Did I tell you that my kiddo has two weeks of spring break? Two. Weeks. Well, at least we get to sleep in.
One week takes place in a beautiful tropical location, but the other week takes place at home. For the at-home week, we’ve got two playdates on the schedule, plus a much-needed haircut for both of us, and color for one. Also on my agenda are fun things like painting our toenails and watching some movies. And some necessary things, like cleaning Carla’s craft room. On Carla’s agenda: all the TV and video games.
We do also need to eat. What’s a good Spring Break menu plan? Taking a break from meal planning and cooking would be nice, but alas, that’s not in the cards. Even when we are traveling, our hostess has expressed interest in cooking. I would much rather not think about food beyond picking something off a menu at a restaurant, and I would love to wash nary a dish… but. We’ll see.
Okay, so: meal planning, playdates, and Easter. We aren’t big Easter celebrants here, and none of us particularly likes ham (except in Lunchable form). But it seems like we should do SOMETHING celebratory, no? Aside from copious amounts of Reese’s peanut butter eggs, of course.
Dinners for the Week of March 25-31
Tacos: Tacos are a great, kid-friendly meal with the benefit of being easy.
Hamburgers: Carla eats hamburgers and I’m hoping one of her playmates also eats hamburgers. If not, there are always chicken nuggets.
Pork Loin with Wine and Herb Gravy: This seems fancy enough for a holiday meal. I bet it would pair well with some baby potatoes and asparagus.
Pizza: I just want pizza. Carla won’t eat it, but my husband will.
Something else????
There. That sounds sufficiently spring-break-y to me. What’s on your meal plan for the week?
Ours was very nice. It began with a Passover Seder that was so, so lovely. We are so lucky to have friends who include us in their family celebration.
My parents were really big on religious community and tradition, and I grew up going to church every Sunday and attending traditional events for every holiday: same food, mostly the same people. I really loved that, growing up, but I have not been great about doing anything similar for my kid. On the church side, my husband is not religious at all and has no interest in church, and I am too shy to go to church by myself. These two things are not going to change. Maybe when Carla gets a bit older, she will have an interest in church and can go with me. We’ll see. The tradition thing… that’s a little bit better, but not by much. Maybe, probably, it makes no difference at all whether we eat The Same Exact Thing every Easter. I feel like I’m going off on a tangent that is related to a simmering sense of guilt that I’m not doing enough for Carla’s religious education, that I am failing at surrounding her with community and values and traditions that will provide a strong foundation for her all her life, and we’re not going to dig too deeply into that today.
The Seder was lovely. I love reading through the Haggadah and eating the ritual foods and talking about how the message of Passover is relevant to our lives today. I love spending time with friends who feel more like family. I love watching a passel of kids tear through the house while their parents smile indulgently and occasionally intervene when someone gets a little too adventurous. I was so lucky to have that kind of extended friend-family when I was growing up, and I feel so grateful – for myself and for Carla – that we are being brought into the warm, loving fold of this particular family.
We also had a pretty near perfect weekend, I think, just the three of us. Saturday, we went and looked at a house and it was beautiful and I am still a little sad that we decided not to make an offer on it, but it wasn’t our house so it will be okay. (We are not in any hurry to move. We are simply looking for The Perfect House, and if we find it we might try to buy it.) Then we dyed Easter eggs. Then we went to a concert with friends, which was a lot of fun. We didn’t get home until LATE, though, and the Easter Bunny still had to put out baskets and fill eggs with stickers and money (thank you Sarah, for the cash idea!), and hide eggs which meant that my husband and I didn’t get to bed until TWO AM IN THE MORNING, which is something my system has become incapable of handling. Carla, of course, woke up at seven and she is not allowed to go downstairs on holiday mornings without us, so we ALL woke up at seven.
So Sunday we did Easter things, including eating Reese’s peanut butter eggs for breakfast, and then we went our separate ways to do the things that introverts do: video games, elaborate Barbie/Calico Critters dramas, reading. I went for a very long walk by myself, which was perfect. The weather was brilliantly sunny but cool enough that I was glad I’d worn long sleeves; I think this is my preferred temperature. I listened to an audiobook and observed with pleasure all my neighbors doing Spring Is Here kind of things: a big group sitting on the driveway on lawn chairs as kids ran around looking for Easter eggs, a few solitary people weeding garden beds, families out walking together, teens playing basketball in the driveway, kids riding bikes. I saw, from across the street, the woman without her partner, and as I waved and smiled, I thought about you and about how you would want me to say something to her, but I couldn’t find the words and then we were out of range.
While I have seen some popcorn trees and some forsythia in bloom while driving Carla to school and her various activities, and there are a few batches of daffodils and hyacinths popping up in various yards, I haven’t seen a lot of flowering trees in my neighborhood yet. But I did notice that one of the magnolias on my walking route was beginning to bud.
At least, I think these are magnolia buds. They could be something else entirely.
After my walk, I went home and did a lot of cooking.
We ended up not making ham this weekend. I just couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for ham, even though Jen made it sound extremely easy and I trust Jen completely. Instead, we made this feta brined rosemary chicken which had a good flavor but was, due I’m sure entirely to user error, so very very dry. I roasted some asparagus on the side which was good.
I also got a wild hare and made a pavlova. The pavlova turned out well: dry and crisp on the outside, pillowy and marshmallowy on the inside. But I also made some lemon curd – why not, right? – and THAT turned out horribly. First, I forgot to add the lemon zest, so it was more like lightly lemon-flavored sugar than anything else. Second, I was trying Very Hard to follow the instructions, and to keep stirring until the curd just began to boil (it never did), and managed to turn it into something resembling lemon curd caramel. Which means that when I went to scoop it into the pavlova, it was unscoopable. We had to put it in the microwave for 10 second intervals until it was soft enough to scoop. This morning, it is back to its chewy caramel state. I topped the whole thing with berries and it was SO SWEET. Just like eating a big pile of sugar. I will not be making it again. Carla loves it, though. It’s right up her alley: sugar and fruit. She made me scrambled eggs this morning and then had a big slice of pavlova, so at least I know it will be eaten.
