The week in suppers: around Easter
Easter supper, at the farm
**Monday’s menu** Pasta with pesto. Homemade bread.
**Guests** Albus invited two friends to stay for supper. Unfortunately, he invited them after I’d cooked the food; apparently it looked really good. Now, I’ve seen these boys eat, and I was worried there wouldn’t be enough food. And I was right. In addition to devouring a double batch of pasta, our crowd ate through an entire loaf of homemade bread. Imagine this family, with friends, in their teen years. Wow. I can see the sense in serving up a first course of something like Yorkshire pudding, which is basically a heavy dumpling covered in a fatty gravy. Fill ’em up!
**Extra** Made a huge batch of pesto and froze enough for two more meals. (Or maybe just one meal, plus friends.)
**Tuesday’s menu** Rice noodles with stir-fried tofu, mushrooms, and spinach in an Asian sauce.
**Why????** Even while making this meal, I was asking: what am I doing? Who is going to eat this? (Other than me.) The kids hate mushrooms. Half of them dislike tofu. It’s all mixed together. Disaster. But I served it. And they ate it. Basically.
**Wednesday’s menu** Baked potatoes. Steamed cauliflower. Cheese sauce.
**Easy-peasy** Couldn’t be a simpler meal. Should have steamed the cauliflower slightly longer, however, for that true mushy cauliflower-in-cheese-sauce comfort food.
**Thursday’s menu** Pasta. Red sauce. Broccoli.
**Speedy** Whipped up a fresh red sauce from scratch in about twenty minutes. Then I raced off to soccer girl’s practice and had to eat afterward. Sigh. Apparently the broccoli was a huge hit. If there had been time, I would have broiled tofu.
**Friday’s menu** Kids at grandma’s. Parents eat out: Indian.
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**Weekend cooking accomplishments** I’m currently working on baking bread. But it’s Easter Monday, not quite the weekend anymore. We went to Seeley’s Bay for Easter, and I did nothing in the kitchen other than enjoy the fruits of another cook’s labours.
**Cooking with kids** AppleApple baked a birthday cake with her Grandma at the farm. That counts, right?
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P.S. Friends have sent *yummy *easy recipes for party cakes after I confessed to using boxed mixes in my last installment of “The week in suppers.” Look for a special Party Cake recipe post coming later today. (And think of this blog as my virtual recipe box.)
Happy Easter
May you be renewed.
May you find what you came looking for.
And may there be chocolate.
Thoughts on a holiday Friday
Stasis and momentum.
Slept in this morning. Did not enjoy it. Wondered: should I be setting my alarm and rising at 5am every morning?
Have meant to go for a run all day. I am finally dressed in running gear. Still feeling resistant. Why? Because I know it will be hard. “Get your head right”: something the spin instructor says, for which I am occasionally resentful. I don’t want to. Why don’t I want to, when I know it will make me feel better?
Because it’s hard. Because I’ve been hanging around all day, taking the day off, a little holiday, relaxing. Put all of those into quotation marks. “Hanging around.” I’m lousy at hanging around! “Relaxing.” I’ve cleaned both bathrooms and vacuumed! How to relax? Maybe I’ve forgotten? Maybe relaxing feels like stasis to me. Or I’ve mixed the two up in my head.
And I crave momentum.
In my head, I’m lying on a picnic blanket in the sunshine surrounded by my children. In reality I’d be digging up the weeds. (Plus, it’s too chilly out there, despite the sunshine, for picnics.) Okay, in reality, I’m heading out for a run in the cool sunshine. I don’t know if it counts as relaxing, but I’m doing it. Right now.
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P.S. I’m back from that run. I feel amazing! (As predicted). It was hard! (Also as predicted). But I ran 7.5km in 34 minutes flat. Here’s what I heard a kid in the park ask his dad as I ran past: “How fast is she going?!”
I had a happy fantasy around the sixth kilometre. I thought that I would like to take a year, some while in the future, and train five or six hours a day — and run an ultramarathon. It wouldn’t serve any particular purpose. I’d do it just because I want to. (Is that a good reason to do something?)
