Lately I like to change up lunch a little bit. Instead of doing the typical sandwich or mac and cheese, I like to do a healthier more complicated dish. I was searching through the allrecipes.com list on eggplant and saw this recipe for an eggplant casserole which included a bunch of other veggies I had on hand. It had relatively good review so I decided why not.
Lunch starts early here. We eat around 11:15 so Elliot can starting to go down for his nap at 11:30 and then Erik at noon. That means I had to start cooking around 10 for this to be ready and 10 is prime playing time. Although I like to cook, I am really not good at it, and it also presents some challenges in my house layout. My kitchen is isolated and I can't see the playroom or living room from where I am working. Also the kids like to be around me all the time in the kitchen so it is definitely a process.
It started out great. Erik who hadn't eaten for almost a day finally asked for food, FINALLY and had a yogurt snack while I got started on the chopping. I checked on his brother and he was totally content playing with his truck.
I got the eggplant chopped and in the boiling water only to find this happening with Elliot. Lately he always wants to finish his brother's leftover food on the table. His brothers food is way better than his for some reason. Unfortunately this process is leading to a lot of climbing.
Finally I got the meat and veggies browning before they go in the oven only to hear this commotion in the background. Elliot and Erik were definitely up to no good here, I think Erik leading his brother in a terrible direction playing with the lamp. Definitely a lot of pauses during the cooking process.
While I was pulling my dish together and getting it oven ready Elliot was in the pantry and dropped an unopened ketchup bottle on his foot. There were a lot of tears and since he is sick he wouldn't let me put him down. Since he was in a mood I had to hold him and mix everything up. Here is what's in my dish: eggplant, onions, green pepper, sweet pepper, radishes, 2 cans of diced tomatoes, 2 small cans of tomato paste, veggie pasta, 1 lbs of ground beef, milk, egg and cheese. Seems pretty good, but I forgot one critical part, the seasoning!! So this dish was pretty bland, but it is the process that counts. In my life I have decided I definitely get more from the process often, than from the end result. Or at least that is what I tell myself as I eat my very bland dish.
Oh and Erik had a peanut butter sandwich because I knew he hadn't eaten since yesterday and even if I offered him this dish when he was at his normal he probably still wouldn't have touched it regardless of it being bland or delicious.
In the end it was a failure of a dish, and a lot of chaos to create something so tasteless, but we learn from every experience and it helps me to push forward and try to create healthy different alternatives for my kids.
No comments:
Post a Comment