Now that the holidays are over, it will be an eye blink and the school year will be done, and my baby will be a FIFTH GRADER which sounds impossible.
But before I spend any (more) time fretting about that, I need to figure out what I will feed my family this week.
Dinners for the Week of April 10-16
Tacos: We haven’t had tacos in a while, and Carla will usually eat tacos several days of the week, eating less meat every time until her plate is mainly taco shells and cheese. She has agreed to eat chicken nuggets again, so that’s A HUGE RELIEF.
Shish Tawook with Fattoush Salad: This also sounds good. Plus, I impulse bought a bottle of Shish Tawook marinade, so I don’t even have to think about that part.
Ham Sandwich: This is all I have planned for the rest of the week. (If you don’t want to click the link, “ham sandwich” is our new family term for “figure it out yourself.” My husband is the only one who regularly eats an actual ham sandwich.)
Date Night!: My husband and I are going on a date one night this week while my kid is at a friend’s house.
What was a highlight from your weekend? Anything delicious you are looking forward to eating this week? Are the trees blooming in your neck of the woods?
I am feeling very low lately. It’s not like there’s anyreason at all – my life is full of gifts and blessings. On top of the lowness, I find myself feeling frustrated at myself because I shouldn’t be feeling this way. And yet, here we are.
One small thing I can do to move forward is to post about this week’s dinners. Maybe not the most scintillating of topics, to read or to write, but it’s better than staring at an empty screen and/or dumping my very inconsequential whines onto the page.
We are about to embark on another period of extra busy-ness, as Carla enrolls in a new sports team. We will be back to having extracurriculars that run up against dinnertime nearly every day. This means that we need to focus on quick and easy. Probably a lot of the time, I will end up eating black bean tacos or salad, and my husband will end up eating ham sandwiches. In fact, “ham sandwich” has become code for “eat something easy of your choosing” in our household, even if the resulting meal includes neither ham nor sandwich.
Oh – that reminds me. There’s been a Disturbing Development: Carla was eating chicken nuggets the other day for dinner. She had eaten three and wanted something else, and I suggested that if she was still hungry, she should eat the fourth. And she said, “I think I’m tired of chicken nuggets. I don’t think I like them anymore.”
This is it. This is the horrible endpoint I’ve been anticipating and fearing for years, because she eats them so frequently. And I’m not even going to apologize for it, because there is protein in chicken nuggets and, more importantly, she EATS THEM. Or did eat them. I do TRY to shake up her meals – I do. But there are so few things she eats, and I hate mealtimes that morph into me coaxing/wheedling/demanding that she eat the thing on her plate. Plus, chicken nuggets are EASY, which is important too, and ready in under 10 minutes if I use the air fryer.
What am I going to do if she stops eating chicken nuggets?
(Carla’s suggestion, by the way, was that she would eat tacos every day. And, yes, fine, tacos are great and I am happy to make a big batch of meat at the start of the week so she can eat them as often as she likes. But she gets tired of those too, plus sometimes it seems like “eating tacos” is an excuse for eating multiple crispy corn taco shells and copious amounts of cheese. I get it, and crispy taco shells and cheese have their time and place. But I don’t think, in our situation of plentiful options, that they should be my kid’s MAIN source of calories, you know?)
Carla’s meals are never part of my Dinners This Week posts anyway, since she rarely eats what my husband and I do. But I am still fretting over how to get appropriate quantities and varieties of food into her. (She eats scrambled eggs and salmon and steak and – sometimes – pork tenderloin or teriyaki chicken or hamburger. She will not starve.)
Ugh. We also have HOLIDAYS this week. Well. I cannot get up enough energy to think about making anything special. Fortunately, we have been invited to a Passover Seder with friends, so I don’t even have to think about that. We can dye Easter eggs on Saturday. And maybe that will have to be that. My mother always used to make a ham for Easter dinner, but I don’t like ham enough to make a whole one. Although… maybe it would produce plenty of leftovers for my husband… and Carla sometimes eats ham (although usually in Lunchable form). I don’t know.
Despite having a wonderful list of reliably delicious dinners to pad out the meal plan each week, I still find myself wanting to try New Things, so I’ve got two oldies and two newbies on the list. Here’s what I am tentatively planning to make this week, keeping in mind that we might chuck it all and eat nothing but ham sandwich.
Dinners for the Week of April 3-April 9
Ginger Chicken Asparagus Stir Fry: This is a new-to-me recipe, but asparagus is plentiful these days and this is a way of preparing it that haven’t tried before.
Baked Gnocchi and Vegetables: On a whim the other day, I picked up a bag of cauliflower gnocchi from Trader Joe’s. I don’t particularly like gnocchi, and I’m deeply suspicious of cauliflower masquerading as foods that it clearly is not. But I own a bag now, and I need to do something with it. Maybe this is the solution?
Chili-Honey Chicken and Sweet Potatoes: I have only had this once, so far, but it was so incredibly delicious. I’ve been thinking about it nonstop lately. Maybe it’s time to make it again. I am a little fearful that I loved it so much initially because a) it was novel and b) I thought I’d burned the sweet potatoes beyond recognition but they turned out to be deliciously charred. I doubt I could recreate the same conditions of uncertain anticipation and relief, you know?
Lemon Garlic Pasta with Fresh Veggies: Pasta is one of my go-to comfort foods, and I loved this dish the last time I made it. It sounds springy and filling.
