Little House on the Fairy Hill

Flexibility: My Secret Weapon

(For meal planning and life in general)

It is rare that our meal plans work out exactly the way we plan it. As the kids get older, their preferences for whether they spend the night with their Dad or Eli and I play out differently, and we are, and have always been pretty easygoing about the co-parent schedule. Life happens. No one feels like cooking what we planned or we run out of time.

I have learned over the years not to view meal plan changes as failures of my planning skills. They are simply a part of the mix – we end up needing to use something up, we have less or more people at the table than we though we would. Or something. The ability to be flexible is really, really important, as important as having the meal plan itself.

So when we got to Friday the 2nd week of February with chicken broth for chicken soup with rice in the crockpot, pizza dough cold-proofing, and the kids deciding that they wanted to hang with Dad for the weekend, in no small part due to a game they wanted to play there, I mixed it up. We postponed the soup and pizza to busier nights with kids and I pulled out my list of recipes.

Pizza dough and broth both freeze well.

We had skipped our meat share delivery in January for our planned pantry and freezer eat-down that never happened because life did, so when it showed up early in February, we were still bursting at the gills. And honestly when I take something out these days, I seem to put something in – this alone week I added butternut squash and sauteed mushrooms to the freezer, despite removing meats for meals – so it’s still pretty full!

I took out a pound of chicken and decided we should try a modified version of Crispy Chicken Ceasar Salad – modified because I neither had anchovy paste nor cabbage, but I did have a bag of slaw mix and lots of kale. I also added a whole avocado and some fresh basil to the dressing, because I could. And we didn’t have any bread so I toasted walnuts instead, with a little oil and Everything Bagel seasoning. I substituted fish sauce for anchovy paste at a ratio of 1:1.

It was honestly one of the best dinners I’ve made in a while. And listen, while it was not super frugal, it was decently frugal - because you slice the chicken breasts really thin, I got 8 cutlets of varying sizes out of it. The slaw mix was $3.49, the kale $1.40 (I used half a bunch and massaged it with a little olive oil and lemon juice to make it more tender, next time I would use the full bunch at $2.79) and the chicken was the splurge at $8/lb for our meat share. Call the dressing ingredients $3.50 and we’re talking about $16.39 for a meal we could not stop eating and left us with a teensy bit of salad, some more dressing, and 2 small chicken cutlets left over. I used all things I had.

But did I go get more slaw mix so we could eat it again? Yes, yes I did.

So what are we eating?

Use Up: avocados, sweet potatoes, squash, eggs

Lunches: Tuna Salad, Leftovers

Earlier this month:
Sunday: Baked Sage Chicken Meatballs with Parmesan Orzo. Except with ground turkey, and using mostly dried herbs rather than fresh because that’s what we had. Recommended by Ross Yoder over at Buzzfeed, who also recommends that amazing Chicken Ceasar I was raving about. I really like most of the things he recommends.

I really like meatball dishes, and I especially like it when I can make a double batch and freeze them for later. Which is precisely what I did. I’ll be honest. Good, but not to so good we’re rushing to have it again

Monday: Chicken soup with rice and popovers, the inevitable gift of the roaster chicken we had the prior week.

Tuesday: Just Eli and I, so salmon, roasted sweet potatoes and sauteed spinach with garlic, olive oil and salt.

Wednesday – Valentine’s Day: I found fresh heart-shaped ravioli and heart-shaped macarons at Costco, and what can I say, I’m a sucker. I made a meat sauce and a salad to go with.

Note: I used to be somewhat cynical about Valentine’s Day, but then Covid happened and now I am all in for all the celebrating. Go ahead, make up a holiday, we’ll celebrate it here.

Thursday: Thursdays my daughter had her riding lesson, and then usually spends the night with her Dad. Since it’s just Eli, our son and I, we went for super duper simple, Trader Joe’s Orange Chicken, Dumplings, Edamame and Rice. Total prep time – 5 to 7 nanoseconds. Especially good because Thursday was the stop between 2 celebrations/major dinners that week.

Friday: My daughter’s birthday, we got Sushi for dinner and had cheesecake

Saturday: The kids were with us last weekend, so I went heavily to their preferences. On Saturday we had the crispy chicken Ceasar again, but I made butter noodles and some sliced veggies for my son.

Sunday: Beef Bulgogi that I had marinated and frozen earlier, rice, roasted broccoli

This week

Saturday: My son had a friend over, and we had Instant Pot Beef Bourguignon, a house favorite (it’s even better as leftovers the next day), and popovers with some sliced cukes, tomatoes and avocados. While I don’t make this recipe often, as it’s not a very frugal meal to make, it’s really good, and one of the more-requested winter meals.

Sunday:

Breakfast was our favorite pancakes, bacon and strawberries

Chicken Souvlaki Bowls with Garlic Fries only I’ll use both sweet potatoes and potatoes. And I’m going to make this salad for Monday night so I peeled, cubed and roasted some butternut squash in preparation.
I’ll roast some broccoli to go with tonight’s dinner, since we have lots. I made tzatziki as well.
To help with meal prep, I’ll make some barbeque sauce, pickled onions, and maybe some kind of sweet for my son’s lunches.

I started prepping food and the meal plan and realized that the grocery delivery folks had brought me split chicken breasts instead of the boneless skinless variety. I had an emergency stash of boneless skinless chicken tenders that I had been saving for a larger meal – Costco packages being enormous – and took those out to thaw, and changed up my menu. As I also peeled and seeded the butternut squash for Monday’s salad I realized I was only going to need a little less than half, so I sliced the rest and put it in the freezer.

Why do I do so much cooking on the weekend? Because if we didn’t, we wouldn’t have lunches, snacks or sweets.

