Accomplished!

It's my own fault, really. I knew I had signed up to have the missionaries from our church over for dinner on an upcoming Wednesday. The trouble was, I didn't have my calendar with me at the time, so I didn't make note of the date. Or maybe I did on another piece of paper, but forgot where I put that piece of paper. At any rate, when this past Sunday came along, I wasn't sure if it was THIS coming Wednesday, or the following Wednesday, that I had signed up to have them come. "Oh well," thought I confidently, "When they pass the calendar around again today, I'll just look and see which day it is."

Hmmm, well the lady who is in charge of circulating the dinner calendar wasn't at church on Sunday. "Oh well," thought I confidently, "They always call the night before to confirm, and to let us know what time to pick them up." When Tuesday came and went, and Wednesday morning too (they sometimes call Wednesday mornings) with no phone calls, I figured it must have been NEXT Wednesday that I signed up to have them. Except I wondered why I would agree to have them on the same day that I had agreed to teach a class at my local genealogy society. I went about my day, dropping in at the genealogy society and sitting in on the beginning genealogy class (I'm teaching that on December 4th), etc. At 4:15 in the afternoon, the phone rang, and it was Elder W. "I'm sorry I didn't call sooner, but we have you on our calendar for dinner tonight, is that still okay?" Ummmmm, well, I had taken 3 chicken breasts out of the freezer to make for dh & ds & I, which I couldn't stretch easily without a whole different direction. After agreeing to pick them up a little later than we usually do, I set about to make dinner.

First, I popped the chicken into a pot of water to cook, checked the cupboard for some Stovetop stuffing mix, located a brownie mix in the cupboard (but decided against them), located a box of butterscotch instant pudding in the cupboard (our last box of pudding mix--add that to my grocery list), and remembered I had a bag of salad greens in the fridge, and a tub of frozen cookie dough we had bought from our grandson's last spring for their school's fundraiser. I put the cookie dough on the stove, made up some muffin dough and popped them into the oven. It didn't take too long to cook the chicken, and I even found the recipe I hadn't made in a long while (my kids didn't like stuffing so this was not on their list of favorites), whipped that up and had it in the oven by 5:15 when dh left to pick up these young men.

To make a long story short, dinner was ready when he returned with them about half an hour later. I was feeling so accomplished, especially since my house was clean so I didn't have to do that in addition to making dinner.

The next day I related this story to my #2dd and sis-in-law as we were scrapbooking (dd had her own dinner dilemna the day before too--she invited the neighbor boy to eat with them and ended up with the parents, too). Still feeling accomplished, she sort of took the wind out of my sails when she said, "I'd have gone to Winco and bought pizza."

The thought never crossed my mind--and we have a Winco within walking distance. Still, without leaving the house, I prepared a fitting dinner for two hungry young men as well as ourselves, with ingredients I had on hand, and in a short amount of time, too. Yay for me!