Nightly Supper

From The Atlantic:

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2025/01/weeknight-dinner-never-easy/681210/

The writer, a young career woman, lamented disruptions that creating a suitable supper for her family every evening imposes. It likely does, but prioritizing a set time for everyone to assemble around a table at has benefits that are hard to recapture.  I'm an empty nester, the one who came home from work later than everyone else.  Sometimes supper awaited me, other times the onus of creating, or otherwise acquiring something for us to all eat together fell to me.  Later, as cable made Food TV readily available, I took a liking to the kitchen.  In late career, I allocated an annual bonus to remodeling it, mostly in a cosmetic way.  Now supper creation has become my challenge, one that I seem to meet most nights with an element of accomplishment.

The author's ambivalence is hardly unique to her generation.  In my childhood, we did not have the means to eat out and ordering online would take decades to become available to everyone.  Instead, fortunes were made by suppliers of TV dinners.  Banquet, Swanson, Stouffer's.  My mother, who did not work outside the home, popped them in the oven.  As a student, I went to a cafeteria most evenings.  Then as a wage earner with a kitchen and a family that progressed through its stages, supper came mostly from our stove.  We never ate Fast Food for supper, but would go out on occasion for a pizza.  Still, my family like her family, regarded supper each evening as our primary meal, both for sustenance and interpersonal cohesion.

Like the author, we have reached the modern age.  Preparing supper has never been easier.  Unlike the author, I have evolved a repertoire and a planning mechanism, which she has not developed.  The anchors have become the weekly Shop-Rite ad and my freezer.  Shabbos dinner creates a fixed point.  It has limited repertoire.  Chicken parts, beef cubes, occasionally ground beef.  Friday night is usually the only time of the week in which I will prepare meat.  Chicken is mostly seared and baked, enough for two meals.  Ground beef becomes a meat loaf, two meals.  Beef cubes become cholent, two meals this week and a portion frozen for a subsequent shabbos.  Thus I have 2/7 suppers done.  The template also includes a starch and a vegetable.  Near East Couscous or rice goes on sale, boil water, add contents of box, and sit on stove a while longer.  Or bake a white or sweet potato in the oven.  Boil frozen vegetable or make a cucumber/tomato salad.  

In my freezer I have pierogies, ravioli, fish that had been frozen at sea, garden burgers, a couple packages of plant based meat in various forms.  Fish is nature's fast food.  Thaw the night before.  Tuna steaks need only seasoning and a few minutes in a hot skillet.  Ravioli is boiled.  Perogies have differnt options for cooking.  My refrigerator has swiss and American cheese.  Two pieces of bread and grill on the stovetop.  My refrigerator has eggs and milk.  Quiche takes minutes to assemble, providing meals for two nights.  Sometimes I put extra effort to plan ahead.  Macaroni and cheese in the style of Horn & Hardart has been recaptured as a recipe.  Assembly is tedious, requiring a béchamel and precooked noodles.  The concoction gets baked in a lasagna pan.  Two meals this week.  Freeze two other quarters for single meals each of the next two weeks.  Same for spinach lasagna, recipe from the first cookbook that the upper tier Artscroll publishers ever authorized.  The Shop-Rite ad is useful.  When the ingredients go on sale, particularly the perishable kosher cheeses, that becomes my kitchen project.

And not to forget my pantry.  Spaghetti is quite versatile.  One third of a box, boil, strain.  In olive oil, sauté garlic that I have chopped.  Sauté sliced onions, mushrooms if on sale, some parsely from my indoor pot.  Mix in a bowl.  Often enough for two meals.  In the pantry I keep canned salmon.  Modern small choppers make this easy.  Onion, maybe celery into the chopper.  Add salmon and spin once or twice. Add egg, spin again.  Into bowl.  Bread crumbs or matzoh meal for consistency, spices chosen at whim.  Pan fry as sandwich sized patties.  Enough for two meals.

None of this seems physically taxing or mentally difficult to plan.  Restaurant once a month or so, pizza once a month or so.  Take-out never, fast food never.  We eat pretty well most evenings.

And for guests, shabbos, Seder, Thanksgiving, Rosh Hashanah,  I do a little more. Same for special events wife's birthday, anniversary, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day.  Expanded menu.  Planning a week or two in advance. Coordinating various courses with stove top and oven requirements.  It is those skills utilized for weekday suppers that enable executing the more elegant preparations.