"Are you doomscrolling?" Elwood asked me just now.
"No," I assured him. "I'm writing political posts and then abandoning them. Much better."
I cannot finish those posts tonight, which may mean that they remain unfinished. So instead I will answer Colette's question on yesterday's post: what is up with the dinner request section of the whiteboard?
Anyone can put anything in the dinner requests section of the dining room whiteboard. There is no commitment on the grownups' part to work through those requests in any particular order, so writing "lobster thermidor" or "galantine of turkey" is no guarantee that any turkeys will be galantined or any lobsters thermidored. But if you think of something that sounds tasty, you are welcome to write it down for menu-planning consideration. If a new recipe is a success, someone will usually write it on the whiteboard to request a reprise.
Lately I have been polling the kids for food ideas at the start of a week. Stella makes two meal requests, Pete makes two meal requests, and I think of two things I'd like to cook or eat. (Elwood will eat anything. He's like Mikey from the 1970s Life commercials. I've known the man since 1987 and I just learned this fall that he loves deviled eggs. Think of all the deviled eggs I would have made him if I had only known!) This affords me some flexbility -- I can make pizza one night to fulfill a Stella request, but it can be slow pizza or quick pizza (jarred tomato sauce on frozen naan with pre-shredded cheese, very speedy) depending on my level of motivation. And if I don't want to make pizza at all, I just choose another option from the list.
I find that at 4pm decision fatigue often weighs me down. I ought to cook something. It should be appealing to everybody, and nutritious, and it should use the things in the fridge that need using. Somehow it seems like there are too many options and too few options at the very same time, and so...maybe I should just refresh FiveThirtyEight one more time. But if I narrow it down on Sunday to exactly six options that at least one person especially wants to eat, then I have a pleasing mix of structure and flexibility.
Recent Comments