By First full week at the Sonic. Six shifts in seven days, mostly the four-to-eight evening rush. My feet have not stopped hurting since Tuesday. My hair smells like fryer grease no matter how many times I wash it. My polo, the second polo Carlos gave me on Wednesday because the first one already had a permanent ketchup spot, is hanging on the back of my bedroom door, and I am writing this on Saturday morning at six-thirty before another shift, and I want to talk about what I have been cooking, because the cooking is the part that has gotten harder and the part that has gotten more important all at the same time.
I want to give you the rhythm of a Sonic shift first, because it is the context for the cooking. I show up at three forty-five in the polo and the paper hat and the black slip-resistant shoes Mama bought me at Walmart for $14.99. I clock in at four. The four-to-eight rush is the rush. Cars pull into the stalls one after another and the speakers crackle and the orders come in fast — cherry limeade, large; chili cheese tots; grilled cheese, no tomato; corn dog, mustard and ketchup; tater tots, well done. I ring them up. I send the ticket back. The cooks make the food. I bag it. The car-hops — Brittany who is seventeen and has been there a year, Hailey who is twenty and has a son at home — take the bags out to the cars on a tray. Tips come back. Cash and ones. By eight o’clock the rush is over and I am mopping the back kitchen and counting the change drawer and clocking out, and I am walking the half-mile home in the dark, and I am back in my own kitchen by eight-thirty.
And that is when I cook. Eight-thirty, after eight hours on my feet, smelling like a fryer, hungry in a way I did not know I could be hungry, with twenty or twenty-five minutes between me and bed. The dinners I have made this week have all been built around that twenty-minute window, and that is what I want to give you today, because if anybody else out there is working and trying to feed themselves and trying not to live entirely on Sonic chili dogs, I want this list to be for them too.
Monday: chicken and rice bake with cream of mushroom soup. $4.20 total. The recipe is what I keep coming back to when I have no time and no energy and no patience for cooking. Pour rice in the bottom of a 9x13 pan. Pour a can of cream of mushroom soup mixed with a can of water on top. Lay chicken leg quarters on top of that. Cover with foil. 350 for ninety minutes. The trick is, I prep the pan in the morning before my shift — ten minutes — and Mama puts it in the oven when she gets home at seven-thirty, and by the time I walk in at eight-thirty the dinner is fifteen minutes from done. Hot, real, weeknight food, no cooking-after-the-shift required. Cody actually came home for this one Monday night, which I will get to in a minute.
Tuesday: spaghetti, the cheap way. $2.80 total. Box of spaghetti, jar of generic marinara, half a pound of frozen meatballs we got on sale at Aldi for $1.99. Boil. Heat. Combine. Eat. The whole dinner takes the time it takes for the pasta to cook, which is twelve minutes. I made it standing at the stove still in my Sonic polo, ate it standing at the kitchen counter, was in the shower by nine.
Wednesday: leftover chicken and rice, fried into a hash with two eggs cracked over the top in a cast iron skillet. $0.40 total because the chicken and rice was already in the fridge and the eggs were already in the carton. The whole thing was done in eight minutes. This is what I learned to do this week that I did not know how to do last week. Yesterday’s dinner is today’s breakfast-for-dinner. The hash is the trick.
Thursday: peanut butter sandwiches. I am putting this on the list because I am not going to lie. I came home at eight-forty-five Thursday night with my feet hurting so bad I could barely climb the porch steps, and I made two peanut butter sandwiches with the bread Mama bought on sale, and I ate them at the kitchen table in the dark with a glass of milk, and I went to bed. Total cost: maybe sixty cents. Some nights are peanut butter sandwich nights, and I am going to stop pretending they aren’t.
Friday: chicken thighs again on the markdown rack, $1.99 a pound at Walmart, panfried in a cast iron skillet with salt and pepper and a clove of garlic, served with the leftover rice from Monday and frozen broccoli microwaved with butter. $4.10 total. Twenty minutes from the moment I walked in the door to the moment I sat down to eat. Mama ate with me. Cody did not.