Baked Ham? With what? The more I think about this, the less appealing it is. But my mom made ALL holidays special, and I feel like such a failure for not trying to make them special for Carla. I KNOW THIS IS DUMB. Knowing that it is dumb doesn’t make the feeling evaporate.
What are you eating this week? Any plans for the holidays, eating or otherwise?
Happy Valentine’s Day, Internet! We don’t really do much for Valentine’s Day around here, except cards for one another. And I found some irresistible little things at Michael’s a few weeks ago that I picked up for Carla, including a stuffed animal that she does NOT need. I also picked out a few small treatsies, even though I have been pretty successful at keeping candy and sweets out of our house so far this year. Time will tell whether this was a Bad Plan.
The only other thing I did (today at least; don’t hold me to this for future Valentine’s Days) was make A Special Breakfast for Carla. I used a cookie cutter to cut heart shapes in her pancakes and I bought her a box of Valentine’s Day themed Froot Loops, and I cut her strawberries into hearts. She mentioned the strawberry hearts but not the pancake ones, and only ate a handful of the Froot Loops after proclaiming that they taste just like regular Froot Loops.
My husband’s view of Valentine’s Day, without putting too many words in his mouth, is that it is kind of aggravating and unnecessary. I told him that Carla and I were participating in Valentine’s Day whether he wanted to or not, and that we really wanted to at least get him some sort of candy, but he is trying to eat better and had no suggestions. Carla was indignant at the idea of not getting him SOMETHING, so she and I got him some low-sugar treatsies from Target that I hope aren’t too terrible. My view is that Valentine’s Day is fun, and I like to participate in fun things. Because my husband has made his views quite clear, I have no expectations of getting anything for Valentine’s Day, and was therefore delighted that my husband remembered to buy me a card and Carla remembered to make me one (or, more likely, that my husband reminded Carla to make me one). Also, it was an excuse to buy myself Sour Patch Kids and Nibs.
My only other view of Valentine’s Day is that it’s really fun for our kid, and she will only be a kid for such a short time, so why not lean into the fun for her sake? She LOVES holidays, and candy-centric holidays especially. I think this may be the last year that her school does a Valentine’s Day party, but she really enjoyed making a “mailbox” and writing out Valentines to all her classmates and teachers. She even decided to depart from her all-black clothing routine for the day: she chose a red skirt and a shirt with polka dots in a variety of pinks and reds. Making Valentine’s Day special for her is worth the little amount of effort I put into it, and I’m happy to continue as long as she enjoys it.
This is all to say that we are not doing a special Valentine’s Day dinner, which is fine. Special or no, however, we still have to eat.
Normally, I post dinner plans on Monday. But my husband and I went to the grocery store on Sunday for a quick restock of a few things, so I didn’t need to go to the store again urgently yesterday. Plus, I was having A Day. I swear that I woke up and my brain stayed in bed. Probably needed a mental health day. I was in a fog all day, and kept forgetting things, culminating in nearly missing Carla’s music lesson.
One of her activities has ceased for the season, which means we can reclaim many hours of our week. I have been feeling happy and relieved since the last day. In my head, apparently, this translated to ALL of her activities ending, which is not the case. So I was indulging in a leisurely Target trip with Carla – you know, just sort of toodling around the store, not really following a list – when my phone alarm went off, reminding me that I had twenty minutes to get Carla to her lesson. Ack!
Of course, the alarm went off two minutes after everyone else in the store decided to wrap up their own shopping trips, so when we got to the (poorly manned as usual) checkout stations, three enormous lines had already snaked into the walkway, blocking foot traffic, plus there was an additionally long line at the lone self-checkout.
I didn’t want to put back all of our shopping – that would have taken too long. And I didn’t want to abandon my cart and our carefully selected items – no way did I want to RETURN to Target after already spending so much time there. (Target shopping just doesn’t have the cathartic, comforting effect on me like it used to.) But (shock of shocks) there was no staff person in sight, so I couldn’t ask if I could simply leave my selections somewhere for 30 minutes while I dashed Carla to her lesson and came back. I did briefly consider parking the cart outside the bathroom and hoping for the best, but as it wasn’t a foolproof plan I didn’t go through with it. So I got in line and sent my husband frantic exclamation-point-laden texts which helped neither of us but felt like Doing Something at least.
Poor Carla, at this point, was complaining about being hungry. Most Mondays, because of our jam packed activity schedule, I feed her dinner at 3:45 (I know), so she was starving. I impulse allowed her to impulse grab a package of Nutella and pretzel sticks as well as a Rice Krispie treat off the impulse buy display. The line moved at an agonizingly slow pace, but eventually a couple of other registers opened, and we were out of Target a mere 15 minutes after my alarm went off.
In the car, while Carla wolfed down her treats, I called the music teacher to let them know she’d be late. We managed to arrive at her lesson 15 minutes after it started, but by then I was a sweaty, edgy mess.
Later, when I unloaded the Target bags, I realized that I’d grabbed the wrong type of breakfast bars for my husband. So I will be returning to Target after all.
I still feel slightly frazzled today. My husband asked whether the dishwasher was full of clean or dirty dishes, and I gave him an exasperated look and said, “Well, just look in the dishwasher and you will know!”… at which point it became apparent that I had only unloaded the top rack and the silverware tray while the bottom rack was still full of clean plates and pots. Also, I have been writing this post and just now realized that I forgot to soak my feet this morning. Sigh. I really hope that my brain decides to show up to work at some point today, even if it is a little tardy.
Anyway, dinners!
Dinners for the Week of February 13-20
Garlicky Chickpea and Spinach Soup: I posted about this a few weeks ago and tried it and LOVED it, wet spinach and all. So flavorful, so filling. I have been thinking about it ever since, so back on the meal plan it goes! I feel like the preparation would work well with lentils, too, but I haven’t tried that yet. Maybe next time.
