After posting yesterday, I was fretting (mildly, very mildly) about what we would eat for New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. I like to have a plan, especially when it comes to food. Plus, the grocery store situation will get iffier as we get closer to the holiday – busier and then closed; that’s what I mean by “iffier.” I had to dash over to the grocery store yesterday afternoon, to find something to feed the babysitter.
(Did I already fret about this to you? I feel like I did, but I can’t find it in yesterday’s post. Oh well, if you have already endured this fret, perhaps skim down a bit or come back another day. Here, I will put in sub-headings to make it easier to skim.)
Feeding-the-Babysitter Fret
What do YOU feed the babysitter? Why is this something that I fret about so much? We rarely have a sitter, but when we do I almost always get a frozen pizza. My thought process around frozen pizza is a) easy and b) most people like pizza and c) Carla eats it. (She does not eat macaroni and cheese for instance. Or most other things.) But when I fretted out loud to my husband and daughter, a) my husband said “You ALWAYS get a pizza” and b) Carla said “I’m tired of pizza. I’d rather have chicken nuggets.” Oooh, two multiple choice lists in one paragraph. Wild.
These were highly interesting comments. First, yes, as I already told you, I do tend to ALWAYS get pizza. But we have had a babysitter, what, twice in the past three weeks? Is pizza two times in three weeks really that egregious? But more importantly, the babysitter last night was a different babysitter than the one we had last time. So she hadn’t eaten pizza three weeks ago.
Secondly, yes, Carla ate pizza three weeks ago with the other babysitter… and I think we made pizza last week or the week before as well, so that’s twice. In the meantime, aside from two nights of steak and maybe a night or two of salmon and maybe one night of tacos, I think she’s had chicken nuggets for every other dinner. (I am refraining hard from making a self-deprecating “I am such a shitty mother for feeding my child nuggets daily lol” comment because she EATS them which is better than not-eating other things and they are easy and they have protein and sometimes I get the ones that also have veggies in them and this is a very long-lived phase but it is just a phase that won’t last forever and I make up for my lack of meal creativity in other good and valuable ways.)
Being a mom slash babysitter-food-decision-maker is so fun. So, so fun.
Now, I don’t personally care to eat chicken nuggets. (I have never typed “chicken nuggets” so many times in my life.) But I think many people are fine with them, so I decided that I would just let the sitter make some nuggets for herself and Carla. But I still managed to fret about it. The dear wise friend to whom I fretted via text suggested I get pizza and chicken nuggets so that there were options. This was genius, so that’s why I went to the store. Plus, I figured I would come up with some wonderful idea for NYE / NYD food in the moment. The store was very busy.
(By the way, I have been masking again in the grocery store, these past few weeks. Around Christmas, I noticed that quite a few more people than usual had joined me… but I went yesterday afternoon and I think there was only one other person in a mask.)
Snacks
While I was there, I did indeed experience a lightning strike of inspiration. For our extra special New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day meals, we are going to have SNACKS!
(By the way, when Carla was very small she pronounced the word “snacks” with kind of a swallowed H/N combo instead of the initial S. Like “HNacks.” So that’s still how my husband and I refer to them.)
We have not yet made the cranberry salsa for which I bought ingredients last week, so we will have that with pita chips. I picked up a small bag of Lay’s Potato Chips and some Southwest Ranch Dip, and I have plenty of vegetables to cut up for extra dipping.
(Since this post is rife – RIFE – with parentheticals and asides, what’s one more? I first became acquainted with Southwest Ranch Dip when I was pregnant. My mother-in-law served it at her apartment one day – this was when my in-laws had an apartment in our city – and I loved it. Pretty much everything made me nauseated in those days, but crunchy greasy Lay’s chips dipped in that dip were HEAVEN.)
