When's Dinner?

I have come to the conclusion that I am a complete failure as a stereotypical woman.  

Two days ago I wrote about my less-than-stellar cleaning habits.  (In case you missed it, you can read about that here.)  Tonight I confess that I am not much of a cook.

Let me be clear.  I do cook.  Just about every night.  It's just not something I am particularly good at, and I am certainly no June Cleaver greeting my husband at the door every night wearing pearls and high heels, holding a steaming casserole dish in one hand and a cocktail in the other.  Me in the kitchen is a sight to see, but not for any of the right reasons.

Tonight was a perfect example.  I have been trying to prepare healthier meals, avoiding processed foods as much as possible.  I have discovered that doing so requires a lot more dollars spent at the grocery store and a lot more hours spent in the kitchen.  Still, I have felt it was worth it. Pinterest has become my best friend, providing me with numerous recipes.  I have been wanting to try one recipe, Baked Ziti with Creamy Kale and Sausage, for quite some time and I decided tonight was the night.

Tonight should not have been the night.  First of all, I did not have all the ingredients, which meant I had to stop at the grocery store on the way home from work.  My husband had taken the boys to their martial arts class, so I was going to go home and start dinner before they got home at 6:45.  Unfortunately, as is often the case, I did not read the recipe very carefully ahead of time.  There were like a million steps that required a million different pots.  Okay, it was only three pots, but to me that's a lot.  I prefer to throw a bunch of ingredients into one pot, cook it, and be done.  This recipe had me doing things like slowly whisking in three cups of milk.  How do you slowly whisk in three cups of milk?  Why would I even want to?  It seems like it would make so much more sense to just dump it all in and stir.  But, whatever.

I really do try to do just what recipes say, but sometimes it just doesn't make sense.  And sometimes I just get hungry and too impatient.  Recipe says it will take 45 minutes and an hour and a half later I'm still whisking.

Finally I reached the step where I got to combine all the ingredients from the three different pots into one and mix it all up.  Which meant, of course, that I ended up flinging part of it out of the pot and all over the stove.  But wait.  I'm still not done.  The next step was to put the combined mixture into a 9x13 pan, sprinkle it with some Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese (which cost a fortune, by the way) and bake it at 350 for 15-18 minutes.  When it's done, it needs to rest for 10 minutes.  It needs to rest?  I'm the one who's been doing all the work!  

It's now 8:20 p.m. and we still haven't eaten.

All I can say is, this pasta better be good.