feeding people is stressful

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Friday Randomosity: Life Lately Edition

A bunch of random little things have been collecting in my brain, so let’s get them out of my head and into some bullets. 

  • Inspired by NGS, I am wearing a scarf today. It’s one of my favorites – and something I “inherited” from my husband’s grandmother, who was stylish until her final day. I don’t know that I am quite pulling it off the way NGS does, but sometimes you have to fake it til you make it.
  • I just spent… well, far too long trying to photograph myself in the scarf without getting my face in there. That leads to some very unappealing angles, so you’ll just have to picture whatever it is you think I look like with a royal blue scarf tied untidily around my neck.
Here it is, on my bed and not on my person.
  • Carla has begun keeping a list of license plate numbers when we drive around. I do not know why, except that I think she finds them interesting? I didn’t know she was doing this until the other day when she asked to read them to me. “Sure,” I said, figuring that she’d copied down interesting personalized plates, like U R L8 or GZUS LRD. No. She read me off a series of letters and numbers. RDP 7791. SST 9494. JTI 0138. You get the idea. Then last night she asked me if she could read them to me again, and – not wanting to express any less enthusiasm than her newfound interest deserves – I said, “Why don’t you read me the ones you’ve written down since last time?” She was amenable to this plan, and read each series of letters and numbers off with gravitas. I am not quite sure how to respond, or how she expects me to respond, so I tried to say things like, “Oh wow, that’s a good one.” or “Nice! You don’t see X very often!” 
  • If it is not clear, I find Carla’s license plate obsession as adorable as I do perplexing. 
  • We are (maybe?) getting the dinner situation under control. It works like this: I make a “real” dinner Tuesdays and Thursdays. Maybe Saturdays and Sundays, too, who knows. But Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, we all kind of fend for ourselves. For me, this means making a big batch of soup on Sunday or Monday and eating it all week. Or a pot of black beans, and then making tacos for myself. My husband asked me to buy him ham and bread, for sandwiches. We’ll see if this works better than me trying to cram a crockpot meal in every other day. 
I may make this enchilada soup next week. It’s such a perfect fall soup.
  • (Things have been different since we have visitors. I have been making more Real Dinners for us to eat together, although our guests seem a little flummoxed by how varied our eating schedule is.)
  • Speaking of food (which I always am), the Guinness beef stew I made this week was SO GOOD. First of all the recipe includes instructions for how to make it in the slow cooker, so I did that. But… those instructions basically say throw all the ingredients together in the slow cook and I did not do that. I seared the meat and cooked the onions/garlic as well, before adding those things to my crockpot. I don’t know if the flavors would be the same without, but maybe I’ll try it next time because I really hate searing meat. It takes forever and my arms, stove, and floor get speckled with hot oil. The recipe calls for carrots and potatoes. I used baby potatoes and I didn’t chop ANY of them (which may have been a mistake, but oh well). My husband also requested parsnips, so I added a couple of those. And since he was getting parsnips, I also added a container of quartered mushrooms, for me. Then I think I panic-poured a cup or two of chicken stock into the crockpot, in addition to the quart of beef stock, because I was afraid I had over-veggied. My only complaint was that it lacked salt: I poured in a big glug of soy sauce toward the end, and then I had to salt and pepper my bowl of stew. But no one else felt it was under-salted, so maybe it was a Me Thing. The leftovers were better than the initial night. This is a keeper.
  • Also, I made a green bean dish to go with tacos one night, for our family member who is pre-diabetic. It was a HUGE hit. Not with me; there is an entire tomato in it. Not Carla; the veggies were cooked, and she is a raw veggie purist. But everyone else loved it. Bonus: it was extremely easy to make. So it will definitely be something I make again.
  • Our guests are staying until next Friday, when their local airport reopens, which is conveniently the day that our next set of guests arrives. (So far, it seems like the hurricane spared their home, which is extremely fortunate. They were so smart to leave when they did.)
  • Carla just walked into the kitchen and said, “WHAT are you doing?” Um, making breakfast? “No, I mean, WHY are you wearing a SCARF?” I can wear a scarf. It’s a perfectly normal accessory. “But it’s so BLUE. And it doesn’t go with the navy.” (I am wearing dark jeans.) Oh, who knew the critical eye would develop so early! 
  • Do you want to see the cute little challah Carla made? She did all the work – rolling out the separate strands, braiding the strands together, figuring out how to stuff it into a six-inch cheesecake pan I have. It was light and delicious and super adorable, even though we clearly used a much-too-small pan for it.
  • Despite the fact that I have lost my list, I have been chipping away at it. I’ve even made some of the phone calls on the list, which I hope you know by now is A Feat. But the problem with phone calls is that sometimes that’s not the end of the task. One call I made was to our bank, which is just… the most frustrating bank in the WHOLE WORLD. And I left a measured (I hope) but irritated message on the guy’s voicemail, and then he called me back at the exact moment I was in another call, so I couldn’t answer. He left no message at all, so I guess I have to call him back. ARGH. 
  • Speaking of phone calls: I had a very perplexing set – yes, set – of phone calls with Dairy Queen. My husband wants an ice cream cake this year – or, at least, that was one of two cake options he offered me and it was the one I didn’t have to make, and you know that cake baking is one of my love languages, so I think this is a good indication of the current stress/busyness level around here. So I asked Siri to call Dairy Queen while I was driving from the grocery story to pick up Carla from an activity. The person who answered was unintelligible, so I asked, “Is this is Dairy Queen on street and street?” and she said, “Nah.” So I hung up and looked up the number for the DQ I wanted (when I was parked), and oh look, it is the same number I just called. So I called back. Same person answered, still unintelligibly. Did Google simply have the number wrong? Had the DQ closed without my knowledge? “I am trying to call Dairy Queen?” I said hopefully. “This is Dairy Queen.” Phew. “Oh good, I would like to order an ice cream cake.” The person asked if I could hold on for a moment. Sure. I sat on hold for 56 seconds, and then the call disconnected. I called back. “I am just trying to order an ice cream cake!” Another brief hold, and then finally I was able to place the order. Then the person said, “What time do you want to pick it up?” I said sometime in the morning? Eight o’clock? “Oh, you can’t do that.” Oh, okay. Nine? Ten? What time do you open? “We don’t open until eleven o’clock.” Okay great, eleven o’clock it is. “You can’t do that.” WHAT TIME SHOULD I COME GET THE CAKE. “Well, we open at eleven but the cake won’t be ready until one.” Great. See you at one. 

