Some time ago I started meal planning. After years of feeling like dinner took me by surprise every night, only to have both kids complain about whatever I'd cooked didn't feel like a good long term strategy. So during the week we have our five nights - red meat, chicken/fish, eggs, cheese and what we call "bean night". Bean night includes of course beans, but also legumes, grains and anything that I would call adventurous vegetarian. Quesadilla and vegetable sticks do not count.
I'm not going to lie that bean night is the toughest sell of the week. This week I made Brazilian black beans. Colin did pretty well scooping up both the pork and beans, but I could tell that Meryn was quietly struggling. Now I realize that including pork with the beans might sound ironic, but as a young mom I'm trying to be realistic. If cooking beans with pork sometimes helps to get the kids over the hump, then I'm in.
Each week I try to balance the tried and true with new recipes and more often than not when one of them likes something, the other does not. I swear that they have private meetings about this during recess at school. Colin loves both lentil and roasted pumpkin soup. Meryn for some reason can't seem to cope well with any soup. I have no idea why?
With time I am starting to hit on a few mutual likes including polenta, soba noodles and a couple of weeks ago braised lentils with sausage. They were delicious!
More importantly than any one week, the kids had accepted that bean night is here to stay. Compared to their whinging from a year ago they are at least open to trying new things today. As a mom, I'm happy . . . ✿ Micheline
