The Perfect Sunday Dinner

Meals this week have been pretty haphazard.  The best time for me to work in the yard and the garden is after the big kids get home from school.  This allows the little girls to wander in and out of the house without me having to follow them around keeping an eye on them.  The big kids can help with the watching.  With the days being lighter later, I lose track of time or I just want to get one more area weeded or planted, etc.  When I walk back in the house, it is way past dinnertime and everyone is hungry and cranky.  In the interest of getting dinner on the table quickly I have just thrown together whatever is fastest and easiest without a lot of care or thought.  Thursday I didn't even do that but left for the school with William for an almost forgotten meeting.  As I ran out the door I told the big kids to fend for themselves and to please feed the little girls too.  I think dinner that night mostly consisted of cereal.  

Today, I actually took the time to prepare dinner before church.  I put together a meatloaf and a large pan of scalloped potatoes.  I put them into the oven and set the delay timer so that it would all be cooked perfectly when we walked back in the door.  I would have just enough time to put together a salad and cook a vegetable while the kids set the table.  In the perfectly planned image in my mind everyone pitched in happily together.  Lauren and Steven got the plates and cups off the higher shelves while William gathered the silverware out of the drawer.  Sarah would have been getting the drinks and condiments out of the fridge and they all would have lovingly let their little sisters assist them.  My imagination had us all sitting down to a lovely Sunday dinner with smiles and our best manners.

Somehow reality always manages to crowd into our perfect fantasies.  

It started out alright.  We walked in the door from church to a wonderful aroma.  Even my pickiest eaters thought that it smelled good enough to eat.  (The fact that they had been fasting didn't hurt that perception.)  I am always happy to get compliments rather than complaints when it comes to dinner.  Rachel hurried to the kitchen because she likes to claim the right to help with the salad.  I asked the rest of the kids to get the table set so that we could eat.  So far, so good.  Then I opened the oven.  WHAT?!?

The scalloped potatoes were not the bubbling golden cheesy goodness that I expected but were a very solid dark brown almost black mass.  The meatloaf more closely resembled the very inedible hockey puck.  Black, dry and hard.  How can something smell so good and look so awful?  I looked at my options and tried to salvage it.  No luck.  I did manage to scrape some potatoes from the middle of the pan but they were mushy and had a tinge of burnt taste to them.  We would have had to be a lot hungrier than we were to make the meatloaf appetizing.  So much for the well planned meal.  I was back to square one with a very hungry household and a very poorly stocked pantry as I was too busy Saturday to go grocery shopping.

You can tell what happened next can't you?  Hungry cranky kids and a frustrated mom trying to come up with something else on the spot.  Mix in a little disappointment over not getting the wonderful meal we were expecting and tempers got the best of more than one of us.  So much for the tranquil reflective Sunday dinner of my dreams.  Two kids sent to their rooms later, dinner did get on the table and it wasn't awful but it wasn't great either.  I mean sometimes we have breakfast for dinner on purpose but not when our mouths were already watering for something else. 

William made me promise to make scalloped potatoes later this week.  I checked my schedule.  Thursday may be the day to make the perfect family dinner.  I can already see it in my mind...