And about Monday and about Cody. I want to write this down because it is the part of the week I do not want to forget. Cody came home Monday night for the first time in seven days. He was not high. His eyes were clear. He sat at the kitchen table and he ate the chicken and rice bake, and he asked me about the Sonic job. Real questions. Specific ones. Is Carlos fair? Are the older girls nice to you? Do you get tips? He has not asked me about my actual life in I cannot tell you how long. I answered every question. I told him about ringing the wrong button for an hour the first day. I told him about Brittany’s order going to Hailey twice. I told him about the $187 in tips I made my first week, which he whistled at, which is a sound I have not heard him make in a year. He ate two helpings. He did not stay long. He was gone again by ten-thirty. But he was home for ninety minutes, and he was clear-eyed, and he asked me about my life.
Summer solstice was Tuesday, the longest day of the year. I worked the four-to-eight shift. I walked home at nine-fifteen with the sky still blue at the horizon, the way it does in Oklahoma in late June, the kind of sky that almost makes you forget the dark is coming. I made spaghetti at the stove in my Sonic polo. I ate at the counter. I went to bed.
I have built a list this week of dinners I can make on tired feet. I have built a paycheck I will pick up Friday. I have built a brother who came home for ninety minutes and asked me what my life is like. The summer is starting. The notebook is filling up. The Sonic shifts are getting easier, slowly, the way a thing gets easier when you do it every day. And the cooking is the thread that runs through all of it, the small reliable thing I do with my hands at the end of every day, in the kitchen that has been mine for a year and a half, in the second half of my fifteenth year.
The recipe roundup below is the magazine version of the kind of list I have been keeping by hand. Pick the ones that fit your week. Use the markdown rack on the proteins. Buy the cheap pasta. Make a chicken-and-rice bake on Sunday and turn it into hash on Wednesday. The list is the kind of thing that grows the more you cook it. There is no shame in a peanut butter sandwich on a tired Thursday. There is also no reason to live on the Sonic chili dogs you smell like all day. The middle is where most of cooking actually lives, and that is what these dinners are for.
Easy Dinner Ideas: Grilled Hot Dogs with Brown Sugar Baked Beans
Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: 20 min | Total Time: 30 min | Servings: 3
Ingredients
- 1 package (8 count) hot dogs
- 1 package hot dog buns (8 count)
- 1 can (28 oz) baked beans
- 2 tablespoons brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon yellow mustard
- 1 tablespoon ketchup
- 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/4 teaspoon onion powder
- 1/4 watermelon, sliced into wedges (optional, for serving)
- Condiments of choice: ketchup, mustard, relish
Instructions
- Prepare the grill. Light charcoal and allow it to ash over, about 15 minutes, until coals glow orange and are covered with gray ash. Spread coals evenly for medium-high direct heat.
- Make the baked beans. Pour canned baked beans into a small saucepan over medium-low heat. Stir in brown sugar, yellow mustard, ketchup, garlic powder, and onion powder. Simmer uncovered for 10–12 minutes, stirring occasionally, until slightly thickened and fragrant. Reduce heat to low to keep warm.
- Grill the hot dogs. Place hot dogs directly on the grill grate over the coals. Cook for 5–7 minutes total, turning every 1–2 minutes, until the skins blister and char slightly in spots.
- Toast the buns. During the last 1–2 minutes of grilling, place buns cut-side down on the outer edge of the grate away from direct heat. Toast until just golden, about 1 minute. Watch closely so they don’t burn.
- Assemble and serve. Nestle each hot dog into a toasted bun. Serve with a generous scoop of baked beans on the side and a cold wedge of watermelon. Add condiments as desired.
Nutrition (per serving, 2 hot dogs with buns and 1/2 cup beans)
Calories: 520 | Protein: 18g | Fat: 22g | Carbs: 62g | Fiber: 6g | Sodium: 1240mg