What's for Dinner

My husband and I just had the conversation we have too often.  

:What do you want for dinner? 

:I don’t know, what do you want for dinner?  

:I suppose we could barbecue something.

:Nah, we just did that and I’m really not in the mood.  

:We could have fried rice.  

:Didn’t we have that earlier in the week?  Sarah wants lasagna, but that takes too long. 

:We could go to Wendy’s.  

:If I eat at Wendy’s again this week my hair may turn red and start looking like Pippi Longstocking. 

:Well, there’s always spaghetti.    

I didn’t use quotation marks because it really doesn’t matter which of us said what.  Our lines are interchangeable.  It’s a skit we’ve been performing for nearly 30 years and we know both parts.  It’s not a new problem, but it’s gotten worse in recent years.

I used to have a system.  Monday was Mexican night.  Wednesday was pizza night.  Friday was date night.  Sunday was a roast or chicken cooked in the crock pot.  That left only three nights a week to worry about.  But then the system collapsed due to a crumbling infrastructure.  There aren’t enough eaters in the house to support all that cooking, and those that are left have issues.  

About two years ago my body decided it didn’t like Mexican food anymore.  I haven’t been able to identify the specific ingredient, but peppers seem to be a likely candidate.  Makes me really sad, because I LIKE Mexican food.

We have the only teenager in America who doesn’t like pizza.  Go figure.  

And a roast seems like a lot of trouble for three people.

But the root of the problem is that I simply don’t like to cook. I think I’ve mentioned it before.  I don’t think about dinner until late afternoon and I want to eat no later than 5:30.  I want it to be quick, easy, fool proof, and to have no strange exotic ingredients.  Like celery.  I guess strictly speaking celery isn’t exotic.  It’s just that you buy celery, use one stalk, then the rest goes limp in your fridge and you have to buy it again.  So at 5 p.m. I don’t want to make something that requires celery.  Am I right or am I right?

I’ve looked at websites with thousands of dinner suggestions, but boil ‘em down to their chief ingredients and they all seem very much the same.  Can chicken with an apricot glaze really taste much different than chicken with an orange glaze?  If I make barbecued chicken with pasta today am I going to want barbecued chicken with rice tomorrow?  I don’t think so.

 And don’t suggest a new system.  Unless the new system includes the service of a cook and wait staff I’m not interested.  

So tonight it will be spaghetti.  Again.  I can go from decision to table in ten minutes.  Two minutes for the water to boil, eight minutes for the pasta to cook.  During that time the Prego jar is opened, the sauce warmed in the microwave, a bag of salad is removed from the fridge, and a loaf of bread is put on the table.  Voila.  

I have the most tolerant husband in the world.