Dinner in an hour

This is not a foodie blog and I do not have pictures to go with what I am about to post, but I figured it might be helpful to some mom out there.

We went to a lake to swim with some homeschool friends, so I did not get started on dinner till 4. I had it on the table at 5 (fine, 5:05 for transparency's sake). No, it was not take-out. No, it was not chicken nuggets or frozen pizza. It was a solid dinner: soup, main, starch, veggie. No, it was not a miracle.

This morning I pulled a bag of chicken cutlets from the freezer. Since I buy them at Costco, I usually divide the large family pack into two bags before freezing. This bag had breasts sliced in half, so it defrosted quickly.

At 4 I turned the oven up to 400, rinsed the breasts and put them in the pan. I sprinkled them with sesame oil, soy sauce, onion flakes, garlic powder, ginger and a drizzle of honey. Then I mixed them in the pan so the breasts were well-coated, covered them with foil and stuck them in the oven. Next, I rinsed one cup of rice in another pan, added 1 3/4 cups of water, a drizzle of olive oil, covered that pan, and stuck it in the oven with the chicken.

I usually make this quick zucchini soup. two onions, chopped, 4-6 zucchini, chopped into chunks, vegetable broth to cover, 1/4 cup of rice, bring to a boil, add seasoning, simmer for 20 minutes, puree with immersion blender straight in the pot, voila! Except that I like to doctor it up: add quinoa instead of rice, or throw in extra veggies. Today, as I was reaching for a bag of quinoa, I found a package of edamame noodles from Costco. They were brittle, they were green, and they had zero appeal of the noodles, so they were sitting in the pantry. An evil genius idea of a substitution: why don't I crumble them in instead of quinoa, then puree and nobody will know? Look at all the extra protein! Look at me salvaging what I'm sure were expensive noodles, languishing here! Hehe! So in they went. I made a mental note to remove any traces of what I did before the kids who will come to set the table express their opinion on my substitution without a taste test.

While the soup was simmering, I pulled out a bag of string beans and another pan. I trimmed the ends, tossed them with a bit of olive oil, spread them in a pan and sprinkled with salt. Then they went in the oven together with the chicken and rice.

I checked my phone. I stretched. This dinner was practically cooking itself. I uncovered the chicken so it could get dry in its sauce. I threw a bunch of parsley from my garden into the soup (it's about the only thing that grew in the garden, but it sounds very foodie of me now: freshly snipped parsley! In reality, I was too lazy to go and get scissors, so I twisted and yanked). I pureed the soup while adding cumin and curry and called the kids to set the table.

They fought. Just because I had dinner under control did not mean that they turn into angels. One child provoked another. By the time, I took a bathroom break, a steady wail in stereo leaked under the door. One child touched another. One child lost dessert.

It was dinnertime. Dinner was served.

They ate the soup with the green edamame noodles incorporated into it. Hint: soup croutons make all soup taste better. Some asked for seconds. They discussed how much fun they had playing with their friends, making elaborate sand dams.

Save this post for the next time dinner prep gets in the way of getting together with some friends and spending the day at the beach.