This will be far from the 1960s Mrs. Dick Van Dyke-post the title implies! My lessons in economics as a newly-married woman do not include me carrying a pocketbook with a meager budget scratched out, deciphering how much I will have to cut back on groceries if we repair the leaky ceiling. I know; that day will come eventually. The longer I can stay in apartment living, the farther in my future I can push that!

The type of economics I am referring to is far different. This form of thriftiness is credited to my lack of a dishwasher. Until married, I never realized how many dishes it takes to cook a full meal. I don’t mean a quick macaroni-and-cheese meal. I mean a homemade grab-the-Betty Crocker-cookbook type meal. Just one slow-cooked main course with a couple of side dishes can render every pan, every cutting board, half my serving bowls and all of my serving spoons dirty within a fifteen minute time-span.  Let’s not even think about baking a dessert…there wouldn’t be any silverware left to eat it with, anyway.

And let me say: I own plenty of dishes. I have three –to-four times as many dishes/pans/silverware as people in my household. (Not a hard ratio to obtain when there are only two people in your family.) Despite this, there have been days when there were more dishes piled in my sink than stacked in my cupboard; there have been mornings when cereal for breakfast was impossible because I hadn’t gotten around to washing a load the night before; there have been times I have forgotten the color of my countertop; there have been days when I spent two whole hours just washing dishes.

I have begun to hate washing dishes. But I’m unwilling to surrender the meals my husband and I have been making for processed, pre-made, boxed equivalents.

So I’ve started to cut corners.

Remember the baking rule that insists on separate bowls for wet/dry ingredients? My mother taught me a trick: wet ingredients mixed on the bottom, then add the dry ingredients on top. Gently blend the dry ingredients with a finger (a spoon saved!) then stir together with the wet ingredients below. The second serving bowl can remain nestled in the back of that far cupboard that’s so hard to reach.

My husband has convinced me that heating sauces in their own pan is pointless. Sauce is always mixed with something after it’s heated, right? (It’s not like you’re drinking your marinade or spaghetti sauce!) So we now heat it up in the frying pan with the meat or pasta or whatever it is meant to compliment. The flavors blend better that way anyway.

I also stopped putting serving bowls on the table when we sit down for meals. Hot items remain on the stove to be dished up; most cold items I put directly onto plates as I prepare the meal. That’s at least three bowls AND three serving spoons saved.

In The Dick Van Dyke Show, Mary Tyler Moore would have broke out the china when company came. At the Enger’s…we break out the serving bowls.