Tag: breakfast

Weekly recap + what we ate: bitter and boring

Ice patterns on the creek, as seen on a winter walk.

It’s been a week, hasn’t it? My mind is spinning. When I think about this week, the word “bitter” comes to mind.

For one, bitter bitter cold. We had two days of delayed start to school because the cold caused morning freezes. Coming off the holiday weekend, it wasn’t the worse way to ease ourselves into the week, but I can say that since I have the luxury of being able to take my morning meetings from home. I’m sure the two hour delays were very disruptive to a lot of people. After two years of mild winters, I actually kind of love this bitterly cold January that we’ve been having. (Winter made my gratitude list last week…). It makes me more eager for spring in a way that I haven’t felt for a while. Who know if I will feel like this in another few weeks, but for now, I’m embracing the bitter cold.

The other bitter thing about the week was the days following inauguration. Well, even inauguration day too, I guess. A bitter pill to swallow. All of it. And getting more terrifying as the days go on. There are so many people who work for the federal government around here – the air is decidedly grim. I have no new words to say about this all. I try not to read the news, and then worry that I’m uninformed. I have learned that ostriches don’t really bury their heads in the sand – they look like they are when really they are looking after their eggs which they lay in holes in the ground. (Since, you know, ostriches don’t nest in trees.) I feel like there is a metaphor here – I’m not burying my head in the sand, I’m tending to my young…

MLK day, we had a cozy day as planned. I baked scones, we read books, we went on a snowy walk, we watched Modern Family, we had dumplings. We even spent an hour cleaning the toy room, while listening to the inauguration. I tried not to swear out loud too much in front of the kids as I listened to the address, but really, maybe I didn’t need to restrain myself. I debated whether or not to stream the ceremony, but ultimately, politics aside, I thought it was important to witness that process and for the kids to understand how power passed in this country. I don’t think the younger kids completely understood it. But they all know for sure, that I am very disappointed in the results of the election.

I worked from home all week, save for one day when I went in for a 90 minute meeting. I got to ride in and back with my friend so I was actually happy to go in even for a brief time. This is how my friend and I hang out during opera season – carpools and schedule meetings. It’s kind of our version of running Target errands together, I guess. Anyhow, the rest of the week I worked form home. Sometimes when I work from home I forget to eat lunch, so I was really pleased with myself that I threw together this salad. Isn’t it pretty?

It’s chopped up cucumbers, candy cane beets, olive oil, salt, pepper, lemon juice, and fresh dill. I liked this so much I ate it again the next day, adding half a can of chickpeas for some protein. All the fresh vegetables were wonderful on a winter’s day. Highly recommend!

We’ve also been on an oatmeal kick in our house lately. Something about chilly mornings makes oatmeal seem like the perfect breakfast. The kids eat their oatmeal with milk, frozen blueberries, and copious amounts of brown sugar. I like to have my oatmeal savory, so I’ve been having my oatmeal with sweet potato, a boiled egg, and scallions, all of it toped with a sprinkle of sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, and soy sauce. It’s kind of like congee, but made with oatmeal instead of rice.

The oatmeal is not as pretty as the salad above, but it is just as tasty.

Thinking about:
I recently read two articles that had me thinking about how underrated the every day pedestrian life was. First there was this article in the Guardian, “I’ve Had the Same Supper for 10 Years.” It’s a profile of Wilf Davies, a sheep farmer in Wales who, as the title says, eats the same thing every day for supper. He’s only left his farm in Whales once, thirty years ago. At one point he says:

“People might think I’m not experiencing new things, but I think the secret to a good life is to enjoy your work. I could never stay indoors and watch TV. I hear London is a place best avoided. I think living in a city would be terrible – people living on top of one another in great tower blocks. I could never do it. Walking around the farm fills me with wonder. What makes my life is working outside, only going in if the weather is very bad.”

Then there was this article in the New York Times, “How a Driving Instructor Spends Her Sundays.” The NYTimes’ series “How ____ Spends their Sundays” usually features people who seem to me impossibly cool – local celebrities, entrepreneurs, athletes swanning around to brunch and coffee and workouts and dinner parties and Pilates class. This feature, though, this one was different. Shanti Gooljar, gets up at 5 am, and spends the day teaching people how to drive, goes home, has cream of wheat for dinner, watches Yellowstone, and goes to bed by 8:30pm. It’s not glamourous or hip, but it feels oh so real. After her husband died, she says, “my family wanted me to go to Florida — my mom is there, and my brothers and sisters. But I’m at the age where I like the same routine.”

