Giving New Meaning to Parenting

Every Thursday night I scrub the stove until it shines and I hang clean kitchen towels, the ones with my favorite coffee cup design, on the double oven handles. No one doing any heavy duty or messy cooking until Sunday night, so it’s the way I set myself up for the weekend. I definitely use the microwave, and on occasion I’ll use the toaster. But for the most part weekend meals are thrown together with what’s left in the fridge, take-out or in a restaurant.

Which leaves us with the question…are you a weekend warrior when it comes to food, or are you a washout? Do your eating habits and food choices change with the days of the week? Do you disregard your good sense or hang onto it through your days off?

For the past couple of weekends I’ve had many restaurant and party meals. I know, I know, I’m not getting any sympathy from anyone. And they were dee-licious meals at that! My kids had lots of meals at friends houses — and I’m there was no whole wheat bread on the menu. So we were all off our healthy-eating game two weekends in a row.

But it’s not just party-hearty weekend that make it hard to stay on-track. It’s the lack of a schedule, and the impromptu plans that come along with having a teen and a tween. Sometimes a good meal is anything that you DON’T pick up at a drive-thru window!

So I’ve scoured my freezer to see what I can pre-plan for this weekend so that I can grab and go without losing my sensible eating sensibilities! I’m a huge fan of Garden Burgers because I can disguise them as fast food and you can cook them in the microwave, therefore not dirtying the stove! My kids will eat Barilla Plus Pasta and I acquiesce because the cooking merely involves water (no mess!) We’ve also discovered some pre-seasoned cans of tuna and you don’t even need a can-opener.

I feel like we have two weeks to get it under control again because along with the Thanksgiving turkey comes the nemesis of everyone’s healthy eating ambitions — The Season of Grazing!

by Amy Nathan

[tags]home, family, food, organization, eating, preparation, Barilla pasta, nutrition, cooking[/tags]
Photo graciously provided by Darwin Bell, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved