When last we left, I was musing the types of problems I’d be encountering with my young adult type children.

And, here we are: What is for dinner?

It’s almost like they’re toddlers again. Trying to figure out what to make for dinner has become the bane of my existence.

Current grocery prices are definitely impacting me, especially as we added a mouth to feed back to the food budget, and three-quarters of the family are athletic bottomless pits of food consumers, but those aren’t the issues that are keeping me up at night when it comes to feeding the horde.

E recently attended a leadership conference and came home wanting to do her part to have less of an impact on the environment. While I’m loving the effort she’s putting into turning lights off, and consuming less water, I’m not quite as thrilled about her desire to eat less meat.

Normally I would be, especially considering the giant vegetable garden that is consuming a lot of my time and energy. See, A came home from school with a new mission to increase his protein intake and put on more muscle pounds. He’d happily exist on only lean protein in the form of meat.

Back to the vegetable garden: While it’s thriving, we have been going more on a wing and a prayer when it comes to what is actually going to grow, and when it’s going to be harvestable. Right now, I’ve got radishes. So many radishes. Why did we plant radishes? I have no idea, because not one single person in our family enjoys eating them.

For the first week of everyone being back under one roof and summer vacation, we tried the old “if you don’t like it, make something yourself” route. That plan hit a roadblock when there weren’t enough pots for everyone to cook their own meal.

Another snag happened when everyone based their recipes on the one green pepper we had in the fridge.

Something had to change for my sanity, and before they started to eat the furniture.

But, first, a reality check. I turned them loose and told them they could buy their own groceries, plan their own meals and make whatever they wanted.

I also told them they could eat whatever they wanted, as long as they paid for it. The sticker shock brought them back to the reality that they really did not want to have to be responsible for buying their own groceries, and in turn, this made them much more open to my menu suggestions.

I also reminded A that we had a steady supply of a very high protein food readily available from the birds that I’m also responsible for feeding. G had the brainiac idea to get A to earn his eggs by doing farm chores, but a single day of watching his precious ducks mishandled by the inexperienced A, and he donated to the cause.

So, after a few more iterations of the feed troughs, and a lot more fighting and mystery containers of leftovers that no one wants to claim, we’ve managed to return to the system that has worked for us in the past. Breakfast and lunch options are provided, and I make one meal that could be late lunch or early dinner that everyone will eat.

E can now turn her attentions to composting. I tried to explain that in a round about way, all our food scraps make it to the compost bin, even if it’s finally in the form of chicken poop. A freed up more time to add to his workout schedule, and G is planting more stuff that may or may not be edible in a few months.

I feel like my kids do this regularly: Challenge the status quo, fight about it for a few days, and then either compromise or go back to the way we were doing things. A pointed out that arguing seems to be a love language that we are all fluent in, and so I guess it sort of makes sense that we keep repeating this cycle.

I guess until I learn how to make a radish dish that everyone likes, we’ll stick with what works for us.

Liz Pinkey’s column appears on Saturdays in the Times News