What's for dinner?

Rachel Ray I am not.

Martha Stewart, not her either.

I don’t spend much (ok, any) time watching the Food Network because it only discourages me. I would LOVE to cook like that…and my sister does, but I’m just not the kind that can look at my ingredients and think….what kind of meal would all this make? I think those meals in a bag at the grocery store are pure genius. Warm and serve…it’s all good.

But after some of the weekend food “mishaps”, I might need to step my cooking fare up a notch or twenty.

I really didn’t know how bad it had become until this weekend Jacob asked me….“Mom, could you get the recipe from the school cafeteria for their spaghetti. It is SO good.”

Now spaghetti is one thing I do make. Boil the noodles, open the Ragu…how hard is it? But when the school cafeteria is trumping your efforts….well that’s just humiliating.

I did once tell Savannah that they were having terriyaki chicken bites in the cafeteria and asked if she wanted to buy or bring her lunch. Upon mentioning what the cafeteria was serving she began to rub her stomach, her eyes got really wide and she kept saying…“yummy, YUMMY!” (that should have been my first clue things were going downhill!)

So either the school cafeteria has really improved their fare or I need to start watching the food network. Because that is one of the things you really want to do as a mom, right? Feed your family healthy, warm, delicious meals. It shouldn’t be THAT hard.

Unfortunately last week, I made a meal that looked like this:

Burned to a crisp those pork chops. You know it’s bad when your husband says…“I want to take a picture…I’ve never seen a pan burned like that.”

And later in the week when I was making Brownies for a Valentines party, I had to position Savannah to stand underneath the smoke alarm.

(this picture is not staged, I literally had her stand there every time I opened the oven. I later learned there was so much smoke involved because something had dripped onto the bottom of the oven - which I may have known to check had I been a faithful cooking show follower!)

And then one of the kids…I can’t remember which one (I’ve blocked it from my mind!) muttered this…

“It was perfect until you pulled something out of the oven.”

So, if you are trying to reach me today….I may be too involved in the Food network programming to answer….

Or maybe I’ll just go get a few more of those heat and serve meals…

Cause hey…my family is hungry and seeing how it’s President’s Day, the school cafeteria is closed!