Cooking for This Dummy, aka "Where's the Pepto?"

When I was in college I used to cook only for myself.  This meant that whatever I made did not look like what it was supposed to; I didn't care as long as it tasted okay.  Luckily I met, fell in love, and married a woman who has excellent cooking skills.  Over the years I have tried to learn how to do some basic things so that I can understand what she does, but frankly I still need to read the box of things while she can just pull it from memory.  Now that I am tasked with the cooking, I find myself trying to remember how things are done, double-checking every recipe, and calling my wife to make sure i'm doing things right.  I try to stick to her normal formula of a main dish, vegetable, preferred food, and a fruit of some kind.

Right now the Smurfs are happily eating a dinner of mac & cheese, tater tots, hot dogs (Smurf 2 only), apple sauce and mixed fruit cup, and shredded cheese (they like cheese!).  No one wanted the turkey burgers that I had to call my wife about twice to be reassured that I wasn't going to kill them with it.  Did it matter that I ate one?  Nah, I can tolerate half-cooked food because that's what I used to make.  Both seemed to like everything else because their plates are almost empty.  However, I think my son may be taking after me because he just poured the juice from his fruit cup into his milk and drank it.  Although I think that's something to try, my wife surely would have had a fit.  Plus he likes to mix his food to try out a variety of tastes.  He once mixed a bite of turkey burger, applesauce, and milk; he took several more bites after I told him it was okay as long as he wanted to eat it.

Fortunately this was not my first successful daddy-only meal.  The first real meal I cooked in the past few weeks was pancakes.  I was able to get them very close to the way my wife makes them, and the kids ate them all.  Of course Smurf 1 complained of a stomach ache a little bit later, which had me worried that he was sick from undercooked batter or something (he had to go to the bathroom).  I did do a crockpot dinner the second night alone with them of turkey chops, cream of mushroom, peas, corn, rice, and fruit.  They actually ate it without complaints and I was proud to have done it.  I will try meatloaf at some point, but I've got to make sure I have a backup meal in case it doesn't turn out well.

Misspoken Word of the Day
Violent.  "Look at the pretty rainbow! I see orange, green, violent, yellow, red, and blue!"

"Are They Twins?" Count of the Day
I've had 2 of them today, and 4 of "they're so cute!".  The short response still works.