I’m sure there are people who might read about Davies and Gooljar and dismiss their lives as boring and dull, but I was struck in these two articles by how content Davies and Gooljar were. And I know you can’t always get the full story in a newspaper article, but they did seem like they found great satisfaction in the unexceptional rhythms of their days. How different their lives and expectations were from the pressure I feel to fill my days with adventures and excitement. It got me thinking – what I do on an average, say, Thursday – the getting up, packing lunches, carpool, meetings, pick ups, dinners, cleaning up – is that just the tedious parts of existence, what I do to fill and enable the more exciting and exotic parts? Is that the boring part of life?

And then I think of Wilf Davies who sees the world of beauty in a cuckoo’s call or the view from the top of his valley, who sees all of humanity in his sheep. Or how Shanti Gooljar finds so much satisfaction in running her driving school and hiring the right people. And I envy how at peace they seem to be with their lives. Don’t get me wrong – I think there is so much to see and do in this world – and I for one would be sad if I never got to eat roti ever again. Yet at the same time, I wonder if the people who are the most content are the ones who are able to find as much joy and satisfaction in the every day routines and rhythms of life as they are to find it in new and novel experiences. I think there’s great satisfaction to be had in the consistency of pedestrian life – perhaps routine can kind of free your mind to see beauty in the things around you. And perhaps you can’t chase contentment abroad if you cannot find it at home?

Grateful for:

-Fleece Lined pants. I ordered these fleece lined pants form Duluth Trading Company when they were on sale at the beginning of the month, and they have been amazing! I wear them for walks in the cold, for standing outside waiting for the bus, even for hanging out at home because for some reason our thermostat is set at 66 degrees. (It’s a setting leftover from when I was working and there was no one at home during the day… I should shift it, but I always forget until I’m already cold.) These pants are so cozy and warm. What they say about “No bad weather, just bad clothing”, well I feel like these pants perfectly summed that up for me this week.

-The middle kid who turned eight. He is such a cerebral, goofy kid, bringing equal parts joy and frustration to my life. We celebrated with a special birthday dinner on the actual day and then he had a birthday party with a six friends at the duckpin bowling alley. It was a perfect size party, in my opinion. Also – he’s now old enough to stay home by himself legally in Maryland, but when I broached the subject with him, his eyes got really wide and he said, “I think I would be scared.” So I guess that’s not something that will happen soon. But it’s good to know that if I did storm out of the house in anger and left him by himself I would not have CPS knocking at my door.

-Trails for snowy walks. On Saturday, we had to run some errands in the morning before the bowling alley birthday party. We were so efficient that we got our errands done 30 minutes before we were due at the bowling alley. So we decided to stop at a trail on the way for a brief snowy ramble. (“This feels like a hike,” the five year old said. I can’t pull one over her, that’s for sure.) This particular trail is tucked next to the shopping Plaza with a Trader Joe’s, and you wouldn’t guess that it was there. But apparently this little creek gorge was a favorite place of Teddy Roosevelt’s – funny to think this little patch of nature about ten miles from the White House was once considered “getting out of town”. These days, it’s proximity to a major road makes it pretty popular and it’s far from pristine – I imagine it’s where kids go to make out, and there’s often discarded alcohol bottles around. But even still, I think it’s a beautiful little rocky corner of nature and I feel so lucky that it’s just right there.

From the placard at the trail. “Excepting Great Falls it is the most beautiful place around here.”

-For fresh baked cookies. On MLK Day, we wanted to make cookies, and since I had made chocolate/walnut scones, I wanted to make a non-chocolate cookie. I settled on Molasses cookies from the King Artur’s Baking Companion. The dough needed to be chilled overnight, so I didn’t actually make the cookies on MLK Day. The next day, I pulled the dough from the fridge, and instead of whipping up the whole batch of cookies, I just made six cookies and put the batter back in the fridge. And the next day, I just made a few more cookies, as many as we could eat in one go. And so on – the batter lasted all week. Indeed, I am inhaling the aroma right now as I sit typing next to the kitchen. I rather like this bake-as-you-go method of cookie baking – we always have fresh cookies and the house will always smell divine.

-That I live somewhere equipped for snow. Granted our schools had a two hour delay twice last week for the icy conditions, but I’m glad that the streets were clear so the the ice could be treated. I have a colleague who is currently in Houston and his rehearsals were cancelled because it snowed there and the city was not equipped to deal with the snow, shutting many things down.

