Soooo, it’s been a few years. My adventurous toddler is now a picky 9-year-old. I’m a full-time professor, still with gluten issues, and my husband also works full time. This means our eating habits have slid down a steep slope of takeout and cereal for dinner over the past several years. About a year ago we decided to try one of those boxed meal plan thingies. It pretty much saved our lives, marriage, and diets. I’m going to be posting some reviews of the ones we have tried so far at some point in the nearish future. Suffice it to say, cooking creatively from scratch is just not happening in our busy household anymore, so we are creatively using other options to keep it fresh, tasty, and at least somewhat healthy. There are still too many cereal nights and my child lives mainly on hamburgers, but oh well.

Another thing I want to focus on is the mixed needs of my family. I have been severely gluten intolerant for five years. My kid likes ALL THE BREADS. My husband is flexible, but not so much into the planning and shopping and cooking. So finding things that work for all of us is well nigh impossible. My goal is to teach my kid to cook well enough that she can feed herself – but so far not so much. Meal boxes have been great for me and the husband; we cook together now (a first!) and usually enjoy the process and the food. I’m the more experienced cook so I kind of handle the management and prep and he usually handles the proteins. It turns out we work well together in the kitchen. The kid – not so much. Picky doesn’t even begin to cover it, and I refuse to force her to eat stuff as that never did nobody any damn good.

Travel with a picky kid when you are also gluten intolerant is a giant pain in the ass. I’ll have words about that too.

So that’s where we are at these days. Hopefully, I’ll put some reviews up soon, possibly including local restaurants, grocery stores, and resources.