Last week in suppers: post-Thanksgiving
**Tuesday’s menu: Pasta. Roasted tomato sauce (prepared the day before). Pan-fried tofu. Steamed fresh spinach.
**Original plan: Monday was Thanksgiving, and a holiday, and somehow meal-planning for the week ahead escaped me utterly. I jotted down a quick list of veggies on hand, and hoped it would provide inspiration throughout the week. Hey, the spinach got used.
**In the kitchen: Whipped up after swim lessons. The item that took the longest was the pasta (waiting for the water to boil!) I’d just read an article in Macleans extolling the use of butter, so must confess butter was added to … everything.
**The reviews: AppleApple did not get to eat until after her soccer. I did not get to eat until after dropping her off at soccer (I also went for a run.) When I came home, I traded off with Kevin, who left for a soccer meeting. In my absence, supper had been eaten. The spinach was untouched (forgotten?) Was it ever delicious. And buttery.
**The verdict: Good leftovers. AppleApple ate pasta and sauce as a bedtime snack and declared it very good.
**Wednesday’s menu: Beans and rice (pictured above). Cabbage/daikon slaw. Tomato-cilantro salad. Broiled eggplant and zucchini. Condiments (crema, hot sauce, feta.) Tortilla chips and tortillas.
**Original plan: There was no plan. So I’m pleased with this feast.
**In the kitchen: Washed, quick-soaked, and started cooking beans first thing in the morning. Baked rice in the afternoon, left in the oven (oven turned off). Thawed tortillas. Post-piano lessons looked to the veggies in the fridge for inspiration.
**The reviews: So good, I couldn’t bear to miss it to go to yoga class as planned.
**The verdict: Excellent. We lingered, we talked.
**Thursday’s menu: Squash soup with leeks. Beets, potatoes, and carrots roasted with garlic. Broccoli with cheese sauce. Bread and cheese.
**Original plan: Thursday is the only day of the week that we don’t have an activity after school, or something one of us is rushing to immediately after supper. Yes, that’s sad. Or active. Or both. But it means that Thursday is my happy cooking afternoon.
**In the kitchen: Whipped up after school. Roasted the veggies with fresh thyme picked from our driveway (doesn’t that sound appetizing?) After roasting, tossed them with a vinegrette. Broccoli with cheese sauce was by request. Have I mentioned how much I love requests?
**The reviews: Some were not happy, except with the broccoli/cheese sauce combo (popular despite being made with a sharp swiss). Others thought it was the best meal of the week. And that’s saying something. It was a good week, food-wise.
**The verdict: Speaking for myself, I couldn’t stop eating.
**Friday’s menu: Gallo pinto (beans and rice fried together), with tortilla chips, crema, cabbage salad, and salsa. Plus a ham sandwich for soccer girl, and an energy bar for me. Yum?
**Original plan: Leftovers. But the kids wanted a real meal. Gallo pinto technically is leftovers, but, rebranded, is much preferred over those other leftover leftovers.
**In the kitchen: Kev did the frying. We were just home from skating. I was getting ready for a run, and soccer girl was getting ready for soccer (I’m getting in the habit of taking her to soccer, then running trails while she’s there).
**The reviews: Heard via the grapevine that the gallo pinto was declared “the best supper ever.”
**The verdict: Not too shabby. Even eaten cold, after the kids are in bed, accompanied by a glass of wine. Ah, Friday.
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**Weekend kitchen accomplishments: Nothing. Nada. Nope. Home alone with kids on Saturday, so I cleaned and tidied instead of cooking or baking. Plus we went to the grocery store and stocked up on junk food. I’m whispering that. Then we hosted four extra kids overnight (our turn in a babysitting exchange!) and ordered in pizza. And today Kevin has a soccer game, and soccer girl has another practice during which I’m going to go running in the rain, and you know, there’s a fair bit of bread still frozen in the freezer, and we’re not yet out of yogurt, and we’ve got junk food. Whispered. Everyone needs a break from time to time.
Porch progress: front steps, baby, front steps
Look what we have! Steps. Yup. Walk right up and knock on the door. C’mon in.
We’ve had some funny/awkward moments since we lost the porch a few months ago. My mother AND one of my brothers (on separate occasions) climbed over stacks of wood and balanced on sawhorses to knock on the front door. My brother’s comment? “This isn’t the friendliest way to greet guests.” Most others figured out that our back doors were somewhat more accesible, though admittedly at nighttime not well-lit. But if one really wants to complain about unfriendly design, the back staircase, which we’ve had to use as our temporary entryway, is seriously lethal. It’s unfixable, cramped, a mess of different levels, and the stairs have no railing. Stuff it with wet boots, piles of coats, and several backpacks and it’s a recipe for disaster. Basically, I’ve been on high alert for potential accidents every time that door opens and closes.
