I spent forty minutes last night making a chicken casserole that required three different mixing bowls. I chopped carrots into perfectly even pieces. I grated a block of cheddar by hand because the pre-shredded kind does not melt right in the oven.
My five year old looked at his plate and immediately started crying. He said the chicken was too close to the carrots. The baby just threw a handful of cheese directly onto the kitchen floor. I ended up eating a bowl of cold cereal while standing by the sink at nine o’clock.
I am officially done trying to cook elaborate meals on weekdays. It is simply not worth the pile of dirty dishes or the crying.
Tonight we had snack plates instead. I took a standard metal muffin tin and filled the cups with dry crackers, sliced apples, and tiny rolled up pieces of lunch meat. It took me three minutes to put together. I did not turn the stove on. I did not chop anything that required a heavy knife.
They ate almost everything in the tin. They even asked for extra apple slices. The baby still threw a cracker on the floor, but I just kicked it under the fridge. I am going to keep serving dinner in baking tins until they complain. It saves me an hour of cleaning and I do not have to wash a single mixing bowl.