Quinoa Crunch Salad: This just sounds so yummy and fresh. I am not a big eater of cabbage, but for some reason it has a high level of appeal right now. Probably my husband will want chicken with his salad, and I may roast some shrimp for mine.
Slow Cooker Chipotle Chicken Tacos: Despite everyone’s encouraging comments in favor of chicken thighs, I am going to make this with breasts. Takes a looooong time to teach this old dog new tricks, especially when those tricks involve food. I plan to turn this into a taco bowl with lots of romaine and cabbage. I feel a little wary of a slow cooker recipe that doesn’t require any liquid, but I suppose the NYT is trustworthy enough. And I can always throw in half a cup of chicken stock if I feel really uncomfortable.
Noodle Free Chicken Pad Thai: Is this too similar to the quinoa crunch salad??? We’ll find out, I guess. I have never in my life purchased broccoli slaw, so I am very interested to learn what it’s all about. I am going to let my husband eat the chicken for this one; I will eat shrimp or just stick with the veggie-only version.
What’s on your meal plan this week? Do you do a special Valentine’s Day dinner?
Do you realize that THIS WEEK is Thanksgiving? This week! This coming Thursday! If you are not residing in the U.S. at this time, may I move in with you and skip over this extremely wonderful and yet High Stress holiday please and thank you.
My parents are visiting, which is WONDERFUL. They stay in a hotel, which is mutually beneficial. My mother will be making a pumpkin pie – from scratch, using a real pumpkin – with Carla, per Carla’s request. My father will make the Caesar salad. I will make the mashed potatoes. Perhaps I can outsource the dressing to my husband. I don’t know.
Wait a second. Now I am wondering whether we typically HAVE Caesar salad at Thanksgiving, or if this is a my-family-of-origin Christmas tradition only? I really WANT Caesar salad. But maybe it’s overkill.
I suppose I will make a turkey. I mean, I ordered a turkey already, so I am kind of locked in to making it. This is the only time all year that I eat turkey, because I hate turkey. Is hate too strong a word? How about, I strongly dislike it. It seems kind of silly to put so much work into a thing I really only eat because It’s The Thing You Do At Thanksgiving… (in my family, that is). But everyone else likes it. Maybe even Carla will eat it. And it’s essential to making the gravy I like. Well. I suppose I will ask my mother to help me. She is very good about helping – the giblets don’t squick her out and she is masterful with timing things so they are all ready at once. Why those genes did not express in my DNA, I don’t know, but here we are.
I feel kind of giddy, like I’ve had too much caffeine. Combination of pre-Thanksgiving excitement/anxiety, I suppose. That’ll get your blood buzzing!
Plus, as per usual, the end of the year just snowballs out of control. I don’t yet have holiday cards! I haven’t purchased a single Christmas present! I have only one single idea what to get Carla for Hanukkah! My mother-in-law arrives two weeks from today!
Please tell me something calming. I originally typed “clamming.” You could tell me something clamming too, if you like. But something calming would be MOST WELCOME.
In the meantime, we all need to eat in the days leading up to Thanksgiving. Perhaps we shall go for easy and warming. And then we’ll wing it, afterwards, with leftovers and charcuterie boards.
Where are you spending Thanksgiving, US friends? And what are you most looking forward to stuffing into your pie hole eating? What are you having for non-Thanksgiving dinner, non-US friends?
It seems as though I am doing NaBloPoMothis month, which is 30 blog posts in 30 days. (Will I make it??? Only time will tell.) Details at San’s blog here.
We had perfect trick-or-treating weather, I’m just going to say that first.
Second, I will note that I am writing this yesterday (for you), on the night of Halloween, and that as the designated Candy Hander-Outer, I treated myself (see what I did there) to an extra large glass of sauvignon blanc. So. You know. Read this through wine-colored glasses, if you will. Too bad I wasn’t drinking rosé.
Carla was Extremely Serious about trick-or-treating this year. Long past, apparently, are the years when she toddles around our cul-de-sac and comes home, happy and spent, after thirty minutes. Oh no. This year, she was hardly home from school when she began counting down the minutes until six o’clock, which is when our city’s Designated Trick-or-Treating Time begins. (Does your city do this? Mine did not, when I was growing up. Then again, city is a wildly generous term with which to refer to the place I grew up.) If only Carla could apply the same time urgency to getting to school every morning as she did to ensuring she was trick-or-treating at six on the dot!
She was so Serious that she refused to allow me to take a photo of her. She was a witch. Picture, if you will, a pale blond child with heavy black eye makeup, some of which had migrated in a bruised-looking way to under her eyes, and black lipstick, scowl of determination and sparkly witch’s hat askew on her head, marching into the leaf-scattered twilight, a swath of black polyester and glitter – so much glitter – trailing in her wake.
(My husband went trick-or-treating with her; she isn’t quite at an age where we feel comfortable releasing her into the wild; dark things traipse about on Halloween night, even in our lovely neighborhood. I forced him to promise to capture her image, somewhere, somehow.)
I remained at home, to hand out treats.
I had to buy four bags of candy. Candy is HOLY KITKAT EXPENSIVE this year, right alongside everything else I suppose. I bought two bags sight unseen from the Target drive-up service; one of chocolatey things like KitKats and Whoppers and Heath bars, and the other of gummy things like Twizzlers and Sour Patch Kids. They turned out to be tiny bags, with 50 pieces of candy in each bag. And each piece was nothing but a bite. A BITE. I know this because I sampled some or maybe all of the Heath bars. “Fun size” has shrunken by at least 60%, in my estimation. So, in a panic, I went to Target this past weekend. All the good candy (subjective) was gone, and the remaining bags were $10.99 or $15.00 apiece. (I looked at my receipt for the 50-pieces-per-bag purchases; they were only $5.99 per bag, so perhaps I got what I paid for.) I got a giant $15 bag of Tootsie Rolls and Dots mix and a $10.99 bag of Smarties.
