John and I have had several tense conversations about the dinner issue in particular. The way I cook now is very time intensive. Grocery shopping alone has gotten kind of crazy: Earth Fare has the best selection of organic and healthy food, plus the cheapest dairy. But I'm not paying $2 for one pound of pasta, so we need a trip to Publix about twice a month so I can get Barilla, cereal, the Good Seasons packets I will never give up, and the like. Then again, New Leaf (our co-op) actually has cheaper prices on just a few items like ricotta cheese and tortillas; plus, their locavore cred is a lot higher. When I buy fish, it's both cheapest and highest quality at Mike's Seafood, so that's another stop. If I want prosciutto, I need to swing by an Italian deli. And of course I like to support farmers' markets... The thing is, my kids actually enjoy going on these errands with me; grocery shopping is one of the many activities I use to fill our days. But it's obviously not going to be feasible when John and I are at work all day.
Then comes the issue of cooking. As of now, I usually spend 30-60 minutes making dinner, and if I have no help it's another half hour for cleanup. When I haven't seen my kids all day, I'm not going to be ok with letting their dad play with them for their remaining 2 hours of waking life while I'm stuck in the kitchen. My solution -- which I think is a common one -- is that whoever cooks doesn't have to clean. But my husband thinks the incentive structure in this arrangement is inherently unfair. If the cook only has to worry about the experience of eating and not at all about the experience of cleaning up, then large-scale increases to the clean-up job might be added for only marginal benefits on the eating side. (I love being married to an economics professor almost all of the time.) He wants us to split cooking/cleaning duties during the week.
At first, I felt pretty hostile to that suggestion because I exert a lot of control over our diets right now, and on his three days I would lose a lot of that. I'm also remembering what he ate for dinner before I cooked for him: lots of enriched starches and dry slabs of meat smothered in barbecue sauce.
But then I had a seemingly-unrelated epiphany about sending my kids to preschool. I've gotten them through babyhood with lots of patient nurturing, but it suddenly dawned on me that we're moving into the phase where my goal as their mother is to teach them how to live good lives without my help. Paradigm shift! But in the context of the food discussion, I realized that part of that goal is teaching them how to feed themselves in a healthy way. I want them to leave my house knowing how to buy good food and make it into something delicious; that would be an even greater gift than making sure they always have a full table to sit at for dinner in my house. And it's not going to happen if it's always me doing all the work of filling that table.
So if John and I can agree on some ground rules, I think I can accept beginning the process of letting other people in this family share the responsibility of feeding us. Here's my first draft:
- Every meal needs to include a vegetable. (Ideally, we'd follow the new federal dietary guidelines just presented this week, which recommend filling a full half of your plate with fruits and vegetables. My style of cooking tends to mix the food groups within single dishes, so it's hard to separate them out quite like they do with the new plate icon, but the point is still pretty clear.)
- We all eat the same dinner. Arranging it in different components is fine, but no special meals for kids.
- Try to buy local and organic ingredients whenever possible. I think we can do this by shopping at one big store each weekend, then making quick stops for specialty items or fresh produce on our way home on weekdays as needed.
We still need to sort out the meat issue, though.
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