Summer Fare

I really don't cook. I don't enjoy it--in fact, I find cooking tedious and uninteresting, requiring too much clean-up and fuss.

Mind you, I think nothing of doing plaster of Paris at the living room table, or tie-dyeing with the girls in the backyard WITHOUT GLOVES, so clean-up and fuss aren't in fact issues for me. I just don't enjoy cooking.

I mean, why cook when you can just make a sandwich?

The other moms who I know who don't cook happen to have partners who DO cook, but I happen to have a partner who needs me to tell him, every single night, "Just ask the girls if they want a peanut butter sandwich or a grilled cheese sandwich or a smoothie, and there's canned applesauce and frozen corn or blueberries, and see if they'll eat a carton of yogurt with it." Seriously, every single night he needs me to tell him options for a quick and suitable dinner for two children. I think he eats baked chicken for dinner every night, I don't bother to ask.

And no, we're not one of those families who eat dinner together, with the tablecloths and napkin rings and candles and crap. Sue us.

That being said, I do get a lot of pleasure out of an in-season fruit salad:

It doesn't require cooking!

I don't tend to cook normal stuff every day, like a nice pot of spaghetti or a brown rice stir-fry or whatever normal people stand around in the kitchen for an hour and cook for dinner every single day, but every now and then I will try out a recipe, especially if it sounds just crazy:

The Pioneer Woman's Knock You Naked Brownies were CRAZY. I didn't put all the fuss into them that she did, but yeah, they turned out just a smidge over-the-top. Insanely tasty, and unlikely to be baked again unless I'm ever invited to a potluck at which people would be impressed by over-the-top sweet desserts. That potluck would probably be in Arkansas.

I got bored with baking bread every day, so now I pretty much only make the occasional pizza crust, but after the instruction of my friend Cake, I do now officially know how to make pie crust--

--although it's kind of a lot of work. Still, the family praised and praised and praised the strawberry pie that the crust turned into, and although I'm pretty sure that all the praise every time I cook something is a not-so-subtle strategy to simply get me to cook a little more, I do have plans to make that pie crust again soon, this time for quiche, and also to at some point to get around to trying out both zucchini fries and overnight cinnamon rolls.

Or, you know, we could just continue eating sandwiches. It could go either way, really...