Dinners and Hugs

Day 2 of 365

It’s 10:44 in the morning and I just turned the crock pot on with tonight's dinner for my guy, Guy, and my son, Jason.

I’m a vegetarian.  Every day I cook two dinners.  One for the meat eaters in the house and one for me.

I don’t mind really.  I think I enjoy the challenge of coming up with healthy, yet overlapping meals. 

In fact, I just realized the other day, that I actually ENJOY, preparing the evening meal in our household.

Maybe it delineates the business part of the day from the family part of the day, for me.   I usually start dinner at 6:00 PM and, depending how creative I’m feeling, we sit down to a family meal some time between 7 and 8:00.

We kind of have a routine going.  I do the cooking and the table preparation.  Jason, clears the table and loads the dishwasher, and sometimes washes the pans, too.   If not, Guy does the pans.

Our dishwasher is old, but hanging in there.   We have to use the pots and pans cycle to just get the regular dishes clean.  I don’t want to insult it further by forcing actual pots and pans on it, that it won’t get clean, anyway. 

Maybe it’s because of my age, but I don’t mind making concessions if a machine is obviously doing all it can do.  I think I’m hoping others will look at me with the same thoughtful eye, when I’m in my last years.

Anyway, back to the food thing.  I started cooking after I took Home Economics in the 7th grade.  Not by choice, mind you, the class or the cooking.  My Mom, thought that it would be good for me to continue with what I learned in school, by cooking a meal once a week for our family of 7  plus.   (The plus being any neighborhood kid that happened to be hanging around at supper time.)

I learned to cook en masse.  Not necessarily with any flavor, though.  My Dad had what the doctor termed as a “pre-ulcerous condition”.  Totally understandable with five kids in the house.  The prescription was a “bland diet”, and my mother did her best to fulfill this prescription.  We ate, and that what matters.

When I got involved with my ex-husband, I learned from his mother that there was another way to cook.  They had a large family, too, and she loved to cook for them.  It was one of her ways of letting them know she cared for them.  She kind of hugged them with her cooking.

I’m no longer with my ex-husband, and only see his mother once every few years.  But, her hugging with food attitude is still with me.

Unfortunately for me, Guy, is not an eater.  He is the only person I know that can eat one small meal a day and be satisfied.  If I’m lucky he saves himself for dinner.  Sometimes though he eats lunch, so then he just picks at his dinner.  I do give him kudos for trying.  It is kind of sweet of him to at least sit down to the family dinner and participate when he has no interest in the main purpose of the gathering, the food.

My son, on the other hand, allows me to hug him with my cooking and anything else he can find in the pantry, the refrigerator, the freezer.  At 6’6” and 225 lbs, he is an eating machine.  When he moves out on his own again our grocery bill will be 1/4 of what it is now.

So where does all this food talk lead to?  It leads to tiny change number 2.
Since I can’t hug my lover with my cooking, I’m going to have to go at it another way.

It’s amazing how many days will go by without truly connecting with the people we care about the most.  I’m told this is normal in today’s world.  How sad. 

Tiny Change 2.  Hug Guy every day.

I hope that as you read my thoughts you, too, are inspired to make tiny changes to your life.

Best Regards,

Linda