Taco Tuesday and other food fights

Big A threw a taco across the dining room table.

Yes, you read that right. It was Tuesday and out of original meal ideas, I resorted to "Taco Tuesday." This has actually been a rare family-pleasing meal in our house but this particular Tuesday, Big A was not in the mood for Mexican. "This is disgusting," she yelled. "I"m not eating dinner." With that, she got sent to her room. I called her back down and after some back and forth she conceded to eating a taco...until she discovered that I had put *MEAT* into said taco. That's when she picked it up and whirled it across the table. The taco seemed to slide in slow motion, lettuce and meat trailing out behind it.

I didn't know what to do. Part of me wanted to laughed, part of me wanted to smack her and part of me wanted to just run away to a land where I didn't have to force feed little people three times a day. I sent her back to her room until J came home. I was spent. How do you really follow up a flying taco?

As a person to whom cooking does not come easy, it is especially frustrating to hear I don't like that, that's disgusting, and I'm not eating that night after night. Its enough to make me want to throw up my hands, toss a bag of cookies onto the table and call it a day.

Tonight I made a very basic dinner -- baked chicken, microwave steamed veggies and cous cous. It actually went over quite well and both girls particularly loved the cous cous, one of my personal favorites. "I should make this more often," I thought naively. Until I looked across the table...which I could barely see for the tiny little cous cous seeds littering the entire thing. Did you know that cous cous crumbles into a sticky paste when you try to wipe it up with a damp cloth? Yup, it does. I'll never make that again. And off goes yet another food I can feed the kids.

I know many people are of the "The kids will just eat what we eat and learn to eat a variety of food" school of thought. And this admittedly sounds good in theory. But when your normal pre-kids food was a sandwich or a Lean Cuisine, that school pretty much goes out the window. So I'm left with trying to wrack my brain each week. What can I make that's not disgusting? Yes, that is my low standard. It also can't be spicy. Or have any cheese other than the "mac" variety. It can't be fried more than once a week. It can't have mushrooms. Or tomatoes. It can't be mashed potatoes. It can't be red meat. It can't be in the form of a sandwich. It can't be of a pasta variety other than spaghetti or rotini (and that gets moans too). So yeah. We end up with a lot kid food. Spaghetti. Mac n' cheese. Ham slices. Fruit. Chicken and fish nuggets (just can't tell them its fish), cucumbers with ranch dressing. Yes, I know, it sounds real appetizing around here, doesn't it?

Add to this the fact that I have to go through this rigamarole three times a day and there you have one of my least favorite parts of being a parent. When I think back to the thousands of meals my mom prepared during my childhood, I can only say one thing: I now understand why old people never cook. They're damn tired of it.