Menu Ideas for the second week of school

I'm desperate to put dinner on the table for a whole week, but I seem to take the easy route and pick something up once or twice a week.

For lunches I'm taking soup at least two days and a salad for the other.  I found a recipe for Italian Sausage Soup in the Allrecipes magazine and I'm making a big batch today for lunches.  Some of the suggestions online say to add orzo pasta...  I'm so sad I can't find the box I swear I had.  

Meals for this week, which I swear I've bought food for but I can't remember what I was planning.  Hmmmm...

• Chicken Quesadillas or Burrito Bowls with beans and rice
• Macaroni and cheese casserole 
• Slop - ground beef browned with salt and pepper and covered in cream of mushroom soup and sour cream over rice - finally had this last week and I wondered why I haven't been making it EVERY  week!
• Spaghetti with vodka sauce.  Hopefully I'll have enough sausage left to make this.
• Hamburgers and salad - I might make some sort of potato...  lemon potatoes?
• Italian Sausage soup leftovers - on Thursday when Rob is gone.
• Chicken wraps - Asian Style Chicken for lettuce wraps from Schwans but in tortillas because Safeway didn't have any butter lettuce. 
• And if for some reason none of that sounds appealing some night...  I still have the stuff to make another pepperoni pizza.
• And I still have cheese ravioli, sauce, mozzarella cheese, and olives left to make a layered casserole. 

Wow, we're eating the same things every week.  Maybe that's why I run off to buy other food during the week.

Back 2 School

It's been crazy busy here - community events, back to school prep (which most people get done in a day or two of shopping - but I can drag out for weeks), busy work schedules, and an overarching feeling of anxiety and being overwhelmed.  It doesn't matter how much I try to prep for the start of school, we're always caught off guard and feel like it's too much.

The result has been a house full of oversensitive people, people who can't take a joke or requests for additional support from others.  I can't ask Lindsay to unload the dishwasher without her freaking out about having homework or being too tired.  Admittedly, this sounds a lot like a screw you to chores, but there's also a hint of the desperation that says she was in no way prepared to be back in school.  So I wonder, is there a good way to prepare for school or does the initial shock of a 7:30am to 3pm schedule (plus homework) after a summer of no responsibilities feel a lot like being thrown into a pool of ice water?

This is the question that consumes my life from the middle of July to the middle of September.

   

Food for the Week

Farmers markets offer a great opportunity to increase the amount of veggies in our diet.  Unfortunately you can't see that in this weeks menu ideas.  I have an abundance of squash (yellow and green), and some broccoli, but I used most of my veggie bag in the soup I made yesterday.

• Hamburgers and salad
• Zuppa Toscana leftovers
• Spaghetti with Vodka sauce, garlic herb bread and spicy broccoli
• Macaroni and Cheese - blue box
• Chicken Quesadilla and zucchini pie
• Slop or Fin-fer night (Find food for yourself)

We might have two fin-fer nights.  We went to a tiny little water park in Greeley today and followed it up with a picnic.  We had a lot of fun, wore ourselves out, and my family is asleep at four in the afternoon.  They'll probably wake up in an hour or two, but I doubt we'll be making a big dinner.  They can have tuna sandwiches or something.

We have plenty of snack food for the week because of all the random stuff I bought for our snacky dinner last night.  Hummus, cheese, bread, veggies, fruit.  I take snack food to work with me for lunches while Rob prefers burritos, leftovers, sandwiches, and small microwave dinners.  We have a little of everything in our freezer and deep freeze.

Next week we'll have to plan for Lindsay's lunches too, as well as quick breakfast food.  School starts and I'm so far behind in my planning and purchasing for the change.  Hopefully I have some great surge of motivation and don't wait until the day before she has classes.

 

Change Sucks

Matt is supposed to be done with the Navy next year so I've posted a best guess countdown.  It may or may not be accurate, but it will count for me and I won't have to.  Most of what this means is that we are counting down to change that we can't imagine.  He hasn't lived here since he was a boy in high school.  He's a man now, with adult dreams.  It will be different.  

It seems that everything is different these days.  Work is more annoying than normal, though I did talk about marijuana edibles with my boss last week.  It was a weird conversation, and funny.  I live in Colorado so it's legal, our employees just can't test positive for it because of the work they do.  I however, am exempt because I'm an office employee.

School is starting soon and Lindsay and I don't do well with change.  I have my last class coming up and that will be different too...  and then I'll graduate and more change.  Change, different, new experiences...  it just keeps happening.  That's what life is all about.    

Simple Saturday Gratitude

We went to the farmers market today.  We normally go to the one by our house on Sunday, but we have one of Robs work events to attend tomorrow.  We found one on the other side of town and it was awesome.  There was a wine booth.  I had no idea there was a winery close, but there is and it had some amazing wine.  I bought my regular bag-o-veggies for $10 and Lindsay begged me to buy kale.  When I buy kale I always use it to make zuppa toscana and she also decided that she wanted to invite her boyfriend over for dinner to try it.  Thank god for the wine, right?  Nah, he's a good kid.  We also bought some great bread, orange chocolate cookies, a lemon cucumber, and of course the wine.  

So for dinner we had zuppa toscana and a bunch of other snacking food...  sliced baguette, hummus, boursin, slices of sharp cheddar, strawberries, blueberries, sliced apples, and sugar snap peas.  We sat on the living room floor in my personal version of a picnic and watched The Goonies while eating too much.  

I'm full.  I'm tired.  It was a good day.

Rant

Since when are we as parents expected to bribe our kids to turn in homework, to attend classes, to give a rats ass about school?  

Oh, crap.  I feel a rant coming on; one that starts with, "When I was a kid..."  Shit.

When I was a kid, I was offered cash for grades.  I guess there was bribery involved, but I was expected to approach school like it was my job.  MY JOB.  I was required to attend all my classes, I was required to give a shit, and when I didn't (I'll admit to a rough year in high school), I had my ass handed to me on a platter.  I was grounded, had double the chores.  

What scares the crap out of me is that a lot of parents are offering things I would never consider.  Remember when you said to your parents, "But (fill in best friend/distant acquaintance - whomever suits current needs)'s mom lets her!"  Well, I'm not so-and-so's mom, I'm your mom and I will not (fill in the blank with rejected request).  

Sigh....   Being the parent of a teen girl freaking sucks.  I MUST apologize to my mother as soon as possible.  I put her through hell, and her curse threatens my sanity.  You're not familiar with the curse?  Lucky you.  When I was a teen, my mom rather nonchalantly said to me, "I hope you have a daughter just like you."

Well fuck. 

I find myself thinking back to when I was this age...  what did my mom do that worked?  What did she do that enraged me?  What did she do that kept the situation under the slightest control?  And holy shit, what did she do when I told her I was pregnant?  How would I react?

I feel like Lindsay's teen years are going at a snail's pace.  The sooner I can get her to 18 and graduated, the less anxiety I'll feel.  That's what I'm telling myself.