So, welcome, again. To the front door.
:::
PS I’m hesitating to post this light-and-fluffy entry, because it means my previous more serious post on working-moms and at-home-moms won’t be the first post seen here when you visit … and I’m still hoping for a few more comments and thoughts. Are you a working mom? Plan to be a working mom? A working dad? Or maybe you’re an at-home mom or dad in love with your life? Or otherwise? I don’t usually do a shout-out for comments, but I’m craving conversation on the balance, on the longing, on the wish to be several things all at the same time, or perhaps it’s a wish to do several jobs at the same time, or to participate in life in ways that seem to conflict with each other. Thanks in advance for joining in the conversation.
Where mom-at-home meets working-mom
I didn’t write yesterday. That felt strange. But I didn’t have anything to say.
I’m not sure I have anything to say today, either. In truth, life feels a little wan this week, gloomy, rainy, pale, grey. Or is that the weather?
I am tired. I might have overdone it on the exercise front, though I don’t like to admit it. I didn’t rest after my trail race, but continued apace, training toward the marathon. And I didn’t rest after Sunday’s long run (the furthest I’ve ever run). By last night, my whole body ached in a way that was unfamiliar. It still aches this morning. I did not get up early to swim, though I dreamed it; even in the dream I didn’t make it to the pool, though in the dream, I got to lounge on a snowbank under a hot summer sun. Ah, dreams.
Before sleep, I am reading the poems of Mary Oliver for my poetry book club. I am searching my heart (it is impossible to read the poems of Mary Oliver without searching one’s heart). And I have some questions. The kind that can’t be answered by reading the horoscopes, though heaven help me, I keep reading those, too.
**Where am I heading, at my breakneck pace? **What am I failing to stop for? **What if I can’t squeeze every fascinating everything in? **What matters? **Will I always be so impatient? So goal-oriented? **Can I be both ambitious and content, or do those two states of mind cancel each other out? **Do I want to be at home, all day, every day?
That last question hangs around me this fall, dogging me. Look, there is the new porch, and at the end, there is the wall and the front window of my new office, which makes the house look unexpectedly much bigger than before. But is it big enough to contain me?
A friend from grad school wrote this heartfelt post about returning to work after spending the past year home with her son, who is now a year. I was riveted by the emotions her post raised in me. She’s a full-time working mother! She loves her job! It’s a whole new frontier! I want to know more in an almost clinical way: let’s dissect and analyze this. What do I feel, reading about her major life transition? I feel envy, longing. She is expressing her working self, participating in the larger world, working with others. But when she describes missing her son’s bedtime due to a late meeting, I am gripped by the same agony she expresses, a pit opening in my stomach: missing a whole day in his brand-new life!
It’s too late to wish I’d chosen otherwise: to wish that in the past decade I’d developed my working self. I didn’t want to at the time. Instead, I got to have all those bedtimes. So many that they blur together. They seem mundane. I didn’t/don’t appreciate them enough. All that time we’ve spent soaking into each other.
More questions.
**When I unpeel myself from them, who am I? **Who am I outside this home? And the question I’m most scared of, the one I really want to ask: **How do I begin to develop my working self, now, after a decade of being mom-at-home? (Some of you might be asking, too. If you are, or if you have ideas or encouragement or more questions, too, please respond.)
We are thankful for …
Fall at the farm.
Wild apple trees.
Nobody falling out of wild apple trees.
Puffballs.
Adventures.
Sunday morning long run (34km).
Food.
Family.
Last week in suppers: October is here!
**Monday’s menu: Pad thai (pictured above). Broiled shrimp and tofu. Daikon salad. Stir-fried rainbow chard.
**Original plan: Pad thai with hot and sour soup. But both things require tons of pre-prep organizing and stirring up multiple bowls of things, so I decided to simplify.
**In the kitchen: Whipped up after school. The pad thai is a version without ketchup; it’s made with fish sauce and lemon juice and piles of cilantro (not vegetarian, no).
**The reviews: Eaten too hurriedly for reviews, but everyone seemed happy.
**The verdict: Excellent.
**Bonus recipe: Radish salad was made by slicing the daikon super-thin, then mixing up a dressing of fresh lime juice and maple syrup, plus salt. Sprinkle on some hot pepper flakes. Divine. (My invention).