Monday: Mondays are busy – the kids go back to school after vacation, my daughter has her skating lesson, and there’s not a lot of time to cook. I had been planning sliders, but instead we’ll have have Chicken and Rice Circa 1975 with the split chicken breasts, the Ina Garten salad referenced above and sliced avocado and cukes.

Tuesday: it’s just Eli and I we’ll make Lentil Sausage soup with leftover homemade bread. Leftovers keep me fed during the work day for a few days, after the beef stew and leftover chicken run out.

Wednesday: Another busy day here, but we have some pizza dough in the freezer, so BBQ chicken pizza and cheese pizza in the oven. I reserved a couple of chicken tenders from Sunday’s meal to go on the pizza.

Thursday: Salmon bowls over the last of the Fregola pasta (this stuff is not super frugal but it’s so good) with spinach and whatever other veggies we have.

Friday: the kids will likely go to their Dad’s, so Eli and I will try Crispy Black Bean Tacos with some guacamole

Saturday: If no kids again, we’ll make a Massaman Curry Stir Fry over cauliflower rice. Usually we use chicken, but we might switch to shrimp, since i have some in the freezer and we’ll have had a lot of chicken this week.

Sunday: the kids will come home again, and we’ll make homemade bolognese and have a pasta dinner. And we’ll prep something for Monday.

Do I think we’ll hit every meal I plan? Nope. But that’s ok. We’ll adapt.

February on the Farmlet

January blew through our house like a tornado – flu playing round-robin, emergency surgery and a long hospital stay for my husband, and nothing quite went as planned. So I think we all breathed a sigh of relief when February 1st rolled around, and brought with it something resembling normalcy.

Still we are lucky ducks, with all ending well, and despite the periodic cough that seems to be hanging on for myself and my son, the rest of the year is looking much better. At least we got all that out of the way early.

And once Eli was feeling better we were able to attend a cooking class as a family that had been a holiday gift to us all, with the kids taking charge of the Zuppa Inglese for 12 without so much as a bit of help from anyone other than the Chef leading the course. I look forward to having our own dessert chefs do more at home. We are targeting experiences over stuff this year, with the exception of more hospital experiences – I’ll think we’ll skip those.

February on the farmlet starts to get busy – it starts quietly, and then by the later part of the month there’s seed-starting and garden cleanup on the good weather days. We still need to mow down the raspberry canes and the trench beds. Nearby the local farms are starting to tap their maple trees – syrup making is a long New England tradition, and it is one of those things that I love seeing.

We are trying to balance experiences and downtime this year. Especially in the summer we get so busy we forget to be home just mowing the lawn, weeding the garden, and making fresh summer foods. I’m starting to plan the garden for the year, and bought some lovely blue pumpkin seeds I can’t wait to try.

For now though, we’re eating as much of the winter foods as we can, and it’s time to eat down our bulk veggies in earnest. Saturday night I used 14 onions to make French Onion Soup, because they won’t keep forever. We’re almost halfway through them, and by April they will need to be used up.

So what are we eating this week?
Use up: Cantaloupe, kale, oranges
Bake: Bread, if I get motivated, homemade donuts

Sunday: Family dinner, we aren’t cooking
Monday: Sheet Pan Sticky Chicken and Roasted Brussels Sprouts, Kale Salad with Pecorino and Walnuts & No Knead Bread I can prep the bread and some of the kale salad tonight and do a lot of prep work in the morning to make sure we eat at a normal hour
Tuesday: It will be just Eli and I, we’ll make a cauliflower curry soup
Wednesday: Roaster chicken with veggies, rice pilaf
Thursday: Eli will find a protein and cook
Friday: The kids schedule has been a bit fungible since their Dad started a new job – they mostly want to hang out with him on the weekends, since they see him less during the week. If it’s just us, I’ll make a butternut squash soup or a curry.
Saturday: Eli and I are going to make a pantry challenge meal together – using up what we have and getting creative
Sunday: Remember those Chinese chives I froze? Time for Chinese Chive Dumplings, Hunan Dumplings, some spring rolls from the freezer, rice and Edamame.

If you haven’t heard about Hunan Dumplings before I’m not shocked but oh are they good.

Prep for Monday: Chicken soup with rice. Any time we have a roast chicken, once we’re done with it I take the carcass and put it in the crockpot in water with herbs, bay leaves, and a dollop of vinegar. I then let it cook overnight, and at the end is the best broth. I strain it out, strip the meat and add that to the broth, and then chop carrots and onions, add some seasoning to taste, and cook. If I have a Parmesan rind, it’s perfect for this.

I don’t add any rice until it’s getting close to dinner time, about an hour out, and then i add it on a low simmer, about a cup and a half-ish, but i eyeball it.

Add to that either our leftover bread or some popovers, and that’s dinner. And usually a couple of lunches for Eli and I as well.

I’ve started to plan meals for the rest of the month as well, including trying out Char Siu Pork and Lemon Butter Dijon Chicken and Orzo.

But that’s later.

A Year of Abundance

I learned from my friend Melissa years ago to choose a word to frame each new year. New Years is her favorite holiday – full of possibilities and fresh starts, and I love that outlook. This year my word is Abundance, and I do feel abundant in every area of our life.

On New Year’s Eve the kids came back from their grandparent’s house exhausted and with nothing left in their social batteries after a week of solid events.

I made Beef and Broccoli from scratch – total winner, and a smashed cucumber salad that was good but not so good I would make it again and we ordered a bunch of takeout. Eli made a fire in the wood stove, and he and I watched Barbie, while kids did their thing. It was quiet but very nice with everyone taking the time to restore their energy in their own ways.

I meant to make Chinese Chive Dumplings for dinner as well, but I forgot to get wheat starch to make the dough, and while I could have substituted wonton wrappers, it wouldn’t have been the same. So instead, I chopped up the chives and froze them for a later meal. Honestly, you really can freeze almost everything.

