Good Eats? Then Why Am I So Offended??

Cooking is like an art to me…a form of self expression.  I collect cookbooks and recipes.  I pore through them and pick and choose things that I think my family will not only like but will also EAT.  In short, I really enjoy not only the process of cooking but I think what I enjoy most is the CHALLENGE of cooking.

I admit I am a big cookie artist.  I love to find all sorts of different kinds of cookies to make.  I recently started to feel the same way about basically any kind of cooking I am doing.  And to me, it’s so much of an art that I also get really offended when the family turns its collective nose up at what I have worked so hard to produce.

Every night for me is like Cupcake Wars with real food!

And it’s hard to even figure what they’ll accept or reject.  Take for example Sloppy Joes  – REJECT!  In fact, one of the children asked where were the noodles for the spaghetti sauce, very clearly missing the hotdog buns (I think they create less messy Joes) set beside the plates.  He also missed the plates and got another one instead – yeah, the “children” are 21 and 29, respectively, but please, bear with me.

Tonight I made lemon chicken with sweet and sticky green beans and rice.  I even made the effort to make applesauce raisin bars for dessert.  Not even touched.  Last night I made them cheeseburger macaroni from scratch with Velveeta and most of ended up in the fridge.

I was crushed both times.

Last week, I went on strike and proclaimed for all to hear that I wouldn’t be making any NEW food OR cookies until all the leftovers STOPPED.  I stopped making human sized portions too and stuck to child sized fare so there really wasn’t a lot to eat anyway and it was all first come, first served.

But now, I realize that I do get really offended when they reject what I make.  Even the easy stuff.  I mean, what am I supposed to do?  I can’t even judge based on past experience what they will eat or won’t eat and I’m pretty much stuck making Happy Meal sized portions for a family of four adults for the forseeable future.

It gets even worse because I feel compelled to EAT this stuff when I prefer food I know they won’t even touch.  Like chumus or falafel or vegetables or an apple.  You get the picture.

Which brings me to my two evil confessions.  First, yes, I hide food that I want to eat.  Why?  Because they are like locusts here.  If I would put out a bag of tortilla chips that would take me a month to eat with salsa on the side as a snack….I’d never see them.  So yes, I have a stash.  And the second thing is I dole out cookies on a need to eat basis.  I realized they were wolfing down my hard work like dime a dozen Dollar Tree cookies and so now I put out about half a dozen at a time.  Is it mean?  Probably but I felt so hurt that my hard work was eaten with such little regard.  And I proved it, too, when I got them 3 dozen cookies for $0.99 from Aldis and they were gone in a day.  About the same as it took them to inhale mine.  So I don’t feel too badly about my evildoing.

It’s just all so difficult. How do you feed a pack of people like this?  You can’t tell what they like (other than chocolate chip cookies from ANYWHERE) and you never know when or what they’ll eat.

So what do I do?  Any ideas?

I bought a head of cauliflower and tomorrow I am making Buffalo Cauliflower Bites with it.  No one in this house will even go near it and I don’t even want them to.

They can have leftovers and believe me, there are a lot this week!  They’re all made with good food from top notch recipes and you can take it from me, I worked hard to make them all.  On second thought, maybe I SHOULDN’T complain OR be offended.

I’m getting quite a few nights off from cooking!