This assortment turned out to be… too much. We had far fewer trick-or-treaters than in years past. One of my neighbors said, the other day, that she thinks “they bus the kids in,” based on how many children we usually have streaming down our sidewalks. But this year, it was a slow trickle with little bunches of kids in groups.
Some observations:
The majority – VAST majority – of our trick-or-treaters seemed to be in that nebulous teenage range. Maybe they were middle schoolers, maybe they were high schoolers; I could not tell. Some were wearing costumes, some were wearing jeans and a hoodie. I handed out candy and overly enthusiastic “Happy Halloweens!” to anyone who dared knock on my door. (One mother came up with three smallish children, none of whom were in costume, and said apologetically that they had all had inflatable costumes, but they had all popped. I told her that I was happy to give candy to any trick-or-treaters, and asked if she wanted some candy; she declined.)
There was only a small handful of kids Carla’s age-ish.
There was another small handful of kids in the baby-to-toddler range. One little kiddo was wearing an inflatable tractor of some sort. I asked him if he was a bulldozer, and he made an elaborate digging motion and said, “I’m a backhoe.” Thank you, kind sir, for the correction! (It was adorable.)
We lost SO MANY kids to our video doorbell. Let me back up: We have a video doorbell now. I objected strenuously for many years, but finally my husband’s desire for video evidence of… tomfoolery??? won out, and we have one. All the notifications go to his phone, which is the sole satisfaction I get from having this thing. But the trick-or-treaters had no idea how to deal with it! I had the door open (perfect weather) and was sitting in my office (reading blogs, drinking wine) a mere six feet from the door, and overheard several kids saying, “I don’t know how to ring this doorbell!” I guess I figured kids would knock? Or say, “Trick or treat!” or something through the screen? But no. Some of them WALKED AWAY before I could catch them! Oh well???
At one point, I put up a sign that said PLEASE KNOCK! I HAVE CANDY FOR YOU! and I heard one child read it to another; the other child’s unironic response? “Okay, I guess we should ring the bell!”
I was so un-busy with handing out candy, I may have done a TEENY bit of amazon shopping, I’m sorry!!, sauvignon blanc loosens my wallet and my ability to leave things in my cart overnight. I’m sorry!!! It seemed like a necessity at the time!
Each Halloween, the children who lived in our house before we moved in come by. They don’t know us; we only know them because they used to come to our neighborhood block party. It’s always slightly uncomfortable, because they will peer behind me into the hall, and whisper to their friends that they used to live here, and they never smile. But this year, I didn’t see any of the kids. I suppose they may have all grown up by now; we’ve lived here eleven years, after all. That makes me a little sad, even if I am also relieved to no longer feel like I stole something precious from them.
Carla came in fairly early. My husband and I both think that next year, we should really make an effort to find her some friends to trick-or-treat with. This goes against my hermit tendencies, but I do think she’d enjoy herself more. She claimed that she’d had fun, but she seemed SO SERIOUS about the whole thing. All business, as my husband said.
She came home with quite the haul. She organized everything by candy type and counted it all: 89 pieces of candy, 12 of which were Milky Ways, 10 of which were plain M&Ms. I asked her which is her favorite, and she shrugged helplessly. “All?”
Lots of our neighbors give out full-size candy bars, and it lit a competitive flame inside my husband. He wants to hand out full-size candy next year. “We don’t want to be the house with the bad candy,” he told me earnestly. No, honey. No we don’t.
I continue to love Halloween. It is so stress-free and I love how strangers and neighbors alike open their homes and candy bowls for children they may or may not know. I love the joy in dressing up. I love seeing children of all ages making the rounds, no matter what they are wearing. I love how many teenagers commented on Carla’s pumpkins. I love how friendly the night becomes. It makes me feel so warm and happy and full of tenderness for our children and one another. It was a good night.
I hope your Halloween was as charming and balmy as mine was.
Usually, Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. It’s so low-obligation, plus there’s candy, plus you get to see adorable kids and their semi-embarrassed parents marching around the sidewalks. It’s a lovely holiday.
This year, I didn’t even put up my bats. My bats are my FAVORITE decoration of all the decorations I own, and I just couldn’t summon enough energy to put them up (or to contemplate the inevitability of taking them down). I (Carla) finally put up our yard ghosties, and we bought some pumpkins, so I feel like I made SOME effort even if it was wildly late.
This ghost is as aghast as I am that tomorrow is NOVEMBER. What the what.
Carla insisted on carving our pumpkins yesterday. I have managed to avoid jack-o-lanterning since… 2019, maybe? I can’t remember. But it has been several years. I have to admit that I didn’t miss it. It’s so messy and I don’t like the feeling of pumpkin innards, and I hate how strenuous an activity it is, to remove said innards. Plus, pumpkin juice leaves my hands feeling weirdly mask-like, even after thorough washing. But Carla was insistent, so I was game; I am at the point in her childhood where I am wondering, “How many more [fill in the magical childhood event of your choice] will we have left?” and I’m trying desperately to Cherish. So I cherished some pumpkin-juicy hands and pumpkin guts all over my floor. But! The best part! CARLA DID ALL THE CARVING. All I did was remove one pumpkin lid (my husband did the other one) and scrape at some of the most recalcitrant innards. She did everything else, from planning the design to doing the actual carving. She even cleaned up (most of) the mess! And rinsed and strained the pumpkin seeds that she’d lovingly saved from the fate of the guts! It was wonderful. Nine is a stellar age, I’m telling you.
This cat-o-lantern has ears AND a bow-tie!
