“Get it done” v. “Make it fun”: Cooking for Your Family

I’m not what you would call a “domestic goddess.” My house is not spotless. My kids always have clean cloths, but…just not the clothes they want to wear. “Put the shirt on…it looks fine! is a common statement from me on most school mornings.

I cook. I clean. I do laundry. I get it done, but I’m no expert.

I’m not winning any awards for cooking either. Cooking is something I do. I have three children and a husband. I’m the defacto cook in our house as I have always been the SAHM. Even now that I am a WAHM I still do the lion’s share of the cooking. I’m not saying that my husband never cooks. Far from it. He is good at grilling. Swoops in after work MANY days to finish off the cooking that I started, but drifted away from to tend to kids or homework or work. I cook because my family needs to eat, but I don’t cook because I love it.

Before I became one of #theFamilyDish Ambassadors my attitude was that cooking was a task I needed to get done. My family needed to eat, right?

Over the past few months I have cooked for my family with foods provided as part of #thefamilydish Ambassadorship. I had a choice to make…either continue to view cooking as something that needs to get done or go out of my comfort zone and make cooking fun.

“Get it done” v. “Make it fun”

What won? “Fun” won by a landslide. I started taking cooking more seriously. Following recipes. Creating dishes from scratch. Meal planning. Buying ingredients ahead of time instead of dashing off to the store in a panic or calling my husband in a panic or just getting panicked! In short, I got my act together.

Funny, right? I had to take cooking more seriously to find the fun. When I took the guesswork out of cooking I found the fun side. By following recipes in the #theFamilyDish recipe book, I learned to make dishes that my family now love. Onion burgers. Tuna and veggie casserole. I prestocked the pantry with ingredients. I looked for recipes BEFORE grocery shopping. By getting my cooking act together, I started enjoying cooking more.

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