good neighbors

by

Dinner Adjacent Topics + Desultory Dinners This Week 

Dinner Topic the First: My daughter has made friends with a family on our street that has three kids. Occasionally, she will be playing with the kids and the kids will be called into dinner, and Carla will get kind of swept up in the mix and end up eating dinner there. This has happened… hmm. Three times? Four times? I’m not sure. I always say yes because a) whatever gets Carla jazzed about eating dinner is okay by me and b) I like the idea of Carla getting exposed to what other people eat and how other people “do” dinner. 

Anyway, the kids were playing this weekend, and Carla brought one of the neighbors in to use the bathroom, and the neighbor kid asked quite cheerfully if she could stay for dinner. 

Well. It was nearing five pm and I had no dinner cooking, and in fact had no dinner planned. Carla was busy offering the neighbor some chicken nuggets when the other kids rang our doorbell and said their sister had to go home for dinner. (Carla ended up eating leftover salmon, edamame, and rice for dinner. I had a microwave meal; my husband had leftover spaghetti with meat sauce and an English muffin with peanut butter. Clearly the neighbor child didn’t miss much.)

When the kids rang the bell, it was five o’clock on the button, by the way. Even on the rare occasions when I have specified a time for dinner, I usually give myself about a thirty-minute cushion because I am so unbelievably terrible at estimating how long things will take to prepare, cook, and serve. 

I was thinking, this morning, about how unbalanced it feels that Carla has been over to their house for dinner multiple times and yet we haven’t had their kids over for dinner once. 

The thing is, it will never be spontaneous. I could never just, on a whim, have people over. People DO this, I know they do. But I feel completely off-kilter just thinking about it. A big part of it, I think, is the specific way we typically “do” dinner. Which is to say: I make something for Carla that I know she will eat, and I also make a completely separate dinner for my husband and myself to eat. We have been better about eating together as a family, but there are still many, many nights when Carla eats at 5:30 or 6:30 or somewhere in that timeframe, and then my husband and I eat dinner at 8:30 or 9:00 after Carla is in bed. 

This dinner style doesn’t really lend itself to having surprise extra people at the table, you know? 

Anyway. I do try to have lots of snacks in the warm weather months (note to self: get more snacks) so that the kids can come in and grab a snack when they’re playing, and it isn’t always Carla depleting the neighbors’ snack supplies. But I think having them over for dinner would have to be planned, in advance. Maybe the next time I plan to make tacos I should invite them over? But that would mean making double the tacos, right? Because I would have to invite all three kids, right? And what if they don’t want to come over? 

Dinner Topic the Second: I am still reeling a little after spending just shy of $200 at the grocery store today. The amount isn’t wildly out of the ordinary, by the way. I was just rather shocked because I have only two dinners on my meal plan this week, plus “ham sandwich,” and I already had nearly all of the ingredients for one of those meals already. So what exactly did all that money BUY?

We eat a ridiculous amount of dairy, I think that’s the main culprit. My husband eats yogurt daily, I make a smoothie with yogurt and milk daily, my daughter eats yogurt confections for dessert (I tolerate them because they have some protein and calcium in them) and continues to drink hot cocoa on the regular. We all adore cheese. Half and half is a necessity. Yogurt is not cheap, folks! Sure, the stracciatella yogurts were on sale for a dollar apiece, but I bought EIGHT of them. (Carla only recently learned that they are delicious. I was eating them for dessert, and now I have to share them with her.) Okay, I was curious, so I added it up and $71 of my total bill was devoted to dairy. The cream cheese was $6.99 a 16-oz box, the Fage was $6.99, and the Fairlife milk was $5.49.

Tea was also on sale, so I got three boxes. I drink a lot of tea, but I also have writing partners who come over and drink tea with me, so I need a wider variety than I might otherwise have. 

Carla requested “meat sticks” and then specified that they be “the red Chomps.” Fortunately, the red Chomps were on sale, so I got a bag of small ones for $6.99 and few of the large sticks at a dollar apiece. 

Usually when I spend a big hunk of money at the grocery store, it’s because I’ve purchased a lot of meat. Like when chicken is on sale, I buy a bunch of it. But the only meat I bought today was a) two on-sale hamburger patties for Carla ($4.88), b) a half-pound of ham ($5.60), for my husband’s ham sandwiches, and c) ten grilled shrimp ($10.56) for the pasta primavera because I am sick of chicken. (The shrimp, by the way, were the single most expensive item on my grocery list. Prepared foods are so convenient but so spendy.)