Carla is excited to go trick-or-treating (although she is overly worried, in my opinion, about this rumor/conspiracy theory that’s going around about drugs disguised as brightly colored candy; I think it’s bunk and that anyone who spends money on drugs or makes money from drugs would not just HAND THEM OUT to children, who – in addition to having no idea where they got said drug-candy – have no financial means to continue to BUY drugs, but she is hearing this from FAMILY and also from FRIENDS AT SCHOOL OMG, so I guess I understand why she is edgy) (we know all our neighbors and we inspect all her candy anyway) and I am excited to watch her traipse around to the neighbors’ houses, where many of them have secreted special full-size candy or little candy bags just for her.
We have the best neighborhood for trick-or-treating. Our houses are fairly close together, we know nearly all of our neighbors, there are tons of kids. When the weather is nice, some of the neighbors set up tables and chairs on their driveways so they can really get involved in the trick-or-treating process. It’s wonderful.
I am making tacos tonight, because they are easy and Carla likes them enough that she might actually eat some before she goes out on her candy-procurement mission. The rest of the week, well… I think I’ll make a pot of butternut squash soupto have on nights when my husband and I eat separately (he eats a ham sandwich, though maybe I’ll surprise him with turkey! I am so fun.) instead of black bean tacos. For the other nights, I’m feeling more adventurous than I have in awhile. We’ll see how long that lasts, won’t we.
It’s been a very long time since I’ve done a grocery store report. In large part because things seems to have stabilized somewhat (except for prices HOLY CAULIFLOWER it is more than $100 every time I set foot in the grocery store), or at least I’ve grown to roll with the occasional random shortages. However, my grocery shopping experience today was a little distressing — the vegetable situation was GRIM. We’re talking two red bell peppers and five stunted zucchini (zucchinis? zucchinii?) and NO ICEBERG LETTUCE level grim. But I circled around to the produce section a few times, and finally there was a big pile of iceberg lettuce heads (this is Carla’s preferred lettuce for tacos, hence the urgency), and, even better, they were on sale at 2-for-$5 rather than “on sale” for 2-for-$7 which is what they’ve been going for lately. I think I’d just hit the store too early, before things were restocked from the weekend.
(Small aside: Our grocery store staff is extremely kind and helpful, and I have often approached a staff member in the produce section and asked whether there is something available in the back, and sometimes there IS. I was going to try this approach this morning, especially because a staff member was a) wheeling out a big cartload of bagged lettuce varieties and b) she’d already brought something out for another customer. But then after she handed over the spinach to the person who’d asked for it, the staff member heaved a huge sigh and groaned “oy vey” under her breath in a manner far too world-weary for nine in the morning, so I moved along without bothering her.
I did buy a bottle of non-Huy Fong sriracha in my store’s house brand. I haven’t gotten up the nerve to try it yet. But I fear that the chili pepper / sriracha shortage is going to outlast my small stockpile, and I need to find an alternative.
I also bought two cartons of yogurt that expired yesterday, so that was annoying. But that’s on me, I guess, for only doing a quick check of the expiration date of one yogurt and assuming that all flavors would expire on the same date. They do NOT; the expiries vary wildly from yesterday to December 5. Let that be a warning to you.
Dinners for the Week of October 31-November 6
Ground Beef Tacos
Garlic Balsamic Crusted Pork Tenderloin: This sounds yummy and I haven’t made it in AGES. I think I’ll throw some root veggies into the oven to roast alongside the pork.
One Pan Pesto Chicken: This is a new one for me, but it sounds good (sans tomato, of course) and fairly easy, maybe?
Sheet Pan Crispy Salmon and Potatoes: This sounds good and I have some salmon filets ready to go in the freezer. Now I just need to find some good looking asparagus that isn’t mind-blowingly expensive.
Butternut Squash Soup:This is so easy, even if it does involve chopping an onion. I just use cubed frozen butternut squash and it’s fine. The last time I made it, it was a teeny bit watery, so I am going to add a third bag of squash to the mix without adjusting any of the other elements of the recipe. I also bought a loaf of sourdough from the grocery store bakery and I have Big Plans [Confidential to those of you who hate mushrooms: LOOK AWAY] about sautéing some mushrooms with a little butter and garlic, and spreading the mushrooms on some Swiss cheese on top of a buttered slice of the sourdough and cooking it, grilled cheese style. That would make a delicious side to my soup, wouldn’t it now.
Now I need to go find a bowl big enough for all the candy I plan to dole out to our trick-or-treaters.
Happy Halloween, Internet! I hope your night is full of treats!
Carla was eager to buy a yellow pumpkin this year, and now I’m wondering why we don’t buy yellow pumpkins every year?! Wishing you a purrrr-fect Halloween.
When I was a kid, my mom always did Easter baskets for us. I remember the green plastic grass. I remember a few jelly beans nestled in the bottoms of the baskets. I remember often receiving a white chocolate bunny, because my kind, thoughtful mother remembered that I didn’t like chocolate but still wanted me to have a bunny. (I have never liked white chocolate, either, but back then there weren’t all the options we have now. Plus, we didn’t have a Target or a Walmart in my hometown, and Amazon hadn’t yet been invented, so she was really limited to what she could buy in the grocery store. This makes it sound like I grew up one hundred years ago, doesn’t it?) The only other thing that I got reliably each Easter was a beautiful Easter dress.
Oh, how I loved those Easter dresses! They invariably came in soft pastels – frothy milkshake pink, pale robin’s egg blue, duckling fluff yellow. They were always twirly, and often had things like petticoats and lace. I felt SO fancy when I went to church with my family.
We don’t really DO Easter, these days. We don’t go to church (and I find myself growing fuzzy on the Easter Story details, which I should really brush up on). We do dye eggs, for Carla’s benefit, and we do buy candy. The Easter bunny still visits, which means we still hunt for eggs.
