Cookerati

Let ‘em Handle It

Some days that’s my attitude.  My son likes his friends to come over, and he likes them to stay.  It can become an evening of preparing and cleaning food for me, if I let it.  Sometimes I like to impress.  Today he was home for another snow day, but I had to trudge into work.  When I got the call from my son asking if his friends could come over and stay, I was willing, but only so far.  I told him I didn’t have anything ready for them to eat, and I didn’t want to run into the store (no extra driving please).  He said there were a couple of boxes of mac n cheese in the pantry, they could make it up and have it for dinner.  I thought well, they’ll live, let them handle it. 

Truthfully, it’s not the way I like to eat every night, but I keep things in my pantry because I don’t want to always deal with dinner and figuring out how to make teenage boys happy.  Lazy, maybe, or it could be that one of life’s important lessons to teach my son is that if he wants something, then he has to figure it out.  Something else to think about is that the boys are at my house more than each other’s. So, while I don’t mind providing, it can be expensive and time consuming for me if I decide to go overboard.  Letting them handle it puts the breaks on that – after all, they don’t care about the food so much as the game playing.

One of my tips for letting them handle it, without intervention is to provide the tools that make success easy. Shortcuts like boxes of mac n cheese help.  I also had Tyson’s Seasoned Beef Brisket in Fire Roasted Onion Sauce in the freezer.  Dinner was ready in 10 minutes.  They actually spent more time at the table gabbing, goofing and singing to the phone than they did cooking.  I did learn something new, you can’t carry around your cell phone and cook at the same time. 

My husband and I scraped the pots clean when they were done, it was good enough for us also.  Delicious as a matter of fact.

I have more Tysons Frozen cooked dinner foods in the freezer because they go over well.  I also have hot dogs, tater tots, and chicken fingers in the freezer as well as tuna, mac n cheese, noodles and sauce in the pantry and cans of soup in the cabinet.  I’m sure my son will have his fill of them when he’s on his own.  There are times we work on the meal together, chopping, peeling, sautéing, but then there are the shortcuts and really, I’m okay with that. Let ‘em handle it. 

Tweet This Post Plurk This Post Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post Ping This Post Reddit This Post Stumble This Post