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Show Who can think of dinner before breakfast? ' p.g. blab ! . By MARCELLA WALKER Suppertime at our house has disintegrated lately into apathy, mass confusion, or "Let's go out to eat". I don't know how fulltime working mothers do it. When I come home at night everyone is starving and so am I and no one wants to wait while dinner is fixed if it is going to take longer than five minutes. Not many dinners take less than ten minutes so it is perplexing, frustrating and aggravating. Mom (me) frequently asks everyone for suggestions for dinner. Either no one can think of anything, which is most of the time, or they cannot agree. One child will say she is not hungry so it doesn't matter to her, the other child says she'll eat anything because she is so hungry except that she will not eat anything which is in the house at present. .Dad doesn't say but you can see by the look in the eyes that he doesn't care what it is as long as it just is. The kids always want to go to the store or out to eat. If we go to the store, they each get their own thing so we end up with a supper that consists of cottage cheese and chips, yogurt, bean with bacon soup, chicken noodle soup, and ice cream. They usually plead for out to eat if they think there is a slim possibility that we will agree. Our oldest son said recently that he couldn't believe how often we take the girls out to eat compared with how often we took the family out to eat when he was at home. Of course, I didn't work then and entire month's food supply like I used to do. Over the years, the time element has played a more and more important part and so I just run into the store, get what I need at the moment, and run back out again. This makes it necessary to either go to the store every day, which I ususally do and which is very expensive, ex-pensive, or go out to eat. This means that if I run into the store on my way home from work, everyone is going to get to eat what I feel like having which no one but Dad may tolerate. I have found over the years that Jer and I have not been too good of an example. We both will eat most things, although, I have certain days when somethings look yuck. I don't know about him. To the kids everything looks yuck. No matter what you suggest as possible dinner menus all you get is "yuck". If you don't suggest and just bring something home that sounds good to you because you are starving and anything at all will do, you still get the "yucks". At least if you go out they have a choice. But, this can lead to arguments of the nth magnitude. Dad doesn't want Mexican but one daughter does. Dad wants Chinese but one daughter will die if she has to eat Chinese. One daughter wants chicken fried steak and she doesn't care where she gets it as long as it isn't in a Chinese restaurant. Mom secretly is craving a chimichanga buts doesn't dare mention it. Sound familiar? On occasion, I can get the older daughter still living at home to cook some dinner. She is a verv P(w) I and has some special t esT'0? does w-ell. The trUe i tL hat,she call home to see if , dinner, she either isn't home rJ or will only fix what she w?m7 noneoftheingredientesIenlny house so a trip to the st ?e" trr necessary and I have the car. d I 7s 3 girl e had a f neighborhood market. If We " S something we just ran up toTh a store put the groceries on the b Jl f and hurried home to fix din, ' e Besides, Mom usually had all J. t necessary ingredients on hand I I had I to fix dinner a lot when I Wa C in high school because Mom tan Pe gone back to teaching and it w V always my turn on the days she ha faculty meeting after school It Wa e usually hamburger, boiled potatoes and green beans that I fixed. It Wa ail family joke. ad en But I was also good at potato soud corned beef and cabbage and a few H things like that. If I was smart I would assign each $ of the girl's a day to cook One "cl dinner per week per girl shouldn't kill them. They could buy their f groceries on Saturday and they e would be ready when their day to T cook came. The only thing is, they would have eh some place to go or what they b.vl wanted to cook wouldn't appeal thai 1 day or somebody else would already ss( have eaten the ingredients. I know pi how it would go. or I guess I had better start thinking fcd about what we are going to have Tl tonight. Or should we just go out ou somewhere? the iim there were more to feed then. But sometimes, going out is the easiest thing. We don't go to fancy places even if we do go out but it saves the wear and tear of deciding what to have on the spur of the moment. If I was well organized like some people, I would put something in the crock pot in the morning and let it cook all day and it would be ready when we got home. Or I could make a casserole in the morning and put it in the fridge so it only has to be heated when we get home. That is what I could do. However, I never do. I have trouble thinking about dinner before breakfast. One of the problems that leads to all this confusion is that I never get to go the grocery store and buy an |