(I am getting such a silly kick out of posting these photos, as though you don’t know what a bag of Lay’s looks like. I mean, maybe you don’t, but it seems unlikely.) (Images above and below from lays.com, marzetti.com, Instacart.com for some reason, and traderjoes.com)
In addition to chips and dip, I grabbed some mini pretzel dogs that I’m hoping my husband and child will eat (I eat one hot dog a year and it is normal sized and in a BUN not a pretzel; I do not care for pretzels) (are you beginning to get a clearer picture of why my child is so picky), and some feta and caramelized onion pastry bites. I also got a garlic and cheese flatbread, which sounds good but not terribly different from garlic bread; we’ll see. We have some cheese and crackers and some olives already. This is all way too much food already, but I have arranged a family outing to Trader Joe’s later today to see if we can find any other treats to add to the selection. Trader Joe’s is usually pretty great about having fun frozen treats.
Do you have favorite snacks to recommend? I would be willing to go to another location in addition to Trader Joe’s if there is something I NEED to try. I am serious about snacking.
As far as sweets are concerned, we have PLENTY. So many sweets. I ended up throwing out a bunch of leftover (and now stale) Christmas cookies, which was both sad and cathartic (the ratio of cookie plates for neighbors to cookies made was waaaayyyy off; lesson learned), but we have many other cookies and candies that kind family and friends sent. Most of it is chocolate, which I don’t like except in very specific situations. But as I prefer savory to sweet anyway, I will be perfectly happy with my Lay’s and dip.
Old-Fashioned Blogroll
(I am feeling very smug about my choice to put subheads into this post, because there is no good segue between Lay’s and blog reading.)
Lately, my Feedly has been acting up. Either that or user error but PROBABLY it’s Feedly yes that makes the most sense. The problem is that I keep missing posts. I’ll think, “Oh, so-and-so hasn’t posted in a while!” and then I’ll go to her blog and she posted sixteen days ago and I missed it. I’m not opposed to leaving comments on old posts, not at all, but I like to know what’s being posted AS it is happening, not after the fact.
I was remembering how, in Days of Yore, I had a list of blogs I read on the side of my homepage. And every morning when I had a tea break from work, I would click through the list to read everyone’s posts. When I got back to regular blogging in 2016, my blogroll was so depressing; so few of the people on the list were blogging anymore! Some of the links went to defunct pages or spam sites! So I deleted the whole thing.
But now… maybe it’s time to create a new blogroll. This wonderful blogging community I am so fortunate to be part of is robust, and I don’t want to miss anyone’s posts because of user a Feedly error.
Of course, the very idea of creating a blogroll raises frets like “what if I accidentally leave someone out?” So I need you to promise that if you have a blog, and for some reason it does NOT appear on this hazy future blogroll should I ever get it together enough to make one, that you would TELL ME because it was clearly I don’t think we can blame this on Feedly user error and not a deliberate decision to exclude.
We always stay up on NYE till midnight and watch Ghostbusters 2 (the climactic scene takes place on NYE, therefore it is a New Year’s Eve movie; fight me). I used to make a huge batch of Chex Mix because I love it so much and I remember eating it on NYE at parties as a kid. Then one kid developed a nut allergy, and a couple of us became sensitive to gluten, so it was just Corn Chex and Rice Chex with the seasonings, WHICH IS STILL DELICIOUS. But lately it’s just too many carbs that tempt me to overindulge, and that’s not worth the work.
So we will make mini homemade pizzas for dinner, play some games, and then when it’s time for the movie I’ll pull out some chips, Cheetos, a veggie tray and our favorite homemade veggie dip (Tellarite Veggie Dip, from the Star Trek Cookbook).
All this to say, I think homemade Chex Mix is a fantastic NYE snack, and if I had more self-control, I would be making it this year. Alas.
The Chex are the best part of Chex mix! I never would have thought of making it only with Chex, but that is genius!
https://www.shakentogetherlife.com/nothing-but-chex-mix/
To get the proportions right, I used this recipe, but even before that I was just replacing cups of nuts with cups of Chex.
Oh, and my 11 year old subsisted on hot dogs and boxed (freshly made, no leftovers!) mac and cheese for about two years, and he’s healthy and intelligent. And he’s expanded his palate since then. I got him to try lasagna by telling him it was pizza pasta: “you like pizza, right? the sauce, the cheese?” “Yeeeessss…” “Well, this is pizza-flavored pasta.” Now he loves lasagna, even (especially) with beef in it! Have hope!
