Meh...

So, here's the deal with our darling baby...I mean, toddler, Mimi.  She is an early to bed person.  We hit the kid jackpot and have a child who "usually" sleeps 12 hours a night and has for a very long time.  Although, this winter cold/stomach flu nasty sickness season and recent teething have put a cramp in that dream.  Anyway, since she usually is in bed by 7pm on average, she has dinner around 5:00pm each night.  So the three days that I travel the 30 minutes to Addison for work, I usually don't get home until around 6:00pm or a little earlier...leaving no time to cook a "family" meal. 

I think this is where my cooking funk began.  See, we got into the habit of feeding Mia (whatever we had in the fridge, leftovers, etc.) and then after she went to bed around 7 or 7:30pm, JC and I would sit down together and eat.  Sometimes I could cook, but usually the meal consisted of frozen pizza, lunch meat sandwiches or a Lean Cuisine. I'd worked all day, been up since 6am and usually didn't feel like cooking.  While those food choices are not bad on occasion, I'd say for a good 2 months straight my husband ate ham sandwiches and salt and vinegar chips for lunch AND dinner.  While I always handed him a vitamin at night to make up for his nutritional deficiencies in the day, it hardly makes up for a balanced and well cooked meal.  Besides, I wanted to start eating together at the table as a family every night.  I did that as a kid and think it's a very good habit to get into.

So, here was the plan.  On Mondays (I go into my office T-Th each week), I would create three meals to freeze, so JC could easily pop them into the oven at 5:00pm and we could all sit down together for a wonderful meal (with pizzaz if possible) when I walked in the door around 6pm. Last night was our first run at that...

I give you Gourmet Tuna Noodle Casserole.  (picture taken with a blackberry b/c I could find our SD card).

So, it's not very pretty and I couldn't eat more than a few bites of it when I got home (I blame some leftover stomach virus nauseau), but JC liked it. No, he loved it.  And Mimi had three helpings. 

I used white albacore tuna, added brocolli and peas, parmesan cheese and some other things.  It's actually a recipe from...you guessed it, Ellie Krieger's book So Easy.  It was okay, but...I think I can do better.  Good news is that Mia did not have leftovers from the night before and JC didn't eat a ham sandwich.  It's a start.