What do you want for Dinner?
This is a question I pose to my
wife nearly every day. " I don’t know" is
the answer I usually get. As
exasperating as this answer is for me, I
totally understand why I get that response, and I’m good with it since I also
have no idea what I want. This evening’s
dinner will be the 88,149th in my life thus far. Since most meals
are eaten at home, just think of all the decisions that had to be made.
There was no need for decisions for first few years of my life,
mom just pushed her breast into my mouth and away I went. I've been told that I enjoyed that luxury a little too long, but that's another story. The next couple of
decades were also a snap since that same mother made the supper (this is what
we peasants called the evening meal) and there was no need for input from
me. Got married at nineteen and my
wonderful bride was then given that nasty decision task. I escaped again. Hers was not an easy task as the children
arrived, eventually a total of four, since their tastes did not jive with
mine. How she managed to keep us all
happy at the table was short of a miracle, but she did it.
As good practicing Catholics,
Friday’s were a nightmare for her. I
love food and will eat just about anything and eating fish is far from a punishment or sacrifice for me, but unfortunately to get fish into the kids it had to be those “wonderful
yuckie fish sticks”. And let’s not talk
about vegetables, one child (name kept out) detested string beans so strongly
that it started to be funny. Took her only
a half a century to realize they were not that bad.
Well sitting back and enjoying having
someone else make those decisions eventually came to an end. With retirement and all the kids married and out of the
house, it became my turn to do the cooking and make the resulting meal decisions. At first it was rather easy, but after a few
years it got tougher and tougher to maintain variety in the daily meals. I found out how tough it must have been for
my wife. I enjoy food and love to cook
so I’ve been very involved, even to the extent of putting together a
family cookbook.
Even loving food and cooking
still doesn’t make the daily dinner decision an easy one. The 88,149th meal should be a special one, don't you think? I’ve been thinking about just that all the
while I was writing this little Blog. Took a while, but the answer finally came to me.
What a fabulous decision.........................we're go going out to eat!
