I HATE GRILLING

As a follow up to my I HATE DINNER blog, I also am not a fan of grilling. Grilling is a man sport and I do not have a man who participates in sports, including grilling obviously. To me, using the grill is one big pain in the ass because I am trying to be in the the kitchen getting the rest of the pain in the ass dinner together and really cannot keep an eye on the grill, which, even though it is illegally on our deck, it is not in the kitchen where I am, getting the rest of the meal under way.

I have noticed over the years, when we have been at other people's houses for dinner, that the women are usually in the kitchen getting the meal under way, while the men are gathered around the grill with a beer in hand. This is how I figured out how grilling is supposed to work. If you have one person (the man) supervising the meat, then it has a better chance of being cooked properly. When I do it all myself, it is usually charred, or under cooked. In addition, whatever else I am trying to multi task in the kitchen usually comes out half assed.

I have finally decided to make life easier and just say NO to GRILLING. I use the George Foreman grill on the kitchen counter to do burgers, and I am getting pretty good at using the broiler with the smoke alarm only going off once. The kids are well trained at waving a kitchen towel under it to shut it off. My husband will often wander in mid preparation and ask, why aren't you cooking that on the grill? I tell him that I HATE GRILLING and that if I lived alone I would not even OWN a freaking grill.

On rare occasion when he has stuck around long enough to grill, he never stands out there with it anyway. He usually goes on about some other business, because unlike me, he likes all the meat way over cooked. Which in turn pisses me off, and I end up running in and out when he is supposed to be on grill watch, checking with a meat thermometer (so that I can have proof that the meat is actually done).

I also hate the way the grill LOOKS on the deck. It is just a big visual distraction to me.

So in addition to hating dinner, I hate grilling. However, I am a fan of the man sport of grilling, when done by a professional...at someone elses house.

Why I Hate Dinner...

The first step to admitting that you have a problem is admitting it. Right? Well I think that being a life time member of Weight Watchers would officially qualify me then, as having a problem with food. I have sympathized with Oprah for years, as I can feel her pain with being skinny one year, fat the next. I have seen 160 lbs (not pregnant) and most recently an all time low of 125 on the scale, in my adult life. I have been a size 12 and I have been a size 4. I can proudly claim, however, that I have never seen 200 on the scale (ok, so I was 196 the day I gave birth to my daughter).

When I got married, I took over the traditional female role of being the grocery shopper and the food preparer. I learned very early that I would have issues with being in control of what another person would eat. Having never really had experience planning and cooking meals, I'd have rather just gone about my life shopping from the healthy food groups and making sure that we both had our 3 proteins, 2 dairies, 2 fruits, 5 or more veggies, 2 fats and 3 breads. Back in the 1990s, that was how one ate on the Weight Watchers plan. It became very easy and I could go about my life with a mental food diary, knowing what I had left to consume after lunch. But my husband did not need the Weight Watchers Way of Life...and liked a more traditional way of eating 3 full meals, a few snacks and also had no problem sitting down to a dinner of meat, starch and vegetables at 9pm.

I battled with this new role in my life and saw the scale go up and down a few times in the first 5 years of marriage. Luckily, I got back below my Weight Watchers goal in 1996, just before getting pregnant with my first child.

Along with yet another new role in my life of motherhood, came a whole new facet to the being responsible for what another person eats. The first pressure was breast feeding. The pressure to do so was intense. I decided to give it a try, really wanting it to work out. Little did I know, my son's personality would be stubborn and picky right from birth. He refused to latch on and just screamed for the first several days of being home. As new parents, we cracked under the pressure and broke out the bottle of formula around 3am on day 4. As he sucked it down without any problem, I decided that I'd been starving my child for the first 4 days of his life. Way to go, Mom! Still feeling the pressure to do the right thing, I pumped breast milk and poured it into a bottle for him for close to 2 weeks. I hated it. I began to resent him. I was pissed right off at him. As I sat on the couch one Saturday night pumping a set of breasts that looked like they belonged to Pamela Sue Anderson...I told my husband that we'd certainly reached a new level of our relationship...sitting on the couch watching TV while I pumped away. The laughs only lasted so long. After 2 weeks I had had enough and packed the pump away. I was giddy to run to the store to fill my cart with formula. I could not WAIT to have my body back to myself.

As time moved on, and table food was introduced, we both commented how we never knew that feeding a child would be as exhausting as it was. The refusal to eat what we offered. The crying. The panic that he was not getting the nutrition that he needed in order to grow...it was all too much. After only so long, we'd fix him something we knew he'd eat...be it scrambled egg, pasta, you name it...but it was never what we happened to be eating that evening.

From there it was only the beginning. Add a second child into the mix along with a picky husband and I have spent many nights screaming I HATE DINNER!!!!!!! As someone is always complaining about the meal I have prepared and asking to have something else. Now that we have one on the verge of being a teenager, he has a couple of times walked out on dinner to go down the road to see what "Nana" is making. Oh, I know...to the outsider we have no control of our child. Guess what? You are exactly right. I lost control the day I hooked myself up to that *&^ *&%$ breast pump!

And the thing is, no one "gets it". I spend hours and endless amounts of money shopping for food only to come home and put a meal together that someone is crying over. I decided that I just cannot win. I have threatened to simply purchase a stack of frozen entrees (formerly known as TV dinners) and just let people pick their meal, zap it and go. No one thinks I am serious.

After tonight, where I had one child cheering for the pasta and meatballs I had made, and one crying because she thought we were having home made mac n cheese (that the other one refuses to eat)... my husband casually mentioned that he had spaghetti and meatballs for lunch at his mother's....

Did I mention yet that I HATE DINNER!?!??!!??!