**Tuesday’s menu: Honey-baked lentils. Steamed rice.
**Original plan: Yup. This one was by request. It needs a vegetable, I know. I’m not awake enough to think of one.
**In the kitchen: Easy work, completed after waking from a killer morning nap, following my night of doula’ing in Toronto. Turn oven off, leave until suppertime. Eaten post-swim lessons.
**The reviews: I didn’t get to hear the full reviews, due to racing off to a soccer coaching clinic with AppleApple. She ate a sandwich instead. But when we left, CJ was in the throes of an impressive tantrum because he couldn’t SEE the honey in the lentils. A reliable source tells me he became so incensed that he bit the table, at which point everyone started laughing, even him. But he didn’t eat the lentils. Everyone else did, however, and within 24 hours, it was gone.
**The verdict: Good meal to make in advance. And yum.
**Wednesday’s menu: Leek and potato soup (crockpot). Bread, hard-boiled eggs, cheese, sliced tomatoes.
**In the kitchen: Early morning chopping and sauteeing, but it paid off. I pureed it in the pot, and called it “Mashed Potato Soup.” (Ever-popular.)
**The reviews: “It looks different, but it tastes the same. Like, no offense, Mom, but when I saw you with that big bowl of vegetables this morning …” -Albus (I did use lots of leeks; and the soup had a greenish yellow tinge that was slightly unappetizing, or, in Albus’s words, “kind of looks like barf.”) Unfortunately for us, right about then, CJ gagged on his egg yolk and threw up an entire egg right onto his plate. I would characterize the moment as matter-of-fact rather than dramatic. Thus endeth supper. You’re all racing to make leek and potato soup right now, I can tell. I was solo parenting because Kevin was in Toronto.
**The verdict: Actually a really good meal, both food and chat.
**Thursday’s menu: Curried lentil soup (crockpot). Saag paneer. Baked brown rice. Plus leftover white rice.
**Original plan: For some reason, when I made the menus on Sunday evening, I was hankering for risotto and had written that down in place of regular rice. Who has time to stir the risotto? Not I, at least, not yesterday. So I threw a lentil soup in the crockpot and made brown rice instead.
**In the kitchen: Was chopping onions for soup when the electrician knocked on the door to go over the outlets and light fixtures and other things requiring thought and decision-making; but that wasn’t all. The kids were finishing breakfast and getting packed for school. Kevin was in Toronto (yes, again). Another parent was telephoning to tell me about a last-minute change to school-walking plans. Albus was refusing to walk his little sister. “Where is the electrical box, can you show me?” “You’re so mean! I never get a chance to talk to my friends! And now you’re going to make me walk her!” Chop, chop, chop onions. The thought crossed my mind: I can’t hold this together. But then I did. On with the day.
**The reviews: Most chose the brown rice and we talked about how nutritious it is. Does it taste different from white rice? We debated. Fooey gobbled the spinach and paneer and requested leftovers for her lunch box. Lentil soup was eaten. It was just me and the kids, and we enjoyed each other’s company. And they all ate lentils and brown rice and, at the very least, sampled spinach and paneer! An I-love-these-kids moment.
**The verdict: Good food.
**Friday’s menu: Bailey’s pickup supper. Plus picnic for soccer girl. Plus dinner out with girlfriends for me.
**In the kitchen: Managed pickup and food storing in under an hour. Additionally, packed picnic, soccer bag, running gear, and ran out the door to pick up a car from the Grand River Carshare, which we just joined earlier in the week, in order to meet Kevin and kids at skating.
**The reviews: I wasn’t home to hear those reviews, but AppleApple and I enjoyed the picnic (apples, red peppers, cheese, bread sticks and pretzels, and a pumpkin muffin) after she’d changed into her goalie gear, and I’d changed into my running gear. Then she went to her goalie clinic, and I went for a run. An hour and a half later, we zipped down to another indoor field for AppleApple’s second soccer session of the evening. I’d arranged carpooling for her, so I dropped off the Co-op car and walked to meet my friends for dinner and a drink. (Kevin was at his own soccer game; Albus was at a sleepover; and the others were home with a sitter.)
**The verdict: All I can say is PHEW. We made it all happen. This scheduling stuff gets easier with time and experience.
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Weekend kitchen accomplishments: Four loaves of bread. Double-batch of waffles (three bags frozen for later). Pan of roasted tomatoes turned into sauce. Two jars of applesauce made from apples picked at Kevin’s family’s farm. Banana bran muffins.
Note: All of this accomplished on Thanksgiving Monday. We spent the weekend with Kevin’s family. Good grief but it’s a hot day to have the oven on. I can’t believe I’m saying that about October 10th.