Confessions of a mom that can't cook

I like to say that Jonathan stunted my cooking growth and development. We started out as high schoolers on pretty equal footing... meaning we could both make a frozen pizza. As Jonathan's interest in cooking grew and my interest in eating his cooking grew... it became much less worthwhile for me to expand my culinary skills. Jonathan's first high school job (and also my first high school job) was as a server at the local "Mexican Steakhouse." Jonathan eventually became a prep cook there and that led to a series of restaurant cooking gigs through high school and college. Jonathan's first full time job after college was working as a chef for "The Atlas," which is a well respected four star restaurant in Iowa City. Everything from scratch. Mostly organic and pricey enough we couldn't otherwise afford to eat there.

Jonathan loves to cook. For him, it is a way to serve and love his family. I love to eat. It is a beautiful system. However, sometimes schedules collide and the duty of providing nourishment for our family falls upon me. I can bake and sometimes those skills come to some use in preparing an evening meal. I can make a fabulous homemade pizza with the dough from scratch. However, as the semester winds down and I am seeing less and less of my husband I'm realizing that I really need to expand my culinary offerings. Saturday night I made chicken salad sandwiches (inspired by a phone conversation with my sister.) I looked at a few recipes, but then made up my own. They were decent enough that Jonathan said he would eat them again even though they included grapes. We'll call that a win. Double points to me for using the grapes before they got old. Sunday night I made spaghetti (thankfully, I can manage that.) Tonight the plan is to do breakfast for supper. I don't think we've ever done that since we were married, but I am a master of the from-scratch pancake and Gabriella will be thrilled. If I make whole wheat pancakes and add some fruit/eggs can I call it a healthy meal? Probably not if I include bacon.

Perhaps you can help me think of some simple, reasonably nutritious (can't be worse than pancakes, right?) meals. Oh yeah, they also need to be virtually foolproof and dairy free.

Here are Natalie's rules of cooking:

1. Find a way to distract the children. Keep Juliana from pushing the step stool up to the sink so she can play in it. Remember not to put gross stuff (ie: plate used to thaw chicken) in the sink where Juliana can get to it no matter where I seem to hide the darn stool.
2. Consider hiding all the chairs in addition to the stool.
3. Don't allow Jonathan see me using knives or other dangerous kitchen equipment. There is a high likelihood he will run across the room and take over in an attempt to save my imperiled appendages.
4. Don't try to watch more than one thing at once.
5. Find recipes that can be thrown together and stuck in the oven.
6. Use timers.
7. When all else fails, bake fresh bread to take attention away from the rest of the meal. Everyone loves bread, right?