Dr. Atkins spins in his grave

Our evenings are usually pretty hectic. I pick Maia up from daycare at 5 (around the same time J gets home). Maia gets dinner around 5:30 and the bedtime routine starts about an hour later. You can see why J and I don't normally eat dinner until about 8. J is pretty good about asking if he can help get dinner started while I put Maia to bed. He's no Cordon Bleu chef but, unlike his brother, he does know that you need to boil water *before* adding the pasta to the pot.

So, the other night J asks if he can get something started for dinner, and I told him there was an open box of pasta in the cupboard. So, he looks at the box, which was only half full, since I had previously used half the pasta for another dinner. He complained, "this is all there is?", and, too tired to argue that half a box of pasta really was plenty for 2 people, I told him he could find more pasta in the pantry. He proceeded to cook a full box of penne--serving each of us half the box.

A few minutes later, I hear him turning on the oven. He comes back from the freezer with a frozen pizza. "What are you doing? You must be pretty hungry, huh?," I asked. "This is the bread dish," was the reply. And here I thought it was important to have a *vegetable* dish with dinner. Silly me.