The trend in kitchens has been swinging in this direction for a while, away from mixes and pre-made frozen foods, back into cooking from scratch. Once in a while, when I’m just not capable of cooking (for whatever reason) we’ll go back to the old frozen pizza. Most of the time, though, we make the effort to put something good on the table and into our tummies.

To put supper on the table, sometimes we resort to a fully cooked rotisserie chicken from the grocery store. For side dishes, we can reach for some frozen corn (frozen last summer when it was fresh), a small container of frozen red and green peppers, and toss all of this into the steamer to cook. Somehow, even as wrecked as we might feel, we manage to put a decent meal on for supper.

Later on, we attack the leftovers. All it takes are the bones from the chicken, the veggie water from the steamer, and a couple pieces of onion to make a chicken broth. I usually have to be in the kitchen making lunch for the next day, so I might as well get a broth simmering.

A broth like this will look and smell thick and tasty. When I’m tired and running almost on empty, sometimes I make the best use of my time. When everything is said and done, I can relax and go to bed knowing I’ve put in a good effort to feed the family and we didn’t even need to resort to frozen pizza – yet.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. This post originated a few years ago after a somewhat wild weekend for Chuck and Amigo. I don’t remember what I was doing, but it led to one of our pantry raids, supplemented by a rotisserie chicken. When life is rough, we manage.