God bless my husband. He has been the head chef in the household for a very long time. When he lost his job two years ago, I was pregnant and cooking was out of the question most nights. Until then, we’d been going out to eat 3-4 nights a week so even before that I wasn’t doing a whole lot in the kitchen. With the job loss came a need to save money and the dinners out were severely cut back. He had ample free time and I was so nauseated most days that just looking at uncooked food could induce vomiting. It just made sense for him to take over.
Then the baby came and I was nursing in the evenings. And I was tired. And when I did cook, my oldest son complained about the things I chose to make. And I had night classes. And frankly, my husband is just better at making dinner. He can pull out 4-5 seemingly random ingredients and make a delicious and healthy meal. I’m definitely a plan-ahead meal-planning recipe follower. Except I don’t plan ahead very effectively and I throw up my hands and give up.
No more. Starting now, I’m taking dinner back. I will take this chore off his plate (ha, pun intended!) and maybe I won’t have to do the dishes…
Last night was the first night I took over the dinner making and it was great to be in the kitchen again. I started simply with oven fried pork chops, a favorite of mine that I’ve been thinking about for weeks. I found this recipe a while back when we were getting boneless pork chops in our Angel Food boxes regularly. We haven’t gotten any recently and I’d been craving them but the cost of pork chops kept me from making it. Lowes Foods had them on sale this week, so I gave into my craving and bought some.
I did make a change to the recipe. Instead of stuffing mix, I used Italian style bread crumbs. We’ve had it both ways and I don’t think one is any better than the other…I just utilized what I had in the house. I had gotten several boxes of Betty Crocker mashed potatoes for free with coupons a while back, so I put together some of those and threw some frozen mixed veggies (less than $1 a bag at Walmart) in the microwave and we were all set!
Cheap and easy, but delicious! Two of the three kids loved it, so that was a win as far as I’m concerned. Best of all, I satisfied my craving without blowing the budget and feeling guilty. The entire meal cost less than $8 and fed all 5 of us, so I feel pretty good about splurging on the pork chops. And I feel good about taking back dinner. There will still be days when I ask my husband to take over and work his magic, but the kitchen is mine again. Now if I could just get someone to clean it up and wash all of those dishes…