Thank you! And this is very smart! I need to think about whether there are chicken nugget adjacent foods I can try to promote!
Breaded chicken patties as a burger? Then trying, maybe, if she likes pizza, breaded chicken parmigiana?
Ah yes, baby steps! Although I should have specified that by “she likes pizza” I mean she will remove the cheese (and any other toppings) and most of the sauce until there is just an essence of tomato-ness and then eat the crust.
I use theoldreader.com which I pay $25.00 a year for 500 feeds, though I think it’s free for the first 100 feeds. I pay because I still keep the all the old feeds that are now defunct because I like the history of my blog reading. I really, really miss google reader.
I know people miss google reader, but I don’t think I ever used it! I always just had my little side margin blogroll. Laziness on my part, no doubt!
I was very paranoid that I would forget to include someone in my paragraph about the new bloggers I’ve met this year! I really hope I didn’t! I would feel awful. But if someone left me off, I would understand because we have to keep track of a lot of stuff!
So we always get pizza for the babysitter since it’s something our son will eat. We have not had a babysitter since February 2020, though!! BUT – I am thinking/hoping we’ll get one this Feb and get back to quarterly date nights. We always get a take and bake pizza from papa murphy’s, and I tell the babysitter ahead of time that we are getting pizza. It’s always the same person, but I give her a heads up so she doesn’t like eat pizza for lunch or something. But I’m also here to say that my kids eat a lot of chicken nuggets, too. They do not eat the way I envision they would eat. And I have had to get over that. I am sure I am partially to blame, but I also think some kids are more selective than others. Like our 4.5yo doesn’t like fruit. Who doesn’t like fruit?? Feeding kids is hard but their doctor assures me it will get better some day.
I love a snacky meal! I love dips and salsas and guac and things like that. I love a veggie tray since I love ranch dip. I will always be happy with a snacky meal! My MIL is coming over tomorrow for a belated Christmas and my husband decided to get take out which I am very happy about. I am going to make a soup on Sunday with the ham bone from the Christmas ham and we are very excited about that since we both love soup. To be clear, our children will not eat said soup. They will probably have – wait for it – chicken nuggets. Oh, and pizza is consumed about every other week here, sometimes more often. Because when your children eat so little, you have to eat the same things over and over and over again!
Chicken nuggets solidarity!!!! I never thought of alerting the babysitter ahead of time about the food situation. Perhaps I will start doing that!
We Door Dash Panera Bread pizzas for both my girl and the babysitter (after asking if she likes pizza and what kind). It takes care of both the problem of her eating and that of her needed to prep or make food for my girl. We don’t go out a lot, so it’s doable (but feels incredibly extravagant haha! It’s literally the only time I’ve used Door Dash).
I have to admit that Door Dash and Instacart and all those food delivery services stress me out! I have never tried any of them, and have only ever had delivery from one local pizza place!
I had a reader send me an email to say that my subscribe wasn’t working, and it took me FOREVER to figure it out, but I did, and whew. I think. I don’t use feedly but I use The Old Reader which works well, and if they ever discontinue it I have no idea what I’ll do.
Snacks, snacks. I love tortilla chips and salsa, but your post about pregnancy snacks reminded me that I loved eating…are you ready for this…cheez whiz when I was pregnant with J. Cheez whiz on toast. Like, is that even food? I’m not sure. I just know that I craved it constantly. I ate like four pieces of toast with cheez whiz every day.
My mom made a snack mix with crackers and pretzels, and I ate so much of it that my feet and varicose veins all swelled up. So much sodium. Worth it! But SO MUCH SODIUM.
Cheez whiz!!!! That sounds like something from sitcoms but not reality, but honestly: when you are pregnant, you have to eat whatever you can. That’s a law.
This must be an official thing because when I was pregnant I could not get enough of fake cheese flavor.
You’re making me nervous because I used to read blogs on Bloglovin. They then began to misbehave. Then I discovered Feedly, which I now love. Now you’re saying it’s misbehaving.
I’m like you in that if you notice me not liking or commenting on your posts, you’ll let me know, right? IT’S NOT YOU. YOU DIDN’T DO ANYTHING.
