True confession time. Hopefully confessing will be the final nudge I need to get my act back together.
I hate dinner. Seriously. Hate. It.
Okay. Maybe I just hate it when I’m so tired I can barely see straight and I still have dinner to make……and clean up.
After a day of caring for Parker, homeschooling, cleaning, more cleaning, the laundry (how is it that with less kids living here I still have just as much laundry?) and Parker’s at home therapies, just the thought of making dinner makes me want to run away from home some nights.
I’ve resorted to taking the easy way out once a week. Pizza. The cheap kind, true, but the kind that requires money I should really put towards medical debt none the same. Or in today’s case, an oxygen concentrator.
I’ve ordered more pizza in the last three months than I have in the last three years.
Then it dawned on me.
$20.oo x 52 weeks comes out to be over ONE THOUSAND dollars. I could purchase a brand new oxygen concentrator for that price….or at least close to it.
It’s rather stunning to see that in writing. How easy it could be to blow a ton of money on fast food.
Pardon me while I go bang my head against a wall. I’ve been on the road to spending an incredible amount of cash on being too tired to make dinner.
I’ve spent the last few days creating a simple, healthy and CHEAP new 30 day menu. Crock pot meals. Meals I can assemble in the morning before I’m too stinkin’ tired to cook. Meals I can create using items I purchase in bulk anyway.
Menu planning is just part of my problem these last few months, though.
The other part is balance. Using good time management. You know, all the things that go straight to hell the minute you give birth to a medically fragile kid with special needs and lose all control of how you get to manage the time that in reality is no longer yours to own.
Luckily, this littlest Hodson boy of mine is cute enough to make it all worth it, eh?
They say the first part of recognizing you have a problem is admitting to it. Consider this my admitting.
Now to get my act back together.
And create a chart assigning each of my kids a night to clean up after I cook.
How do you handle the dinner making at your house on the nights you are exhausted?
PS: To make this post even more timely, I found out that the affordable used oxygen concentrator I was going to purchase tomorrow was sold out from under me. (I keep thinking ‘if only I hadn’t done this or that…..then maybe I’d have the cash to…..’ ) Who makes a verbal agreement and then backs out on it without even giving you an opportunity to match the new guy’s price? Trying to find affordable used durable medical equipment is hard enough. Dealing with people who leave you hanging out to dry while they try to make a better deal……suck. But we’ll keep on keeping on, cause that’s what we do around here.
About Tammy and Parker
Ahhhhh the crock pot! Best creation ever! I’ve got 2 and sometimes use both at same time…to really get a jump on things! Another great things is you can use cheaper cuts of meat and they become so tender and tasty! I.hate when I do the math on eating out. Horrifies me..I also give myself and the family a pass some nights and leave kitchen til the morning. While I’m not crazy about waking up to it ..id rather tackle it in the am
m and sit down with everyone and veg out! ;+)
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Amy, I love our crockpot too. My biggest issue with that is my EXCEPTIONALLY picky family, with Reed being the worst.
I use my crockpot for things like pulled pork, BBQ chicken, Cafe Rio Chicken, etc. But soups and stuff. Reed won’t touch them. He also doesn’t like roasts. sigh. I keep telling him that if he was so picky I could feed this family on next to nothing by simply relying on stews, lentil soups, etc.
On the flip side my family loves rice. I have a source for organic brown rice that is very cheap. So I’ll often make up a huge pot of brown rice and use it in several different kinds of ‘fried rice’ concoctions with left over meats, veggies, and small amounts of healthy oils.
Last night we had a roasted chicken (purchased on sale for really cheap) and baked potatoes that I stored last Fall in mulch from my parents garden, we had broccoli as a side. I got the chicken ready to go into the oven in the morning….which helped a lot. The whole meal for 8 of us was about $5.00. Actually a bit more than I like to spend on one meal. :0)
I can make chilli in the crockpot and that gets eaten. Especially if I make breadsticks to go with.
So….tell me what things YOU make in your crockpot. I need some inspiration!
