My 11yo and I were fixing dinner the other day, and as I mixed together pasta noodles and sauce from a jar, he quipped, “So, we aren’t actually cooking dinner?”

I said, “What do you mean? Of course we’re cooking.”

He replied, “I mean we’re just mixing and heating it up. We aren’t cooking it.”

Well, pardonnez-moi, sous chef. Sometimes, we use jar sauce instead of making it from scratch. So, there – now you know a little secret: I don’t cook everything from scratch. *Gasp – I know! I try to make sure that the boys have ample amounts of fresh produce, and even though we eat dinner at home together most nights, some of our meals come from containers more so than raw ingredients.

Case in point: Italian food. I have tried making lasagna from scratch. It was abysmal. It took For. Ev. Er. and turned out blech. Not to mention, it was VERY expensive! Stouffer’s, on the other hand, makes a perfectly delicious lasagna that only takes a couple of hours of forward-thinking to pop into the oven before dinnertime.

I recently obtained a celery-based lasagna recipe from a like-minded low-carber friend, and I’m looking forward to making that one day soon, but when it comes to feeding five boys, I don’t have any shame in admitting that I serve box lasagna. It’s actually one of the few one-dish meals that feeds everyone.

I need a bigger oven. :p