Today is the 5^th Mon­day of the month. 

These are the odd weeks.  The shift­ing week.  Start­ing with one month and end­ing with anoth­er, you nev­er know quite which month you are sup­posed to act in.  Which month’s goals do you focus on?  Which month’s bills do you pay? This is the week that I share a struggle. 

I feel as though I am not alone with this par­tic­u­lar strug­gle.  Either you love to cook, but nev­er have enough time to plan and pre­pare a deli­cious meal for your fam­i­ly the way that you think you should, or you hate cooking. 

When my boys were young a very dear friend of mine gift­ed me with this tiny paper­back book titled, “The I Hate to Cook Cook­book”.  It was about the size of a small dime nov­el, and con­tained selec­tions of the eas­i­est recipes and the author’s com­men­tary on the loath­some chore of cook­ing.  The book is rid­dled with great recipes such as “stay a bed stew” and the like.  I found it sim­ply delight­ful to read and I could com­plete­ly relate with the author’s feel­ings towards the art of cooking. 

I am no Julia Childs and I nev­er wish to be. 

That is my con­fes­sion this month.  I have six very hun­gry guys in my house and yet, I hate cook­ing for them. 

I don’t even know how I sur­vived the ear­ly years with tod­dlers.  It is very much like being in the trench­es.  Now that my men are old­er, they help plan and cook the meals each week. This is how I have over­come this strug­gle, but I assure you, it was quite by accident. 

I was so des­per­ate for help in the kitchen, that my guys have been my right hand men since they could sit up. Every moth­er at some point mas­ters the art of cook­ing one hand­ed with a kid on her hip. Only, I put my kid to work.  Every meal was cre­at­ed out of des­per­a­tion with a tod­dler on the counter. 

Clear­ly God had my back when it came to cook­ing.  Not only haven’t I poi­soned any­one, but all five of my boys can cook. So if you find your­self hat­ing to cook or lov­ing it but with­out the time to com­plete it per­fect­ly.  I urge you to set aside your dreams of a per­fect­ly clean kitchen or per­fect din­ner and involve your young chil­dren in the kitchen.  Because a teenag­er who can hold his own in the kitchen is a won­der to behold.