Serving Up Love on a (New) Plate

This dish is one of our family favourites. It’s honey roasted chicken and it’s super yummy as the chicken cooks in a pan in its own juices with honey, lemon, garlic and oregano. I serve this with chicken rice and the kids just hoover it up. It is one of the easiest dishes to feed them.

However, this post is not about the food, good as it is.

(Incidentally, if you’re keen to try this recipe, my friend Pam has shared her version of this dish on A Dollop Of Me as part of the Kitchen Exploits Family Favourites series. You might want to check it out at this link: Winner Winner Chicken Dinner.)

This post is about that plate, which my dinner is sitting pretty on. Plates that my dear husband lugged back from Australia when he had to make a quick business trip over a weekend a couple of weeks ago. My husband knows I love pretty crockery as much as he thinks it is completely pointless. So I was really touched that he bothered to go shop for a dining set and lug it home for me as a gift. I’ve got to admit that the design is more his taste than mine, but hey, the man carried home a heavy and bulky gift that he actually thinks is rather pointless because he thought I would like it, so love it, I do.

Our marriage, like all marriages, isn’t perfect. There are many many days where we take each other for granted or get annoyed with each other (reasonably or otherwise). For me, there are many instances where I ignore my husband’s needs in favour of meeting the kids’. It’s not something I’m proud of, and lately, I’ve been thinking up and putting into practice ways in which to shift the balance. Like cooking his favourite food more regularly, or making the time to be together, or simply not begrudging him his need to rest.

I think on the question of whether my husband or my children should come first in my life (after God, that is), the answer is clear: it should be my husband. We chose to be together and it is on the foundation of our marriage that our family has been built. But I can also tell you that it can be very difficult to do so, especially when the kids are young and demand a lot of attention, and practically suck the life out of you. One of the reasons I found the first year after birth difficult was because it is so consuming that my relationship with my husband had to take a backseat. No, make that a very-last-row-on-the-bus seat. Which is bad, because on top of being tired, I was also lonely. Now that the kids are a bit older, it’s still too easy to get stuck in the daily grind of their needs, especially when I’m home with them nearly 24/7. But I realise that I must make the time and consciously choose my priorities.

This plate serves as a reminder to me of the need to think about my husband, and on its part, reminds me that my husband is thinking of me too.