Every time my mom’s birthday passes, I find myself scribbling in the same thing on my homemade birthday card: “Thank you so much for everything you do.” Of course I mean it, but I’ve never understood it — until this past week.
It was finally time to give my mom a break from slaving away in the kitchen cooking her famous chicken parm — so I decided to attempt to make dinner Monday through Thursday to see how much my mom takes on every day to feed a family of four — and hopefully not poison my family.
Preparing meals for the week to feed a family is its own job — add on a paying job, household chores, raising kids and somehow our parents still don’t explode. It’s time to start appreciating.
My mom works as a part-time teacher from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday and still manages to come home and have dinner on the table before 8 p.m.. And on the days she doesn’t work, she’s doing laundry, picking up the house and going to Hen House.
Sunday afternoon I sat at my kitchen table with a piece of paper and pen trying to find a meal for every night. I flipped through cookbooks, checked my Pinterest “food board” and tried to think back to some of my mom’s past dishes.
What I thought would take me 15 minutes, took an hour. I was constantly thinking, “no, we had that recently,” “no, Andrew won’t eat that,” “no, that takes too long.” And when I finally finished, I still had to go to the grocery store.
When my brother complains that we are having a side of vegetables again, I now give my mom all the sympathy she deserves in planning out our meals.
Everytime I was at the grocery store I found myself calling her immediately asking how to choose the juiciest pineapple or get the right cut of meat at the deli — something I never really thought about while walking alongside her in the store.
My first night cooking, I was fortunate that my mom was home. I made chicken avocado ranch wraps and even though I practically gave her a heart attack because I didn’t know you had to wash chicken before cooking it, she helped me through my first mental breakdown — wrapping chicken in tortillas.
The second night was breakfast for dinner, which meant use anything you have in your fridge to make a meal. Surprisingly, I felt pressure I never thought I’d feel when cooking for my family — what if they didn’t like it or I set off the fire alarm. I wonder if that’s something my mom has gotten used to?
By Wednesday, I had made a new friend — Jason the butcher. It was my third time at Hen House that week and I was so over it. The minute I got home and unpacked my ingredients, I fell to the floor — literally, my mom took a picture — because I realized I used the last of the pepper jack cheese last night in my egg burritos and needed more for this meal.
Helloooo Jason.
My only way of coping with the loss of gas to Hen House was to throw a temper tantrum on the floor, my mom would quietly get into her car and drive up to the Corinth Hen House to buy the missing ingredient for our dinner.
Thursday night was my big finale. Grilled chicken and pineapple salad — a family favorite. This recipe is super simple because you just have to cut up a ton of ingredients, but there’s a challenge: grilling. While my dad is easily a grill master — considering he has multiple grilling devices — my mom has grilled whenever he isn’t home.
I’m proud to say I grilled well. There were golden grill marks on the chicken and I didn’t catch anything on fire. But, I still had my mom’s help. She still helped me spray down whatever you call the surface of a grill, I don’t know a griddle? So I didn’t burn myself when the flames shot up.
Sure, I roll my eyes when my mom asks me for the third time what I want to eat for dinner this week. Yes, I’m guilty of complaining that dinner isn’t ready when I can hear my stomach grumbling. I’ve never quite understood all of the stress that goes into preparing meals, but my mom takes stress and handles it in the calmest, most graceful way.
I’m really glad that I will go into college knowing the importance of washing chicken. It’s comforting to know that no matter where I go, she is a phone call away to answer my dumb questions about wanting to find the juciest pineapple or sending a picture to see if my chicken is too pink.
So with that, I feel that I can truly tell her, “Thank you so much for everything you do.