I’ve been really trying to preserve things lately and avoid waste, even slicing up and sauteeing mushrooms and then freezing them if we have some we aren’t using. I had some of our last apples that were starting to get a little mealy, so I turned them into cinnamon applesauce for our big family brunch too – just peeled, cored, and popped the apple bits in the crockpot with 2 tablespoons of sugar, a decent slug of cinnamon, and a little water. It was really good, and I sent most of it home with my sister since we had so much food.

And here we are in 2024, entering it softly, and with optimism. We put the last of the tax impacts from 2022 to bed in December, and so we’re walking into the new year with a level of freedom from financial burdens we haven’t had for a while.

Interest rates are very high, so we’re not sure exactly when the renovations will start, but it’s likely to be late this year or early 2025 because we want to be thoughtful about how much we spend and commit to spending. It’s hard to keep waiting, but we also know in our hearts it’s the right decision. It will happen, and in the meantime we’ll do some small-ish improvements that give us some quality of life, like replacing a few windows and finally bricking the walkway, and a few other things.

But despite having to keep pushing off the renovation, we’re very much at peace. Everyone got things they needed and wanted over the holidays. We got to spend time with family. January, despite a couple of work trips, is going to be relatively peaceful, and we deliberately kept the first weekend open other than one errand that will take a couple of hours, because we all just need a break.

We are slowly de-Christmasing the house, and I find the lack of ‘stuff’ in it refreshing. And what’s nice is that we really do have everything we need and then some. I’m grateful for the bounty in our lives and that we’re able to share it with others.

And we’re having a very frugal month – eating down the pantry, focusing on our financial future. We do have a ski weekend planned, and a dinner at the end of the month with my parents, but those are budgeted in.

This week we’re eating simple and healthy. To kick off the new year I made the Green Goddess Salad that is making it’s way around TikTok. It’s really good, especially after it sits for a little bit for the flavors to blend. Also, it makes a metric pantload of salad (this being the technical unit of measure), so you might want to consider making it for a party or as I did, give some away.

Use up: We have a lot of green veggies to use – spinach, baby kale and lettuce, brussels sprouts as well as tons of root veggies.

Monday January 1st, 2024: Homemade chili, cornbread, green goddess salad, guacamole

Tuesday: Just Eli and I, salmon over cauliflower rice with veggies

Wednesday: Grilled chicken wings that were in the freezer, couscous, roasted brussels sprouts and onions

Thursday: Eli cooks with a protein from the freezer

Friday: Homemade pizza with various and assorted veggies and toppings

Saturday: Baked sage chicken meatballs (only we have ground turkey, not ground chicken) with parmesan orzo & roasted vegetables

Sunday: Clam Chowder and homemade bread

Monday I’ll travel for the first time in 2 months, so Eli and the kids will have a few days of their own meal plans before I come home and we start the meal planning again.

Happy New Year to all.

The Time of 3 Feasts

Christmas is over. It was lovely, almost perfect. Our lives are so full and rich and blessed, to be honest.

The 26th is the day of almost nothing. In the morning my daughter joined me for our only expedition – once a year I go to Lush Cosmetics for their Boxing Day sale and stock up on gifts for the following year, when everything is 50% off. A stockpile of gifts is a help in keeping costs down. But after that, and then coming home for a breakfast of eggs and fruit with leftovers and the fresh bread my neighbor made us, it was a day where everyone could do whatever they wanted. And mostly that was a lot of nothing.

The detritus of the holiday is still present in the living room, which I head over to every now and again to tidy up. We got the kitchen cleaned up Christmas night, but the living room was too much after I had been on my feet 12 hours a day for several days to prepare – cooking, baking, and cleaning. And then the next day we did a little.

We rarely have nothing days. Of course, there’s still laundry and tidying to do, animals and children that need feeding, and the beginning of putting things away from the holiday, but we run on 1/4 speed or less all day, using plenty of leftovers and simple food to fuel us. It’s a ‘sit in bed and read cookbooks‘ day for me, after feeling like I had run several marathons in a single week.

I host Christmas every year for us, my ex, and his parents. We celebrate with my parents on Christmas Eve, and see others throughout the time before and after, but Christmas is here. Most years I make a turkey dinner or Beef Wellington, but this year we spun the meal around a favorite, Rosemary Beef Tenderloin with Wild Mushroom Cream Sauce, and everyone deemed it excellent. It’s pretty much foolproof too, and that’s something for someone like me, who hasn’t really mastered cooking steak.

With that went homemade Garden Foccacia, creamed onions, 4-cheese mashed potatoes, roasted green beans with toasted almond slivers, and a butter leaf lettuce salad with apples, dried cranberries, tomatoes, cucumbers, and toasted pumpkin seeds.

And for the 2nd time on the table in the last few years, the Cranberry Tart with Gingersnap Crust appeared – I really love this dessert. Our first feast was delightful.

The next day everyone ate leftovers early in the day and then needed a change, so I made tacos and guacamole, in the process using up the last of the Pico de Gallo in the fridge. I really wanted to use as much up as possible as we get ready for our pantry eat-down in January. Normally, I really don’t like running out of things, but it’s the best path to less food waste, so I’m working on that.

There are technically 5 feasts this week, because my parents are hosting another big family dinner and had already hosted Christmas Eve.

Feast #2 is a holiday brunch we’re hosting, with a waffle bar, bagels and cream cheese and lox, a make-your-own hot chocolate station and sausage, pizzelles, and my Mom is making quiche and coffee cake. Feast #3 is New Year’s Eve, our traditional combination of homemade and ordered Chinese food.

And then on January 1st, we’ll roll into our Uber Frugal Month and eating down the pantry and freezers. I can’t wait – feasts and celebrations are lovely, but so is the quiet of January, with a lot of home food and walks in the cold. We’re busier than usual this winter, but we’re making some space to be home and rest. And declutter – I’ve already got several bags of clothes ready for my cousin’s kids and more will come out of the house as the year wears on.

