When I am home I really try to keep foods interesting. Last night I made a caprese chicken sandwiches with homemade potato chips. I’m sorry I have no pictures of this one and we were both hungry and just dug right in. I took a page out of Giada’s Holiday Handbook for my dinner. After watching a number of episodes what I took away is that I did not need to hand make everything myself. First we are in a crazy time period and where I live it looks like we’ll be going into another lock down in a couple weeks. So it’s become even more important to keep provisions on hand that don’t expire easily or that you can use for a few meals. We went shopping yesterday just to have at least two weeks worth of food on hand just in case. This includes meals we don’t have to cook if we lose power for days which has happened in the Northeast. Secondly Giada is absolutely right. Why do we feel we need to hand make everything ourselves?
Admittedly my boyfriend and I were very lucky during the first lock down. We were both still working and were able to pay our bills. Plus the area where we lived did not get hit as hard the first time around. So at the beginning of quarantine when I was only working halftime I was able to make great meals for our home. I could research recipes. Shop for ingredients, prep, and clean all while he was working. Once I went back full time I tried to keep it up, but I was so tired returning from a day of work that I slacked on dinner and I noticed our meals were getting less tasty and more bare boned.
Lately when he sits down he looks at my meals suspiciously as if trying to gauge whether I made them (or poisoned them?). His first question was where did you get the recipe for this. I can’t blame him. For a while my cooking was lazy and awful, but he kept eating it gratefully never saying a word. I could always see the disappointment on his face though. Cheating (as he calls it sometimes) is a gift to us both. It’s a means for me to provide a great meal when I know I’ll have just worked an 11 day and a means for him to actually come home to something he’ll enjoy.
Cheating also gives you one more advantage in these times. Less meal prep means more time to spend with your loved ones or taking care of your own health and needs. My cheat last night was buying pesto and already made ciabatta bread at Target. I still breaded the chicken myself, though I hadn’t intended to. Luckily I was able to defrost and cook them just in time. Let me tell you guys it was an amazing meal. I was able to slice some really thin potatoes to make some super yummy chips and I broiled the sandwiches to toast the bread and melt the cheese.
My next cheat will be a remake of a meal I made last week. This one I have a picture of. Bisquick beer battered shrimp and a remake of Buffalo Wild Wings buffalo sauce tater tots. He loves shrimp and was so excited that I took the time to make it for him because I hate shrimp. Plus the tater tots were something we enjoyed a lot while dating and was super easy to recreate as all it took was store bought tater tots, cheddar cheese, green onions, bacon, and some buffalo wing sauce. To everyone who reads this please stay safe and take care of your loved ones. It may be a rough holiday this year, but we’ll get through it with lots of tater tots and cheese.
