James' World 2

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I turn away from my husband and his snoring, using my back to try to block out the light from my phone. It is my favorite time of day: 10 p.m., in bed, secretly scrolling my favorite app, NYTimes Recipes. Looking at all the beautiful pictures, I feel myself getting excited, hopeful even. I click on family-friendly dinners, and my heart drops instantly: It reads like a list of rejection letters. Fajitas. Chili. Tortellini soup. Lasagna. I swipe, faster and faster, rejecting things left and right (though I still think of left swipe as rejection), and I am reminded of the years I spent swiping on other apps, picky in a different way. Back then, I rejected men for being too square, too edgy, too comfortable with typos. Now I swipe and make the rejections on my children’s behalf: This recipe looks too spicy. Too cheesy. Too saucy. Too meat-y, too bean-y.

It took me years to admit my family, happy in almost every way, would completely implode if asked to live on what the Internet tells me are “Family-Friendly Dinners.” I read other families’ meal plans like other moms read romance novels, fascinated but incredulous, sure no one is being whisked off to Paris or that people’s kids are eating fish tacos in real life.

It wasn’t always this way. For years, I persisted, an acolyte in Ellyn Satter’s church of feeding, sure that if I just put certain foods (namely, healthy home-cooked ones) on the table 10, 20, 50, 5,000 times, my kids would eventually be called “good eaters,” Internet code for adventurous, polite, nonpicky dinner companions, basically little 45-year-olds in children’s bodies. But after years of this, years of heroic dinnertime effort met with routine, resounding rejection, it finally happened. I broke.

The scene that played out in our dining room last fall was a familiar one to anyone with kids. I had spent Sunday meal planning the week’s meals, my cookbooks around me on the living room floor, avoiding the allergens (avocado, tomatoes, peppers) and preferences (no broccoli, fish, “saucy” food, spice) of my family members. I’d found some that threaded the very fine needle of food preferences and time allowances I’d have to cook during the week. I grocery shopped, labeled what food should not be eaten before it was made for dinner (“DO NOT TOUCH!” the egg carton said, as they were destined for pad Thai), and got to cooking.

And so, on that night last September, I cooked. Chicken shawarma — a recipe that promised, literally, to “change my life.” I grilled, roasted, and diced. I minced the dill, considered whether to peel the cucumber. (I split the difference, peeling it in strips.) I set the table, our cloth napkins over our placemats, the food all on the table to serve family style (Ellyn Satter insists!!!), and my family sat down. And of course, nobody ate. My husband muscled out a “Thanks for dinner” as my son slid down in his chair, horrified at the very sight of cooked vegetables. My daughter declared she didn’t eat meat. (She does.)

I did not flip the kitchen table, but only because our dog, Larry, would have immediately made off with the chicken bones, but I did suddenly understand Teresa Giudice in a way I never had before. What was I doing with my one wild and precious life? I loved cooking because it brought people together. And yet my cooking for my family was doing anything but that. We were miserable.

So, I decided I was done. I would no longer cook for my family.

Over the next few days, I came up with my new rule: I would prepare food for my family, but I would not cook. The fine details are such: There are no recipes allowed, whether from a cookbook or online (Bye, NYTimes Recipes! See ya, Smitten Kitchen!!) and food should be prepared in 30 minutes or less. Practically, it means a lot of quesadillas, frozen food (Trader Joe’s frozen aisle is our meal plan for weeks), and pizza. We eat the most basic of tacos (ground turkey, spice packet, pre-shredded cheese). Baked potatoes and bagged salads are go-tos. There are lots of repeat meals.

This doesn’t mean I don’t cook ever; I just no longer cook for my family. I save my cooking for other adults. In fact, the space this no-cooking thing opened up for me inspired me to institute something we call Sunday suppers: a regular time to cook for friends we invite over. At which, of course, my kids eat food that they would normally reject — maybe it’s because they’re surrounded by friends’ children who compliment my pulled pork?

But beyond that, our dinners have now become pleasant. No tables are flipped; no tears are shed onto the scrambled eggs and pancakes we are eating. (Breakfast for dinner is about as fancy as we get now.) My son makes jokes as my daughter tells us the “cuckoo banana pants” thing that happened at school each day. To be clear, we aren’t all eating the same thing. My husband often works late, and I batch cook a big soup or salad for me or us to eat all week alongside the kids. The mealtimes I dreamed of are happening, just over different kinds of food than the fantasy includes.

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The mealtimes I dreamed of are happening, just over different kinds of food than the fantasy includes.

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