-That I still get to work from home. So many people are getting summoned back to in person work, some with merely a weekend’s notice. How do the people who make these decisions think that people can accommodate this on such short notice?

Looking forward to:

-Our trip to NYC this week! The hardest thing will be getting the kids up early to get on the 5am metro to Union Station, but after that, I hope things will be pretty simple. (I realized that it probably would have been easier if I had gotten tickets out of the second stop on the train since that’s about a twenty minute drive from home and we could have left the house closer to 6am. Oh well. Next time.) I’ve bookmarked Kinokuniya, a Japanese Manga/Stationary store for us to visit, and it’s also next to the New York Public Library, which might be a fun place to duck into for a few minutes. I know I wrote up above about the joy of a boring life – clearly I don’t want my life to be too boring.

-Dumplings with my friend K, who I haven’t seen since the beginning of December. Looking forward to catching up. (This happened today. Dumplings were delicious and we’ve agreed to be better about scheduling time together – we have our date on the calendar already for March 1st since she’ll be travelling in February.)

– A family adventure day coming up next week. At our weekly family planning meeting, I realized that we had next Saturday completely open – no kids’ activities, I didn’t have to work, there were no plans of any kind. A free Saturday is very rare for us, so we’ve decided to have an adventure. It might be as simple as going on a hike. We might make it as far as going up to Longwood Gardens. Not sure what we’ll do yet, but a free day on the calendar is such a delicious thing.

What we ate:

Monday: Noodles and dumplings – we went out to eat.

Tuesday: Chicken sweet potato Thai inspired curry, recipe from Dinner Illustrated. This was hugely tasty and the kids loved it.

Wednesday: Cabbage Soup. Loosely based on this recipe from the New York Time. I used dill instead of parsley and Italian herbs because there was a comment that made me laugh: “Italian seasoning has no room in Eastern European cabbage soup. Use fresh dill instead.” So I did. Vegan.

Thursday: The 8 year old’s requested birthday dinner: soy sauce/honey chicken wings (my mother’s recipe), steamed broccoli and green beans, sesame brown butter udon noodles.

Friday: Pizzas (the Husband made these himself) and Bad Batch.

Saturday: pasta with yellow squash, mushrooms with tuna and steamed broccoli on the side. This was a kitchen sink kind of meal – basically sautéing whatever sad veggies we had to use up and then tossing it with tomato sauce. I served canned tuna on the side for protein.

Speaking of sad veggies – we have a bunch of sunchokes given to us by a friend and no clue what to do with them. – does anyone have ideas for how to eat sunchokes? (They aren’t actually sad quite yet – they seem to last a long time in the fridge.)

What other cookie batters should we make to keep in the fridge? What is it about your boring life that gives you the most satisfaction? I hope everyone has a heartfelt week, and wishing you warmth however you can find it.

Weekly recap + what we ate: kind of a slog

Birthday Boy.

Last weekend’s highlight was the Chuck E. Cheese Party. So overwhelming, but lots of fun was had. I think if I had to do it again, I would skip the party package and just take a bunch of kids on our own. One of the main features of the party package is the Chuck E. Cheese show, featuring a highly energetic birthday video and a person in a Chuck E. Cheese costume – both of which I think the six year old found bewildering. The whole thing was rather loud and frenetic, on top of the already loud and frenetic video games. Also Chuck E Cheese is an explosion of choice – so many games to play, and then at the end when you redeem your “point” for “prizes”. Part of the party package gives the birthday kid an extra 2000 points, which greatly increases the prizes you can cash in for. Most kids only managed to win enough points to get a plastic ring and a dum dum. The six year old had so many more options – none of them life-changing, though I kind of wanted him to bring home the light up gyro wheel. I think he spent twenty minutes starting at the prizes and came home with one of those sticky spiders you throw at the wall and watch them slowly climb down. Standing with your child at the Chuck E. Cheese prize counter is an excellent exercise in restraining parental judgement. At least for me.

This week following felt very full and kind of a slog. In that ordinary life is kind of a slog kind of way. The Husband was at an in town conference for two days. He still came home at night, but because of conference events he didn’t arrive home until after bedtime, so I felt on my own with the kids two nights in a row. Three if you count the night the Husband took the oldest to basketball practice and I had the two littles. Luckily they were the two days that there were no activities, so we could just be at home. I always feel bad complaining about how challenging I find solo parenting in the evenings because when I’m working, the Husband solo parents almost every night. He does six week stretches with lots of solo parenting evenings, so I should be able to handle two nights.

