Dinners this summer
This week Emily Oster sent out a newsletter that hit really close to home. The crux of the post was how to think about dividing household mental labor more equally doing what she calls Total Responsibility Transfer (TRT). Eve Rodsky calls this dealing the Fair Play deck and Consider - Research - Execute (CRE). We think of this as getting Strongsuit.
Anyway, Emily Oster has not managed to TRT dinner and neither have I. Why? Mostly because it’s the one daily chore I realized I actually kind of like. And while I like it, it still has to get done in under 30-40 minutes and has to be a single meal that everyone will eat at least be part of.
Here are my current go-tos:
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What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking: hand’s down my favorite Substack subscription. Worth more than the $5/month. Both the Esquites Chicken Salad and Balsamic Basil Grilled Chicken hit it out of the park with my kids and other adults. My child who won’t eat pesto, kale, or spinach, also decided that she loves this green pasta.
Anything-bar: taco bar, burger bar, pasta bar, baked potato bar, you get the point. The simple act of getting to choose what to put on their plate and assemble themselves is shockingly appealing to my 8 year-olds. It’s more putting things in bowls than cooking.
Tajín on everything: watermelon, cucumber, margaritas, grilled chicken, grilled corn, etc. It makes everything better.
Crudité plate: this is obvious, but wasn’t obvious to me. My kids will eat more vegetables if they are out before dinner. So the carrots, cucumbers, peppers, etc. that go untouched next to chicken and pasta get eaten as they whine “how long until dinner.”
Tools I Can’t Live without:
Meat Thermometer: My brother has been known to show up to Christmas with his own knife and meat thermometer (which I took personally when it was my kitchen) so I bought this one and use it daily. It makes grilling 1000000 times easier.
Mandoline: Felt unnecessary when we put it on our wedding registry, but I now use it multiple times a week prepping vegetables. Especially for above mentioned crudité plate.
While I like cooking, I will also say that the best part of sleep away camp is the meals. With the kids away it becomes abundantly clear just how much harder “easy meals” with kids are than literally any meal without them. Last night I ate cheese and crackers (or a TikTok Girl Dinner). It was the only plate I prepped and not one person complained that it wasn’t a real meal.
Also, if you are someone like me that thinks a lot, probably too much, about how to feed their kids, I can’t recommend Pressure Cooker enough. Award-winning and co-hosted by one of my oldest friends, it’s a super interesting listen and helps keep it in perspective.
As always, this newsletter is free to subscribe and we don’t use affiliate links. Just Strongsuit recommendations.