Short Order Cook Syndrome


To the modern mother of multiple children, school day breakfast can be one of the more chaotic times of day. Someone wants pancakes and someone else wants cereal.  All the clean bowls are in the dishwasher which needs to be unloaded and in the mean time, there’s an English muffin burning in the toaster. Then, someone spills a glass of milk and, well, you know the story.

How did this happen? How did the modern mother become a short-order cook? And more importantly, why can't the children just make their own breakfast? Even better, why can't we all just be more like the French and have pain au Chocolat?

Well, this modern mother just stumbled across what must surely be the most painfully obvious solution to short order cook syndrome: the breakfast schedule. Each child nominates a food and it goes on the weekly schedule. Monday, it's pancakes all around. Tuesday, it's cereal day. Wednesday is for English muffins, and so on.  The next step of course would be to have the children prepare the food independently while the modern mother sips her tea and reads the headlines. Right. Maybe they could master that after a trip to Paris. 

4 comments:

Lisa Rich said...

Pancakes are for weekends or special days. Rarely a school day treat. Breakfast is self-serve at my house. Of course, my boys are older (11, 9, 7), but they pour their own cereal and milk every morning. Sometimes a bagel with cream cheese. (There is one problem with the self serve thing - the stupid milk in a bag concept here in Canada.....oh, whoops, we don't say stupid in our house....the ridiculous milk in a bag....it isn't manageable for the kids to open a new bag.). And I am *never* a short order cook in my house. You eat what I fix or you don't eat. I sometimes ask for input or suggestions, but in the end, I don't make special orders for each kid.

kayce hughes said...

We haven't gotten to the point where they cook breakfast but that would be nice!

Anonymous said...

Great idea. We have short order cook syndrome on the weekends. I have started asking for requests and planning accordingly. It's either scrambled eggs/bacon or pancakes/waffles. I love having the time to do this on the weekends. During the week it's only yogurt and cold cereal for us. No time for ordering up.

EHP said...

True confession to all of you: We don't do hot breakfast on weekdays either, but I know plenty of families who do. Even so, I cannot yet trust my younger children to pour their own milk, but then again they are only 3 and 5.

Post a Comment

We would be delighted to hear your thoughts on the matter. Please, do tell us!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...