The week in suppers: family time
“Roman feast”
**Monday’s menu** Corn and white bean chili (crockpot). Fried kale. Leftover rice and quinoa.
**Thanks to** the LCBO magazine for the chili recipe. Kale was supposed to be included, but I cooked it separately. It was delicious (the kale, I mean).
**Tuesday’s menu** Beans and rice and tortillas.
**Swim lessons + soccer** This has become my go-to meal for our tripleheader evening of swim lessons, Soccer Girl’s practice, and Coach Kevin and son’s soccer game. Throw in some salsa and cheese and wrap it up, and everyone’s happy. Well, as happy as everyone can be when everyone is being rushed about mercilessly.
**Wednesday’s menu** Leftover soups (miso, chili, and harira). Toasted pita chips (homemade). Crackers and cheese. Green salad with mustard dressing.
**Family time** We always relax on Wednesday evenings. We have time. The pita chips were a hit: made by brushing stale pitas with oil and sprinkling with salt and paprika and cumin and baking at 400 until crispy. Good conversation.
**Thursday’s menu** Pasta with pesto. Hummus, falafel, kim chi.
**Chef Kevin in charge** I took AppleApple to her goalie practice, which happens over the supper hour, so Kevin made supper using pesto frozen last fall. He kept it hot for us, and for me added a little side plate of kim chi, hummus, and falafel, which was crazy delicious. The kim chi is made by a waiter at our favourite restaurant — he knows I love kim chi, so he gave me a jar the last time we were there. It is so good, I don’t know what I’ll do when I’m through.
**Friday’s menu** Mashed potato soup. Roasted squash. Bread and cheese.
**Injury** I gouged myself whilst peeling the squash and cutting it into chunks. Just what I need, a cooking-related injury. However, the roasted squash with garlic was beyond delicious. Wish there was an easy route to peeling and cutting squash.
**Family time** Another memorable meal, with great conversation. It was fun to have Albus’s friend join us, giving us insight into the social life of the grade five boy.
:::
**Weekend cooking accomplishments** Four loaves of bread. Potato tortilla (Spanish omelet) for brunch on Sunday.
AppleApple in her Roman toga (as made by AppleApple)
**Cooking with kids** AppleApple’s menu. A Roman feast! Spiced grape juice. Cabbage salad. Barbequed chicken served on a platter with rice and cumin-spiced sauce. Grilled eggplant. Honey-soaked dates stuffed with walnuts for dessert. (Nobody else was required to wear a toga; and my God isn’t she gorgeous?)
Better than bread
snow kick
This morning started at an earlier hour and less pleasantly than anticipated. A certain small soccer player decided she didn’t feel like playing for her team this morning. Too early, too tired. The Marshmallows would have to struggle on without her. Except her dad coaches said Marshmallows. And there are scarcely enough kids on the team to make a team when everyone shows up. She had to go. Team spirit. Letting her team down. Being a team player. All concepts not best discussed at 7 o’clock in the morning. The unhappy debate woke the house.
At last, small defiant Marshmallow off to play for her team, I returned to my bed, hoping for a wee lie-in. CJ followed.
“Come for a snuggle?”
He climbed in, sat up with blankets over knees, alert and happy. “Should we have a Cookie Monster story?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“Do you want a long story or a short story?”
“Whatever you think.” Eyes closed, hoping to drift back to semi-sleep.
“I think a long story.”
“Okay. A long story.”
He thought for a moment, and then launched in. “One day Cookie Monster didn’t know what to do. So he was looking out his window. And his mom was baking something!”
“Maybe it was bread?” I suggested, thinking of the bread I planned to bake this morning.
“No. It was something better than bread.”
“Ah.”
“Like strawberry blueberry cookies!”
The story continued, with jumping garbage cans and birthday parties and magic birthday gifts and hiding gifts under the carpet, and lots of mms and ohs from the drifting audience.
I am baking bread right now, but maybe I should consider baking something better, too. The two littlest are playing in the snow (we have snow! it’s cold! just like winter!). They’ll be in before I know it, requesting hot chocolate with marshmallows (and not the soccer-playing kind). Strawberry blueberry cookie recipes, anyone?