Today’s experiment
balancing
Today, I am experimenting. Can I compartmentalize and work on two projects at the same time? I am going to attempt to develop my new character (ie. creative, not-yet-for-profit work), even while keeping several irons in the fire for a freelance piece I’m writing (ie. less creative work-for-pay). The new book, of course, has no due date, no deadline. The freelance piece does. I am obsessive about meeting deadlines (not necessarily a bad thing); except I’m so obsessive that I frequently meet deadlines well ahead of schedule. And honestly, I’m not concerned about meeting this one. I know I can do it. Things are moving along nicely. I know this. Still, my instinct is to worry it until it’s done. Thing is, I can’t finish this morning. There are interviews yet to do and other people’s schedules to take into account. More to the point, I don’t need to finish this morning. The deadline isn’t until next week.
So. Can I step back, set it aside, not worry about it, and work productively on something completely different?
As I say, it’s an experiment. It had better work, because, frankly, this could be my life for a long long time. It already is my life, you say? What with the children, and the cooking, and the triathlon training, and the book-writing? It’s funny, but those things all fit together in a long-term way that doesn’t trouble me. They’re all part of a steady routine, an ebb and flow that isn’t exactly predictable, and yet seems symbiotic somehow. More of this, less of that; more of that, less of this.
If I don’t write a blog post today, I’ll write one tomorrow. If supper is on the table late, well, eat some crackers and cheese, kids. If I have to drop a writing day to take a kid to the doctor, my book doesn’t know it. In all of these circumstances, I’m flexible. But give me a deadline and I focus to the point of compulsion. Hm. Maybe this goes back to childhood: feeling a sense of responsibility as the eldest of five, wanting to please, anxious over any perceived failure, stomach in knots if we were late for school. I was “high-strung.” Maybe, maybe, in some circumstances I still am.
My goal for today: Trust myself. I will get the job done. All in good time. And meantime, there is other work to be done, and it’s just as valuable, even if invisible.
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Yesterday, a client of Kevin’s brought him a ripped-out page from the latest issue of Elle Canada. “Tracking the best in movies, books, music and art,” says the page. “This month, we’re inspired by free spirits.” And there is The Juliet Stories! I love that Juliet is being identified as a free spirit. (Wasn’t “spirit” my word of the year when I was writing Juliet?) There’s a dark side to being a free spirit, of course, and I suppose that’s partly what the book is about; but sometimes I wish I were more free of spirit — colourful, creative, adventurous, alive. Writing is my window into all those things I couldn’t actually be.
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Finally, two exciting reading discoveries.
1. CJ is “reading” to us. I’m pretty sure he’s essentially repeating memorized text, but he links the words on the page with the words he’s saying. Out and about, he notices and reads signs (STOP is a good one), and he notices words and points out letters and letter sounds that he knows. Exciting!
2. Fooey read bedtime stories to CJ last night. For the record, I still love reading bedtime stories to the kids, but I’m not always available — last night I was walking Albus home from piano lessons. I got home in time to hear the tail-end of the last story, and give goodnight kisses. Sweet.
“I stalk her on the internet”
good morning
Found …
I LOVED this quick-paced conversation between two young women discussing The Juliet Stories. Their goal is to record themselves discussing a book in 140 seconds. That’s fast! My favourite part is right at the end and it had me laughing out loud: “Read her blog!” “Yes!” “I might stalk her on the internet … because she makes every day better.” “I stalk her on the internet too, but I think she knows that.” “She knows now!” Oh, and they loved the book. Yay!
Also, here’s a link to an interview I did with Open Book: Toronto. It’s got some nice stuff in it, somewhat off the beaten path.
And my dad tells me there’s a blurb on The Juliet Stories in this month’s Readers Digest (Canadian version only). But I haven’t checked that out yet.
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Meanwhile, I’m drinking that cup of coffee (or one that looks exactly like it, and then I’m going to the library to do research this morning. Wish me luck. I’m thinking about how to write a character who is both troubled and strong. You know she’s struggling, but you’re rooting for her.
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Speaking of stalking on the internet (in a good way, I mean), friends have mentioned that they have difficulty posting comments here on the blog, so I’m going to try removing one of the levels of anti-spam features, which may (or may not) make commenting easier. Please let me know if it helps. (Other tips, anyone?) If this proves to invite too much spam, I’ll have to revert back again. But I love hearing your comments, and widening the conversation, so it seems worth a try.