I wish you all peace and joy in the new year.

Holiday Lights

The weather has finally turned cold, and although there’s still a lot of leaves on the trees, it’s definitely the tail end of it. Coats and boots are starting to be taken out of closets in the morning and we eat a lot of soup.

All the winter prep other than Eli finishing his project of covering the windows with insulating plastic – hopefully for the last time – is done. The chimney is cleaned, the firewood delivered, the furnace burners checked, the septic system is pumped. We’re pretty much ready for the winter months, or as ready as we can be.

In early November we took a 24 hour journey out to see my sister in upstate NY and came home with our annual haul of winter vegetables, as well as a large bag of books, borrowed reading material for the coming months of being inside.

Another Thanksgiving is complete, and I am grateful this year for so much. For my home, my family, my friends and my work. For the local food on my table, and the bounty that is our lives.

Right after Thanksgiving my husband and I scooted off to Newport RI for a night – we don’t get away much, but this was just perfect.

Last weekend I started using up our gorgeous haul of veggies.

Because I like to make one big breakfast each weekend, I made some pancakes, and there was a few leftover for a breakfast for someone this week. To that I added bacon and cut up strawberries. Once those were done I got the roasted vegetables started. We had already had some veggies in the fridge from our winter CSA share, so into an oiled baking pan went:

1 large turnip
1 very large sweet potato
1 also large beet
2 leeks
2 onions
6 cloves of garlic
2 parsnips
A handful of baby carrots

I peeled all the veggies and cut them into 1″(ish) chunks. I soaked the leeks in cold water after cutting them up so that any dirt would leach out. Then I tossed them in with salt, pepper, garlic powder, more olive oil, and about 1/4 cup of balsamic vinegar. I baked them for 3 hours at 350, and then once dinner went into the oven I lowered that to 325 degrees. After about 5 hours they were done, creamy and caramelized. They cook down significantly, so I also made a salad.

Then I took on a new recipe, a slightly modified version of this Cider Braised Pot Roast. In the interest of pretty and slightly fall-celebratory, I put it in my Staub Pumpkin Cocette. Years ago when I got divorced I had to buy a bunch of things – think bedding, mattresses, silverware, etc – with not a lot of extra cash and very little time. I bought a ton from Overstock.com, and with the Overstock rewards dollars they gave me, I splurged on 2 things – the gorgeous pumpkin shaped dutch oven, and some really pretty, deeply discounted pumpkin dishware.

Turns out the dishes were cheap because they chipped easily, and only a few survive today, but the Cocette I’ve babied. I love this thing. I mean, I really love all things pumpkin shaped, but this was a splurge when I probably should have bought other things with the rewards dollars – but I’ve never regretted it. Good cooking tools are worth it, as long as you use them.

And the pot roast and potatoes were knock your socks off good. We’ll definitely be adding that recipe to the rotation.

I thawed some chicken thighs and breasts to use in Crockpot chicken and dumplings. Honestly I wasn’t impressed with any of the recipes online, so Monday morning after a quick run, I made up my own.

I put 4 chicken thighs and 2 breasts in the bottom of the crockpot, added a little homemade cream of chicken soup, carrots, onions, and a couple pinches of garlic powder, parsley, thyme, tarragon and some a couple of handfuls of frozen peas. I added some salt, and that…was about it for the next 6 hours. Then I added a bit of half and half to make it more creamy.

Then I made these dumplings, which were pretty good. I’m all about the cozy food right now.

I also stuffed spaghetti squash.

This week we’ll get our Christmas Tree, and share cooking as we get back to work from our 4-day weekend, and start getting ready for the holidays in earnest – we decorate every inch that we can of Sithean, and I love all the merry.

Tonight the kids will be home from their grandparents, and we’ll make a simple dinner of spaghetti and meatballs with a double batch of homemade sauce. I don’t have fresh herbs on hand, so I’ll substitute with dried. We bought a raspberry pie from a local farm, and that’s our surprise treat for dessert. And as a side I’ll make this Honey Mustard Kale Salad that’s one of my favorites.

Monday: Eli will make us his famous enchiladas and I’ll make mango salsa and hopefully the avocados will be ripe enough for guacamole.

Tuesday: Chicken Leg Quarters Circa 1975 (baked with rice that was first sauteed in butter with onion and garlic and a quart of chicken broth) with roasted veggies again, and bread. I’ll get up super early to prep everything so that at the end of the work day all we have to do is sit down to eat. Maybe a cucumber salad since we have some dill to use up.

Wednesday: Beef taco skillet and broccoli from the freezer. Both the kids have activities on Wednesday afternoons, so it’s extra busy.

Thursday: Eli will cook using up whatever proteins we need to eat.

Friday: Oven pizza and tree decorating! And I’m going to try this Balsamic Parmesan Brussels Sprouts recipe as a test run for Christmas.

Saturday: we have a dinner out in Boston at one of our favorite restaurants with the kids and their dad. Because Eli has to have a procedure in early December, we’re front-loading our holiday activities.

Sunday: I’ll start making Christmas cookies, and I’ll make some Parmesan Crusted Chicken, a french onion soup, and fresh bread.

Monday: We have some crab and lobster ravioli in the freezer from a sale last month, so I’ll make that, we’ll bread some fish and put a nice lemon caper sauce on top. That with a salad will be just right.

And that will do it. Lunches will be leftovers or sandwiches, and we’ll use up the oranges and apples we have to eat. I hope you have a warm and delicious week.

Autumn Colors

Somehow more than 2 years have passed since my brother-in-law died. I still can’t quite wrap my head around a world without him in it, but the grief is different than when it was fresh. Tempered, not as overpowering, but still a weight in my chest cavity. Still a hole, even if not as overt. Every time we go to the cemetary or pass it while driving, it’s still just wrong that he’s there, and not home with this family.

