holiday angst

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Holiday Weekend, Cooking Failures, Dinners This Week

How was your holiday weekend? 

Ours was very nice. It began with a Passover Seder that was so, so lovely. We are so lucky to have friends who include us in their family celebration.

My parents were really big on religious community and tradition, and I grew up going to church every Sunday and attending traditional events for every holiday: same food, mostly the same people. I really loved that, growing up, but I have not been great about doing anything similar for my kid. On the church side, my husband is not religious at all and has no interest in church, and I am too shy to go to church by myself. These two things are not going to change. Maybe when Carla gets a bit older, she will have an interest in church and can go with me. We’ll see. The tradition thing… that’s a little bit better, but not by much. Maybe, probably, it makes no difference at all whether we eat The Same Exact Thing every Easter. I feel like I’m going off on a tangent that is related to a simmering sense of guilt that I’m not doing enough for Carla’s religious education, that I am failing at surrounding her with community and values and traditions that will provide a strong foundation for her all her life, and we’re not going to dig too deeply into that today.

The Seder was lovely. I love reading through the Haggadah and eating the ritual foods and talking about how the message of Passover is relevant to our lives today. I love spending time with friends who feel more like family. I love watching a passel of kids tear through the house while their parents smile indulgently and occasionally intervene when someone gets a little too adventurous. I was so lucky to have that kind of extended friend-family when I was growing up, and I feel so grateful – for myself and for Carla – that we are being brought into the warm, loving fold of this particular family.

We also had a pretty near perfect weekend, I think, just the three of us. Saturday, we went and looked at a house and it was beautiful and I am still a little sad that we decided not to make an offer on it, but it wasn’t our house so it will be okay. (We are not in any hurry to move. We are simply looking for The Perfect House, and if we find it we might try to buy it.) Then we dyed Easter eggs. Then we went to a concert with friends, which was a lot of fun. We didn’t get home until LATE, though, and the Easter Bunny still had to put out baskets and fill eggs with stickers and money (thank you Sarah, for the cash idea!), and hide eggs which meant that my husband and I didn’t get to bed until TWO AM IN THE MORNING, which is something my system has become incapable of handling. Carla, of course, woke up at seven and she is not allowed to go downstairs on holiday mornings without us, so we ALL woke up at seven.

So Sunday we did Easter things, including eating Reese’s peanut butter eggs for breakfast, and then we went our separate ways to do the things that introverts do: video games, elaborate Barbie/Calico Critters dramas, reading. I went for a very long walk by myself, which was perfect. The weather was brilliantly sunny but cool enough that I was glad I’d worn long sleeves; I think this is my preferred temperature. I listened to an audiobook and observed with pleasure all my neighbors doing Spring Is Here kind of things: a big group sitting on the driveway on lawn chairs as kids ran around looking for Easter eggs, a few solitary people weeding garden beds, families out walking together, teens playing basketball in the driveway, kids riding bikes. I saw, from across the street, the woman without her partner, and as I waved and smiled, I thought about you and about how you would want me to say something to her, but I couldn’t find the words and then we were out of range. 

While I have seen some popcorn trees and some forsythia in bloom while driving Carla to school and her various activities, and there are a few batches of daffodils and hyacinths popping up in various yards, I haven’t seen a lot of flowering trees in my neighborhood yet. But I did notice that one of the magnolias on my walking route was beginning to bud. 

At least, I think these are magnolia buds. They could be something else entirely.

After my walk, I went home and did a lot of cooking.

We ended up not making ham this weekend. I just couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for ham, even though Jen made it sound extremely easy and I trust Jen completely. Instead, we made this feta brined rosemary chicken which had a good flavor but was, due I’m sure entirely to user error, so very very dry. I roasted some asparagus on the side which was good. 

I also got a wild hare and made a pavlova. The pavlova turned out well: dry and crisp on the outside, pillowy and marshmallowy on the inside. But I also made some lemon curd – why not, right? – and THAT turned out horribly. First, I forgot to add the lemon zest, so it was more like lightly lemon-flavored sugar than anything else. Second, I was trying Very Hard to follow the instructions, and to keep stirring until the curd just began to boil (it never did), and managed to turn it into something resembling lemon curd caramel. Which means that when I went to scoop it into the pavlova, it was unscoopable. We had to put it in the microwave for 10 second intervals until it was soft enough to scoop. This morning, it is back to its chewy caramel state. I topped the whole thing with berries and it was SO SWEET. Just like eating a big pile of sugar. I will not be making it again. Carla loves it, though. It’s right up her alley: sugar and fruit. She made me scrambled eggs this morning and then had a big slice of pavlova, so at least I know it will be eaten.

Now that the holidays are over, it will be an eye blink and the school year will be done, and my baby will be a FIFTH GRADER which sounds impossible.

But before I spend any (more) time fretting about that, I need to figure out what I will feed my family this week.

Dinners for the Week of April 10-16

  • Tacos: We haven’t had tacos in a while, and Carla will usually eat tacos several days of the week, eating less meat every time until her plate is mainly taco shells and cheese. She has agreed to eat chicken nuggets again, so that’s A HUGE RELIEF.
  • Potato Leek Soup: I don’t know. This sounds good, maybe?
  • Shish Tawook with Fattoush Salad: This also sounds good. Plus, I impulse bought a bottle of Shish Tawook marinade, so I don’t even have to think about that part.
  • Ham Sandwich: This is all I have planned for the rest of the week. (If you don’t want to click the link, “ham sandwich” is our new family term for “figure it out yourself.” My husband is the only one who regularly eats an actual ham sandwich.) 
  • Date Night!: My husband and I are going on a date one night this week while my kid is at a friend’s house. 

