At long last, answers to all your burning questions! (For those of you who really couldn’t care less about what we ate, I apologize for all the posts. Feel free to skip right over this. My regularly scheduled kid posts will return shortly!)

1. You cook a lot! Do you ever have leftovers? What do you do with them?

Yes! We have a ton of leftovers and we use them for lunches. I really don’t know why, but we pretty much never have them for dinner. However, I am glad you brought this up, because I think I would like to start having leftovers for dinner and making lunch-y foods for lunch. Sometimes a big plate of macaroni and cheese seems a little heavy for lunch! I am kind of nervous about buying the right lunch foods so that I don’t buy too much or too little food. Does anyone plan out their weekly lunches like you do with dinner? Or do you have basically the same thing all week for lunch? Please let me know what you do for lunches in the comments! I am going to experiment with leftovers for dinner this week. (Do I sound like an alien? I feel like we may be the only family that doesn’t eat leftovers for dinner.)

2. Do you LIKE cooking? Is it a hobby? Or is it just a way to get dinner on the table?

I do like cooking, but I REALLY like eating. Before kids, we went out to dinner all the time. Now that we can’t do that as much, I have started putting more energy into making interesting meals. I also have more time and energy to cook meals now that I am a stay at home mom (I know SAHMs aren’t really known for having a ton of energy, but being with 2 kids all day is a lot less draining than being with 20 all day. Seriously, teaching is HARD WORK. Give your child’s teacher a hug — or better yet, a gift certificate to their favorite restaurant.).

My grandma Katie was a great cook and I learned a lot from her. I miss her a ton and making her recipes makes me feel connected to her. My dad and grandpa Chuck are also great cooks. They are both really good at cooking without recipes, which I am horrible at.

3. Do your kids eat what you eat?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. We nearly always serve them what we eat for dinner. I read a book, recommended by my friend Nicole, called My Two Year Old Eats Octopus when Sam was about one. The author really stresses the importance of eating dinner with your children and exposing them to lots of different foods. I plan our meals based on what sounds good to me, and try not to worry too much if it’s a “kid friendly” meal. If I am making something I KNOW the kids won’t like, I often try to include a side dish that I know they do like. Our rule for the kids is that they have to try two bites of everything and not make any rude comments about the food. We are trying to teach them to take their bites and then just say “thank you” if they don’t want more.

4. How long have you been a vegetarian?

My mom and I were vegetarians for a couple of years when I was in middle school. When I was in college, I became a vegetarian again and have been ever since. I used to eat fish, but now I only eat shellfish and only do that when we go out to eat. Ben’s been a vegetarian his whole life, though he eats fish. About 5 years ago, I started eating poultry, but that only lasted a year.

5. What are your reasons for being a vegetarian (religious? animal cruelty? just don’t like meat a ton?)?

(It is hard to answer this question without sounding sanctimonious, so I apologize in advance.) I loved eating meat. But I just can’t eat it anymore because I think it’s wrong. The best way I can explain it is this: try to picture if someone moved to town from another country and they told you that in their culture, they eat dogs. To them, they’re delicious! They try to eat at least some dog meat at every meal, they keep dogs in small cages to keep costs low, and they fatten puppies for slaughter. How would you feel about this? Would it matter how delicious the dog meat was? Wouldn’t you want to tell your neighbor that even though dog meat is delicious, he shouldn’t eat it? Or maybe start by telling him he doesn’t need to eat it at every meal? But what is the difference between a dog and a pig? Pigs are at least as smart as dogs. Some people even keep them for pets. We don’t need to eat meat to stay healthy. So why do it? Yes it tastes good, but I am just not willing to have that much pain and suffering on my conscience just so I can have something that tastes good.

There are also plenty of environmental reasons for avoiding meat that you can read about here.

And here are some health arguments for being a vegetarian.

And here is a Christian perspective on not eating meat.

If you want to read more about factory farming conditions (which make my dog meat example sound like a fairy tale) check out this link with excerpts from the book Slaughterhouse. Or watch this video. It is really, really sad.

6. How and when do you do meal planning?

I usually do meal planning on Tuesday nights. I go through Evernote (see next question) and pick out recipes that look good and plug them into my Google calendar as an all day event. I do the whole week (Wednesday-Tuesday), skipping nights that we have dinner plans such as date nights or parties. Then I use my shopshop app to make my grocery list. I love this app and highly recommend it! Before each grocery item I write @pro (produce), @dairy, @mid (middle of the store), @up (our Harris Teeter has two stories), or @TJ (stuff I get at Trader Joe’s). Then I alphabetize the shopping list and that way my list is divided into sections by where I get it. I go shopping on Wednesdays. I try to go to TJ’s first because they don’t always have what I need. Then I hit up Harris Teeter. Occasionally I have to go to Whole Foods too, but if so, I do that another day.

7. How do you organize your recipes?

Ok, so no one actually asked this question. But I just really wanted to share Evernote with you. It is a computer program and it also has apps for your phone (which is nice when you find yourself at the store without a shopping list). You can copy and paste recipes into the program or you can add scanned recipes as images What I love about Evernote is how you can search it. You can enter ingredients and it will pull up all the recipes that have those ingredients listed–it will even find scanned recipes (including handwritten recipes) that use those words! How cool is that? Whenever we see recipes that look good, or a recipe someone recommends, Ben or I paste it into Evernote so that I can find it later. When you paste a recipe from a website, Evernote automatically adds a link for the recipe so you can remember where you found it later. You can add tags for the recipes like breakfast, vegan, etc. but I always forget to do that. For a while we were scanning a lot of our favorite recipes from cookbooks into Evernote but that’s kind of time-consuming! Maybe someday when I have a bunch of free time (ha!). By the way, I should mention that Evernote isn’t just for recipes and people use it for a bunch of different things–mainly note taking. We use the free version and we use plain Evernote, not Evernote Food.

8. Do you have any tips and tricks for getting dinner on the table, especially with kids?

First of all, I have plenty of fails. Pretty much every night you see that we got takeout was a night that I didn’t get dinner made for one reason or another. I never plan on takeout! Sometimes we also end up eating much later than planned because dinner takes longer than expected, and then we scramble to get the kids in bed at a reasonable hour. But here are some tips for getting dinner made on a normal night:

• Planning out our weekly menus and shopping for the week definitely helps. I know what I am supposed to make ahead of time and I have the ingredients for it (ideally).
• I try to not leave the house after nap time. On Mondays, we have a gymnastics class so I plan super quick meals or meals that I can make completely ahead of time.
• I usually start cooking at about 4 or 4:30 and we usually eat dinner at 6:30 or 7. I’ll chop up all the ingredients, then stop and do something with the kids, then I’ll go make the sauce, then go attend to the kids, then boil the pasta, etc. I do a lot of starting and stopping.
• Sam gets to watch 30-60 minutes of TV per day and this is when he gets to watch it! That helps a lot. I also set the kids up with snacks while I am cooking. And then set them up with coloring or play-do. Campbell is definitely at a tricky age for making dinner right now. She doesn’t like when I go in the kitchen and shut the gate and cries for me to pick her up. Occupying her with a snack and/or an activity helps. And Sam can be a big help too when he is playing nicely with her!
• I usually try to only do one new recipe per week (if that) so at least I am kind of familiar with all of the recipes.