I guess that never changes when you lose someone too soon.

This past week brought fresh grief, when a colleague and friend lost her adult son to lung cancer, and Eli and I grieved with her at the wake and funeral. Never a smoker, he somehow got one of the worst cancers you can get.

I’m almost done with business travel for 2023 – one more trip, and I’ll be grounded for the following 60 days, something I’m thankful about. Business travel is a pro and a con – we definitely use the airline miles, hotel points and rental car free days I accrue for our vacations, and those definitely lower costs for us, but the time away from home is hard to get back. And honestly, it’s pretty tiring.

Home feels extra wonderful right now. Last week on Saturday it poured, and other than some housework, and my oldest helping at the school play, we really didn’t have anything pressing to do. A roaster chicken went in the crockpot to become chicken soup for dinner, we had all the components for popovers to go with it and there was a bunch of salad stuff to use up.

Rare are the days not full of demands on our time so we were reveling in the idea that we could just do very little.

Our CSA came to an end past week, and next week the Winter Share starts up. We decided to do one more stockpile for the winter, and had done that a week ago, with everything from a lot of rice to dried black beans, several blocks of tofu – tofu freezes well, so we toss it in the freezer and Eli often makes us crispy tofu bites in the air fryer, and so on. Butter, shredded cheese – all straight into the freezer for later use. We also did a bit of holiday shopping while we were at Costco and made sure we had frozen dumplings in the freezer in quantity – we love to make our own, but these are comfort food for the kids.

All that’s left now is our stock up of onions, sweet potatoes and squashes in Upstate NY next month, and then we’ll be eating down our stockpile other than buying for holiday dinners and the small amounts of groceries we’ll need each week – milk, fruit, things we run out of.

*Eli with 2 of the giant squashes we grew*

The garden is still producing, at least for a few more days. We harvested several giant squashes as well as a colander full of Tomatillos – our first hard freeze is due on Wednesday night, so I’ll be picking the last of everything today and tomorrow.

So what are we eating?

Last week’s Menu

Use up: Ricotta cheese, very ripe avocados, lots of potatoes and apples

Saturday: Chicken soup with rice, popovers, and a salad using the last head of lettuce from our CSA this year.

To the salad I added some cherry tomatoes that were on the reduced rack at Market Basket, our local independent grocery store but still good ($0.68 is the best price ever for a pint of tomatoes after the growing season ends), toasted pumpkin seeds, chopped up baby cukes that were nearing the end of their days and needed using, a cut up half of an apple my son didn’t finish slices from yesterday and I stored in the fridge, avocado, a sprinkle of parmesan, and a simple dressing of salt, pepper, lemon juice and olive oil. Best salad ever. And it used up a lemon that was ready to go.

Pro tip: Once you have juiced the lemon, use the halves to scrub out your sinks. It’s a natural cleaner/disinfectant and it makes everything smell wonderful.

Sunday: We had leftovers for lunch as the ravioli lasagna from Friday night needed to get eaten up. Dinner was intended to be homemade Ramen with shaved steak and slivered veggies in creamy miso broth but my son made himself spicy ramen for lunch, so instead I made Creamy Miso Pasta with the shaved steak, the last of the scallions, and I roasted some brussels sprouts to go with. It was not super popular – Eli and I liked it, but the kids were not fans.

*Lemon Blueberry Ricotta Bread – Photo by Eli 5 Stone*

I also made Snickerdoodles and a several loaves of Lemon Blueberry Ricotta Bread in an effort to use up the excessive amount of leftover ricotta we had, some summer blueberries in the freezer, and the last remaining lemon. And because it was niece and goddaughter’s 18th birthday, and my parents earlier this week and in just a few days. After a round of birthday drop offs of gifts and baked goods, I returned home to make dinner for my crew.

Monday: Monday I ate a bit of leftover chicken for breakfast with some cut up honeydew melon and a few of the leftover brussels sprouts. I packed a sandwich and some homemade cookies, fruit and goldfish for my son

Tuesday: I uh…know Eli made something. I just forget what it was and I forgot to write it down.

Wednesday: Eli made salmon with sliced tomatoes and avocado and an amazing carrot soup with homemade croutons.

Thursday: I had dinner out with my sister, a rare treat, and Eli and my son ate a frozen pizza (although they did heat it!)

Friday: I made rice, homemade pot stickers and roasted broccoli. My oldest had a riding event, so dinner had to be made before we left at 5:30, but I ate when we got home.

Saturday: It was a full day of chores and Eli and I managed to squeak in the last canoe ride of the season due to the warm weather. The temperature is going to drop so we tried to take advantage. Then we took our son to the Trunk or Treat Halloween event in town, dropped him at Dad’s and tried a new-to-us restaurant in nearby Newburyport, MA.

This Week’s Menu:
Use up: Spinach, brussels sprouts, kiwi fruit and strawberries

Sunday: Breaded fish and crab cakes, slaw with apples and scallions in it, Sweet Potato and Kale Salad, tater tots from the freezer. The target for the first couple of days of the week is always to have lunch leftovers for a few days.

I also started bread dough, made more Salsa Verde, made chocolate chip cookies – the treat for the week – and prepared Parmesan crusted chicken for Monday dinner. A few of the crusted chicken tenders went into the freezer to be healthier fast-food options, and a few of the cookies as well, something I’m trying out to see if it works.

Monday: That chicken that we made on Sunday is the main course, just quickly reheated with the fresh-baked No Knead Bread that will have been rising since Sunday morning. With that is salad. I deliberately didn’t buy bread this week so I can also use it for my son’s ham sandwich lunches. For us, lunches are leftovers.