What was a highlight from your weekend? Anything delicious you are looking forward to eating this week? Are the trees blooming in your neck of the woods?

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Low, Ham Sandwich, Disturbing Development, Dinners This Week

I am feeling very low lately. It’s not like there’s any reason at all – my life is full of gifts and blessings. On top of the lowness, I find myself feeling frustrated at myself because I shouldn’t be feeling this way. And yet, here we are. 

One small thing I can do to move forward is to post about this week’s dinners. Maybe not the most scintillating of topics, to read or to write, but it’s better than staring at an empty screen and/or dumping my very inconsequential whines onto the page. 

We are about to embark on another period of extra busy-ness, as Carla enrolls in a new sports team. We will be back to having extracurriculars that run up against dinnertime nearly every day. This means that we need to focus on quick and easy. Probably a lot of the time, I will end up eating black bean tacos or salad, and my husband will end up eating ham sandwiches. In fact, “ham sandwich” has become code for “eat something easy of your choosing” in our household, even if the resulting meal includes neither ham nor sandwich. 

Oh – that reminds me. There’s been a Disturbing Development: Carla was eating chicken nuggets the other day for dinner. She had eaten three and wanted something else, and I suggested that if she was still hungry, she should eat the fourth. And she said, “I think I’m tired of chicken nuggets. I don’t think I like them anymore.” 

This is it. This is the horrible endpoint I’ve been anticipating and fearing for years, because she eats them so frequently. And I’m not even going to apologize for it, because there is protein in chicken nuggets and, more importantly, she EATS THEM. Or did eat them. I do TRY to shake up her meals – I do. But there are so few things she eats, and I hate mealtimes that morph into me coaxing/wheedling/demanding that she eat the thing on her plate. Plus, chicken nuggets are EASY, which is important too, and ready in under 10 minutes if I use the air fryer. 

What am I going to do if she stops eating chicken nuggets? 

(Carla’s suggestion, by the way, was that she would eat tacos every day. And, yes, fine, tacos are great and I am happy to make a big batch of meat at the start of the week so she can eat them as often as she likes. But she gets tired of those too, plus sometimes it seems like “eating tacos” is an excuse for eating multiple crispy corn taco shells and copious amounts of cheese. I get it, and crispy taco shells and cheese have their time and place. But I don’t think, in our situation of plentiful options, that they should be my kid’s MAIN source of calories, you know?) 

Carla’s meals are never part of my Dinners This Week posts anyway, since she rarely eats what my husband and I do. But I am still fretting over how to get appropriate quantities and varieties of food into her. (She eats scrambled eggs and salmon and steak and – sometimes – pork tenderloin or teriyaki chicken or hamburger. She will not starve.)

Ugh. We also have HOLIDAYS this week. Well. I cannot get up enough energy to think about making anything special. Fortunately, we have been invited to a Passover Seder with friends, so I don’t even have to think about that. We can dye Easter eggs on Saturday. And maybe that will have to be that. My mother always used to make a ham for Easter dinner, but I don’t like ham enough to make a whole one. Although… maybe it would produce plenty of leftovers for my husband… and Carla sometimes eats ham (although usually in Lunchable form). I don’t know. 

Despite having a wonderful list of reliably delicious dinners to pad out the meal plan each week, I still find myself wanting to try New Things, so I’ve got two oldies and two newbies on the list. Here’s what I am tentatively planning to make this week, keeping in mind that we might chuck it all and eat nothing but ham sandwich. 

Dinners for the Week of April 3-April 9

  • Ginger Chicken Asparagus Stir Fry: This is a new-to-me recipe, but asparagus is plentiful these days and this is a way of preparing it that haven’t tried before.
  • Baked Gnocchi and Vegetables: On a whim the other day, I picked up a bag of cauliflower gnocchi from Trader Joe’s. I don’t particularly like gnocchi, and I’m deeply suspicious of cauliflower masquerading as foods that it clearly is not. But I own a bag now, and I need to do something with it. Maybe this is the solution?
  • Chili-Honey Chicken and Sweet Potatoes: I have only had this once, so far, but it was so incredibly delicious. I’ve been thinking about it nonstop lately. Maybe it’s time to make it again. I am a little fearful that I loved it so much initially because a) it was novel and b) I thought I’d burned the sweet potatoes beyond recognition but they turned out to be deliciously charred. I doubt I could recreate the same conditions of uncertain anticipation and relief, you know?
  • Lemon Garlic Pasta with Fresh Veggies: Pasta is one of my go-to comfort foods, and I loved this dish the last time I made it. It sounds springy and filling. 
  • Baked Ham? With what? The more I think about this, the less appealing it is. But my mom made ALL holidays special, and I feel like such a failure for not trying to make them special for Carla. I KNOW THIS IS DUMB. Knowing that it is dumb doesn’t make the feeling evaporate.

 

What are you eating this week? Any plans for the holidays, eating or otherwise?