Effin’ technology. 😒
I was just talking with another blogger about AI, ChatGPT, and robots. Humans can do that, but they can’t help bloggers keep track of their blog posts. Grrr.
Well, I am saying MAYBE it’s misbehaving, but also maybe I am not using it correctly? EFFIN TECHNOLOGY indeed.
🤣
I love pizza so I wouldn’t get tired of it. I enjoy those mini quiches that you can buy at most grocery stores. Chex Mix is good too.
I enjoy a mini quiche! Although I don’t know that I had ever considered eating one for not-breakfast!
Giving the sitter a heads up on the food situation is a good one. Or generally, just having frozen pizza, pizza rolls, frozen whatever on hand. Teens (at least back when I was one) will generally eat anything. Unless they are allergic, of course. Which, I assume, they would inform you of the allergy.
Do not worry about the amount of chicken nuggets Carla consumes. It is protein and she will likely expand her palette as she gets older.
I haven’t thought about New Year’s Eve yet (which I guess I should since it’s tomorrow) so I have no idea what we are doing. I would assume that most likely we will be home or at our neighbors. Odds are instead of a meal, if we are home, The Husband will do snacks/appetizers. Which, honestly, I prefer to a full meal. Although, when presented with snacks/appetizers, I generally eat more than I would if just been given a meal.
The blogroll on my blog is quite ancient and I should probably do a great big purge. But, there are some ex-bloggers on there that I enjoyed so much that occasionally, I’ll take a trip down memory lane. I don’t use my blogroll to read though – back in the day, I think it was more to highlight blogs that might be new to your readers. Since I’m still on Blogger, I just use the reading list on the Blogger Dashboard. If they ever get rid of that, I am going to be up a river!
Oh, you’re right. Keeping bloggers you love, even if they no longer post, is important!
I feel like when I was a babysitter, most of the time I was told to make PB&J sandwiches, so I’m sure they don’t mind pizza OR nuggets. That sounds like something that would have delighted teenage me. And, if your babysitter is an adult, I think it’s fair to just assume they’ll feed themselves whatever they want, right? Or is that not right? No one touches anything in our kitchen ever because we are Control Freaks about Gluten, but how does it work when people are in your space? Is ANYTHING up for grabs for them to eat/drink or just what you tell them?
I use Feedly and haven’t had any issues, but now I’m paranoid. Maybe I should have a blogroll, too. Or, use the Blogger Dashboard like Gigi said (I haven’t thought about the dashboard in ages!!).
We have no food allergies, so there is no reason to be stressed about other people in our house, but IT STRESSES ME OUT SO MUCH. I always breezily tell babysitters to make themselves at home and help themselves and then I specifically DO NOT THINK ABOUT IT because what if they are touching things???? I am only breezy for appearance’s sake.
LOL LOL LOL at only breezy for appearances— this is me to a T
We have swung wildly from one end of the NYE snack spectrum to the other, and we are currently in a THE MADNESS MUST BE DECREASED year, so I asked the kids what they HAD TO HAVE for NYE and here was their list:
• pizza rolls
• mozzarella sticks
• plain M&Ms (either regular or mini)
• maybe Doritos
I also bought mini egg rolls because I love them. And now I feel the urge to go to Trader Joe’s, because this is the first NYE I have been a Trader Joe’s visitor!! so I don’t even KNOW what delights they have!!
I NEED A TRADER JOE’S REPORT PLEASE. We got mini tacos, spanakopita, buffalo chicken thingies, and some sort of snack mix.
Try the spicy chakri mix – I don’t know if I like it but I also cannot stop eating it?!?? Crunchy with Indian-style flavors.
We have no plans at all for NYE tonight. I can’t decide whether I feel completely lame or very, very smart for this decision. My sister is visiting and we were to host a NYE party for them (they used to live in our area so have lots of friends here), but then there was a change of plans and they’re actually going somewhere else. So…it’s just my husband and I and the kids. Maybe we’ll put the kids to bed early and do an at-home date night? We used to do these every weekend but have done it once (?) since the start of November because of his travel + kids being sick + company/holidays.
We have a babysitter like once a year and I ALWAYS fret over food. Mostly because I’m not home to oversee issues!
