A few weeks ago on Jon & Kate Plus 8, Kate went for tummy tuck surgery (totally worthwhile in her case, as it replaced her “butt in the front” with a gorgeous flat tummy that looks like it never carried 6 babies at once, let alone one, quite impressive). Anyway, Kate was getting the surgery for free because someone who watched the show was the wife of a plastic surgeon and wanted to help, but that meant that the surgery had to take place a three hour drive from their home. That meant that Kate would be away from home for a week, and then, when she finally returned, she wouldn’t be able to take care of the kids or do any of the usual household work for an additional two weeks, while she recovered.

So in preparation for this major event, Kate cooked. She pre-made dinners for the whole time that she was going to be out of commission, and then froze them in the freezer, ready to be thawed and eaten. The whole episode was basically devoted to watching her shop, chop, and cook various meals for 10 people. Kate talked a lot about how she tries to make healthy meals for her kids, and how eating a balanced diet is important enough to her that she’d rather spend 24 hours cooking than have her kids eat take-out for three weeks straight.

I got to thinking during this episode that Kate, although she clearly loves cooking, can’t possibly be spending a lot of time in the kitchen making complicated gourmet meals. On an average day, when she has to make lunch and dinner for 8 kids — who all still require supervision and care — she probably has to get in there, get it done in like, 15 minutes, and get it on the table as fast as possible. So if she has three weeks’ worth of meals that are a) healthy, b) freezable, and c) FAST, then that is a cookbook waiting to happen.

I personally hate cooking, so I am always on the lookout for easy, fast meal ideas that my kids will actually eat. I used to have this awesome cookbook that I used all the time before I was married called The Bachelor’s Guide. Its big thing was that no recipe called for more than five ingredients, and most of the cooking instructions involved things like, “Throw a can of soup in the pot and stir it around, then add a shake or two of oregano, and done.” It was definitely my kind of cookbook, but because it was aimed at men, almost every recipe involved hearty red meat, and that didn’t really work out when I moved in with a vegetarian. But if someone were to write a similar sort of book — recipes of no more than 5 ingredients, which can be prepared in 20 minutes and on the table within 45 minutes — then I would be first in line to buy it.

So this thinking about easy recipes gave me the idea to swap week-long menus with some of my other Mommy friends. Surely, they too had a need for quick and easy meals, especially the ones who work all day. And like me, I was guessing that they were in a rut, where they prepared the same 3 lunches and 4 dinners over and over again, just because it was the easiest thing to do, and they couldn’t think of anything else. I wasn’t interested in a formal “recipe exchange,” where people give me recipes for things that are really awesome at parties, but take 20 ingredients and spices I don’t have and require an hour of prep time. I was interested in knowing what their families really ate, on a day-to-day basis. What kind of things do the Mommies reach for, when it’s 5:30 and the kids are screaming and starving, and they have 10 minutes to get dinner on the table?

To start with, I’m doing a trade this week with MyFriendJen. I’m keeping track of what we are eating for lunch and dinner each day, and so is she, and then we will swap and see if we can get some good ideas. I must say that I do feel some pressure to provide more variety than I usually would, to show off a few of my rarer (but still fast and easy) meals, just to give Jen the full possible spectrum of ideas. If all goes well, I figure I will ask Mrs. Carl Sagan to do a swap next week.

Oh, hey! New idea! If all goes really really well…maybe that cookbook I dreamed of will happen…with us as the authors! Cooool.