American Dinners

I read somewhere that the average American family has about 10 to 12 dinners that it keeps in steady rotation. Of course there are holidays and special occasions where people cook something outside of the norm. And everyone tries new recipes every once in a while. But generally speaking, most families serve the same 10 to 12 dishes over and over again.

In my house we tend to make lots of variations on the same sorts of meals. For example, we might have spaghetti with tomato sauce and fake meatballs one week, but the next week we'll have penne with spinach, navy beans, and alfredo sauce. They're both just a pasta dish-- are they two unique meals? I don't know. Is pizza still just pizza if you put different toppings on it?

I think that our basic meals are 1) pizza, 2)burgers/hot dogs with some kind of french fries and a salad, 3) pasta with sauce and a protein, 4) a fake meat and two or three vegetable side dishes, 5) potpies, 6) Indian food with rice, 7) noodles with peanut or ginger sesame sauce, vegetables, and fake chicken, 8) burritos/tacos/quesadillas, 9) hearty vegetable soup (or chili) with dinner rolls, 10) perogies with fake sausage and lima beans, 11) onion, bell pepper, stewed tomatoes, black beans, garlic, and corn served over rice...

I think that's about it. Luckily, the kids are all pretty good eaters. Elise is going though a phase right now where she barely eats anything and she spits out half of anything that goes into her mouth. It's super annoying. But I'm sure she'll get over it soon. Just in time for one of the other kids to start THEIR picky eating phase. Oh well. No one's going to starve. (Except for the other night when I served everyone sushi and egg rolls and edamame-- no one ate much of that. So they all got cereal after a while. Ugh. Maybe next time.)