Balanced What?

I used to love cooking.  I would spend hours combing through cookbooks for new recipes.  Countless hours in the kitchen left me creating masterpiece meals.  I even fed the majority of my husband's co-workers on an ongoing basis.  I loved making people happy through food.  Hey, it's a family thing.  Then, something happened. I had kids. 

Now, before you judge me, eating healthy food is important. However, there are days, when trying to please the pickiest of eaters like daughter of the year No. 1 seems simply unattainable.  I suppose this is the ultimate revenge from my mother.  She survived raising me, the second pickiest eater on the planet but, not without casting some sort of motherly hex to be sure I had a child just like me.  Blessing or a curse - I haven't decided yet.  My only recourse is knowing I eventually grew out of my picky eating.  

My cooking today consists of 30 minutes or less, crock pots, one dish meals, and most anything I can whip up quickly.  I WISH the days were here of having time to cook without anyone tugging on my pant leg, throwing things in the kitchen that I trip on later, or treating me like a short order cook who can make anything for my "customers."  But, as dad of the year says, maybe we'll get that back in retirement.  

So, what's a tired mom to do?  Be the short order cook?  Force feed my children?  Warning, the one that's the picky eater has been known to throw up at the table when she eats something she doesn't like.  Great dinnertime atmosphere!  Perhaps I should keep putting housekeeper and cook on my Christmas list every year?  However, like all moms of the year do, I give in.  Except I cave in astronomical proportions.

I know what you're thinking.  I think it from time to time too.  As a mom, I rock!  Because Funyuns® and scrambled eggs, while emphatically gross in a photo, please my picky eater.  Let's call it reason No. 377 why I'm in the running for mom of the year.