I think we have mainly stopped buying Carla Easter dresses – although I loved getting her fancy frocks when she was teeny. This year, she gets a Passover dress because we have been invited to a seder at a friend’s house.
image from carters.com
And we do Easter baskets. With the green plastic grass. I don’t put jelly beans in the grass though – a) I really dislike jelly beans, which is immaterial but needs to be stated, b) they tend to get lost in the grass year over year, which I find gross. To me, the only thing less appealing than a jelly bean is a stale jelly bean that may be five years old.
We usually get Carla a chocolate bunny of some sort, and then a few other little candies. I don’t really like chocolate, but I DO like Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs, which are not only the best Easter candy, but are by far the best iteration of the peanut butter cup. There is something about the specific ratio of chocolate to peanut butter that I find irresistible.
image from target.com
I also like Sour Patch Kids, bunny-shape pleasant for the holiday but not necessary:
image from target.com
And this year I asked my husband to include some cinnamon bears if he could find them. (He is doing the candy shopping this year, bless his heart.)
image from target.com
My husband also likes Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs. And the confusingly named Reese’s Pieces Eggs, which are VERY DIFFERENT and also I hate them. I would put Reese’s Pieces of any kind right down there with black licorice and jelly beans and those weird styrofoamy circus peanut candies. But to each his own! We are still able to enjoy a happy marriage despite our opposite feelings on the subject.
For Carla, we also get an assortment of whatever candy she might like, which is ALL candy, honestly. But I also usually get her a few little things that aren’t candy. Often, I do socks or underpants, but we recently replenished both of those staples so I was able to focus on less practical and more FUN little gifties.
Some books. She has been a huge fan of the Magic Bunny series, but she has all the books. So this year I ordered her the first of the Lucky Bunnies series. This appeals to me because bunnies are Easter-y. (I mean, secular Easter-y.)
image from amazon.com
I found this silly LEGO bunny in the dollar section at Target (although it was NOT a dollar):
This triceratops taco holder has nothing to do with Easter, secular or otherwise, but Carla is still really into dinosaurs (and tacos), and I think it will be a fun Easter basket filler:
Image from amazon.com
I’m not putting it in an Easter basket, but I did order myself some sunless tanner (I know I read about it on someone’s blog – let me know if it was yours!). Sunless tanner is one of those things I am VERY attracted to, despite the fact that they rarely work as promised and almost always smell nauseatingly chemical-y. I will let you know how this one works out.
image from amazon.com
And I ordered myself an Easter dress as well. It fits well enough, but I’m not 100% sure I love it enough to keep it. The model in the photo seems pretty young, but I can’t tell if the dress reads more Mother of the Bride in person. In case you aren’t sure, that’s not the look I’m going for. I would prefer Stylish And Springy Without Trying Too Hard.
image from Nordstrom.com
I also plan to buy myself some more irises this week. They are my all-time favorite flower, closely followed by tulips. I spotted some last week for $6 a bundle and paired them with a bunch of yellow tulips and the arrangement made me SO happy all week long.
Well, I am playing a rousing game of Is It Covid? from home with my child, who had a fever and the sniffles and droopy/whiny child-illness-malaise yesterday! Yay! I am hoping to get her in to see her doctor today for a Covid test (or that we can do a drive-thru test at Walgreens, except in that case I will have to do the swabbing and I am not looking forward to that!)) so that we can… get her back to school? I have no idea what the rules are these days. Last year when she had the sniffles (once ALL YEAR which is a miracle; masks work y’all), she was out of school for four days. I am really REALLY hoping that she will be able to return to school by Thursday so she can participate in her much-anticipated Halloween parade. But please, at least let her be well enough to trick-or-treat next Sunday.
We are obviously hoping it is Just a Cold, for so many many reasons. (For instance, my husband has a rare day off which corresponds with a not-as-rare day off for Carla, so we have plans to go see a special art exhibit in town.) But the BIG one is that my in-laws are scheduled to arrive tomorrow, and my mother-in-law begins radiation therapy this week which I am assuming will suppress her immune system. Obviously they will stay at a hotel if Carla has Covid, and obviously we will all stay far, far away from them, but sheesh. What timing, amirite?
So I am distracting myself by planning meals for the week! Meals that I cannot shop for until Carla is cleared for Covid! Meals that I may never get to serve to more than myself and my husband! Woo! Covid-Era Living is fun fun fun all the time, isn’t it?
Dinners for the Week of October 25-31 (maybe, if we’re lucky)
Soy-Ginger Pulled Pork with Tangy Slaw: I love this meal, plus it’s easy peasy, plus I don’t think I’ve ever served it to my in-laws before (and they are surely growing weary of BBQ pulled pork and various types of tacos). The last time I made this for my husband, I made homemade bao buns which were… denser than they should be. But it seems that Asian grocery stores carry frozen bao buns, so I plan to go to my local Asian grocery and see what I can find. Once I am not potentially contagious, obviously.
Red Wine Braised Short Ribs: For some reason, I have had short ribs on the brain. I bought some short ribs at Costco already, so those are taken care of. Now I just need to figure out what to serve these with. I have only ever eaten them with polenta, but have never made polenta. And probably I will need to make a simple salad, too, to have on the side.
Roasted Pork Tenderloin with Fall Veggies: I looked back in my “dinners this week” emails to myself, which is how I used to keep track of meals and my notes on how they turned out. Apparently we used to eat this all the time and it was good??? Time to test out the veracity of my notes!
Follow Up: This was, indeed, delicious. The “marinade” might be better if used as an actual marinade; next time, I may let the pork sit in it for a few hours beforehand. Also, the veggies I did this time were carrots, parsnips, sweet potatoes, and radishes. The sweet potatoes were the best, the parsnips were acceptable (and my husband loves them) and I didn’t eat the carrots because I already know I don’t care for carrots. But the radishes were DISGUSTING. No thank you, do not make again.
Salmon and Fennel One-Pot Wonder: Alison recommended this one to me (thanks, Alison!) and it sounds like the perfect thing to make for my in-laws!
