Revisiting dinner plans

I thought I would pop in and revisit our current plan of having the four teens in our house take over fixing dinner one night a week. To recap our plan, each child has an assigned night to cook. They choose what they want to make when I'm doing the weekly grocery list, then I buy the ingredients. After that, they're in charge, asking if they need help or clarification. I will weigh in on their choice during the planning stage. For instance, if we already have one meal for the week with a ground beef base, I will steer the recipe planning to something with different ingredients. 

I am happy to report that everything is going swimmingly. There has been no issue with a child deciding not to cook. On the contrary, everyone has been very responsible and checking to know what time they should start preparations. I'm also happy to report that everyone's cooking skills are pretty darn good and all the meals have been tasty. 

It's also been interesting to see what they choose to cook. Instead of choosing based on amount of preparation, they have pretty much all chosen their personally favorite meals, even if I warn them that a certain meal takes a lot of time and effort to make. Done of the dinners that have been chosen include sausage risotto, beef and cabbage turnovers, and orange chicken. Tomorrow K. is planning on making zucchinis enchiladas. 

This past week there actually wasn't much choice in what each child chose. I never found the time to get to the store, so instead of choosing and me buying the ingredients, we looked to see what ingredients were still in existence and base the meal on that. Someone did a quick stop at Aldi to pick up a few vital ingredients, but for the most part, we managed to survive the week with what was on hand. Thank goodness for a well-stacked pantry. Today's grocery trip was a little frightening in its amount, though. 

Lastly, it seems as though we have a developing dinner tradition. The other night, somehow the conversation turned towards Grieg's composition, In the Hall of the Mountain King, so I played a recording so everyone could hear what we were talking about. Someone then suggested that J. should read a sonnet by Shakespeare to compliment the classical music, so he did. Then it was suggested we should do this every night, a suggestion I turn completely forgot about. Today in the middle of dinner, L. asked what we would be listening to, so I played Eine Kleine Nachtmusik by Mozart followed by J. reading another sonnet.