Making Dinner is Unnecessary

I now believe that "dinner" is a conspiracy designed to stress moms out.

Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash

(Note: I realize that there’s an extremely important election today in the U.S. and in light of this, dinner is the least important thing imaginable. Honestly, I’m escaping the stress of this day by writing about dinner and how much I hate it and hoping what I do is helpful to anyone struggling with too much to do. Here’s hoping the worst thing we have to deal with on Wednesday is what to eat for dinner. Please vote and take care.)

I. Hate. Dinner.

I hate meal planning, shopping, preparing food, cleaning up from cooking, and storing pungent leftovers only to throw them away a week later because nobody will eat them.

I don’t have this problem with any other meal. Breakfast? Scrambled eggs and a banana. Lunch? Peanut butter and jelly sandwich and some celery and/or an apple. Fine.

But Dinner?

Dinner apparently needs to be something hot and delicious, that everyone in the house will love, is different from anything we’ve made in the last 2 weeks, and somehow can be perfectly prepared in the 8 minutes I have between when I arrive home and when everyone declares they are STARVING, all while a toddler is attached to me screaming like a rabid koala.

This sentiment may not apply to you if you love and/or are great at cooking, you have a partner who actually shares in any of the dinner-related labor, and/or you can afford to just have every dinner delivered. But this is not my life.

I simply do not have the executive functioning skills in my ADHD brain to manage all of this while working more than full-time, parenting, and trying to cram in some sleep once in a while.

So I gave up. I gave up on dinner.

And it’s been actually fine.

Is dinner a capitalist plot designed to make moms feel inadequate (or just quit working)?

Here are some things that are “bad”:

• Simple carbohydrates

• Salt

• Fat

• Processed/pre-packaged food

• Food that comes packaged in plastic

• Sugar

• Snacks

• Eating “on the go” or while watching TV

• Eating too late / right before bed

• Getting take-out or delivery

Things that are good:

• Vegetables

• Lean protein

• Whole grains

• Fiber

• Variety

• Eating together and connecting

• Getting kids involved in cooking

• Meal planning

Don’t just take my word for it - the internet even says so!

Google summary results from searching “Healthy eating for families”

I’m not going to argue with any of this. I do think these guidelines are all totally fine. Of course it is good to limit sugar, processed foods, and plastic, and of course it is good to sit down to a meal together, have a variety of different foods, and eat a lot of vegetables.

The problem is that modern life - at least in the United States - is not remotely set up to facilitate this. I frankly think that things are intentionally designed that way to make it harder - or just more expensive, less healthy, and more stressful - to be a working mom. Notice how all the stuff on the “bad” list is incredibly cheap, easy and convenient to come by. The stuff on the “good” list often requires more money, time, and preparation (or at least it seems to - I’ll get to that).

Working a typical 9-5 schedule (so, at least 8:30-5, probably more like 8:30-6 in reality) means you’re getting home right when it’s dinner time and everyone hasn’t eaten for about 6 hours (remember that snacks are bad).

Add in any kind of activities in the evening (like sports - because in addition to all of this, kids need more exercise to be healthy! but you can’t just send them outside to play because danger) and all our positive dinner aspirations become pretty futile - if you plan on actually cooking every night.

If there’s no time to cook, you could grab some fast food, but not only is that terrible for you (I dream sometimes of being able to drive through somewhere and just get something like a pot roast that isn’t made with a 10 pound bag of salt) it’s really too expensive for our family.

Basically I have two choices here:

• Stop working (this is the choice I think I’m supposed to make to be a good mom, per society - but it actually wouldn’t solve the fact that I hate everything surrounding dinner and it’s still a TON of work either way)¹

• Stop cooking

Not working is not an option because mine is the only income in our house.

So I stopped cooking (at least on weeknights).

We lived!

Everyone will live even if you don’t cook dinner

Photo by okeykat on Unsplash

Did you know that these are all perfectly acceptable dinners?²

• Bagged caesar salad with a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store

• Apples, celery, and peanut butter

• Mini toasts with mozzarella (or brie), fresh basil leaves and tomato slices (with pancetta or bacon for extra protein if you must)

• Cucumber salad with red onion and w/avocado (or seriously just avocado with pretty much anything, like just sprinkle salt, chili powder, and lime juice on an avocado and just eat it)

• Raw broccoli florets and baby carrots dipped in ranch (low-fat if you must) and an uncured ham sandwich

• A heated can of smashed black beans in a fried tortilla with some lettuce and cheese on top (this is maybe technically cooking but takes approximately 4 minutes)

• Uncured ham, spinach leaves, tomato and cream cheese rolled up in a tortilla and cut into pinwheels

When it comes to meal planning, I use a grocery pickup app and pretty much order the same groceries every week (so just refill the cart in my app with the same stuff I bought the week before). A lot of the stuff above can be re-combined with other things to make different stuff, but I also don’t think it’s super necessary to have wildly different menus every week.

My kids eat a ton of fruit so I do change that up a bit - depending on what’s in season I’ll switch between pineapples, mangoes, pears, etc. My toddler pretty much exclusively eats raspberries like a tiny baby bear.

Sometimes for dinner we just have “fruit plate!” which is….just a plate of fruit. And a glass of milk. Or even a tiny bit of whipped cream to dip the fruit in if we’re feeling feisty. My daughter in particular loves this and sings “FRUIT PLATE!” to the tune of the Batman theme song when I give it to her (“da na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na FRUIT PLATE!”).

I will admit not everyone in my house loves my dinner philosophy (my husband frequently complains that it’s “not enough” for him, to which I say - just eat more of it if you’re still hungry?!)). And on weekends, I do often cook, because I genuinely like using our grill - and I cook a TON of extra so we can heat up leftovers during the week (99% of the time, leftover meat gets turned into tacos or burritos). I also love roasted potatoes so I make those whenever I have the time.

Is it food? Are you eating it in the evening? It’s dinner!

It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be food.

When I made this realization, 2 things happened:

1. We started saving WAY more money on food and stopped wasting so much.

2. We stopped eating so much fast food/convenience food, because we were no longer panicked at 7:30 at night that we didn’t have any plans for dinner and all the meat in the house was frozen solid. We could just open the fridge and eat stuff.

So, just in case you need to hear this: if dinner is stressing you out, you don’t have to make it. It will be fine.

1. I know not working outside the home doesn’t make the labor surrounding dinner any easier. If you’re a stay-at-home mom you still have a full-time job. You’re still going to be dealing with screaming rabid koala toddlers climbing up your leg while you’re trying to keep everything from burning either way.

2. I’m not a nutritionist and don’t actually know if any of these are acceptable from a nutrition standpoint. But my family eats them and we see mostly ok. If you *are* an expert in nutrition, please feel free to correct me on any of this!