
{"id":6495,"date":"2009-07-23T06:17:22","date_gmt":"2009-07-23T14:17:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=6495"},"modified":"2009-07-23T06:17:22","modified_gmt":"2009-07-23T14:17:22","slug":"what%e2%80%99s-for-dinner-i%e2%80%99m-starving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2009\/07\/23\/what%e2%80%99s-for-dinner-i%e2%80%99m-starving\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s for dinner, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m starving"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Rosemary Summers<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Life has changed since \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ancient times\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (or so my kids call it) when I grew up. We rarely ate anywhere but in the family kitchen, where one of my fondest memories is arguing with my brother about not crossing into my side of the table, no matter what food was on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153my side\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that he wanted. Mom would have dinner on the table promptly at 6 p.m. when Dad walked in the door. Of course, it required help from us as kids or else you were left with washing the dishes. I always chose preparing the food, usually involving a trip to the garden to get the vegetables.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nSo today, what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the most common question faced by parents at the end of day? \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s for dinner, Mom (or Dad)? I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m starving!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\nFailing to answer within 30 seconds brings the inevitable next most-common question. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Can we go out to eat? I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m starving, and fixing dinner will take too long!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or the whine \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing to eat in the house.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>With tightening budgets, we all think twice about eating out quite so frequently. A Caesar salad with chicken at a restaurant averages $8. You can buy all the ingredients for this same dish for about $3 per person. <\/p>\n<p>We decided to regain control of our waistlines, our budget and our family time together around a table. We needed a game strategy (this was the only way to get the guys involved) to get started. There were two parts to the strategy: planning and action. <\/p>\n<p>Planning meal menus for a week and a written shopping list was the easy part. Using a shopping list cut down on the odd assortment in my cart that wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t yield a full meal. I always try to visualize the colors on the plate, making sure that I have a red, yellow or orange and green filling up two-thirds of the plate. We are indeed lucky that we have an abundance of farmers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 markets throughout the county, with excellent local produce. Summer is especially exciting for the variety of fresh, colorful fruits and vegetables.<\/p>\n<p>The action part was more difficult \u00e2\u20ac\u201c sticking to the menus and eating together without the TV on! Food Network to the rescue, filled with all kinds of tips and tricks for making food preparation easier. For example, when you bring your produce home from the market, wash it and bag it before putting it in the frig, saving a step during food preparation. Find a night of the week or weekend and do some prep work with some of the ingredients, like saut\u00c3\u00a9ing the ground white turkey with the chopped onions and keeping it in the frig until you need it during the week. <\/p>\n<p>Pre-preparing parts of the recipes helped me stick to the plan, especially when I was tired or cranky. On weekends, I try to fix at least one casserole or dish that I can freeze and use on a really busy night.<\/p>\n<p>As far as the TV goes, the off switch works fine (and so does the automatic record\/delayed viewing button).<\/p>\n<p>Not too much grumbling about this \u00e2\u20ac\u0153new experiment\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and there were requests for repeats on some of the menu items. Wonder of wonders, lunchboxes started filling with some of the healthy leftovers, leaving me with another dilemma: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What am I going to do on leftover night?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>For tips, recipes and more on preparing meals at home, check out our new Eat Smart, Move More Orange County website at <a href=\"http:\/\/co.orange.nc.us\/health\/esmmoc.asp \">co.orange.nc.us\/health\/esmmoc.asp <\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Rosemary Summers, DrPH, is director of the Orange County Health Department and a member of Orange County Healthy Carolinians. She is an avid cook.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rosemary Summers Life has changed since \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ancient times\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (or so my kids call it) when I grew up. We rarely ate anywhere but in the family kitchen, where one of my fondest memories is arguing with my brother about not crossing into my side of the table, no matter what food was on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153my side\u00e2\u20ac\u009d&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6495"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6496,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6495\/revisions\/6496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}