The Event ~ Dinner Time

Cooking dinner at the end of each day is probably one of my least favorite things to do.  If I had my choice between a cleaning lady, maid, or cook,  I would, without hesitating, take a cook!  It's not that I don't like to cook ~ I do, but it doesn't come easily.  Every time I want to try a new recipe, I never have the right ingredients.  When I stockpile my pantry with the right ingredients for a number of different recipes, the ingredients get used on other things before I make the recipe for which I bought the ingredients.  I need a cook and a grocery shopper. 

Actually, I have a built in cook and grocery shopper.  My husband.  He excells at both.  And enjoys doing so.  But his own work schedule doesn't allow him to devote alot of time in the kitchen.  When he does, he loves it!   

So last nite I came home from work again wondering what to cook for dinner.  Right now I'm cooking for four instead of two since Cash is home and Annie is boarding with us until her storm damaged apartment gets fixed. 

I did recently buy chicken breasts for all those simple chicken recipes I've gathered.  But where were those reipces now?   OK,  at the top of my pile was Sweet and Sour Chicken.  So I decided to give it a try ~ after I started shredding two big heads of cabbage ~ purple for coleslaw and green for cabbage burgers.  In the midst of shredding cabbage, making coleslaw, trying to make this new sweet and sour chicken, cutting and frying zucchinni, and microwaving brown rice and preparing the sauce for the chicken, I called for help.  HELP!  PLEASE!  I can't do this all by myself in one night! 

Cash and Tim came to the rescue.  Annie was studying.  Tim made the coleslaw, Cash set the table, turned the zuchinni and took care of the rice, while I concentrated solely on the chicken.  My kitchen was a mess, cabbage everywhere, but dinner was on the table at 7:30.  (I will be making cabbage burgers this weekend!)

To try this new recipe on a spur of the moment decision and have something else prepared to go with it was a real task for me.  Without help from my men, it would have been a wreck in the kitchen!

The sweet and sour chicken was absolutely delicious!  I think I can try that again, but when I have less going on in the kitchen.  Dinner was an event.  Cooking dinner was an event.  I think the most eventful times in the home take place in the kitchen!  The kitchen can be an eventful friend!

In my defense, yes, I can cook, and many times I've set out some really nice spreads on the table.  I do best when I cook for a crowd and can prepare a menu and grocery list ahead of time.   Like  Thanksgiving dinner, or a dinner party for company.  That's where I can excell in the kitchen.    More often than not, I rely on and repeat many of my tried and true recipes from the past ~ some favorites which I will share in this journal soon.

Come, Lord Jesus!  Be our guest.  Let this food to us be blest!  Amen