictions rather than my own.) Here is where Carla chimed in and informed our neighbor that I HATE tomatoes. So I am clearly not blameless. 

Once I had assured her she wasn’t doing something egregious by feeding my child cherries and red peppers, she seemed to relax a bit. She asked if something like tea and biscuits would be fine and I said that would be lovely and we discussed possible dates (though didn’t settle on anything specific). I am… so relieved. THANK YOU for helping me figure out the right way to handle this sticky situation. 

Now I can turn my Food Frets toward camp. 

Carla is attending a new camp this summer, and they don’t offer meals. So we will be packing a lunch. This is fine. 

Now that she is nearly NINE (which is nearly TEN, omg), I am looking forward to forcing encouraging Carla to make her own lunch (with supervision). We discussed some potential ideas for lunches, and her Ideal Lunch is a Lunchable. She only eats the ham Lunchable, and she only eats the ham, the cookies, and the crackers. She refuses to eat the cheese. If I pack her slices of other cheese – specifically cheddar that I have cut for her – she will eat that. 

So I was banking on sending her with Lunchables each day, and that if Lunchables become unavailable (again), or if she gets sick of them, we can pack a bagel and cream cheese with some pepperoni.

To round out her lunch, I would add other things she eats, like pickles and grapes and berries and grape tomatoes and red peppers and sugar snap peas. 

So I felt pretty good about our options. 

Then we got a note from camp that said NO PORK PRODUCTS. 

AHHHHHHHHH 

What now???

I suppose what we have to do is revert to PBJ. The camp is not a nut-free campus, so peanut butter is an option. Carla also enjoys eats sun butter, so she (and I) can make sandwiches every day. Carla eats sun butter sandwiches at school all year long, so I know she WILL eat them. But the last time I tried to make her one, she complained because my sandwiches weren’t the SAME as the ones at school. 

Weary sigh. 

I suppose I can just send her with the equivalent of Snack Dinner, but for lunch. But I am just not sure what the protein situation will be in that case. Snack Dinner usually has pepperoni or a couple of chicken nuggets or two.

I wonder if she would eat cold chicken nuggets (hork)? 

The reason that I am fretting about this is two-fold.

The first fold is that the camp really made a Big Deal about ensuring that we sent a LOT of food with our kids to camp. They emphasized that we should send MORE than we think – like, enough food for a week rather than a day. The kids work so hard and are so active, they are ravenous when they get to lunchtime. So I want to a) comply with the rules and b) make sure my particular kid is getting enough sustenance. 

The second fold is that Carla already eats next to nothing for lunch. I assume she eats something at school each day, although her reports are sporadic and often sound like, “Oh yeah, I ate a hamburger bun and a slice of American cheese.” So I am already facing an uphill climb when it comes to getting her to eat. I want to stack all the odds in my favor by ensuring her lunches are full of things she LIKES, not just things she tolerates. 

Well. I am not really asking for ideas, because I feel like it will be an exercise in frustration. (You, reasonably: “Send her with some chickpeas! Or beans! Or hummus! Or tuna salad! Or turkey! Or a protein drink!” and I will cringe at you while shaking my head because she will not touch ANY of that, and the list is endless.) (I am going to buy some turkey pepperoni and see if Carla will deign to try it.) I am just whining. New camp, new frets.