  • I rarely go to Target these days because it so unpleasant inside (the latest time was no different; they clearly do not have enough staff to fold/tidy the clothing areas or to work more than one register at a time), but there was additional unpleasantness awaiting me in the parking lot! (Confidential to Nicole: LOOK AWAY.)
Someone left their cart not just in a parking space, not just in a parking space RIGHT NEXT TO a cart return, but also touching my car. No damage except to my sense of humanity’s capacity for good.
  • Did I tell you about the bees? We have a nest of bees in/on our chimney. Currently, so far, the nest seems to be on the outside of the chimney, but I can hear them buzzing while I am inside, which is Very Worrisome. Also, they are technically yellowjackets. And also also I want them to GO AWAY.
  • I have been in sort of a fiction lull lately. I am in the middle of a book, but I’m not loving it. I’m not disliking it, either, but it doesn’t pull me. I have been reading some non-fiction lately though. Most recently, I’ve been enjoying The Family Firm by Emily Oster. (Thanks to Lisa for mentioning it in my post about extracurriculars!) Oster just seems so soothing and balanced and her advice seems to great. The book is about making decisions for your family (when to give your kid a cell phone? is this extracurricular worth pursuing? etc.) the way a company would make business decisions, and I really like it. It makes me want to go back ten years and have some of these conversations with my husband BEFORE we had Carla. But I guess sometimes you plan ahead and sometimes you just muddle through, and we’ve really been doing a lot of muddling in the realm of parenting choices. Anyway, I am finding it really eye-opening and I hope I can remember to apply some of her advice to future major decisions. 
Every surface of my bedroom features similar piles of books.

  • Fall is upon us, and the trees around here are very very slowly beginning to don their autumn finery. We’ve had a ton of rain (though no hurricanes, for which I am thankful) but today we have sunshine, and I think we’re supposed to have sun all weekend. I hope we can spend some of it outside! Carla would be happy just sticking around our neighborhood; one of the neighbors has a new puppy! 

  • Related: OCTOBER BEGINS TOMORROW!
  • Have you gotten your flu shot yet? I haven’t, but I want to. Carla has a doctor’s appointment today and I’m going to see if they can sneak a flu shot in as well. She will not be pleased, but it sounds like we’re in for a nasty flu season and I want our family to be as protected as possible.

