Family Dinners for an Even Busier Cook

The Spring sports scramble is on.

Two out of three kids play baseball and softball, and I always wind up being the “parent volunteered to be assistant coach.” 1I’m actually getting better at coaching baseball and softball - mainly by watching the other coaches, and shamelessly stealing any good ideas I see. My youngest decided he doesn’t like baseball - no thank you, too much chance of getting beaned - so he took up Tae Kwon Do. 2No, I don’t understand it. You don’t want people throwing baseballs at you, but trying to kick you in the head is OK? For some reason, he’s fine with that - in fact, he loves it.

What does this have to do with Dad Cooks Dinner? When the kids were younger, I thought I had it rough. But…I had time to get dinner on the table most nights; I’d have to get creative three or four nights a week. Now? Between practices, games, and the usual school functions, we are busy almost every night of the week, plus weekends - sometimes with double or tripleheaders. 3Rainouts are a nightmare - especially when the game I’m at decides “I don’t think the heavy stuff’s gonna come down for quite awhile” while the other game cancels at the first drop of rain, leaving one kid stranded for a ride home. Thank goodness we have the group of parents we’ve been seeing every summer for years, who are willing to help out with a ride home.

Instead of living to eat, we're often eating to live. Dinner is forced nutrition - “Get something in your stomach with protein in it, or you’ll be starving at shortstop by the third inning!” The drive home is half going over the game, half begging for ice cream. 4I try not to give in more than once every couple of weeks on the ice cream. Complaining about the umpires? Well, I give in to that one more often..

On game nights, I cheat shamelessly. Here are our go to diners, from least to most amount of time to prepare:

• Super sandwiches: Cold cuts, cheese, a loaf of bread, pickles, mustard, and a bag of pre-washed shredded lettuce (for the kids) and baby spinach (for the parents) so we have something green.
• Taco night: Tortillas, leftover shredded roast beast (whatever I cooked Sunday), salsas, sour cream, shredded cheese, pickled jalapeños, and the ever present shredded lettuce and baby spinach
• Quesadilla night: Same as tortilla night, without the leftover meat - I make the quesadillas on our electric griddle - think grilled cheese for dinner, but the Mexican version.
• Breakfast for dinner: What’s that? The refrigerator is bare? Time for scrambled eggs and toast.
• Lettuce wraps: If only one kid has a game, sometimes I can pull off a quick pan of ground turkey with Chinese flavors, then serve it with bibb lettuce or romaine hearts.

I used to be the kind of cook who spent Saturday mornings at the farmer’s market, carefully choosing local produce. 5Now my Saturday mornings are at a baseball field, and I’m lucky if I remember my CSA box on the way home on Friday. Maybe I’ll get to the Farmers Market in July, when the season is over? Nowadays, for vegetables, if it’s sold pre-cut at my local grocery store, I buy it. Bags of fresh broccoli, brussels sprouts, green beans, mixed vegetables, snap peas - microwave and go. Salad is quick - a bag of mixed green salads or shredded lettuce. The most common vegetables are ones we can eat without cooking - pre-cut carrots, grape tomatoes, and mini-sweet peppers. 6They’re lifesavers, those mini-sweets - a quick snack that even the kids will eat. And my “salad” is often a fistful of baby spinach. We also live on refrigerator friendly jarred vegetables - all sorts of different pickles and salsa.

I’m hanging on, trying to get us through to July, when baseball and softball seasons are over.7What’s that? We’re leaving for a vacation in Yellowstone Park on July 1st? Gulp. Why do we go through all this? Because, as Gretchen Rubin said: “The days are long, but the years are short.” There’s going to come a day when they’re “too old for sports.” They’re not there yet…but I can see it from here. For now, they enjoy playing and being part of the team with their friends. I want to keep that going as long as we can.

What do you think?

Questions? Other ideas for instant weeknight dinners that don’t involve a drive-through? Leave them in the comments section below.

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