Making Dinner

Do you like to cook? I am 1000% not asking about clean up. Nobody likes that. Screw cleaning up. Leave the dishes for days... just kidddddding! Dishes in the sink were the literal reason my husband and I have gotten into our marriage's biggest fight. Which if you ask me, means we are winning at marriage. Ain't no big thing in the grande scheme of things to fight about. But dishes and messes aside.... I love cooking. Cooking from scratch... with whole ingredients, spices, proteins. Yum. It's a life mission to make something my husband loves... because he's picky and yet not. He will refuse a bacon wrapped date or BBQ venison (and crickets, beef tongue, or chicken hearts) but eat the heck out of Spaghettios. Ugh. So if I can make something we both love, that's not from a box or can, I feel triumphant. You already know I make challah, pizza, and ice cream from scratch. Dinners are no different. Well except for now.

I was recently texting with my amazing Sister-in-Law, Kristen, in Iowa. She is NOT a lover of cooking. Quite frankly, she's the opposite. The day we were texting she had "made" dinner. A magnificent meal of a store bought bagel and chocolate bar. I'm not even mad about this. Well.... the store bought bagel hurts this New York Jewish girl's soul justtttt a little. But hey, easy is easy. And you know every single bagel shop in the US sells chocolate chip bagels. So she's more like a creative genius with her deconstructed chocolate chip bagel. Very avant garde. And before this magical dinner, I tried to persuade her to cook more and in doing so, she got violently ill after curry. Ugh. Aint no way I'm going to get her to eat, cook or even smell delicious curry again. Back to chocolate and bagels....

But while she's doing bagels and chocolate for dinner, I'm over here texting her my dinner plans- Literally this:

And one of these sauces. Microwaved.

And frozen veggies and some 90-second rice.

Seriously.... Store bought, pre-packaged chicken, and some kind of store bought sauce. How embarrassing! I'm writing a blog about making pizza, challah, and ice cream from scratch and 70% of my meals are THIS. The other 30%- UberEats. Oy Vey indeed.

So what the heck happened? Life happened. I could list a laundry list of reasons explaining why... but who the hell cares. My list. Your list. They might be totally different, but we all have reasons certain aspects of life get pushed down the priority list. So after visually acknowledging my ridiculous "cooking" style with Kristen, I knew it was time to reassess.

So what better way to be reinvigorated about cooking than to share our family's favorites and ask you all for your ideas too! I think most families have 6-10 "go to" meals. And they rock. But if every 10th meal is the same one again (insert math: 3 meals a day x 10 different options x 365 days divided by the square root of the likelihood you don't repeat one several times because you have extra ingredients)... it might get boring.

So here's what I'm thinking:

Share with us (selfishly ME) your favorite dinners! What's better than a community of friends/strangers wanting to exchange food and joy?! I'm loving this plan. Let's help save dinner and make chocolate and bagels a special occasion meal. Because that's still genius if you ask me but I didn't get off high blood pressure meds 12 years ago by eating this way. (A story for another day)

Extra points for no cheese. I still don't like cheese on pizza or in life.... unless its brie. Ok fine. Who really cares what I like. 95% of the world loves cheese, so share anything that makes dinner time special for you and the people you cook for. My hopes, we can inspire or help each other create delicious meals. Maybe because delicious meals make us and our mouths happy, but mostly because meals are a time to connect and enjoy the people around us.... Even if you don't eat together (often in our house because of work/schedules). A reheated good homemade meal is still special too.

So.... here are our favs. They are EASY, flavorful, and totally different from one another.

https://houseofyumm.com/mexican-picadillo/

https://www.halfbakedharvest.com/20-minute-thai-peanut-chicken-ramen/

https://fedandfit.com/rice-and-greek-chicken-bowl/

https://nomnompaleo.com/kalua-pig

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dlLQ6L4it4 (auto captions look good!)

https://fedandfit.com/egg-roll-in-a-bowl/

https://therealfooddietitians.com/slow-cooker-white-chicken-chili/

https://predominantlypaleo.com/paleo-cowboy-chili/

Tacos:

and although not really a meal, my mom's stuffing recipe is total bliss for dinner.... and a balance of meat, veggies and challah:

Even digging into my archives to find these favorites has me excited to cook. Granted it is 5am on a weekday, Reece is sleeping, and the coffee is in full effect. But I'm going to ride this positive momentum and create something awesome. And I hope you do too! Email, post below in the blog comments or add your fav recipes to our social media pages. However you share, I'm stoked to cook along side you, taste what makes your palate sing, and not be a chicken and sauce girl EVERY single day.

Just kidding. Kind of XOXO