What's For Dinner?

I don't know about you, but one of my least favorite questions is, "What's for dinner?"

I rarely have a good answer.

We eat a lot of chicken.

When we're all eating together I usually prepare some sort of protein (75% of the time it's chicken), a starch (usually rice or pasta), and a vegetable. The kids also have fruit w/ dinner 95% of the time. I'm a passable cook. We eat, no one is starving, but there is usually at least one component of the dinner that someone won't eat.

Tonight there was a dinner miracle as BOTH children, without coaxing, ate all the components of the meal. Aren't you dying to know what we had? I'm sure that it is not a perfect balance, nutritionally, so please don't email me/comment about all the shortcomings, okay?

Protein:

Cheesy Garlic Chicken - Boneless, skinless chicken breast halves and some chopped tomato covered with a mixture of water, olive oil and garlic herb soup mix. Add shredded mozzarella cheese on top for the last few minutes of baking. EASY and actually kind of fancy looking.

Starch:

Marvin Potatoes, so named because my mom learned to make them that way from my Uncle Marvin, I think. Slice potatoes into discs, the thinner the better IMO, and lay out on a cookie sheet sprayed w/ no stick spray. I used baby red potatoes because that's what we had around, any kind will work. I cut a tablespoon of butter into about nine little cubes and laid them around the tray (actually two trays, my oven is very narrow and only little cookie sheets fit in it), then sprinkled the whole thing w/ seasoned salt. Bake. Done.

Veggie:

Glazed carrots. Here is my very fancy technique for making glazed carrots (snort). I boil some baby carrots until they are pretty soft (i.e. kid friendly in my house). I dump the hot carrots, drained, into a bowl w/ a little butter and about a tablespoon of brown sugar. I stir it until the butter melts and the sugar dissolves. The end.

And everyone ate all of it, even Michael, who has thoroughly shunned vegetables since turning two. They both asked for more chicken and more potatoes and tolerated the carrots without complaint. Harper actually said, "Soft carrots? I LIKE soft carrots!" She also asked me to fish extra saucy tomatoes out of the baking dish for her. She will not eat tomatoes under any other circumstances.

I'm no gourmet but there you go. I celebrate it when both the kids eat all the dinner. Heck I celebrate when both of the kids will eat some of the dinner, tonight's meal should go into some kind of family hall of fame.