The Short Order Cook

There is no such thing as the traditional family dinner at my home.  Sure, when we go to restaurants, we all eat together and select our favorite meals - me a salad, my hubby, a burger, and the kids - one gets chicken fingers and the other prefers pasta with butter.   At a restaurant, it's perfectly fine to choose different dishes, but when the tables are turned, I wind up juggling orders just like our favorite waitress at the diner.

No matter the meal, my kids constantly select different dishes and then, if I make something and it's not to their liking, they even send it back!  Last night, it was pasta for my daughter and a hamburger and fries for my son.  This morning, it was cocoa puffs and orange juice and my son called out to me "Mommy, I don't like orange juice, take it back!"  So instead, I switched his juice for a chocolate milk at no charge.

Back when I was a kid, my mom cooked a meal and we ate it - no complaints.  Cornish hens on Sunday, turkey meatloaf on Monday, chicken thrown in a few days later and baked ziti if we were really lucky.  But nowadays, since I don't spend much time in the kitchen (except when I'm juggling my kids' orders), the family dinner is now served restaurant style - you pick what you want and I attempt to make it.  And, if I burn it or it tastes funny, you send it back and demand a new dish.

I think it's time I take a page out of my mom's playbook - I mean today is Easter Sunday and although we're Jewish, maybe I'll hit the supermarket before it closes and cook up a tasty cornish hen.  Then again, maybe we'll hit a diner that's open and I'll force everyone to order the same thing!