Me: "What do you want for dinner?"
Husband: "Something relatively healthy, not too fatty, not too carby."
Funny, I was thinking "something I can fix that won't cost $100, won't take all afternoon to make, and won't require 3 trips to 3 different grocery stores."
1:15. Cue digging out those dusty magazines with the nice pictures on the bottom shelf of the bookcase. It's hot- discard all fall and winter-based magazines. I hate cooking- discard all magazines that don't promise fast meals.
1:18. Settled on a "Greek lemon soup with chicken meatballs" It involves chicken (cheaper than other meats), carrots and things I already have in the fridge (less shopping) and lemon (which seems to go with hot summer days.
1:20. Setback. The husband doesn't like soups.
1:25. Solution: Just do the chicken meatballs. Skip the soup bit. (That's possible, right?)
1:30. Crap, spent 30 mins stressing about dinner and now I'm starving for lunch.
*lunch break*
2:30. Modified recipe: make the meatballs, cook in cast-iron skillet, do a side salad.
2:35. I remember that I have tomatoes from my parent's modest-in-size-but-very-productive garden, and they WILL go bad soon. Change side dish to sliced tomatoes with basil. If mozarella is on sale, I'll throw that on top, too.
2:40. Boring, time-consuming stuff like: reading and generating shopping list for meatballs. Mentally assessing which store is closest to my other afternoon errands. Making modification notes in the margins.
3:00. Crap, look at the time! Run errands.
5:00. I'm soaked, even with the AC running. My friend Fatso, the voice in my head, says, "You can fix this tomorrow night. Just go out to eat tonight. You can get a salad someplace. No hassle, no dirty dishes, no wasted afternoon hours..." Must. Resist. Temptation.
5:30. Did not resist temptation. Maybe I'll fix dinner tomorrow night.
