The Dinner
"I can't believe you've cooked all these in so short a time, Ma'am," Gabriel says as he sits down by the table.
David, Claire's dad, shrugs, like "culinary marvels" like this is just normal in their house. "Wait till you see what happens on special days."
Carol laughs. "It's nothing, really. It's just the simplest dishes I could whip up using what I have here in the kitchen."
From Carol's perspective, what she did is really "nothing." The one-pot beef took less than ten minutes to make. The secret is chopping the beef into small pieces so that everything cooks in about five minutes.
Meanwhile, the sheet-pan sausage and veggies dish also makes use of the same broccoli, and then some. She chopped everything in one go, and merely portioned which goes to which dish. The sausages were leftovers from last Sunday, and preparing them in this way makes the illusion of plenty.