Making them earn their keep

We are a family that does menu planning. Sunday is grocery day, we make our menu, make our list and then I am off for my weekly torture session.

At least once meal during the week is totally kid friendly. Meaning both children will eat it without complaint. Additionally meaning that the meal consists of macaroni and cheese with either fishsticks or chicken nuggets. (Please pardon the pause while I gag.)

It will likely come as no surprise that this meal often gets skipped because BH and I Do.Not.Want.To.Eat.That.Nasty.Shit. So often we devise some clever reason that we have to eat out and not cook that meal.

STAMPS!! We must go out and get stamps!!! All of us together!!! We have to get them from the store on the otherside of town because they have the pretty ones that REALLY adhere to the envelope and by the time we get there and back well it will be getting late and the kids have school tomorrow .. we can't get them in to bed late, so I guess we better stop at Chipotle and get some dinner to save time since it is RIGHT THERE.

Or something like that.

We are in a NEVEREFFINGENDING quest to eat out less, so my BH came up with the brilliant idea a few weeks ago to have the children cook this meal, so that we would not be able to excuse our way out of it and go out again. The kids love this idea and have been all over it. Of course the problem is that we still have to eat the nasty fishsticks/chicken nuggets. So after a few weeks of success we have been slipping back in to excuse/avoid the meal mode.

I have been looking for cookbooks for kids, or something of that sort to help expand their cooking skills beyond heating up an oven and heating up frozen food, and also to widen and vary the menu a bit.

If anyone has any suggestions about cookbooks, websites, etc. I am all ears.

Please help us on our quest to just say no to sticks made of frozen fish parts.