Tuesday: Halloween Dinner in a hurry – spaghetti with green food coloring added to the water and meatballs with bean ‘eyes’, garlic bread and sauteed spinach, with a sliced cucumber for my son, who doesn’t like spinach.

Wednesday: Tired day dinner of Trader Joe’s Orange Chicken, rice in the rice cooker (one of my all-time favorite & most used kitchen appliances), dumplings and whatever veggies we need to use up. We have some Shishito peppers to roast with olive oil and salt, and we’ll probably do something else to go with.

Thursday: My daughter has her riding lesson, Eli will make dinner and we’ll all collapse early.

Friday: Our first winter share pick up. My ex has a new job, so the schedule with the kids is in flux. If we have them, roasted veggies and Chicken Leg Quarters Circa 1975 over rice, if not, probably fish tacos with the fish cooked in the air fryer.

Saturday: The reverse of whatever we ate on Friday. Roasted veggies usually last us a couple of days.

Sunday: I’ll be preparing for a work trip, so the target will be simple and something that leaves leftovers. I’m thinking Crockpot Chicken and Dumplings.

And that will bring us to almost the middle of November, which hardly seems possible.

Morning Meal Prep

I was up before dawn on my son’s 11th birthday, something I often am, regardless of birthdays or not. This time was different though, because after 3 weeks of straight work travel followed by nearly a week lost to a bout of Covid, I felt like I was finally re-entering my life fully after having been gone for a while.

Literally and figuratively – not just the travel, but then 5 days of isolation from my family upon my return. My closet got organized as a result, and surfaces cleaned off once I started feeling better, but the absence was hard.

So as soon as i could I started throwing myself back into family life. And just in time, too.

I’m a huge believer in prepping food early in the morning, and prepping food for the week. We had already made batches of clam chowder and chili this week, which keeps us in lunches for quite some time.

We had a busy birthday day of celebrating ahead, and timing was going to be everything. The first thing I did was try to do as much prep as possible. Dinner was a cheese board, Instant Pot Beef Bourguignon, our favorite homemade Bread, salad and ChocolateChocolateChocolate Cake, a specialty of the house (this is chocolate cake mix, chocolate pudding mix and chocolate chips, I’ll share the complete recipe soon – for years it was a most-requested dessert in our family). But in the interim, my husband and I were chaperoning a pack of newly-minted 11 year olds to the mall to run amuk (within reason, of course) to test their independence. We would then turn around, come home, and he would oversee shepherding of the kids home while I prepped for dinner.

So I got up, made bread dough, fished the dried laundry out of the dryer for folding, and set to making sheet pan eggs for homemade breakfast sandwiches.

Sheet Pan Eggs:
15 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup shredded cheese
Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F

Prep the sheet pan:
Oil the sheet pan and lay either parchment or foil on it and oil that, to ensure nothing sticks.

Make the eggs:
Stir together milk, eggs and seasoning until well combined. Pour into the prepared sheet pan (I use a jelly roll pan with high sides).

If you want to add some sauteed veggies or spinach, you can. Top with cheese and bake for about 15 minutes until set. Let it cool a minute and slice into squares.
I toasted buttered english muffins with a slice of Canadian bacon each (that I had left over from making homemade clam chowder a couple days earlier) and made homemade breakfast sandwiches. We ended up with 8, plus some extra slices of egg mixture. I served one each to my husband and my son, and froze the remaining sandwiches for easy breakfasts later.

Once the bread dough was prepped and rising and the cake was baked and cooling, I cut up the 2 pounds of strawberries that were on sale this week – a nice break from apples for a bit – I find they get consumed faster if i slice them up.

I also rinsed and cut up mushrooms for dinner, because we were going to be a bit tight for meal prep time when we got home. I had some extra, so I sliced those and sauteed them for a few minutes before freezing them for a future meal. I’m really trying not to waste food, and this is a great way to have just enough mushrooms ready and waiting for use.

At 8:41 the cake was cooling, the mushrooms in the freezer and fridge respectively, the bread dough was rising, the sandwiches in the freezer as well, and the remaining strawberries were chilling in a container in the fridge.

So why get up and prep? It’s a sanity and a money saver. These are meals ready to go. It used up the last of the store-bought eggs (I had also hardboiled some) as our newer chickens are finally laying. The old ladies in the coop are inconsistent, so we’ve had to buy eggs again, and we eat a lot of eggs. It means there’s a few less things we need to do when we get home from our busy day.

The 3-day weekend means I get an extra prep and chores day too, which is great, because I’m behind after getting sick. I’ll go into this week feeling good about our menu and what I’ve done to ensure we’re eating a healthy, varied diet even throughout the busiest of days. It’s the only thing that offsets ‘I’m too tired to cook‘.

And this isn’t just for family-havers. I remember an evening when my husband and I took the RV north to go hiking, and having all our meals prepped and just waiting to eat meant that we didn’t even consider eating out, we just excitedly got back, warmed the food in the oven, lit some candles, and felt lucky as heck to be where we were.

Food prep and meal plans are abundance. I hope your week feels as abundant as mine.

End-Of-Summer Food

The kids are back to school and the weather feels like August – hot and humid, but cooler weather is on the horizon and it is clear we are on the path to autumn.

This year I made a commitment to do better at preserving than I did last year and so far, so good. I have canned 3 kinds of pickles, made multiple varieties of pesto for the freezer, and blanched and frozen kale, broccoli and beans. I have also sliced and frozen zucchini, which doesn’t require blanching.

We are awash in tomatoes from our CSA and our own garden, so we’re trying to eat those, and for the San Marzano variety my neighbor and I have a deal – I grow them, he cans them and we split the end result. So far just a couple of quarts, but I expect more in the coming weeks.

I also tried canning Candied Jalapenos for the first time – no real idea how they turned out yet – and it is time for our first batch of Salsa Verde was made and jarred. We also are starting to get Poblano peppers from our garden and the CSA, and those are being seeded, cut into strips and frozen for use in Buffalo Skillet Enchilada Bake this fall and winter.

