family dinner

This Week’s Dinners, Week 3

This week hit a new snag–I didn’t keep track of dinners.  I’m going to go ahead and blame Daylight Savings Time, because that was popular this week.

So this is me, trying to reconstruct our week from memory.  Given I forgot and left a kid at a dance class this week, we’ll have to hope for the best here (and be grateful to kind people who are understanding when you are late to pick up a kid).

This was the plan, which I helpfully copied from the Sunday Night Goal Post:

  • Mon: pork fried rice, stir-fried cabbage, berries, tomato salad.
  • Tue: Election Returns Night! Crockpot chicken, homemade bread, caesar salad.
  • Wed: take out!
  • Thur: baked ziti, spinach salad, apples
  • Fri: salmon, couscous, chopped salad, fruit.

And this is the actual, reconstructed from my noggin:

  • Mon:  pork fried rice, stir-fried cabbage and apples, berries, tomato salad, green salad. 7:15pm. 5 people. Score: 2 points.
  • Tue: Taco Tuesday! crockpot chicken, tortillas, shredded cheese, refried beans, caesar salad, berries, cucumbers. 5 people. Score: 2 points.
  • Wed: night out together. 5 people. Score: 2 points.
  • Thur: meant it to be leftovers, people wound up eating out, separately. Score: 0 points.
  • Fri:  Pizza Night. 6:30pm. 4 people. Score: 0.5 points.

What we have here is a Wednesday Night breakdown, but on Thursday. For three days I followed the plan, and then it went kerflooey, right down the tubes.  Not only were we not eating together, but we spent money eating out separately!

I wonder if I didn’t follow the plan on Monday would the entire week go off the rails, or would I recover mid-week?  I’m sure we’ll see sometime soon.

Thursday was a kid-event that had Tiny and I out of the house from 6-8pm. I’d tried to encourage leftovers, but Family Dinner doesn’t happen if Mom isn’t there, and the lure of Tex-Mex held sway.

I had a plan on Friday, but pizza won. Sometimes, you just have to let pizza win and watch some tv, and that’s what I did. If we’d all sat at the table to eat it, or even eaten in the same room, I’d have given myself a whole point. As it was, we were all looking at different screens and I’m giving myself the half-point for just all interacting while getting pizza out of the box.

This week tied last week. I’m now really wondering if a 10 is possible for us. I also wonder what our scores were before I was making an effort. My guess is a 4 or so.

Week 3

  • Score: 6.5 /10
  • Plan followed?: 3/5
  • Effort?: medium. 50%.

Look for the Weekly Dinner Plan post tomorrow! Cheep Cheep!

 

P.S. The text editor really, really didn’t want me to publish this post with the word kerflooey. Which is ridiculous, everyone knows what that word means. So I tried to look it up in the dictionary, and it isn’t there. I disagree with Mr. Dictionary on this matter.

What is there? Kerchoo. You’ll be happy to know that kerchoo means ‘ahchoo’.  Not kidding even a little.  Thanks, Dictionary!

Sunday Night Goal Post

This week’s score was an improvement, and I’m hoping that sustained effort will have the family come to accept a pattern. 7pm. Dinner. At the house.  Repetition is the only strategy I’ve got right now. Fortunately, it’s also one of the reliable behavior-changers, so I’m hopeful. There’s also Tiny clanging a triangle until everyone shows up, but we’re not quite there yet.

Here’s this week’s plan. Pork, tomatoes, blackberries, raspberries (not a Wed ad post, but on FB and Twitter) were the sale items.

  • Mon: pork fried rice, stir-fried cabbage, berries, tomato salad.
  • Tue: Election Returns Night! Crockpot chicken, homemade bread, caesar salad.
  • Wed: take out!
  • Thur: baked ziti, spinach salad, apples
  • Fri: salmon, couscous, chopped salad, fruit.

I’m interested to see if there’s a better score this week–there’s still a disruption, though Election Day isn’t near as big a meal disruptor as Halloween is.

Sunday Night Goal Post!

Hello Cheepsters! Hope everyone had a good weekend, and you’re all ready for Halloween.  It’s all over here except for the candy.  Well, that and Tiny still changing her mind about what kind of vampire to be. Pink Vampire is currently winning.

Here’s the plan for this week. Salmon is leftover from last week, sale items were: tomatoes, carrots, celery and chicken.

  • Mon:  salmon croquettes, sesame rice, peas, fruit, tomato salad
  • Tue:  Taco tuesday–chicken, beans, cheese, tortillas and fixings, fruit, green salad
  • Wed:  baked ziti, caesar salad, carrot and celery sticks
  • Thur:  Refrigerator Buffet! and Carrot Soup!
  • Fri:  Halloween! Pizza and candy for all!

