What's for dinner?

At our house, food has been a little hard to come by for the last month. I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but I have not been to the grocery store in over a month. The moment that morning sickness kicked in, the last thing I felt up to doing was wandering aisles filled with rows of foods that may or may not make me lose my lunch.  I even planned a day to go grocery shopping- I brought the kids to Sara's house in the morning, but I never even made it to the store. I ended up at home in bed. And to top it off, my worst "morning" sickness tends to hit shortly after Paul gets home from work, so he goes on kid duty while I crash and burn. Dinners around here have not been pretty.

So hungry, mom...

Thank God for my mom, who came over last week after Max's tumbling class. It happened to be one of my very bad days, and we literally had no food in the house. After running across the street to pick us up some lunch, she told me to write a grocery list so we'd at least have something to eat! We didn't even have bread or milk to speak of. She then took Max with her to Cub foods and I was left with only a napping Lucian to care for. Ahhhh...

Those lifesaving groceries lasted us a week, but the list I gave her did not include much in the way of dinner items. Needless to say, I've gotten pretty creative! Did you know you can make a casserole with only canned chicken, salsa, rice and shredded cheese? It's not a showstopper, but hey, it fills tummies.

But on Tuesday, it finally hit the breaking point. I was out of bread and milk again, we had no pasta, no meat, no vegetables, we were even out of condiments like soy sauce, barbecue sauce and ranch dressing... you know, those things that it seems you can always dig out of the fridge if you really need them. So I wrote up a massive grocery list and I psyched myself up to go shopping when Paul got home from work.

But then, of course, the "yucks" started to kick in. Before I knew it, it was 5:00 and I hadn't left yet. "After dinner," I tried to convince myself. Thankfully there was a frozen pizza left from my mom's grocery run, plus a can of corn in the back of the pantry. That'll do. After we ate, I realized that I really couldn't make it through a shopping trip, but I was not about to let my family go hungry again! So... I sent Paul instead. He's so wonderful. He even used the coupons I'd clipped!

When he came home with bag after bag of groceries, it finally hit me how deprived my children had been! They stood in the kitchen in awe and examined every bag as it arrived, holding each item up to me and asking if they could eat it. Grapes, apples, carrots, cereal, bread, cheese, crackers, they were in heaven! I let them snack on virtually whatever they wanted as I put away the piles of beautiful groceries. Now our home is fully stocked, we've had great meals the last few days, and I have vowed never to let my cupboards get that bare again...

Well, at least I'll try.