When I was in my 20s I had gathered some cooking experience. by the time I was 9 years old, I was baking cookies as often as my mom would allow. Just a little older, I loved Home Ec in school. By middle school, I was tasked with preparing one dinner per week for the family. And when my mother's cancer began to limit her stamina and mobility, I moved back in and did the cooking for her. But my cooking wasn't great, just passable. It wasn't until I married that I really got an education in how to cook from scratch.
My daughters can cook -- I made sure of that. It's not a hobby or something they really enjoy doing, but they can cook enough so that some day when they're on their own, they'll eat more than chips and soda. Both daughters are somewhat busy right now. Despite that, they have been making good on their promise to prepare dinner for every night of April so far.
I thought I'd share some of their meals with you friends. I must say, they've done a great job so far. The two of them made out a menu plan for the entire month, divided up the nights, and shopped for a few convenience foods to make up for a lack of time and/or particular expertise. As I promised, I'm keeping up with the baking of bread and desserts, so they can rely on those foods as needed. And I'm harvesting what I can from the garden for them to use each day (mostly salad greens and cooking greens).
So here's what you make for the family when you're 20-something and have limited time and finances.
Homemade pizza, using a scratch crust and canned spaghetti sauce, greens from the garden with shredded cabbage for a salad with scratch dressing, carrot sticks.
Hummus, made with canned garbanzo beans, crackers, carrot and cucumber sticks.
Meatball sandwiches, using commercial frozen meatballs, rest of canned spaghetti sauce and shredded cheese from the pizza, hotdog buns (instead of pricier sub sandwich buns), plus steamed carrots and canned green beans in a sauce of cream of mushroom soup.
Homemade bean and vegetable soup, graham cracker and peanut butter "sandwiches", sautéed turnip greens from the garden with onions.
I think my daughters are making sensible choices with what to buy for convenience and what to make themselves. They both know how to make bread dough (pizza crust, which is less finicky than loaf bread), but don't have the time for making sub sandwich buns. The canned spaghetti sauce worked both as a pizza sauce and a meatball sauce, and they planned for using the leftovers. They know I keep cooked pinto beans in the freezer at all times, so they knew they could use some in making a bean soup. But they bought canned garbanzo beans, as they wouldn't require cooking but could be turned into hummus as is from the can. The graham cracker-peanut butter sandwiches doubled as a grain and dessert and were very, very easy to do.
It's only been 4 dinners, but I'm very happy with the meals at this establishment. So much so, I think I'll stay the rest of the month. I'm grateful to my daughters for doing this, and I'm proud of their ability to plan and execute an entire month's worth of dinners.
