How Hard Is It, Really, to Eat a Baked Potato?

So, something really, really rare happened in our house this week.

Like a total lunar eclipse or the birth of a white buffalo, I rarely ever get home before The Husband on a week night. And, to add to the notable rareness of this occasion: He actually called me and asked if he could start dinner.

Wow.

I almost turned my car into the nearest gas station to buy a lottery ticket.

How did this happen??

Actually, I had called him earlier in the day and asked him if he could manage to leave work at a normal-human time and pick up the girls, so I could get through the grocery store a pace that would not rival Indy 500 drivers. Ever since my office moved the far side of the city, my commute has nearly doubled each way. Gone are the days of hitting the Meijer on my way to pick up the girls in after school supervision.

There's not way I can do that now--unless I want to risk turning over my entire 401K to the school because of the dollar-per-minute-per-kid late pickup fee. Or--worse yet--I pick them up and we stop at the Kroger on the way home.

Eek! Nothing says hell-on-earth to me like grocery shopping with two kids!

Well, maybe grocery shopping with two kids on a Saturday morning in Walmart. But I digress...

After I regained control of my speeding Acadia, I was able to respond to his question.

Since I was running so late (as it turned out, I even left work 30 minutes late of a meeting!) and I was in the grocery, I pickup up one of those roasted chickens they sell by in the warmer by the checkout.

Yeah, it's loaded with sodium. Yeah, it's been sitting there for 2.5 hours. Yeah, I was taking the easy way out. But, heck, it was on sale and we were facing a 7 pm dinner time, anyway.

I told The Husband a chicken was on the way (see how I still make life easy on him, even when I'm working late?), so maybe he could scrub up some spuds and throw them in the microwave, then heat up a vegetable of his choice. You know what his response was?

"Do we have to have baked potatoes?"

"What's wrong with baked potatoes?"

"They take too much effort to eat. How about mashed [out of the box, I might add]?"

"Too much effort? What do you mean?"

"Well, you have to cut them up to eat them."

"Yeah, so..."

"I'm too tired to eat a baked potato. Why don't I make mashed?"

Did I hear that right? Too tired to eat a potato?? How did he have the strength to dial the phone??

That's when I offered to stop at the store and pick up a jar of baby food chicken dinner, so he could have a complete meal he didn't have to bother to chew.

What really befuddled me was the fact that this came from a perfectly healthy grown man with all his natural teeth. And, he was talking to me, Miss "Suffering-from-26-consecutive-months-of-adult-orthodontia." Now, really, who has the right to talk about food taking too much effort to eat? I have to cut up everything I eat in to little bitty pieces and chew-pick-chew. And, that's if I haven't had an adjustment in the last 48 hours, which means I'm relegated to mushy foods like spaghetti or soup.

So, The Husband whipped up some homemade boxed spuds for supper.

The upside: They were warm and ready to eat when I walked in the door with my three gallons of milk and a week's worth of fruit and yogurt. In less than 5 minutes after walking in the door: Dinner was served.