Let’s see. Tortillas, beans, and chocolate chips were all on sale, and we tend to eat a lot of each of those things, so I loaded up. I bought broccoli for… some fleeting reason that has since been left behind. No worries; I’ll eat it. Eggs, powdered sugar, cream cheese, butter, carrots, and (ew) golden raisins are for my Easter baking projects. Lettuce and onions because I use those things regularly. Jalapeños for a recipe, green beans for Carla. Tomatoes and bananas are for Carla snacking purposes. I bought apples because I am in the mood to make muffins. (My writing partner always has home made muffins for us to munch on while we write. I’m feeling some 100% self-inflicted muffin guilt, which I will address with muffin reciprocity.) Kind bars were on sale, and they have a good amount of protein, so I will stow them in my car for those days when I am in the car during mealtime. Nutella because Carla loves Nutella. Canned pumpkin even though it turns out I already had two cans of pumpkin in my pantry. Rolls for my husband’s ham sandwiches, hamburger buns for Carla, and sourdough bread because Carla is on a toast kick. It’s not nothing, that’s for sure, but is it really $200 worth of food???

I still need to procure lemon curd for the cupcakes this weekend, and coconut milk for the curry I’m making later this week. Trader Joe’s should have both, hopefully at lower prices than at my regular grocery store. 

And what dinners will I make with these groceries, you ask?

Dinners for the Week of April 14-20

  • Pasta Primavera with Shrimp: My husband is not excited about this meal and may be less excited still once he realizes the protein is shrimp. I am looking forward to all the veggies. 
  • Coconut Curry Chickpeas with Pumpkin and Lime: This was my husband’s request; I am not looking forward to it, although we’ve had it before and I like it okay. As is my custom with curries and stir fries, I will add bell peppers to amp up the veg quotient. And maybe the random broccoli I bought?
  • Ham Sandwich: One night this week, I am going on A Fun Adventure with a friend, which I am very much looking forward to, and I am leaving Carla and my husband to fend for themselves, dinnerwise. Hopefully the ham stretches to cover a few additional meals this week, as well. 
  • Easter Dinner with My Parents: A meal I do not have to cook! Cannot wait! 

What’s on your meal plan for the week? Do you have A Specific Time when dinner is on the table, or are you loosey-goosey like me? What was the single most expensive item you bought on your last grocery run?

by

Five for Friday

It’s Friday and I am posting this on Friday, March 15; you may not see this until June for all Feedly cares, but I don’t think I have any control over that. This is kind of a cranky way to begin a blog post, so, as I say to Carla: Let’s try that again.

It’s Friday! I am coming off a night of broken sleep (child coming in at three, returning to bed around four, husband waking up for the day at five thirty), so let’s have some Friday bullets. 

1. Are you as steeped in the Kate Middleton drama as I am? If you have no idea what I’m talking about, a) bless you and b) here is a really thorough explainer. If you are In It, I highly recommend finding a friend who is similarly obsessed so you can text her memes and links to conspiracy theories at all hours of the day. My personal opinion is that Kate is recovering from surgery, probably doesn’t look or feel her best, and just wants to recover in private until Easter as previously planned and communicated by the Palace. BUT, simmering in that dark gross part of me that enjoys drama, especially when it feels very removed from my own boring non-royal life, I am kind of hoping that someone is pregnant with someone’s love child.

2. What kind of snacks do you keep stocked in your house? I ask because we have become friendly with our new neighbors and they invite us over all the time for all manner of things. While I am a little intimidated by reciprocating with A Real Meal (they are incredible cooks and bakers, and every time we’ve been invited to their house the food has been astonishing in both quantity and quality), I am ostensibly fine with having them over for drinks and snacks. The other day, the kids went sledding and we had them over for impromptu cocoa. Luckily, we had cocoa mix in the pantry, and even more luckily the mix had tiny marshmallows, and even more luckily, we had an unopened bottle of spray whipped cream because one of the neighbor kids informed me that he really likes whipped cream on his cocoa in a tone so grave I understood him to mean that something dire would happen if no whipped cream appeared. But then there are all these kids and their parent in my house and I realized I DON’T HAVE ANY SNACKS. It’s not that I don’t enjoy snacks; it’s that I enjoy them too much. We managed to scrape together some muffins I had in the freezer and some individual bags of chips and veggie straws that we had leftover from some party or other, so no one starved. But it made me feel like I need to have at least some snacks on hand. But what?!? I’m not crazy about having a bunch of cookies around, because they either go uneaten or get devoured in two seconds. If we have chips, I will eat the chips. Cheese and crackers aren’t big among the elementary school set, and it’s not like I can have an emergency brie on hand for last minute guests (or can I?). Fresh fruits and veggies, yes, great, and I try to have those around as much as possible, but we don’t eat enough of them to have a ready supply in the fridge at all times. Occasionally I panic buy a bag of clementines, but at least a third of them inevitably go bad before we can eat them. So: shelf stable snacks that appeal to kids and adults but are not so appealing that my family will eat them before we have guests. Is this a thing? 

