Dinnertime at our house is always an ordeal.
My wife is a picky eater. Our 15-year-old daughter is a picky eater who likes to eat early. I get home late from work and like to eat within minutes of getting home. The idea of eating together as a family is something that is alien to us. I can count on one hand how many times we have sat at the dining room table and had a meal as a family.
When I was growing up, my mother made dinner every night. There was a main dish and sides and it was not up to us whether we wanted to sit down and eat at the table. There was none of the “I’ll make something for you and something else for you and something else for you,” there was “we are having (insert name of meal here) and you will eat it.”
We were on a budget and we had a lot of the same things each week. Friday nights were generally frozen pizzas for my brother and me. My wife’s family had salad and bread and a big entree and then dessert. Dessert for my family was rare. A salad before dinner was unheard of.
My mother still has a set of ancient Mary Margaret McBride cookbooks. Mary Margaret was before my time and I don’t know if she was a really good cook. The recipes I have seen in the books are needlessly complicated and take an eternity to cook.
My wife and I have a few cookbooks. We have the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, the Joy of Cooking and others. We have one that is devoted to microwave cooking. It was published in 1979, before people understood that a microwave would be little more than a $50 popcorn maker. My wife’s favorite is one that has recipes for delicious meals made from five items or fewer.
I am convinced that chicken is always one of the ingredients. The book should be called “The Chicken and Four Random Things” cookbook.
My wife uses a lot of cheese on things. She’s part Swiss, so I gather it’s some kind of cultural thing. Her father, from whom the Swiss part comes, dislikes cheese with such passion that he will say anything but when his picture is taken.
I like my meals simple. A meat and a side. Two sides occasionally. Chicken, a potato and a vegetable. Corn mostly. I don’t like a lot of cooked vegetables because I thought they were squishy and weird when I was 7 years old and I think they still are as I am approaching 50.
I don’t like eating things that feel strange or look weird. I never liked spaghetti, because my friend Allen told me it was worms in third grade and I believed him. I like linguini, though, but only with a clam sauce. I saw it once in a movie when I was a kid and thought it was very continental. It isn’t, really, but try telling a 10-year-old that.
As mentioned in the beginning of this column, dinner at our house can be an ordeal. My wife is very picky and has the same eating habits of a 13-year-old boy. Chicken fingers and fries are her favorites. She doesn’t eat much, but she cooks with such skill, Martha Stewart looks like a short-order cook.
She will prepare for me a honey barbecue chicken breast with Swiss cheese and bacon on a hard roll for dinner — and, for herself, a bowl of Froot Loops.
There is nothing wrong with Froot Loops, other than the fact that, though different colors, they all taste the same. I don’t really think much of what makes a dinner cereal, but I would think Froot Loops would be more of a dessert cereal. I don’t know what wine pairs with Froot Loops. Perhaps the kind folks at Kellogg’s can offer a suggestion.
It’s difficult to invite people to dinner at our house. Most nights for us are a haphazard potluck. We tried organizing a potluck meal once. Each of our neighbors brought the same seven-layer Mexican dip. They had tried it at another neighbor’s house and loved it enough to bring it to our house. No one, however, had thought to bring chips.
We had enough seven-layer dip to feed 400 people and not one chip to put it on. I passed out spoons and forks and we kinda gathered around the big vats of dip and ate it with utensils instead. It made for a interesting evening.
No one had brought a dessert, either. There were six adults, eating dip with spoons, drinking wine from beer glasses and wishing for dessert.
My wife sat in the kitchen, laughing, and eating her Froot Loops.
Baltimore native Joe Weaver is a husband, father, pawnbroker and gun collector. From his home in New Bern, he writes on the lighter side of family life.