Naptime Blog

During the summer months, we did a lot of barbecuing. In the beginning of the summer, this was easy. Hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken, steaks, London broil, pinwheels, sausage, spare ribs, even roast beef.  We would barbecue ears of corn, grilled vegetables, you name it, and we grilled it. But after a while, even barbecued foods got redundant.  As we started to see cooler weather, we were ready to start changing things up again with oven cooked meals.

So here we are, early fall, and I am already stumped on what to cook for dinner. I’m thinking of doing a meatloaf one of these days, which is something I haven’t made since the spring. I have a slow cooker/ crock pot, but never seem to remember to start something in the morning that could simmer all day.  And I would need to find good recipes my husband would eat.  I can’t let the thought of cooking beef stew in a crock pot sink in. To me, it belongs in a pot on the stove.  Regardless, I don’t have the time to cut up all the vegetables and watch a stew all day long.  And I cannot believe some people actually do dinner early in the morning!  All I can manage to do in the morning is take the meat out of the freezer to thaw!  The rest I need to do later in the afternoon.

Hmmm. Chicken soup sounds good.  And I must admit I can make a pretty good chicken vegetable soup from scratch.  And my Italian roots allow me to whip up any pasta also, something I am looking forward to making a lot of in the next few months.  But my favorite dish, my mother’s signature dish, is eggplant parmagiana. Yummy.  It just takes so long to prepare!

So there’s also grilled chicken, grilled salmon, stir fry (I love using my wok for chicken stir fry!), pork chops, lamb chops, veal cutlets… I can make a pork roast, turkey (although the husband only likes turkey on Thanksgiving), a Caesar salad, linguini with clam sauce, and I can even make pizzas with different toppings.

I like a variety of different side dishes as well.  I am lucky to have children that enjoy eating their veggies, so any meat/chicken/fish dish can be altered from one meal to the next by changing up the vegetable or other side dish.

So I have listed many different options here, haven’t I?  So can someone tell me why I am stumped about what’s for dinner?

Jennifer
Mom to Juliana (7), Louis (1) and Anthony (1)
Expecting #4 in September!
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