Stuck in a Food Rut With You

Note: I’m not entirely sure why, but I didn’t publish after I wrote this back in March. Unfortunately, it’s just as true today. Ridiculous. Help me. Today was a solid “Day 1” kind of day. It’s all downhill from here.

I’m in a food rut. A horrible, no good, ugly rut. I don’t know how the women folk did it in those bygone years before there were ice boxes, yogurt in perfectly portioned plastic cups, and Cheetos. I don’t know how they made breakfast, lunch, and dinner, every day, without fail, without losing their ever-lovin’ minds. Seriously. Do you?

I can easily spend all day in the kitchen if I’m not careful. Just feeding my people. It’s hard when you have this thing called a budget and your people have food issues. My hubs and girls can’t have gluten, and the girls and I can’t have dairy. It means that I have to make practically everything from scratch whether or not I want to. That in and of itself wouldn’t be that big of a deal–and yes I’m grateful to have enough food to feed them–but for the fact that our modern lives are ever so much busier and active and require doing of the things like going to all the places.

Those vintage type moms might have to go to town once a fortnight for food and supplies and for church on Sundays, but nowadays we have sports, socializing, grocery shopping, car maintenance, bill paying, etc., which just make our lives busier. Because we still have to do the eating of the food thing three times a day. Sometimes, five or six if you own nasty little Hobbitses like I do. I am not at all convinced that this modern world we live in is all that much better than when we had to churn our own butter and throw the dishwater out the back door.

So, all of this food prep and feeding and cleaning have me in a rut. This is my typical pattern:

Day 1: Make breakfast. Feed breakfast. Wash up. Make lunch. Feed lunch. Wash up. Swear at the looming dinner. Make dinner. Feed dinner. Wash up.

Day 2: Make breakfast. Feed breakfast. Throw dishes in the sink. Make lunch that doesn’t require the dishes in the sink. Feed lunch. Wash up. Swear at the looming dinner. Swear at the looming dinner. Make dinner. Feed dinner. Wa…I Nope.

Day 3: Wash up from last night’s dinner. Make breakfast. Wa…No, just pile it all in the sink. Scrounge around for finger foods for lunch. Swear at the looming dinner. Make din…wash up a bit so I have enough pots and pans and counter space to make dinner. Fee…no. Wash plates and forks. Now. Feed dinner…I quit. (repeat daily until I get fed up of the mess and suck it up and clean the kitchen after dinner)

Sure I’ve got the time to spend in the kitchen doing all those dishes. I just don’t want to spend my day in there. I DON’T WANNA. I don’t know how y’all do it, either. Some of youse feed your kids cereal. Cereal! I laugh. When I feed my kids cereal they eat up a full bowl (or two) and then ask me what else there is to eat because they’re still hungry. Sandwiches. Sure, anytime I feel like dropping a five spot on a tiny loaf of bread that makes exactly six tiny sandwiches I do that. Same thing goes with crackers and other premade foods. For the most part, they are budget killers so I don’t get them. I did find a good recipe for gluten free sandwich bread. Finally. So I make it anytime I feel like spending some extra time in the kitchen. So far that has been twice in the last six months.

I am in an, “I don’t want to cook, making food is gross, I don’t want to shop for food, I don’t want to eat out because we can’t really anyway because everything has gluten in it, and in fact, I don’t even feel much like eating at all unless it’s avocados, chips and salsa, almonds, or Nutella” rut. This lack of interest in food, which is rapidly turning into disgust for foodstuffs, is really detrimental to my motivation to make food. Which means my people have had so much chicken and rice that when I make chicken and rice I pretty much put as much away as leftovers as I prepared and the littles go to bed hungry unless they say something and I give them a bedtime snack.

A friend of mine calls it “recipe fatigue”. Whatever it is, I’m ready for it to go away. I’m stuck and I don’t know how to get out. I joked with some acquaintances that I wanted a sister-wife to take over kitchen duty and they looked at me like I had lobsters crawling out of my ears. Like they’ve never thought of it. Well, maybe they haven’t. They all seem pretty enchanted with their lives. Ah, to be young and in a young relationship with only very young children again. :::Meeemorieeees. All alone in the moooooonliiiiiight…”:::

So, do you ever get tired of cooking? What do you do, besides the suck-it-up-buttercup standby that I usually employ?

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