Dinner is Served

Although I enjoy cooking, it's become a chore since Oliver was born and dinner time isn't a time for relaxation anymore, but rather is usually a stress point. The baby is cranky, I'm cranky, we're all hungry and I'm frustrated with myself both because I'm still not able to pull a simple dinner together despite being home all day and because I can't ignore these self-imposed unrealistic expectations. I have a few meals I can make quickly and without a recipe - about the only food I can muster the energy to make these days - but I grew bored of those long ago. So when the e-mail from a friend went out asking who would be interested in doing a monthly meal exchange, I almost responded in all capital letters I was that 100% ON BOARD, SIGN ME UP, WHEN DO WE START? Hallelujah, the meal exchange was going to be the answer to my prayers. When one friend responded with, "So I'm NOT the only one who's a mess when it comes to dinner time?" I realized I'm not the only one either.

The nine of us who make up the new meal exchange club met in a new parents group at a local hospital and we keep seeing each other at soup swaps one or another hosts. It is at these swaps that we bring six quarts of soup and then go home with six different quarts of soup, all bound to taste better than our own creations just because someone other than ourselves made it. I can only imagine that during the hiatus of soup swaps during the busy, and hot, summer months, many of us in this newly formed meal exchange group had drawn a blank on what to serve for dinner, had stared into an empty freezer and had wondered how six quarts of soup could have gone so quickly.

The meal exchange club doesn't officially kick off until October, but the organizer threw the option out there to do an abbreviated swap with anyone who could cook seven, four-person meals with a week's notice. It was a lot of work to multiply a recipe by SEVEN, (makes me nervous about next month when everyone will be participating and I'll need to make the same recipe nine times over) but I reminded myself what a couple of hours of work would yield. I peeled 11 pounds of butternut squash, chopped four heads of cauliflower, diced seven onions, rinsed six cans of chickpeas, poured lemon juice by the cup instead of the teaspoon and spilled tiny granules of cous cous all over my kitchen as I tried to pour carefully measured cups of cous cous into Ziploc bags. A large bag of curry from bulk spices section of the grocery store went along with everything else into the largest pot we own, the stock pot Chris bought for his home brewing. Since I split a lot of the preparation over two days, the pot had to go into the refrigerator, which required me to remove a shelf so it would fit. Once I was finished cooking, the pot's contents had cooled and my kitchen had fully embraced the pungent aroma of curry, I laid seven one-gallon Ziploc bags upright on the floor of my kitchen, carefully ladled an equal portion into each bag, sealed them and laid them flat on a shelf in the freezer to freeze into a thick sheet of curry.

We trooped into our friend's house last night carting babies and boxes or large canvas tote bags full of instant dinners for the weeks ahead. We spread out on the table hotdishes, the main components for a beans and rice dinner, a stew and vacuum-packed pizzas. We repacked one of each meal in our containers, stuck around to socialize some and then headed home.

This morning I debated what I should make for dinner tonight. If I have the time, should I try to come up with something fresh and original or should I already break into my stash of homemade frozen dinners? You can probably guess what the answer is. That's what they're there for, right? With my freezer now stuffed with dinners and soups acquired at the first soup swap of the fall season, I grabbed the most accessible dinner, a vegetarian tator tot hotdish. Add bread and a salad, and voila, dinner is served.