That’s all I’ve got today, Internet. I need to go make yet another phone call. I hope you and your loved ones are safe and dry, and that you have a happy weekend ahead of you.

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Calcium Again

The other day, Carla had a very specific request for dinner: “May I please have a bowl of white [iceberg] lettuce and a separate bowl of [shredded] cheese and another bowl of tomatoes so that I can put them together and make a salad?” 

Sure, child. Why not. 

I mentioned a while back that we are trying to increase Carla’s calcium intake. And by “we” I mean “me” because my husband seems wholly unconcerned by the issue. Not in an “I’m a Physician and Am Unworried” way, but in a “this is not my problem” way ARGH. And a teeny bit in a Thwarting Efforts way. My father (ALSO a physician) suggested we simply give Carla some Tums (calcium carbonate) and so I suggested to my husband that he grab a roll of Tums next time he was at the grocery store. He said a) we already have Tums at home and when I brightened and said “Oh! We can give Carla those!” he said no, that those Tums were for acid reflux. Blink. Blink blink. 

All of this is to say that I am continually working on getting more calcium into Carla. 

Smoothies, as I think I mentioned before, seemed like the perfect vehicle. Especially considering that Carla likes smoothies, and dislikes most other things. 

But there have been two problems.

  1. She hasn’t been in the mood for smoothies. Almost every day I say, “You’re going to have a smoothie for breakfast!” and she says, “No.” And then I argue with her a little bit, and make pleading noises about calcium intake, and she remains firm, and I give up. Because I am not going to waste a smoothie on her when she is clearly going to Stand Firm. And I get it! I like… chili, but I don’t want to eat it every day. If you told me chili had specific life-extending properties, I would still have a hard time drumming up enough enthusiasm to eat it every day. So I get it. I do. But also: JUST DRINK A SMOOTHIE.
  2. Smoothies do not contain as much calcium as I think. I made one for her with 1/4 cup of yogurt, 1/2 cup almond milk, 1/2 cup calcium-fortified orange juice, and 1 cup frozen mango chunks. That makes a LARGE cup of smoothie. And it contains about 40% of a person’s daily calcium. Sigh. It’s a big swoop forward on the calcium-intake-o-meter, but it’s not even halfway, and HOW do I get the rest of the way EVERY DAY?

I wonder if I could mix Carnation Instant Breakfast (200 mg calcium per packet) into her smoothies? 

I found a recipe for frozen yogurt treats that I might try. I broached the idea to Carla and she was a little suspicious, but it would be worth trying at least. Maybe I could mix some Carnation Instant Breakfast into some yogurt and pipe it onto cookie sheets and freeze it? I may give it a try.

I have been Googling like crazy, but the food sources of calcium seem to have so little (50 mg here, 125 mg there – and that’s for a FULL serving of foods she DOESN’T EAT), that it seems impossible to get them to add up to 1300 mg per day. And there is a lot of pooh-poohing of calcium supplements. I get it. I understand that most vitamins don’t have a whole lot of calcium anyway, and that you need to be taking Vitamin D as well so that you can properly absorb your calcium. But it would be really useful to just give Carla a chewable something and be done with it. There are Reasons that I don’t want to get the Viactiv chews (650 mg calcium per chew), but maybe I need to get past them. 

I know I tend to catastrophize. I know I do that. But I keep picturing Carla as an adult, with bones that shatter at the least provocation, and her wan little face asking the heavens, “Why, God, why did my mother not force me to get enough calcium when I was small? Why?” 

Now I understand why my parents were so adamant about me drinking a FULL GLASS of milk every day. (A cup of milk is only 300 mg!)

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Dinners This Week, Gratitude/Anxiety

We are having an especially long weekend, what with Rosh Hashanah following Labor Day. That’s just one thing I am feeling thankful for, this morning. I am also thankful for the beautiful weather – sunny and warm-but-not-hot, with that characteristic rim of cold on the edge of the breeze that signifies the beginning of fall. We have had a lovely weekend so far – I saw a dear friend on Saturday for my second-since-the-pandemic-began attempt at dining at a restaurant (we ate outside and sat at a table that was blissfully distant from any other diners), Carla stayed home with a babysitter (a vaccinated student at Carla’s school who was one of her counselors at camp this year) and had a blast, and then the three of us went to a friend’s house for (outdoor) dinner, which was so so lovely. (This particular friend is an amazing cook.) (Also I still feel compelled to note that everyone is vaccinated except the kids, all of whom attend the same school anyway.) I am thankful that I got to go to a salon and have a professional dye my hair for me, and that she also kindly offered to trim my single, enormous white eyebrow hair. My husband is no longer on call as of this morning, for which I am DEEPLY grateful. And tomorrow, Carla and I will have the house to ourselves as my mother-in-law undergoes surgery. I am grateful for the alone time, but I am also grateful that my mother-in-law is getting such quick treatment. If you can spare some good thoughts for her, please do; we are all expecting the best, including her doctors, but obviously we are all also QUITE ANXIOUS. 