Happy New Year, my friend. All those food options sound DELISH.
Very SMART, Elisabeth! I vote for the at home date night — sounds like it’s overdue!
I still have my old blog roll even though most of the blogs are defunct— I loved them all so much. I cannot take it down.
I always used to just leave cash for pizza delivery and make sure we were stocked with popcorn, movie candy, etc. The kids LOVED ordering crappy pizza that we never wanted to eat (Pizza Hut and the like). Now Harry is our sitter, and he eats like a walking trash can ALL THE TIME, so his faves are always in stock. Also! I think making Carla happy is more important than making the sitter happy. They can eat later and likely won’t even think twice about it.
Trader Joe’s frozen tempura cauliflower is a major snack dinner hit over here. In the air fryer. We also love to air fry TJ’s Mac and cheese bites if the Whole Foods deli is out of Mac and cheese crouquettes. I also have such a soft spot for the sandwich pinwheels from the Costco deli, and we always always always make a giant charcuterie board for snack dinner night. That’s our NYD plan, actually— all of those snacks and more!
I have never seen the frozen tempura cauliflower at our Trader Joe’s, but will definitely keep an eye out for it! I think my husband picked up the Mac and cheese bites.
The kids are having Cheez-Its, pretzel chips, grapes, and sparkling white grape juice for their NYE celebration. Beth and I don’t stay up, but I’ll have a little bit of the juice and maybe some grapes with or after dinner.
Mini babysat for a family that got her doordash every single time she babysat for them. I feel that is a bit extravagant, but I also think it solves a lot of problems. Back in the stone age when I used to babysit, people had mac and cheese for me or pizza or they had various options and just told me to help myself.
We are swimming in sweet snacks at the moment and many of them are GF, which is nice but also NOT nice, because I don’t want to eat them.
I recently discovered lil smokies wrapped in bacon with brown sugar in the crock pot. A great tailgate snack.
I will let you know if you leave me off of your blogroll, should it ever take shape. I know nothing of this feedly thing, is that because I’m on blogger and not wordpress? I use my blogroll to alert me when people have posted. I’d be lost without it.
My mom used to make lil smokies in the crockpot with grape jelly I think? for every party we ever hosted, and they were a HUGE hit. I think my high school guy friends loved them most of all.
If I could eat snacks for every meal for the rest of my life I would. We have never used a babysitter (free grandma babysitting for the win) but when I was a babysitter, I don’t remember people leaving me food! They just said “eat whatever you can find.” But it was the 90s, so times were different. I love blogrolls because it’s the primary way I find new blogs!
Oh Suzanne, you really made me laugh here with all your RIFE. I’ve not fed a babysitter in years, and I honestly don’t remember what I did feed them. Proably pizza or chicken nuggets, so you made good choices
I love that Carla said HNacks, and you still do too.
My girls called back packs, pack packs, and at 55, I still say pack pack. ;-0
My kid also says “HNacks”!!! And now my husband and I do as well!
Our pandemic baby pretty much didn’t have a babysitter for the first 3 years of her life and I have had similar frets now that we do have a sitter. To make matters worse, my husband and I are both teachers at a school where our babysitter is a student and I (probably irrationally) worry that if our food or home is weird, our students will find out and judge us? Writing that out I now see how silly that is, but it has occupied a lot of my brain space recently. Anyway, we ordered delivery pizza one night and everyone was pleased and the second night I made my kiddo a bento which she always loves and left the fridge and freezer stocked with quick options for the babysitter including oven pizza and sandwich options. I also stocked the cupboard with a variety of cup noodles and chips as that was always my choice when I was a babysitter and that’s what our babysitter ended up eating. So I guess that’s my suggestion: cup noodle.
Snacks for New Year’s sounded like a great idea… I mean if there is one night where you just want to snack all the way up to midnight, it’s NYE! I hope it was a good one 🙂
Also: I love the idea of an old-school blog roll… I had one up for a very long time (until so many people stopped blogging). My blog roll would be very long (or I’d have to be selective) because you don’t want to know how many blogs I subscribe to in Feedly. Maybe one thing to tackle in 2023 😉