3. In vanity news, I have been Influenced to buy several things lately. I really like this very inexpensive multi-use highlighter stick. Of course I cannot find the video that originally persuaded me that this was an essential tool in my (non-existent) makeup game, but I like dabbing it on the inner and outer aspects of my eyes and swiping it below my eyebrows for a little bit of lively glow. Totally worth $2.94. The other thing I’ve already tried enough times to recommend it is this bronzing mousse. The weather is edging ever closer to summer, and I don’t want to scare the new neighbors with my fish-belly legs, so I’ve been practicing in the hope that I can add a little lifelike color to my skin before I appear in public in running shorts. I am always on a quest for the perfect fake tan, and this is the closest I’ve gotten. The things I like best about it are: a) It’s dark when it goes on, so you can SEE where you are applying it, and you can also see if you are introducing streaks to your thighs or stomach before the streaks have become one with your skin. b) While it has a scent, as all tanning products inevitably do, it strikes me as much fainter and less objectionable than any other tanning product I’ve ever used. c) The resulting tan is darker than my normal skin tone, but not so dark that it screams FAKE TAN. (I use this tanning mitt to apply it to my body which works really well and helps prevent streaking.) Once again, I have no idea which account suggested this tanning mousse, but I am a fan.

4. One of my current parenting goals is to provide more opportunities for Carla to spend time with her friends. I think I’ve mentioned before that I hate playdates. They fill me with anxiety, because they are both forced social time – sometimes with parents I don’t know well – and because I have no idea how to deal with more than just my one child. For better or for worse, that’s just how I am, and so we haven’t had a ton of playdates. But now that Carla is older, playdates presumably no longer require that social element AND the kids are old enough that I can give them a lot more independence. I used to agonize over how I was going to entertain two whole children, and so I’d gravitate toward things in my comfort zone, like baking projects or crafts. Unfortunately, those things require a lot of prep and supervision and clean up, so they aren’t relaxing or easy. But now I can pretty much let the kids go off and play together. Sometimes we all take a walk outside, and I’m always happy to take a walk, even if the kids ask me to pretend I’m not with them.

Even though playdates are, in many ways, easier now, I still of course have anxiety about them. I find myself fretting about planning An Activity, just in case. I find myself worrying about what happens if the kids get into a fight or misbehave or want food (it always comes back to snacks!) or want to be on screens the whole time.

This is so silly! When I was a kid, I don’t think my friends and I EVER had An Activity. We just went and played Barbies or roller skated in my basement or played school or ran around outside or played house. I can’t even imagine asking my mom or a friend’s mom for ideas. And snacks were not provided by the parent! We scrounged up our own snacks, and I don’t even remember a parent being present for any snacking. In fact, part of the fun of going to someone’s house was checking out their snacks. (Not as fun: eating any sort of meal at a friend’s house, because they had different foods than I was used to and different rules. THAT filled me with anxiety.) I loved my friend J’s house because they had an entire drawer full of candy, and you could just… eat candy when you wanted to! J, notably, was pretty uninterested in the candy. I loved my friend R’s house because her garage freezer was STOCKED with popsicles. At my house, we always had little bags of chips or Zingers in the pantry and Dilly Bars in the freezer and pickles in the fridge. (R and I used to each eat a pickle when we were at my house.) So I am guessing that kids DON’T CARE either what they do or what they eat at playdates. They will figure it out. And yet. We have two playdates on the schedule in the next few weeks and I am already stressing about it. I am planning to be Mean Mom and put a ban on screens, but beyond that… I don’t know what to do or what not to do. Wow, I wish I could chill out about this. 

5. You know something that always feels like magic to me, even though it’s science? Topology. Various algorithms keep serving me videos of topological experiments – because I keep watching them when they appear in my feed – and my mind cannot grasp the mathematics/physics. My dad taught Carla how to make a mobius strip and even seeing him create it with my own eyes doesn’t help me understand how or why it works. It’s witchcraft.