August had us spending a huge amount on food – we had run down almost everything in the house other than tomato sauce and paste, and some stockpiling for the next few months was in order. I tend to stockpile in the fall and spring, but next spring if all goes we’ll be cleaning out for renovation, so this may well have been our last stock up. The only things left are apple picking and to go to my sister’s in upstate NY later in the fall to get our bulk veggies.

But even without that, We are full to the gills on foodstuffs, and more is rolling in to be preserved every week. So it’s definitely time to eat all the foods. And the good news is that this time of year it’s easy to try to hit our 30 plant-based foods a week.

But first we’re trying to keep up with the plethora of CSA produce that keeps rolling in and there’s likely a couple more batches of basil pesto to make, although I’m running out of pine nuts, so we’ll switch to walnuts.

So what specifically are we eating? This past week was really hot, so our meal plan had to stay flexible. Here’s what we ate last week and what we’re eating this week, just as I launch into multiple weeks of business trips, punctuated by a few days at home in between each. Once my trips are done for a bit at the end of the month it will be cooler and we can cook more, but last week’s meals were mostly ad-hoc because no one cared enough about it

Breakfasts: Last week I made a big batch of waffles and froze most of them for quick weekday breakfasts

For lunches: Lemon Cranberry Quinoa Salad was last week’s pre-prepared lunch, minus the avocado so that it lasts longer. This week I’ll be traveling so I’m just making hardboiled eggs for Eli and the kids
Preserve: Pesto, salsa verde, drying sage and oregano
Use up: We have a lot of potatoes and oranges to eat

Saturday: We tried Coconut Curry Meatballs over basmati rice and homemade Naan, although we didn’t have ground chicken or turkey on hand, so I used a combination of ground pork and beef and kept some out for those who are still feeling their way around curries, i.e. our youngest. I added Raita and sliced veggies to go with it. We didn’t have sweet potatoes so I added peas instead. It was good but I would skip the chicken broth in the future.

Sunday: A batch of Ravioli Lasagna, garlic bread and salad for a simple rainy-day comfort meal

Monday-Wednesday nights I’ll be away, so Eli will make the kids ham, which isn’t my favorite.

Thursday: Eli will make us dinner, a chicken something with Brussels sprouts

Friday: We’ll have our CSA share for the week – 5 weeks left to go- and that means salad along with Rosemary ranch chicken and potatoes on the grill

Saturday: We’re heading out to pick apples, so I’ll make Cinnamon Sugar Swirled Apple Bread and maybe Mulled Apple Cider Cakes for the freezer, and to go with make-your-own pizza night

Sunday: Chicken and Rice circa 1975 – a simple rice bake with chicken thighs or leg quarters, a little onion and whatever else you have, all baked together with a quart of chicken broth as the liquid.

Monday: It seems like the heat won’t be quite done with us yet even past the middle of September, so we’ll go for tacos. Most of the work is making guacamole and cutting up the veggies.

Tuesday I’ll hit the road again and we’ll make another meal plan when I get back!

What are you eating?

The Fruit Ripens

While the rest of the country continues to swelter, Massachusetts is having an unseasonably cool summer. Normally in August we have temperatures in the 90s for at least some of the times, these days we are lucky if it hits 80. But even though we’ve had a cool, wet summer, the tomatoes are ripening and so are the raspberries.

It’s time to use up the basil. I always leave it too long, and then regret as it starts to yellow, but it’s perfect right now and we will eat endless amounts of pesto this winter. So this weekend I’ll cut most of it down and whir it up in the blender with garlic, parmesan, lemon and pine nuts.

We’re just back from our annual trip to the mountains, and reminded that after 3 days anywhere, it’s likely we will all want to be at home, no matter the degree of fun we are having. Homebodies, that’s us as a family. As much as we like to travel, home is the best.

But we did enjoy ourselves, celebrating a milestone birthday with friends, getting the kids’ back to school shopping mostly accomplished, hiking to a waterfall, and so on. But when we were done, we were done and so we cashed it in and came home. We have less than a week of summer vacation for the kids, and a few more days of it for me to spend cleaning and organizing, tending the garden beds, and prepping a wildflower bed for my son – this first requires a ring of rocks around the Seckel pear tree, which really needs a pollinator partner. I’m looking around for one to pre-order for 2024 planting.

One thing that going away always proves to us is that we love to eat at home the best. I did a major stock-up shop at Costco after our trip, and between that and some other purchases, I don’t expect to hear complaints about shortages of snacks or clothing for a while.

The squash vines, or at least the ones that I didn’t accidentally pull up when I was weeding are also being pretty prolific, with lots of squash and small pumpkins hiding between the leaves.

Our CSA has another 8 weeks left, and then we’ll shift to the Winter Share, which runs every couple of weeks up until right before Christmas. We are awash in fresh, local food and general abundance.

Abundance.

It’s a word I haven’t felt in a while. When our giant tax bill hit us in the chest, it came after we thought we had finally recovered from a series of financial challenges, the list of which is long enough I think people didn’t totally believe it (in the general public’s defense, the idea that a 70-foot pine tree could fall on one’s house on their absolute last day of work when they lost their job, which they found out on their first vacation alone with the kids after divorce and so on almost belies belief). We were just settling in to the relief of feeling solvent and comfortable again – saving lots, paying down the mortgage early, bought the RV outright – when that next challenge arrived, and it felt like an almost-mortal hit. We wiped everything out to pay it and started over. Yet again.

So now here we are again teetering on the edge of abundance, cleaning up the last dregs of the tax impact, but also facing down a few big things – the last 25 % of Eli’s teeth, my car is starting to need a lot of expensive maintenance, which makes us start to consider if we do that or we replace it, and of course, renovation.

