Meals: A Follow-up

It's Friday, which might be my favorite day of the week. I still get the freedom of packing kids off to school and dragging Laura along with whatever my scheme for the day is (centered around music class, which she adores and thus so do I). Yet the promise of the weekend lingers, enhancing everyone's mood. And a large part of every weekend's joy is, of course, food.

As I've indicated off and on in the past, we've come a long way in the Seymour house when it comes to meals as compared to when I last devoted a post to the subject. And let me tell you, re-reading that really made me cringe, and feel sorry for the me of the past. At the same time, it makes where we are now feel all the sweeter. Tonight's menu summarizes this point best. Frankly, we all got a bit burnt out by pizza night every single Friday. Especially post-Lent, when pizza was the default for a meatless entree. So instead we're going to take advantage of this beautiful weather and grill some flank steak. And guess who is most excited about this? Clare. Well, Danny definitely shouted a "yessss!" when he heard, too, but he's even more excited about the rack of lamb we'll prepare on Sunday after his birthday party.

It's been over a year now that Clare has embraced beef in just about every form, and lamb, and to a lesser extent, pork. Last spring (? maybe earlier) when we enticed her to finally try steak, she literally had tears in her eyes after the first bite. I think she was mainly so relieved to honestly enjoy something the rest of us have relished for years. She still doesn't like chicken or fish, which is her prerogative. I still cook and serve both, which is my happily reclaimed prerogative. Danny now eats enough fruits and vegetables that we need more than one hand to count them all. And Laura is doing pretty darn well, too, despite former gloomy prognostications. In fact, today she and I shared a Publix sub sandwich before doing our grocery shopping - something I never would have considered doing with Clare and maybe not even Danny. Blissful freedom!

Which all amounts to me being a heck of a lot happier in the kitchen. I look forward to meal planning. I've always loved my kitchen, since the moment we laid eyes on the house (if you'd seen the one in our Chicago condo you'd understand). Now I love cooking in it, too. It really is the center of our home: it's where we do homework, where we share meals and learn about each others' days, where Laura loves to make messes and explore...it's where our family's heart beats. To be sure there are still plenty of groans and failures (no one else has embraced the slow cooker like I have, but I keep trying!). But I am delighted that those finicky ordeals are in the way past now. As one of my favorite blogs proclaims, dinner really can be a love story.