Terrible Parenting Through Lasagne

Tonight I'm taking dinner for a couple with a new baby. Looking at their food preferences/dislikes list, the only recipe I was sure would go over well was vegetable lasagne. Hey! Great! We love lasagne, and veggies... I'll make a triple batch and freeze one. Save time and effort. Delicious, healthy and efficient.

Reality check: Delicious, yes. Healthy, yes. Efficient.... no. What I had not prepared for was that this project would dirty every dish we own, create a monster mess, and use up the entire morning. I mean, the ENTIRE morning. Just ask the boys.

I spent the first half hour figuring out how to use the slicing feature of the 40-year-old KitchenAid mixer. It took me this long because Little Bro, who is teething again, bawled on and off for three hours, and my brain works at quarter-speed if someone is crying. Many of the dishes involved were not used for cooking, but as entertainment for my neglected children. At one point I turned on PBS to babysit (and we never watch TV in the mornings).

The mess in the kitchen spawned another mess in the playroom by way of Goldfish crackers given to Little Bro to quiet him, poured out onto a tray given to Little Bro to quiet him, crushed up and poured onto the couch where Big Bro sat watching Sesame Street to quiet him. The morning ended with a familiar question: Why do I do this to myself?

The next time I make lasagne while my children are awake, it will be when they are old enough to help.

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