There is one aspect in this whole family way part that I have been continually failing at for the past few months – preparing meals, especially dinners.
When I wasn’t pregnant, meals were not a problem. Two day old pizza was not a problem. So were canned goods or any other takeout.
Then morning sickness set in. Until now, my body still rejects anything that is not good for me – oil, MSG, junk, soft drinks, sweets, and so on. For the past few months, the perennial question has been – what are we having for dinner?
At first, I looked up to Martha for answers. I checked the site, watched the show, looked up the magazines. But most of the ingredients could not be found here (or maybe I was just too stupid to know what they are in the supermarket). It will also require tools we do not have yet. Even her 20 minute, easy dinners were just too tiring to do at the end of a long day. I needed something simpler.
I turned to the Martha nemesis, Rachel Ray. 
MSN money said that Martha’s stocks are going down. And the new domestic queen is Rachel Ray. She is hipper and her approach to cooking suits working moms best. Less frills, simple, and good, I was sold. So I went around looking up Rachel Ray. I found her recipe book in Powerbooks – Simple Dinners with Rachel Ray. A bit pricey for a recipe book but I figured if this will solve my dinner problems, then why not? Alas, I browsed the menu and again it is full of ingredients that I do not know how they look like nor where to get them. I do not know nor eat most of the food as well. Bummer.
So I am reduced to drawing up my dinner plan from scratch. What am I hoping to design? A dinner plan that I can prepare on weekends and I will just heat during the weekday. Just get me through Saturday to Wednesday, takeouts for Thursday and Friday.
But then again, if I can just carefully plan out my takeouts for the week, I think it is still more cost-efficient.
Darn, me lazy mommy.