Here’s hoping I beat my current record of 5 points.

…and we’re back to Scary Vampire. Or Pirate Vampire. Stay tuned!

This Week’s Dinners

So. Here we are. First week done. Not to spoil you or anything, but I think this will be easy to keep as a recurring feature, given the room for improvement. To recap, this was the plan for the week:

  • Mon:  pork fried rice, broccoli, apples, spinach salad
  • Tue:  leftover posole (from the weekend), cornbread, avocado, grapes
  • Wed:  baked chicken thighs, pasta with garlic and oil, carrot and celery sticks, steamed spinach
  • Thur:  Refrigerator Buffet! (need a refresher on this? check here)
  • Fri:  Octoberfest party with friends

Here’s the actual:

  • Mon: pork fried rice, spinach and feta salad, bananas, cucumber and celery sticks. 7:15 pm. people attending: 4. Score: 1 point.
  • Tue: leftover posole, chicken and stars soup, wheat bread, spinach and feta salad, apples, avocado. Broccoli forgotten in microwave. 7:00 pm. people attending: 5. Score: 1.5 points.
  • Wed: cheese pizza from the freezer, cucumber slices.  8:00pm.  people attending: 2. Score: 0 points.
  • Thur: broiled salmon, broccoli, blackberries, caesar salad, butter noodles, pesto, cucumber and carrots. 7:15 pm. people attending: 5. Score: 2 points.
  • Fri: German food at Octoberfest. 7:00 pm.  people attending: 3. Score: 0.5 points.

Wednesday was clearly the problem day, but Thursday was a good recovery.  My scoring system is arbitrary, invented on the spot each night when I wrote down what we’d had for dinner.  I took one whole point off if everyone wasn’t present, and a half point off for missing a food group. Out of a possible 10 points, this week was a 5. A flunk! With a plan, good intentions and internet accountability, I still fail family dinner.

Week 1

  • Score: 5/10
  • Plan followed?: 3/5
  • Effort?: medium

Tomorrow is another day. Surely, next week will be better. Halloween can’t disrupt a whole week, right? RIGHT?

Accountability, Internet Style!

I’ve been working on having more family dinners. Some weeks are more successful than others, but after several weeks we usually manage three. Once it was four, and we were all sort of impressed with ourselves. As if to show us we’re new at this, the universe conspired the very next week to have us count up exactly zero family dinners. Choir and theater performances, meetings and sleepovers all piled up, and it was two kids eating here, one kid eating out, and parents eating late.

Back in this post, I talked about how some reading, and having a weekly plan, helped to get us all to the table. The week we had no family dinners? No plan was made.

So, Sunday will be the day I post the plan for the week. I’ll actually type it up, and other people will read it. Saturday, I get a score!  It’ll be a way for me to set aside time to reliably make a plan, and to evaluate what is working and what isn’t.  As a bonus, all you Cheepsters get to watch!  Sometime soon I’ll put something ridiculous like ‘homemade ravioli’ on the plan, and imagine the suspense of waiting to see if I pulled it off.  It’ll be like Scandal, with a short white girl that’s much less stylish playing the lead.  And a tall beardy-headed guy playing Jake. And only dinner at risk, not national security. But maybe I get a white hat?

These plans will follow the weekly plan I’d posted earlier. That’s pretty much always in my head when I’m sorting out a week of meals. It will vary depending on what’s in my fridge/freezer, and what’s on sale.

I’m also not going to list everything–I’ve always got fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, and frozen vegetables.  When we all sit down, my goal is for the plates to have: meat, cooked vegetable, raw vegetable, fruit, starch.  So if you look at the meal and think, “Wait, roast pork? That’s not a whole meal!”, you can mentally add those things. Or hell, I can just make up an abbreviation for it. CVRVFS. No. That looks like something the gynecologist would tell me needed a follow-up pap in a month.

It’ll sort itself out.  Let’s go. First public CheepieAustin Weekly Meal Plan:

Mon:  pork fried rice, broccoli, apples, spinach salad

Tue:  leftover posole (from the weekend), cornbread, avocado, grapes

Wed:  baked chicken thighs, pasta with garlic and oil, carrot and celery sticks, steamed spinach

Thur:  Refrigerator Buffet! (need a refresher on this? check here)

Fri:  Octoberfest party with friends

Saturday and Sunday are still not included, because we’re all over the place those days. We might meet friends, go out, smoke BBQ for 20, there’s no telling. My goal here is the weeknight family dinner, so I’m sticking to that.

This is a light week, really. I’ve got leftovers on Tuesday and Thursday, and a night off built in.  Let’s see how I do.

Cheep Cheep!