I hate making dinner, I hate planning dinner and I hate foraging for ingredients. I hate all of it. Because hiring a personal chef wasn?t a practical solution for my family, I subscribed to a website that designs healthy, family-friendly meal plans for the week, thinking that it would solve some of my problems. It provides ingredient lists, recipes and even photos. I was very enthusiastic about it, hitting the supermarket with my neatly printed grocery list, buying exotic ingredients (did you know they sell fire-roasted tomatoes in a can") and picking up ingredients I?ve never purchased before (what does a leek even look like").
Unlike my previous forays into meal planning, where I never made it past the shopping phase, this time I actually took a leap and made the first recipe. I followed each step carefully (because I am not a naturally skilled cook, following recipes faithfully is my only way to avoid disaster) and was proud of the results. It looked like the photo (in the same way that a model looks like her airbrushed ?after? shot) and even tasted good. I couldn?t wait to feed it to my children. If anyone had walked by my house at the moment when I served that dinner, they might have thought that there had been a death in the family. My kids weren?t just crying; they were wailing as if I?d said ?Enjoy your sesame ginger stir-fry with rice noodles and, by the way, I gave away the cat and all of your toys and cancelled the Wi-Fi.? Needless to say, they had cere...