What are you up to this weekend, internet? And, more importantly, what kind of snacks will you be eating?

by

Five for Friday: It’s Almost Christmas! Edition

How many hours of TV watching is still considered “acceptable” while one’s child is on winter break? Asking for a me. 

Carla is feeling nearly back to normal. No fever since Sunday, and no more sore throat. Just a little sniffle and a bit of congestion.

We have SNOW this week, which is delightful!!!!! Probably because I am not obligated to drive in it. But I loooooove snow. I think it is supposed to warm up in the next couple of days, so it may not linger. But it’s so lovely while it’s lasting.

  • Carla and I spent FIVE HOURS running errands on Monday. Five. Hours. It was… not pleasant. She is a real trooper, though, and maintained her good humor throughout. Me… not so much. Somehow, despite the marathon, I still need to go to the grocery store and I really really want to go to the garden center because I continue to have Porch Panic about the state of my front stoop. It is so dumb, but I feel like the dead mums (which I panic bought three days before Thanksgiving, by the way; they were beautiful and lush at that time) are emanating a Gross Dead Vibe and the entire neighborhood is whispering about me behind my back. (Going to a neighborhood Christmas party and having one of the neighbors teasingly ask why we don’t have any lights up didn’t help. THEY ARE PAYING ATTENTION.) Maybe I could just swirl some twinkle lights festively on the dead mums and call it a day???? I still would need to purchase twinkle lights though. I also have a strong urge to buy more poinsettias. I have two small ones, one of which is trying to die already, but I want MORE POINSETTIAS. Part of this is a case of Christmas Décor Envy, which I developed while attending the aforementioned holiday party: the hosts’ house was GORGEOUS and every inch of it was bright with Christmas magic. There is no point in comparing oneself to other people – and in reality, I have no idea WHERE they store all their Christmas paraphernalia, and I have only a creeping horror in my bones to hint at what kind of time and energy is required to dress the house in such a fashion – but still I WANT MY HOUSE TO BE A WINTER WONDERLAND. Poinsettias would go a long way toward helping me achieve that goal, right? RIGHT? 
  • The real problem, I think, is that I have no idea how to decorate this house for Christmas. The living room is weird, so our Christmas tree is weird. It was kind of a battle, to be honest, to figure out where to put it. And I was the one who gave in, which makes me feel crabby. It’s a very open space, with really only two full walls: the other walls are the kitchen (which is a partial wall separating two doors) and the stairway/entryway which isn’t even enclosed; there’s a balcony that overlooks the living room. The longest wall isn’t even a wall wall, it’s a wall of windows. And the other wall is taken up by cabinets and the fireplace. So there’s no REAL place to put the tree. We ended up putting it in the middle of the wall of windows, which I think at least makes sense symmetrically. (My husband and child wanted the tree off center, which just felt wrong in so many ways.) My big idea was to put the tree up against the stairway, but my husband hated that idea so vehemently I think he might have simply declined to celebrate Christmas if I’d pushed. (I still think it would look great.) Also, we are planning to get new furniture for the space, so NEXT YEAR it will be even weirder, but my husband said not to think about that now. (Does he know me?) And that’s just the living room! It’s definitely the most Christmassy of all the rooms. The other rooms have… nothing. Which feels so unfair! (The party host had FIVE CHRISTMAS TREES. That is more Christmas trees than I could ever handle, but maybe I could handle two????) I could fill the piano room with poinsettias! What I really want to do is to line the doorways with something festive (yes, I know I mentioned this already) – I originally thought pine garland. And I have seen so many Instagram videos of people putting shower tension rods in their doorways and decorating them with pine garland and ornaments etc. that I have started thinking that’s a viable idea. (Keep off the internet, kids.) My mother suggested ribbon, which sounds not only economical but also less dusty (and less of a pain to store) than pine garland. But I am not crafty like my mother is, so who knows. I did end up buying some bow-things at Joann Fabric (70% off!) (I also got a box of Hanukkah candles for next year, also 70% off, so perhaps we will have enough candles to light the menorah FULLY every single night of Hanukkah next year lol cringe.) and a spool of ribbon and I’m going to see what I can do. It may be very Preschooler Makes a First Ornament, but it will be Something.
