Summer Cooking with the Boys

My first summer with the boys I cooked all my favorite summer dishes. Lots of salads and cool summer meals. They hated most of them. So the next summer, thanks to a great idea from my friend Crystal, we started the Thumbs Up cookbook. Each boy was assigned a night to cook. We selected a number of categories for our cookbook and they each had to find a recipe to try for each category. After tasting dinner we had a family vote. Four out of six thumbs up and the recipe went in the cookbook. At the end of the summer the boy with the most recipes in the book won a prize. And there were prized for each category. This was amazing! It solved all the complaints. We got to try new things. Some of the recipes I had even made for them before, but since it was their idea, they actually liked them this time. The following summer the boys talked me into assigning them dishes on the same night they cooked. That was a bad idea. They wouldn’t cook anything that used more than one dish. They were over the competition aspect and we ended up eating the same thing every week.

I needed a new approach for this summer. So I went through my cookbooks and planned the entire summer. I picked meals most of them like (lots of variations of tacos). Nothing gets repeated except their 3 favorites: Ribs, hotwings and hamburgers. The boys still help 4 nights of the cooking. Todd BBQ’s on Fridays. Saturday is left overs or date night and I cook on Sundays. One night during the week I added a new recipe to try. Jacob really wanted to try things from different countries so we still get to experiment a bit. I told them if they didn’t want to cook what I had on the menu they could find a new recipe to try as long as they let me know before I do the shopping. So far it’s working great. I am the soux chef for the boys on their cooking night. I do lots of the chopping, prep and clean up as we go so they enjoy the cooking experience. And I have fun with them.

This week we have had Pizza Joes (sloppy joes with pizza sauce), tried a new Vietnamese shrimp salad and Skillet Tacos. Tonight Christian gets to make his favorite Alfredo (he’s quite good at it-from scratch even) and tomorrow Todd smokes ribs. I love it. I don’t have to think about what to eat and the boys seem to do better when I post the menu for the week. I think I freaked them out the first summer and they are always worried about what I am going to feed them.