Dinner Impossible

It's impossible for me to please everyone for dinner at our house. Everyone has something they won't eat. Grant is the only kid on the planet who won't eat mashed potatoes. Joseph can't stand onions. Austin only eats the protein I'm serving. Hans hates cooked carrots. Most of them will only eat melted cheese if it's on pizza. Joe doesn't like cooked broccoli (which I love) so I haven't had that in a meal in years. Jennabee still won't eat much unless she's spoon fed. She picks at her food and plays until we try to feed her, then she opens her mouth wide and eats until her plate is empty.

To make things even more interesting, Joe is allergic to all dairy and has been since he was a child. He had tests done and the doc says he's not lactose intolerant, he's allergic to the protein in milk (casein). So when I make food, I can't use milk, real butter, margarines that contain milk (which is most brands), milk, cheese, sour cream, whipped cream, cream cheese, most chocolate, cottage cheese, yogurt, cream of "whatever" soups, etc. Why in the world he took me out for ice cream on our first date, I will never know. He has since admitted that he got really sick that night. I have to search the ingredients on EVERYTHING I buy. I even have to check cured or processed meats (like ham, deli meats), bread, crackers, boullion, spaghetti sauces, cake mixes, and many other things that you might not expect to have dairy in it. And half the time when something is advertised as non-dairy on the front of the package, they've actually removed all of the dairy except for the casein part which Joe is allergic to. I end up making a lot of food from scratch so I know exactly what's going into his body.

Needless to say, finding a meal that pleases everyboday is extremely difficult. That's why I was thrilled when everyone liked the turkey burgers I made the other night. We all thought they were better than hamburgers. I got the recipe off of a website.

Here is the recipe:

TURKEY BURGERS

3 lb ground turkey
1/4 C bread crumbs
1/4 C finely diced onion (you can also use about 1 T of dehydrated onion flakes)
2 eggs lightly beaten
1/4 C chopped fresh parsley (or 1 T dry)
1 clove of fresh minced garlic
1 tsp season salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 T soy sauce
1 T worcestire sauce

Mix it all together, form into 1/4 lb patties, cook 7 min on each side over medium heat. If you make smaller patties for your kids, cooking time will be shorter. You can also scale down the recipe or just cook up the whole batch and have leftovers (they reheat well). Note: The mix is kind of sticky and wet (if it's REALLY wet, add more bread crumbs) but just do your best and squish the meat down onto the pan/griddle--they cook up great.

We got the ketchup out of the fridge to put on the table and dropped it not to far from the floor. I thought they started making these things out of plastic so THIS wouldn't happen. Grant happened to be walking by right when the bottle dropped and his next step went into the ketchup.