I am grateful, but anxious. While it felt so wonderful to see friends and do “normal” things this weekend, I still get this breathless giddy feeling of getting away with something. And then comes the worry that we are pushing too far, doing too much. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. 

I am grateful that we can provide a home base for my in-laws while they are in town, that we can offer comfort and love and support while my mother-in-law is preparing for surgery and recovering from surgery and determining next steps. But I am not accustomed to extra people in my home. I feel like all I do is vacuum and wash dishes and scrub counters and tidy and unload the dishwasher and prepare meals and clean up after meals. I cannot tell you how many times I have buffed the stainless steel into a mirror sheen this past week.  Why a gleaming refrigerator should do anything to soothe my anxiety is beyond my powers of comprehension. My mother-in-law, bless her, always offers to help with food prep and clean up. But even as I want help, I DON’T; I want to do it my way, and we have very different ways of doing things and I feel like I get (gentle, well-meaning) push back when I try to explain my preferences. And beggars can’t be choosers, right? Why should I even have preferences when the help is being offered? 

I am trying – really, really trying – to be laid back, to go with the flow, even though those things are contrary to my nature. Even though my means of restoring equilibrium is to be alone with my thoughts for long hours. Right now – with Carla crafting ten feet away, her audiobook playing another endless round of Socks by Beverly Clearly – is as close to “alone” as I can get these days.   

And, of all people, this period in our life affects me least. Everyone is worried, everyone is stressed. My in-laws are living out of their suitcases, worrying about my mother-in-law. My husband has been working nonstop for the past seven days; he too is an introvert who needs time alone; and this is his mother who is undergoing surgery and perhaps other adjuvant therapies. My daughter, accustomed to our quiet, three-person home, has had her routine – freshly readjusted, now that school has begun – upended yet again, and she too is worried about her beloved grandmother. My father-in-law was set for knee surgery when my mother-in-law’s health needs popped up; he’s climbing up and down our stairs every day on a bum knee, having to stuff his own pain and health concerns down while he worries about his wife of fifty years. 

Well. I am trying to be a good host, a good daughter-in-law. Trying to be welcoming, and warm, and doing what I can to make the house comfortable and to address my family’s needs. 

The main thing I have control over is food. Which brings us to dinners this week. 

THANK YOU, by the way, for all your suggestions about what to feed my houseguests. I have been asking literally everyone this past week what they serve to houseguests, and I have discovered two things: 1. Talking about food is, for me, endlessly fascinating. 2. It is very hard to turn wonderful, delicious-sounding suggestions into usable options for my particular family. (My in-laws don’t really eat pasta; I hate tomatoes; my husband and his whole family don’t really think of soup as a meal.) 

I still LOVE to hear suggestions, though. And want to visit ALL OF YOU so that you will make me your delicious houseguest meals. Please and thank you.

Here’s what I’ve come up with for this week. 

Dinners for the Week of September 6-12

Hamburgers: For Labor Day. Burgers are easy and everyone will eat them. My husband wanted potato salad from the grocery store, so I got some. I have the ingredients for my favorite chickpea salad, which I prefer to potato salad, and may or may not make it for myself (and whomever else wants it). We have no dessert, but I could whip one up if necessary; I even have a box of brownie mix if it comes to that. (I happen to love brownies from a mix.)

Lebanese Chicken with Charred Cauliflower: I may attempt to make this for the family, although I tend to avoid experimenting with new recipes on my poor unsuspecting in-laws. It sounds yummy and fairly easy, and I am fueled by Nicole’s love of cauliflower to eat more of it.

Steak and Potato Skewers with Rosemary Chimichurri: I made this once before and it was yummy (and surprisingly easy). 

Charcuterie Board: These are SO fun to put together and I tested the idea with the family and everyone was receptive. I have happy anticipation at the prospect of searching through the grocery store for fun little treatsies to include on the board.

TAKEOUT. God bless all the restaurants that offer wide ranging options and delicious food.

What are you eating for dinner this week?