Theme of the week: the free trial
This week’s unoffical theme has been the free trial. In order to fill holes in my exercise life, I tried out two different classes at two different gyms/studios. It was all about trying new things. I lifted kettleballs. I took an aerobics class. And my specific conclusion is that aerobics classes are not for me. Swinging kettleballs just might be. My more general conclusion is that trying new things is really not that hard. You just show up. You accept that you’re the newbie. You might be wearing the wrong shirt (a touch too flashy for this morning’s t-shirt-style aerobics class). You don’t know where to stand. And apparently you can’t get your arms to coordinate with your legs (aerobics class again; really really not for me). You look awkward. At least a little bit.
And that’s okay. Just make the appointment, set the alarm, and show up. If it’s a fit, you’ll know it, and if not, it was a unique experience you’ll never have to repeat.
What I learned in this morning’s aerobics class is that looking fit and toned is not a powerful enough goal for me; I kind of looked fit and toned even before I was. The luck of genes. Nope, what motivates me is the desire to stay sane, to take the edge off, to channel my nervous energy and competitive nature toward semi-useful ends like marathons and triathlons. It is also a way to inhabit my body and to get out of my head.
Which I need. Pretty much daily.
A photographer came this morning to take a shot to accompany yesterday’s interview (it will run a week from Saturday in the KW Record). He seemed slightly disappointed by my ordinary setup: desk, computer screen, chair. He said he’d imagined me scribbling into a notebook reclined in a comfortable chair. He did pose me with pen in hand, which happens next to never since I can’t read my own printing. It got me thinking about how the writer gets imagined — when you think writer, what do you see? Tortured soul? Drink in hand?
Running may be my version of drinking. Here’s hoping kettleballs will suffice too.
Big sky over empty lot
This morning I had my first interview related to The Juliet Stories. Because the book is so new, because I am not a workshopping writer, because these words have really only been read by my agent and by editors up to this point, I am awfully terribly anxiously hungry for responses. The interview was an early response, a hint at what might come.
And it was a kind response, and a generous one, and I am grateful.
Writers don’t get to tell readers how to read the book; that’s not part of the deal. But I can’t help wanting to hear — to understand — how it’s met a reader. What happened at that intersection. How the words were received.
Walking home, I passed this empty lot not far from my house. I saw how much sky there was over the lot, and how blue and clear it was. I don’t often carry my camera outside with me. I wonder, will I see this empty lot differently for having seen it through my lens?
Over the past few nights and mornings I’ve watched the moon wax to fullness and begin to wane. In the evening, it stares in the back window of my office as it rises. It is setting as I drive to wherever that morning’s exercise is occurring. I get to see the same moon twice, on different days. It’s felt like an odd little miracle.
I’m not pulling my thoughts together this afternoon. I’m just writing them down.
And in that vein of randomness, good news to share: Yesterday, my sports doctor cleared me to start running again. Slowly. And in very small doses. I would have high-fived him but he was too busy impressing on me how short short is: ten to fifteen minutes, three times a week. Now that’s short. I’m planning my first run tonight, during goalie practice. I will wear a watch. I promise not to push it. I can’t promise not to high-five anyone who crosses my path during those fifteen minutes, however. You’ve been warned.
Momentous
this morning
yesterday
this morning
yesterday
This morning a very loose tooth came out — the first baby tooth lost from my little girl’s mouth. She was thrilled and yet it was strange. When would the new tooth grow in? When would the next tooth come out? What to do with the teeny-tiny tooth? After some deliberation, she went back upstairs and put it under her pillow.
I felt something the same yesterday. My new book arrived in the mail. I wanted to celebrate. I took goofy photos. I was thrilled and yet it was strange. Part of me didn’t want to read the words on the page. So final. So done. I think that publishing a book is the end of something. It’s the end of what the book could have been (because isn’t there always room for tweaks and improvements? though tweaks and improvements can so easily spin out of control and become hacks and confusions). But, still. It’s the end of that singular imaginative process.
This morning, my little girl lost her first tooth. Momentous. This morning, I stood by the stove, hair wet from my morning swim, and I opened my book and I started to read the words on the page. Momentous. I didn’t want to stop reading and the porridge was late getting made. I read with trepidation and some distance, wondering what the words would reveal that I never intended them to, wondering how to let go. Part of me wants to take the book upstairs and put it under my pillow. Oh, for the simple and magical exchange of tooth for coin, old for new. Gentle passage.
If publishing is the end of something, it is also the beginning of something else. Like Fooey, I am asking: What happens now? What happens next? What does the tooth fairy do with all those teeth?