The Best Laid Dinner Plans

I've been working very hard these past months to answer that old question of "how do you cook delicious, nutritious, economical meals on a strict money- and time-budget." On the days I work, I'm home after 5:30; I don't have time to be scraping and chopping vegetables late into the evening. I'm sorry, Thirty Minute Meals don't cut it. I need something more along the lines of Ten (for prep time at least), for under ten dollars, for a family of five. I know it's a tall order, but it's what I need.

So I've been working really hard. I was all full of self-congratulatory pride when I found a great lasagna recipe, and figured out how I could have one labor-intensive work session on a weekend, and essentially come up with (almost) a whole extra lasagna for one of those 5:30 nights, when I had to whip up dinner in a hurry. I made extra veggie filling, extra meat sauce, and threw them in the freezer in separate freezer bags, figuring next time I wanted lasagna, all I'd have to do is get the cheese sauce mixin's fresh, beat 'em up, thaw the frozen components, boil some lasagna noodles and voila, (almost) instant lasagna! I had pulled out the frozen components three days prior. They were in the fridge, thawed, just waiting to be turned into lasagna. Everything was a go.

The best-laid dinner plans, right? Wrong.

Darned if I didn't pull out the food processor, all happy with my freshly (that morning) purchased containers of cream cheese, ricotta, and sour cream (the sour cream MAKES this lasagna... coquettishly piquante... yum!). Whistling my dixie tune of aren't I so efficient, and aren't I going to have a fresh lasagna in a mere 40 minutes, I dumped the cream cheese into the hopper. Still whistling, I opened up and dumped in the ricotta, and after I started mixing all the cheeses together, too late discovered the little glob of mold that was hiding in its depths. The whole mixture was contaminated. My whistle was replaced by a bomb of dread dropped in the pit of my stomach.

I had planned, I had prepped, I had prepared, I had done my dead-level best to do and be the perfect mom, and serve the perfect meal, and I had failed. I couldn't make the lasagna. I had worked all day, had no car, two crying babies, was bone-tired, couldn't go to the store, hadn't gone food shopping (except to get the cheeses, just that morning) in over a week, and in the fog of despair that permeated my brain, could not think of a single alternative idea for dinner. My cupboard was bare. Most who know me and know my story will tell you that I've survived a lot worse than a ruined lasagna late on a Saturday night (with my husband out of town with our one car, and our two babies crying in unison, and a sulky eleven-year old taking up a whole room with HIS bad mood). I've known my fair share of tragedy, and have come through (almost) unscathed, or at least armed with a battery of tools to help me through scathings far more tragic than the one I'm here describing. I'm equipped.

But in this moment, faced with that one little glob of mold, the cumulative effects of the stressors of two babies in under two years, night after night of interrupted and (almost) no sleep, the feeling of constant dividedness between all the camps of my life... baby, toddler, tween, husband, work, cooking, housecleaning, friends, SELF (which was the first to go and thus far has been the last to return)... it all just caved, with the bomb in my stomach, and I was utterly derailed. Any reserves that had heretofore been propping me up, any fumes I'd been coasting on, all just dissipated in a puff of smoke as I surveyed the ruined lasagna. I was undone.

The thoughts that went through my head... I am bone tired. I try SO hard! And for nothing. All I ever do is fail! No one appreciates that I'm working my psyche to the bone, to try to blah blah blah blah... It went on an on, this loathing self-talk, this crumbling to a ball on the floor of the rapidly draining pool of my sluggish emotional reserves.

All for a lasagna.

For the rest of the evening I moped around the house, ignoring the kids within the bounds of safety, if not propriety, and wallowed in self-pity. (The only kind of "self" I've been allowing, these days, apparently). I picked my way around the living room floor carpeted on every inch with small, hard, pointy, plastic toys that I was damned if I was going to pick up, in the face of my ruined lasagna! Anyone in my house who HADN'T ruined a lasagna today was welcome to pick them up! AND to plan a menu for the week, and make the shopping list, and shop, and put the groceries away, and to cook...! No amount of bleeding, bruised feet or twisted ankles was going to change my mind about that, nossir! I sank deeper and deeper into that place I've heard described as "awfulizing," when the smallest setback sends you in a disproportionate tailspin of doom.

Of course my doldrums were not so deep as to allow me to neglect when Chloe needed to nurse, or Jayce needed help figuring how to get over to a friend's house for a sleepover. Not that I was patient with any of these proceedings, or particularly soft and loving, but I got it done. Jayce made it out the door, Chloe was fed to her satisfaction. She didn't need any lasagna! I went through the motions, wading through my despair, until deeper into the evening, Owen picked up and ate a day-old pizza crust off a plate on the living room table, alerting me to the fact that, lasagna or no, I was responsible to get dinner on the table, at least for him.

And not almost.

Of course, like the residual air that remains in your lungs even after death, there was in fact in me that last, tiny speck of spark, small and vital as a glob of mold in ricotta, somewhere deep in the recesses of my spirit. Pulling it up, I resentfully mixed the veggies with the meat sauce, boiled a pot of water for spaghetti, threw the sauce over the noodles, served it up and called it good. Spaghetti. Your basic poor man's lasagna, the detritus of the best laid plans. Owen didn't mind it, not a bit. Better than day-old pizza crust, any day.