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<\/p>\nI’m late.\u00a0 Again.\u00a0 In more ways than you know.\u00a0 Ha!\u00a0 Ok, enough about my meno.\u00a0 When I’m not sweating, I’m freezing.\u00a0 I’m over it.\u00a0 I’m over so many things.\u00a0 Like dishes.\u00a0 I think every single parent knows the perils of cooking at home when it comes to dishes.\u00a0 It’s like, you work all day at some thankless crappy job to come home and do more thankless jobs….cooking and cleaning.<\/p>\n
Then your kid\/s have the nerve to complain about dinner.\u00a0 Seriously?\u00a0 Eat the food Tina!\u00a0 Lucky for me, I was a bit late to the Let’s Have A Kid game show.\u00a0 Shocking, I know.\u00a0 I had the opportunity to watch my friends have kids and then watch my friends hilariously navigate the picky eater obstacle course.\u00a0 Which isn’t funny when you’re in it.<\/p>\n
I decided to steer my kid away from indulging in pickiness about food.\u00a0 It saved my sanity many, many times.\u00a0 And I managed to eliminate a host of food issues from our lives that I saw other parents struggle with daily.\u00a0 I made the decision early on to make my life as a single parent as easy possible.\u00a0 And growing up, I ate what was put in front of me.\u00a0 Because there was nothing else.\u00a0 And I was hungry.\u00a0 My kid never knew what it was to be hungry.\u00a0 I made sure of that.<\/p>\n
How’d I do it?\u00a0 I simply did not allow my child to not eat what I cooked.\u00a0 Period.\u00a0 There were no other options except one.\u00a0 Canned spinach.\u00a0 Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.\u00a0 Don’t like what I made?\u00a0 Eat canned spinach.\u00a0 Worked like a charm.\u00a0 My kid tried to play chicken (pun intended) with me one time.\u00a0 Just once!\u00a0 Hunger took over and he ate the meal I cooked…two days later.\u00a0 I won’t not throw away perfectly good food.\u00a0 And that was the end of that.<\/p>\n
Where was I?\u00a0 Oh right….dishes and single parenting.\u00a0 Sigh.\u00a0 Today, I whip out paper plates when I’m sick of washing dishes.\u00a0 As a single mom, five bucks for paper plates was not a thing.\u00a0 I washed everything.\u00a0 I know, I know…make the kids wash ’em!\u00a0 Right.\u00a0 Maybe if you can afford to replace dishes once a week or like eating off of greasy plates maybe.\u00a0 Or if you love nagging at the end of very long work days.\u00a0 Not me.\u00a0 It was just easier to do them myself.\u00a0 Still is, to be honest.\u00a0 Plus, homework.\u00a0 Blah.<\/p>\n
Focus!\u00a0 I became the master of the one skillet, one pot, one sheet pan\/casserole type dinners.\u00a0 Gramma used to make this kielbasa potato thing I loved, probably because it was soaked in fat.\u00a0 It rendered out of the smoked sausage and soaked into the potatoes.\u00a0 It was fantastic and one of my favorite ways to eat potatoes.<\/p>\n
I’ve made this dish my whole life and it has evolved with me over the course of decades as my life changed.\u00a0 It started the way she made it, with added oil in a skillet.\u00a0 I stopped adding oil.\u00a0 For awhile, I was adding garlic and sometimes I added onions.\u00a0 Then I started baking it so I could stop standing at the stove monitoring the skillet.\u00a0 Hubs and I have thrown it onto the griddle out in the garden.\u00a0 He loved this stupidly simple dish the second I introduced it to him.\u00a0 Gramma would have loved him.<\/p>\n
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Most recently, Elizabeth (as you all know) wrapped it in bacon and added cabbage to the mix.\u00a0 I discovered that I love cabbage with it!\u00a0 Gramma would have loved her, too.\u00a0 They could have been sewing buddies.\u00a0 I riffed off Elizabeth and made it as a sheet pan dinner last night complete with the cabbage.\u00a0 It was perfect!\u00a0 The whole thing took fifteen minutes to put together and it cooked for about half an hour~ish.\u00a0 I actually wished I’d had more cabbage.<\/p>\n
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The ingredients list is short.\u00a0 I’m cheap, so I wait until the sausage goes on sale.\u00a0 Hey, I save a buck!\u00a0 Cabbage, potatoes, and peppers are also inexpensive.\u00a0 Sometimes the little picnic sweet peppers are cheaper than the large bell peppers, so I use those.\u00a0 One day, I’d like to try it with jalapenos or something.\u00a0 One sausage, one bell pepper, and three or four potatoes easily feeds two people. If you fry it in the skillet, use russets.\u00a0 If you bake it, use red potatoes.\u00a0 I’d like to try it with hashbrowns another time.<\/p>\n
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Anyway, the whole thing costs under ten bucks and sometimes half of that.\u00a0 You can’t beat it as a single parent.\u00a0 If you do it sheet pan style you’ll have less dishes.\u00a0 A lot less.\u00a0 That works for me!\u00a0 Much love, from a woman who survived single parenthood mostly intact.\u00a0 I was lucky, though.\u00a0 I came from a very long line of single mothers.\u00a0 Some of us did great!\u00a0 Others of us….not so much.\u00a0 I gave it my all.\u00a0 And that was all I could do.\u00a0 In between bites of gramma’s kielbasa, of course.<\/p>\n
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