Left Overs

I read an article on Tammy's Recipes about how she had used some left over chicken and potato to help her make a quick, easy meal for company the next day. Now don't get me wrong, I love her site; it's been a real help to me. She does a wonderful job in everything from teaching frugality to pulling recipes together on the fly.

I also understand that her family and mine are rather different in their dynamics. She has two young children and a husband to feed. I have three young men, a husband and a six year old to feed, all good eaters. And there in lies my dilemma. Granted, my husband and I have some excess weight, (alright more than our fair share of excess weight, but we are working on it.) But the boys and all well within a healthy weight range; as a matter of fact three are down right skinny. They are young and active though so they use all the calories they eat.

For this reason I never, well hardly ever have left overs. If I so end up with left overs they are gone before bed time. And don't tell me to double up because if I make twice as much, they eat twice as much. I don't know where the food goes, but it doesn't hang around on their body. They just burn it up. My refrigerator is open more than it is closed. Every meal for me is a start over. I could never cook a chicken and have it be enough. I need at least two. We can go through 10 pounds of leg quarters in a meal and when they are gone you can still hear the guys in the kitchen looking for more.

I rejoice that Tammy can make that system work. I wish sometimes that I could. On the other hand for that to work for me would mean that I would have to loose two to three kids. That day is fast approaching as the oldest grow up and move out. Come the fall semester I will loose my oldest to OSU. My other son has decided to go to the U of A after he finishes at the community college, so he will be around for another four years. Still four years is but a blink of the eye. My next son has plans to do two years at NWACC and then join the Marines. Soon I will be left with only my youngest.

In a way I don't look forward to those days. I know it is what I planned and worked for, but when my children are gone they will be gone. The three oldest have told me that there is nothing here for them, and given their chosen occupations, they are probably right. Then will come the quiet time. Things around here have been so loud and so active for so long I have no idea any more how to live that way. I have spent a lot of years feeling like a movie star with my own little entourage following me where ever I go. I don't look forward to when they are gone.

I know it is a different stage of my life. A time when my husband can spend time just with each other again. We had such a short period of that, just a year. I do love the rare moments when it is just the two of us. He wants to travel. I would like to do that. I hope that the Lord alows us those years. Still I will miss my children. And I'm not sure I can ever learn to cook for just two or three.

I know "a double minded man is unstable in all his ways." The Lord and I need to work on this one.