  • Where I have excelled, at least in volume, is baking. I have made not one but TWO batches of cranberry crumble bars, and they are still by far my favorite Christmas treat. They are just the perfect combination of buttery/tangy and crunchy/chewy. Carla wanted to bake, and her very specific baking request was snickerdoodles with buttercream frosting, so she made those. She really wanted colorful buttercream, and while she was rummaging around for food coloring she found the box of candy eyes we used last year and so she went wild with the eyes. Very Christmassy. I wanted to make molasses cookies, but they turned out a) completely smooth, not crackly like molasses cookies are supposed to be and b) very dry and crumbly on the inside. I tried to save them by adding an eggnog glaze, which I think does help, but… meh. From my online troubleshooting, it seems like my oven is the problem. (My understanding is that the crackly tops come from a combination of rolling the dough in sugar to dry it out, and having a nice hot oven.) I am pretty irritated with our ovens. Yes. We have TWO OVENS and neither of them seems to heat appropriately. SO FRUSTRATING. You should have seen how pale our Thanksgiving turkey was. It was cooked through, but it needed some time on the Jersey Shore with a bottle of baby oil. 
  • During our marathon errand day, Carla came across a selection of dog toys. She promptly burst into tears because she wanted to give them to all the dogs in our old neighborhood. Listen, I am a heartless bitch when it comes to I Really Need That tears. But I got a little misty, too, and I allowed her to buy them. She wanted to use her allowance, but then I had a discount situation that made them free. A Christmas miracle! She wrapped them and I texted our old neighbors and we spent an afternoon going from house to house, giving dog toys (and cookie plates) (although they were last-minute cookie plates, so they were on Hanukkah dishes because that’s all I had) and lots of pets. It made Carla’s day, although I think it also made her sad. It’s so hard to find a balance between honoring her grief by allowing her to visit these old neighbors, while also helping her to move on. I don’t think I’ve got it right. But it was lovely to see our old neighbors, who EACH had a little gift for Carla.  
  • Stocking stuffers have been procured. I feel as though I didn’t give you the full story, on Monday, when I alluded to shopping for stocking stuffers and how difficult that would be with Carla in tow. The thing is, I ordered stocking stuffers for Carla (and for my husband) long ago. Or at least long enough ago for them to have arrived already. However, my parents are spending Christmas Day with us, and I feel super awkward about them coming to our home and NOT having stockings to open. It is probably very silly, especially because they are minimalists at heart. But my desire to have Stocking Equity overruled my knowledge of their minimalism, so I got them stocking stuffers. (We have anonymous stockings that we set out for guests, so they will have stockings as well.) And also, I had NO IDEA what I wanted to get for stocking stuffers. The only thing that I really wished I’d learned about earlier was this flexible screwdriver bit. My dad would use the heck out of that bit! It’s so handy! But alas, I only learned about it on Monday when a YouTube ad interrupted my workout video. Next year, for sure. What I really needed to do was wander around a store and happen across the exact right stocking stuffers. And I got the chance during Carla’s music lesson and found a bunch of stocking stuffers that will hopefully be fun and/or personal-ish enough while also not making the recipient feel too guilty about throwing them out. So now there will be Stocking Equity and I am super relieved. 
Kohl’s is the place to go for stocking stuffers. I also got everyone candy. And Carla, shockingly, will get a bunch of other stuff because she is spoiled beyond belief.

Well, that’s it for me before Christmas, I think! I still have the grocery store/garden center to visit, and I still have to wrap some presents. (And Santa has to wrap gifts AND stocking stuffers – WHY, Santa, WHY did you begin such an arduous tradition????)  (Then again, maybe this is the last year Santa will visit our house, and I will henceforth be sobbing about NO SANTA GIFTS????? Parenting is so fun.)

Oh, by the way, I just have to include this here. Carla went to the orthodontist this week (yay, braces in our near future woo) and the orthodontist was very chatty about Santa. He said he sets TRAPS for Santa, to which Carla reacted with scorn. “Do you want to HURT Santa?” she asked, voice dripping with disapproval. No, the orthodontist just wants to SEE Santa, in person! “Why don’t you set up video cameras?” Carla suggested. Oh, but the orthodontist has tried that. And it didn’t work! Didn’t capture a thing. “That’s because Santa deletes the footage,” Carla said, and she might as well have added, “you idiot” because that’s what her tone conveyed. 

SANTA DELETES THE VIDEO FOOTAGE. You heard it here, folks. Don’t try to mess with Santa, even via digital surveillance methods.