That said, I really believe we’re at the tail end of the stressful time, and stress or no, I recognize and am profoundly grateful for the good fortune that we’ve had. Starting over, and doing it again and again is hard. It has taken it’s toll on me, without question. But I also recognize that getting punched in the face over and over and getting back up each time to face the punch you know is coming is something that requires a force of will that Eli and I have in spades. To do it while ensuring our kids are safe and sound and insulated from the impacts takes extra care and skill. I think we’ve done pretty great.

So this week, we’ll live in abundance as we get ready to shift to our school schedules from the laissez faire mornings of summer. And we’ll eat at home, delicious meals like Lemon Chicken Piccata Meatballs over linguini with salad, Taco Skillet, and the Lemon Bars with Brown Butter Raspberries, a necessary solve for the 6 lbs, instead of 6 individual lemons that Instacart brought me and the infinity raspberries ripening in the yard, and enjoy the waning summer while readying ourselves for the cold weather to come.

I’m a lucky duck.

Gutting it Out

I’m reluctant to give life advice online generally. For one, there’s a glut of that stuff out there – ‘just do this and you’ll be happy’ is sometimes useful, and sometimes frank bullshit. But a conversation with my best friend recently stuck out in my head because we were talking about context switching to get a lot of things done in a day and she told me I was just better at it than other people and I make it look easy.

But that’s not really true in the grand scheme of things – and after we talked through it, I thought it was worth mentioning.

I do get a million things done in a day. Let’s take this past Tuesday for an example. Before anyone else was up in the house, morning being my best time of day, I had put in a run on the treadmill, dealt with laundry, emptied our dehumidifier in the basement (Yay greywater for plants!) started working and made a ravioli lasagna for dinner. Then I had meetings until 4:30 and in between checked on the kids. Eli also keeps them fed and responds to requests but I try to do my part when there’s small breaks between meetings. And then I got dinner on the table by 6, helped with clean up, made sure everyone was set for the evening and folded some laundry. And worked some more.

Some of this productivity is just self-preservation. I do not want to, nor is it in my budget to live on take out. So I have to spend some time on mornings and weekends meal planning, batch cooking and preparing food. I actually really love grocery shopping – I adore wandering the aisles on no schedule in particular and looking at all the things – but because my time is at a premium I treat that as well, a treat. The cost to have groceries delivered is more than offset by things like not having time, sticking to a list (not my greatest life skill) and trying to shop to a meal plan rather than have everything around just in case.

But back to that conversation. What startled me most by it is that this is from a person who knows that it isn’t easy to do a million things and knows that I get tired and still thinks it’s easier for me from the outside.

So is it? I had to contemplate that as we talked and here’s the conclusion I came to.

Context switching is hard. Moving between task and task, switching from a meeting to a creative task to a physical task, from topic to topic is not something our brains do well without a transition period. That’s why on days when I just go from meeting to meeting to meeting on different topics I’m so tired at the end of the day. It’s literally wearying for your brain, and figuring out how to parse time out so that you can get all the things done is work.

But I have a theory that it’s also something you can practice and get better at. But first you have to decide a couple things, and what I mean by decide is not as simple as chicken or fish for dinner. Decide that this is a thing not only that you will do, but you can do. You will do it even if it doesn’t always feel good, takes time to learn but you will do it because this skill – the mental muscle that you will build (that is also sometimes a physical thing too) is to do it anyway.

Take writing. Because I’m up often before dawn, it affords me time to write. Sometimes it’s here on my blog, often it’s more private, but when I am up, I am writing to almost the exclusion of all else except that I also drink coffee. It’s a rare time when I don’t owe anyone anything, and how I choose to use it is to write, then often exercise. I decided I was a blogger. I didn’t decide it was going to make me rich or get me tons of followers – clearly, ha! I just decided I was going to write. And that made me a writer. Someday a book maybe, for now this is enough for me. It gives me joy whether I have 5 readers or 5 million. And so I keep practicing it, hoping to be better.

The same truth is for my running. I am not fast, I do not win races. I just get out there and do it because I really really like who I am when I’m running. So I keep running, even when it doesn’t feel great or I would rather be doing something else, because it’s not just duration that matters but the cumulative process of mental and physical strength that comes from doing something over and over.

So too with the context switching. If you have an hour to be creative, do it. Don’t recite lists of barriers or reasons you can’t. Simply do. Maybe you won’t be good at it for a while, and your brain tells you you need more time. But eventually you’ll find yourself doing it, because you kept at it, because your determination to write or run or learn to make macarons overtakes those barriers.

And then like most of us, your time alloted is done, and you have to move on to the next task. Which you’ve also decided you can do. Parenthood helped me with this, also the work that I do in my head to try to be immersive in where I am – as someone who spends a lot of time distracted by the next things I need to get to, being in the moment is something I’m working on. But when that moment moves on to the next moment, I set it down and move on.

Am I saying everyone should be busy all the time? No. Absolutely not – creativity often comes from giving space – mentally and physically.

But we make time for what we value, even if it takes some moving around, restructuring, and so on. Sometimes you have to try a method out for a while and then try another. But not after 3 days, nope – you give it months. You take the frustration and the not-good-at-itness and you sit with that. You embrace it. Eventually the discomfort becomes something else.

Maybe it will all be joy from the start. But if it’s not here’s my life advice – gut it the heck out. Just.Gut.It.Out. This is not life advice that will win me awards or make friends, but it’s the realest thing I can tell you, and it might just help with the muscle that lets you switch gears more frequently.

What I find is that if you allocate in your mind, you allocate in your life. And then you switch from writing to emails, and that becomes normal. And so on.
I lost half this post when my host froze this morning, and I probably lost some better writing. But then because I had decided I was publishing today, I sat back down after my shower and got it done.

I’d tell you more but now I have to go feed the bunny breakfast and check email.