What's for Dinner?

Frozen pizza never tastes so good than when it's made by one of the members of our meal exchange.  After a busy day of weekend chores and time spent enjoying summer-like weather in March, Chris left this afternoon for softball practice before dinner and I was on my own with the kids until bedtime.  I hadn't even thought about what to do for dinner until that point, so thankfully, I had a stash of meal exchange meals in the freezer.  I pulled out a pizza, turned on the oven, and then headed upstairs to give the kids baths while our gourmet, made-from-scratch dinner baked. 

So many nights are like this.  Weekdays are of course the craziest.  It's fortunate that Chris and I are both home before 5:00 p.m., but that still doesn't allow us much more than time to feed the baby, set the table and either microwave or bake already-prepared food.  Maybe, just maybe, we'll have time to prepare a salad or other simple side dish.  Dinner prep was a little easier when I was home with the kids, but not by much, since taking care of little kids who couldn't entertain themselves for more than a minute left little time for much of anything.  Weekends end up being a blur of doing all the things we don't have time for during the week. 

When my friends and I, all of whom had young children, realized we were all experiencing similar levels of chaos at dinner time, the meal exchange was born.  For a year and a half now, we've undertaken the communal effort of feeding our families homemade meals.  The meal exchange has become a way of life and is something I'm grateful for, even in those months when I feel like I'm running out of time and am too overwhelmed to pull together such large quantities of food in one fell swoop.  But then when we all gather and I hear about the delicious meals everyone has made and I catch up with friends I haven't seen all month, I'm reminded how the committment to the meal exchange is worth it.

I've realized other benefits I hadn't anticipated.  I've lived abroad and have many friends from other countries and enjoy experiencing new cuisines.  It's easy to forget that even within my own culture there is such a variety of food traditions and it's been fun experiencing the food preferences and culinary styles of the other participating families.  Some people tended to cook comfort foods, while others brought dishes I had never heard of.  Over all these months, we've had multiple versions of lasagna, pizza, enchiladas, chili and Tator Tot Hotdish, yet they have reflected the cooking styles of the individual participants.  Some of these dishes have become part of my family's regular rotation. 


As much as we all rave about our meal exchange to our friends, we have experienced some growing pains along the way.  Our group almost split in two, as the vegetarian and vegans were no longer participating in the "anything goes" month and the meat-lovers were admitting they weren't as satisfied with the alternating vegetarian months.  A split would have been a disappointment, because while we all wanted meals we'd truly enjoy, the monthly exchanges are as much for socializing as they are for restocking our freezers.

We kept the group together by switching from an exchange format to a swap.  Instead of bringing enough meals for everyone participating, we bring a set number of meals, and then going in rounds, we choose what meals we want.  This format takes a little longer, but we realized it's workable if we have someone designated to manage the process and make sure everyone has chosen a meal before starting the next round.  It has also allowed us to include more people since the "subs," friends we had made in ECFE or a moms group, had become devoted partipants.

One thing has changed in the last year and a half.  Many of our families have gotten bigger!  Most of us met in a group for new parents at a local hospital when our first kids were born, and since then, many of us have added a second kid to the mix.  If we didn't think life could possibly get busier, it did.  Although the more meals for our freezer, the better, a few months ago, we finally started admitting to each other that making nine, four-serving meals every month was becoming too much.  So the other major change to our format is that we're only bringing six meals each month instead of nine.  Six sounds like a lot, but after making nine meals, six seems easy!