I think the most exhausting thing about being solo alone with the kids is the kitchen clean up. We clean up as a family after dinner, but when the kids are being reluctant about it, it adds a whole other level of emotional energy to cajole and supervise them. Some days I think it would just be easier if I cleaned it myself after bedtime. At least then I could watch tv or listen to a podcast while I do it. But I do want the kids to take ownership in the upkeep of their home. I remember when I was in high school, after dinner my parents would go out for a walk and it was expected that my brother and I clean up after dinner. He and I had this system where one person did the dishes and the other person did everything else because the dishes were such an onerous chore. I know I need to recognize that my kids are a long way from high school, so I can’t expect them to clean up after dinner by themselves, but there is a part of my brain that thinks, “C’mon, kids! You’ve been here for years. Why aren’t you more independently helpful?”

In addition, the two little haven’t been sleeping well. The six year old would wake up screaming. The baby would come to my room and tell me her big brother was screaming, then refuse to go back to bed. I think the Husband was in the baby’s bed at one point. There was bed musical chairs going on. Find an empty sleeping space and use that. One night the only thing that would calm the six year old down was sleeping in a chair in the living room while listening to his bedtime playlist, while I slept on the couch next to him. Every so often, he would wake up yelling that one song or another wasn’t supposed to be on the playlist and I’d have to get off the couch and delete it.

(Sidenote annoyance – the free version of Amazon Music has changed its format so that you can’t just play your playlists anymore; they mix up the songs on your playlists and insert other things they (or rather their algorithm) think you might be interested in. The reasoning is they’ve made all their music library available so there is more music available, but fewer options for how to listen to it, I guess. I was fine with a limited music collection that I could play as I wanted. Luckily I haven’t updated the Amazon Music app on my iPad so I can still play the bedtime playlist in the right order, but I’m annoyed at the conspicuous money grab to try to get people to sign up for a more expensive service. I get that nothing is free, but man it’s annoying. I should just pay for a music streaming service, I guess. I wonder if I can write it off on my taxes then? Because often when I need to listen to a specific thing it’s for work.)

Anyhow, I actually quite enjoy the bedtime playlist, so at least it was nice to listen to the tunes. The Current Bedtime Playlist:
Put on Your Sunday Clothes (from Hello Dolly! the recent Broadway version)
Octopus’s Garden by the Beatles
Put on Your Sunday Clothes (from Hello Dolly! the movie version)
Rocket Ship Run by Laurie Berkner
More I Cannot Wish You (from Guys and Dolls, sung by Betty Buckley)
Dear Theodosia from Hamilton
We’re Going to be Friends by The White Stripes
Waving Through the Window from Dear Evan Hanson
A Million Dreams from The Greatest Showman
For Forever from Dear Evan Hansen
It’s Quiet Uptown from Hamilton

This last song was the source of much consternation because it was “too sad.” (He’s not wrong.) So I was instructed to take it off the playlist. But then on the next pass through, there were tears when it didn’t play. So now Quiet Uptown is back on the bedtime playlist.

Songs I had to remove from the playlist, having caused a crying fit in the post-midnight hours:
At Last I see the Light from Tangled (why?!? I thought he loved that song!)
Try to Remember from the Fantasticks (I like this song. I thought it fit in with the mix, but apparently not…)
Simple Song from Leonard Bernstein’s Mass (this was was a stretch anyway… I love the piece and thought I could just slip it in. Nope)

Okay, it wasn’t all a slog, though. I got to go running a few times, after taking the whole week before off because I was stuck at home with a sick kid. I baked more bread. I got some walks in. I started a new show. Twice I went out for lunch with friends and both times the food was amazing. One time was to a taco place, and they had these really good mushroom tacos. The second time was to a Chinese restaurant and I ordered off the dim sum menu and got turnip cakes and shrimp chang fen and sticky rice in bamboo leaves, salty spicy tofu and Chinese broccoli in oyster sauce. It was so delicious. I don’t always love going out to eat, but these two places were definitely worth it.

One fun thing: On Friday, the six year old’s class was asked to dress up as what they wanted to be when they grew up. Six year old wanted to be a builder. I had a toy hammer for him, and we had a dress up construction hat. But come Friday morning, we couldn’t find the hat. This caused no small amount of consternation because it would have been the perfect accessory. And of course it was thirty minutes before we had to leave for school. So I asked him what else a builder would wear. And he says, “A Safety vest!” Sure. Let me just pull that out of thin air. But… I looked in his drawer and he had an old yellow t-shirt. So I got a pair of scissors and some electrical tape, and…

Instant costume. I think my favorite part is the plaid flannel shirt. He was a little resistant to wearing the plaid flannel shirt, but I googled pictures of construction workers to show him that, yes indeed, plaid flannel shirts are what builders wear.

