The Rose Garden: My Dinner Problem

and how I want to fix it.

Welcome to The Rose Garden, your place to find small beautiful things in the Land of Oaks and Roses.

I’m a self-declared breakfast queen. This declaration isn’t the result of my cooking abilities. It’s a result of the fact that I’ve figured out how to enjoy mornings with my family while feeding them. Breakfast is easy for me because I always know what I’m going to make and how to make it. It’s simple. I don’t need recipes or research. I make the same things over and over again with whatever ingredients happen to be in our fridge: smoothies, veggie scrambles, fruit with nut butter, leftover muffins, Simple Mills pancakes… Breakfast is when everyone is most likely to make the healthiest choices and leave the table with smiles on. Plus, it’s when I get to have my coffee!

Dinner is the complete opposite experience. My coffee buzz is long gone. I have a saved folder of hundreds of possible new “easy,” or “weeknight” recipes but zero energy to execute on any of them. I’m also missing half of the new ingredients needed to make these new recipes. When I do scrounge up the energy (from the deep depths of my being) to cook dinner, one of my kids barely eats after 5pm anyway. It feels like the most effort for the least reward. Dinner is when I’m most likely to yell and my kids are most likely to tantrum.