Follow Up: I made this with the “alternate” option of using leeks instead of fennel. (I only noticed that leeks were an option AFTER I had purchased a bulb of fennel, which I kept around for awhile until finally throwing it away.) It was DELICIOUS. I would 100% do this again. My husband doesn’t even like salmon and he liked this dish. It was very easy and semi-fancy enough for guests. I will definitely make this again YUM.
Chicken with Mushroom Gravy: And a side of steamed broccoli. This is another meal that I found in my old emails. “GOOD. MAKE AGAIN.” say my notes. This is the moment.
Takeout for the other nights. And, who am I kidding, probably these will bleed over into next week, too. I can muster only so much momentum for cooking.
Should I be planning something special for Halloween? I’m having trouble thinking of anything fun, since Carla doesn’t eat anything. (She did not even eat the ADORABLE hot dog mummies I made last year.) Plus, the weather is likely going to be cool and rainy, and we will be pre-occupied with trick-or-treating. Probably I will just do one of the crockpot recipes and call it a day. Who knows. Maybe if Carla is all better and back in school, I will feel a surge of energy for planning some sort of baking project, at least.
Do you normally make something fun and Halloweeny for Halloween? Are you handing out candy this year? If you know trick-or-treating-age children, are they planning to trick-or-treat? Carla didn’t do it last year; I swear we set out candy for people to take, but my husband doesn’t remember doing so and is Firmly Against It this year (although he is okay with taking a masked [Covid free only, obviously] Carla this year). (This means that we have ZERO Halloween candy in the house.) (I am not counting the remaining bag of candy corn; we have had a bag already, plus two bags of the Brach’s pumpkins. But we have had no miniature Snickers bars or fun size Milky Way Midnight bars and that is tragic.)
I am curious what you do normally/are planning to do for Halloween this year. And also how Halloween will coordinate with football, since both are on Sunday.
Well, I’m a day late and a dollar short and don’t care a WHIT because I am typing this outside in my backyard in the sunshine. It may be – checks calendar – only April 7 but it FEELS like summer, and right now that is a novel and welcome feeling so I’m going to bask in it a bit. There are so few opportunities for good basking, don’t you agree?
The reason I am late with my dinners this week is because I have hit my semi-annual Dinner Wall and hit it hard. Nothing sounds good. I cannot bear to think of food. Not a single food sounds remotely edible, not even my one true love: tacos. Perhaps I have overdone it on the Easter candy. Although I don’t really think so, because even that sounds repulsive at pleasant. I tracked down a bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs at Walgreens (thanks for the recommendation, NGS!) and I have not opened it. That’s how dire things are, people.
Of course, we are once again confronted by the undeniable fact that we must eat to survive, and therefore I need to plan something. (Even takeout sounds unappealing, which is an indication of where I am, food-ily.) (I am feeling, temporarily I’m sure, wary of takeout because I had a Bad Experience at a new pizza place we tried over the weekend. Super crowded, like an endless line of people going in and out; MULTIPLE staff members wearing their masks around their chins; at one point, ten entire customers packed into the narrow vestibule together; MULTIPLE customers not wearing their masks properly. I waited outside, which helped – I could feel aghast without feeling personally at risk. But then I also saw a person pick up a stack of boxes, leave the pizza place for an undetermined amount of time, return with the boxes, and hand the boxes back to the checkout person, and then the checkout person put them back in the warming cupboard. One of the customers said something about the returned boxes, and a different staff person removed them and, presumably, threw them away, while telling the checkout person that you can’t put food that has left the premises back in the warming cupboard and return it to circulation. A learning experience for all. But I think you understand why I am feeling a bit skittish about takeout after that. SADLY, the pizza was really good.)
In times like these, when NOTHING sounds good, not even cheese and crackers or nachos for beets’ sake, we turn to things we know we enjoy, no matter what. And yet… every single one of my tried-and-true, easy breezy go-to meals sounds revolting and vomitous. Okay. So we shift to meals that provide nourishment only, and don’t worry about the taste as much. And yet… contemplating a plain Jane meat-plus-veg formula makes me want to violently fling a chicken breast into a broccoli patch.
Nonetheless, after much feet dragging and moaning, I have dug up some recipes that don’t make me want to throw poultry. Plus, I badgered my husband into contributing two meal ideas. Let’s ignore the fact that one of those ideas is a food I refuse to eat and the other is out of season.
Fake Shack Burgers: The restaurant food I have missed the most during the pandemic has been A Really Good Burger. We have tried making burgers on the grill and in the instant pot, and – while both have their merits – they just aren’t the same as a thick, greasy burger from my favorite burger place. (Shake Shack, which I am sure is lovely, is not the place to which I am referring.) I just can’t see getting a burger as takeout. I think it would ruin the burger. So when I came across this recipe I thought maybe it would be The Secret to getting the burger I’ve been craving. We’ll see how it goes.
Baked Feta Pasta (for my husband) and Gigi Hadid’s Spicy Vodka Pasta (for me): Who am I to deny my husband the experience of a TikTok fad, and myself a meal of delicious, delicious pasta?
Persian Pomegranate Chicken: This is my husband’s other contribution to the meal plan. It does not sound appealing to me, but it does sound DIFFERENT, and sometimes different is just as good as appealing. Plus, I am all in favor of encouraging my husband to take part in the meal planning process. The thing is… pomegranates are not in season right now. And also this is a FALL meal. Even though I already said nothing sounds good and so this next bit might sound contradictory: I don’t want FALL meals, I want salads and things we can grill. But! Nonetheless, if I can track down some pomegranate arils and some pomegranate molasses, we will be giving this a shot this week. If there are no pomegranates to be found at this time of year, we will have, instead, Szechuan Stir Fry.
What do you provide for dinner when nothing sounds good?
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life of a doctor's wife 