Breakfast of the moment – Since the 11 year old got a waffle maker for Christmas – one of those gifts ostensibly for her, but really for the whole family – we will periodically have waffles for breakfast. I always make a double batch so we have waffles for breakfast the following week. They’re super easy to pop in the toaster over and reheat. My current favorite breakfast is a waffle with peanut butter, topped with banana slices and sprinkled with Everything Bagel Seasoning. Something about the combination of the sweetness of the banana along with the savory/salty bits of the sprinkle and the hardiness of peanut butter really hits the spot for breakfast. I love sweet/savory combinations. Plus it’s very portable and I can take it to work and eat it at my desk.

Interesting link: This quiz to help determine how much of a morning or evening person you are. Based on your answers to the questions, The Automated Morning-Eveningness Questionnaire then calculates your optimal bedtime plus when your body starts winding down. I thought it was pretty neat to fill out – the questions were about your current sleep/wake habits plus when during the day you feel most active. (Plus you get your results right away – not like some sites where you have to give your email address so they can email you your results … and lot of subsequent spam.) Turns out I am a pretty middle of the road person in terms of when I am the most alert, and my recommended bedtime is 11:30pm with at 9pm winddown.

Grateful for this week:
– Longer hours of daylight. This week was the first time I really noticed that there have been more and more hours of daylight. The sun is up when we drive to 7:15am piano lessons and there was still enough sunlight after school that I could take the kids to the park after school.
– My coworkers. I know I say this a lot, but I feel so grateful for the stage management team I work with. They are all so thoughtful and competent and they always make me laugh. I’ve worked places where the team dynamic isn’t great, bordering on toxic, and that is absolutely not the case at my current job. I don’t always love being the lead stage manager on a show, and having solid assistants makes it a much better experience.
– Leftovers. I sometimes complain that no one else eats leftovers at our house, as if it is some burden to eat the leftovers. Truthfully, the eleven year old will eat them, and the two littles will sometimes eat them if I put it in front of them, but they are nobody’s first choice when making consumption decisions. This week, I’ve been packing leftovers for dinner and I was struck by how easy it is to have a fridge full of leftovers that I can just package up and toss into my lunch box.

Looking Forward To:
– I got news this week that my cousin is coming to visit in a few months. Hooray! I remember babysitting her when she was a toddler and now she has a real job and everything!
-Getting my haircut this week! It’s been a year since my last haircut and I’m looking forward to having it short again. I usually get it cut before I start a job, but didn’t get around to it last fall.
-Starting rehearsal. Before each show begins rehearsal, I have a week called “Prep week” to work on paperwork. It is always a nice low key way to get ready for the show to begin. The first day of prep, I’m always glad to be able to take a pre-dive into the show material. But then there’s always a point midweek when I’m tired of just thinking about the show and ready just to get into the rehearsal room with the singers and director and start putting the show up.
– Supertitle gig coming up next week. The singer is someone whom I worked with when she was barely out of grad school; I’m excited to hear how she’s grown in the past five years. I need to get those translation slides done – I had a dream last night where I showed up to the recital without the titles done and it was quite embarrassing.

What We Ate:

Saturday: Pizza (the Husband made), and Robin Hood, the Disney animated version from 1973. I remember watching this when I was a child. Truthfully, I fell asleep half way through, but the part I was awake for I thought was lovely.

Sunday: Quesadillas (for the kids) and leftovers (for the adults) and garlic green beans for everyone

Monday: Red Pepper Pasta. Only made with orange peppers. More or less this recipe from Minimalist Baker, but I use half and half instead of soy milk so it wasn’t vegan.

Tuesday: Sweet Potato Poblano Tacos from Dinner Illustrated. Vegan.

Wednesday: Pasta e Fagioli Soup. Vegan.

Thursday: Butter Chicken and cut up cucumbers. This is the internet famous InstantPot Butter Chicken recipe – it was the Husband’s request for his birthday dinner. I like the recipe because it makes extra sauce so we can have butter chicken again next week.

Friday: Take out – Fried Chicken and BBQ from Fryers Roadside Chicken.