What's For Dinner?

Something I've been really struggling with is food. Particularly dinner. I always have grand plans for dinner. I meal plan, I shop, and then the time comes and it all falls apart. Afternoons are hard. Tilly has never been a great day sleeper, and now its extremely rare that she will have an afternoon nap. She has anywhere from 30 - 90 minutes between 11 and 1pm. It's widely unpredictable. and usually by 4pm she is entering maximum grumple.

Things I can just throw in the oven one handed while holding her is about all I can manage. Which is ok, I can easily do roast meat and veg. But, variety is the spice of life. Or so they say.

I get really stressed out about it. Jesse says not to worry, he is happy to fend for himself. But, I feel bad about that. Who wants to get home at 1am after a long, hard hospitality shift and cook dinner? I wouldn't. Plus, it still doesn't fix the 'what are me and Tilly going to eat?' problem.

I've tried batch cooking. It didn't work. Me and Tilly ate them, and Jesse still ended up cooking his own food. I tried home delivery meals. Me and Tilly ate them, and Jesse still cooked his own food. These are expensive ways of living. A disconnect. I feel like we aren't a family unit, and aren't functioning as one when we do this.

Maybe I just have to let the idea of cooking go. Fill the fridge with easy to prepare one handed meals. Our favourite meal as a kid was 'fruit and salad and stuff' which was a plate of cut up fruit and vegetables, some cheese, some dips, some crackers, some cold meats. Maybe I have to be ok with us having roast meats and vegetables a lot.

Some of you are probably going 'ok, so what?' But see, food is a trigger for me. For so long it had so much control over my life. I have recovered from an eating disorder. And I refuse to go back there. I don't want food to cause me stress and anxiety any more. I just want to enjoy it. And at the moment I don't. I feel a constant struggle to make sure that we are eating something other than take away. And, most importantly, I don't want Tilly to ever have a bad relationship with food. I don't want it to control her life like it did mine.

I know that this is just a stage. That eventually it will get easier for me to be able to cook properly, maybe even have a little helper. I have to be ok with it being hard right now. I just have to make sure that our freezer always has bread it in, that we always have a can of baked beans in the cupboard, and that some nights we just have 'fruit and salad and stuff.' And that doesn't make me a bad mother or wife.