Girl!!!!!!Reed would go hungry in my house…either that or EAT what I cook! I do lots of chicken type stuff in my c.p. our favorite is a pork butt (shoulder) and salt and pepper and cook it for 12 hours on low and have pulled pork….and I LOVE soups and stews in the c.p. and ya know ya can do baked taters in there….bc baked taters count as a meal if ya add a little cheese and broccoli!
and I love a good casserole. One of my favorite places of inspiration is facebook friends “crock pot moms”…lots of great ideas from them! my other major source is food.com because i can sort recipes by into categories like “main dishes”, “5 items or less”, “c.p.” and my favorite “inexpensive”…i’ll send ya some of the stuff my kids like. do ya’ll have aldi grocery stores? they are an amazing little store with fabulous prices!
Ha! Reed’s Mom used to tell me how she would leave Reed at the table until he ate his dinner. Most of the time he just fell asleep there with the food left uneaten.
It’s a texture issue with him. His Mom would make him take a bite, and he’d hurl back up.
bleck.
Part of the problem is the kinda dramatic rise I’ve seen in food prices lately. I just need to re-think my tactics and gear myself up again. Send those recipes over!
I totally understand the tired thing….I am a single mom with a full time job and a medically fragile child, with no money left for help. I also HATE dinner. I also really love my crock pot and use it all the time. I have 3 and also will use more than one at a time. The other thing I really rely on is freeze dried food….something I learned about reading your blog…it has saved us. I can make dinner in just a few minutes by only adding water. I have 3 months worth of meals bagged on my pantry shelf and all I have to do is pull one out and Viola dinner in minutes. We have about 15 different dinners we all like. I do not do this every night but do frequently…in fact this has been so popular at my house that I have given bagged dinners as baby shower gifts…dinner for a week in minutes no prep the new moms love it. My kids call it Dump and Dine and think it is super cool. We eat a lot of Quesadillas with different fillings when we are in a hurry and I do not feel like cooking. The kids love them, they are fast and easy and do not require much clean up, you can put almost anything in them.
Share with us some of your favorite Dump and Dine recipes! I’d love to know!
You know I hate dinner. Ugh. We used to do the pizza thing on Fridays but learned this: make a whole bunch of pizza dough, section it off into 1 pizza sized portions, freeze individually. Make a bunch of pizza sauce with canned tomato sauce and italian seasonings. Ladel one pizza worth into freezer bags and freeze right beside the dough. Then, you just have to get fresh cheese and toppings and pull out the frozen dough and sauce in the AM. Have the KIDS make the pizzas and you just bake them.
It’s been tradition since forever that every Friday I make the dough and then Reed comes home and puts the pizzas together. But I’ve been too lazy to even do that. I’m seriously thinking I need to have a sleep study done. meh.
Twitter: sugar_Loco
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We love the crockpot too! Try not to spend too much time getting addicted to Pinterest, but that’s where I find a ton of great recipes and yummy too! You could make a base of the meat in the pot for Reed and then at the end of the cook cycle, pull his portion out and then make the soup or stew. Maybe that would help? Or try baking a casserole, those don’t tend to take too much time and you just throw it all in a pan and go. Hopefully that helps? We plan each meal out/week and it really helps us stay on top of eating at home – which is waaaay healthier than eating out. Good luck!
Twitter: getcluedin
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I have a hard time making dinner daily as well — we try to do menu planning and it tends to fail and our picky kiddos drive the final menu anyway- it is tough. You can always do pizza at home but I find that ingredients plus dough tends to run about the same as pizza from Little Caesar’s with the garlic sticks. Not kidding. Crock pot is what my hubby does or you can make soups out of leftover veggies too and broth is reasonable and yummy. Hope that helps lady and you know what? you deserve to indulge once in a while too!
HUGS!
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Twitter: La
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I’m also a big fan of the crock pot. Though it requires some pre-planning you don’t meed many ingredients and takes very little time.
Good luck with finding the oxygen concentrator. Sounds like it’s been an ordeal!
Twitter: taradaramadeit
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I’m with a lot of others on this one … crock pot.
I always think that it’s going to come out the same, but it’s always different! LOVE
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Twitter: preppypoppy
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I wish my comment was filled with easy recipes that could make your life easier, but I’m useless in the kitchen. Absolutely useless! Like you, when dinner rolls round, I’m too tired to worry about making something, but also the mess that goes along with it. Basically I’m here to say, you are not alone!
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