Challenge: Day 1

Day 1 of my 5 day Family Dinner Challenge down...Here's how it went...

I usually do grogery shopping on Sunday and though I have the week off, today was not exception. I spent the last couple days going through some of my cooking magazines looking for new recipes to try. At first, I was feeling overly ambitious and had a brand new recipe picked out for each of the 5 nights. However, I realized that may be a little much. So, I picked out a couple new recipes and the other nights I'll stick to things a little more familiar. Each day, I'll share what I made. So I won't get into the meals for the week right now. With my recipes picked out and my grocery list made (I used a cool shopping list app on my phone!) Mariana and I hit the grocery store and found everything on our list! My hope is that I won't have to step into a grocery store again for a week, but that is probably wishful thinking.

As you recall, the first part of the challenge for myself is to cook dinner 5 nights this week. Rene and I often start out with every intention of cooking and eating at home each night. But, inevitably, we have nights when we are so tired or sick of cooking that we end up going out or ordering a pizza. Tonight, we talked about getting pizza, but then Rene came up with a graet idea...For dinner tonight, Rene helped me by grilling pork tenderloin and asparagus and I made homemade mashed potatoes. Pork tenderloin is one of our favorites, especially in the warmer months when we can cook it on the grill. For the aspargus, Rene simply drizzled it with olive oil, grilled it and then sprinkled it with salt and paper. For the potatoes, I boiled yukon gold potatoes on the stove. When they were cooked, I mashed them by hand with a little butter, milk, a couple of tablespoons of sour cream and some fresh chopped parsely. It sounds like a complicated meal, but it was relatively quick to make and was quite tasty.

Part 2 of my challenge is to require Mariana to try at least one bite of whatever we make before letting her make a different choice. This second part a was a little more challenging tonight. A few minutes before dinner was ready, she started asking for "something from the cupboard." Meaning, the cupboard where we keep snacks like crackers, cookies, raisins, cereal, etc. I simply told her, "We're having dinner a in a couple minutes. After you try 2 bites of dinner, if you don't like it you can make a different choice." She was fine with that until I actually put a plate with two small pieces of pork on it in front of her. Then the screams began. She pushed the plate of food away and screamed and cried. Keeping our cool, Rene and I pulled her chair slightly back from the table and told that when she was ready to have her 2 bites, she could come back. Well, she screamed and carried on for over 10 minutes! At one point, I thought we would still be in the kitchen waiting for her to calm down at midnight. But luckily, by some miracle, she stopped crying, calmed herself down and said she was ready to eat the pork. We slid her chair back to the table and she promptly ate both bites! And then she asked for more! She called in porky-pine, but she ate it and enjoyed it, so that's all that matters. Hopefully, after tonight she realizes that we really are making yummy food and we won't have to deal with the screaming. But, if we do, we're ready!

So, 1 meal down and 4 to go. How is your challenge going?