I love when I am standing in the check-out line at the supermarket scanning the women’s magazines and I see that common headline “From Preparation to Table – 15-Minute Meals!” I admit I usually fall for it and throw the magazine in my cart. After all, if we don’t have hope, what do we have?
To be fair, I didn’t count the shopping time needed for buying all the ingredients for the fabulously fast meal I was going to try cooking. I set the timer for 15 minutes right when I began preparing the meal. (Hey, I bought the magazine on the promise that they were going to make my life easier with these splendidly speedy meals. Darned right I’m going to time them.)
They don’t tell you that you need to be a ninja food-chopper using a knife that can split a hair in mid-air.
Since I wasn’t the former and didn’t own the latter, nine minutes had passed by the time I was done preparing the food for cooking. Since the entire dinner cooked conveniently in one pan for a practically effortless dinner experience (not my words), I scooped everything up and put it in the pan, then stirred as I cast furtive glances toward the timer.
When the timer went off I lifted the pan from the stove and poured everything into a large bowl, then ran the bowl to the dinner table and set it down, pumping my fist in the air and yelling “I did it! I rock!”
The two children and one husband who had been sitting patiently at the table leaned forward in unison and studied what I had just set down. Finally, someone was brave (or stupid) enough to ask “What is it?”
“It’s a 15-minute meal. It made my life easier”
“Is it cooked?”
“Yes it’s cooked! Try it.”
“You try it first.”
“I don’t have to try it first, I cooked it.”
“It doesn’t look cooked enough.”
“Then take some and put it in the microwave for a few minutes.”
“Then it won’t be a 15-minute meal. Not really.”
“It’ll still be one for me, because my 15 minutes are up and I’m done with it.”
“Can we order pizza?”
“Yes. But it had better get here in 30 minutes. I’ll set the timer.”
I’ve made successful 15-minutes meals. Honestly. Nobody is better than me at dropping hot dogs into boiling water, slapping mustard and ketchup on buns, transferring the cooked dogs to the buns, stacking them on a plate, ripping open a bag of chips and then placing everything on the dinner table.
Just call me Ninja Hot Dog Mom.
