What's for Dinner?

 Ah, the dread question.

First of all, family dinner as a performative nostalgic spectacle is definitely a tool of the patriarchy. Also, things are so much easier than they were 11 years ago in most respects. 

But still, there is the question of what to feed everyone. Every single day. And! We are almost never all home at the same time. Bah.

Here's what's working right now:

1. A compulsory dinner on Friday, even if that's grilled cheese sandwiches on the Blackstone, so we can sort of touch base and hear about everyone's week and do something fun to kick off the weekend. (Coop sometimes rides the bus home with friends on Friday because it is the one night he doesn't have dive practice, but we still make him come home for dinner because we are terrible)

2. A fun dinner on Saturday. Maybe that means Ben and I go out and everyone else has pizza. maybe we all go out. Maybe we have a quick dinner and a smorgasbord of movie snacks-- you get the idea.

3. Big dinner on Sunday that will yield leftovers for a couple of days: burgers but make extra burgers and a huge salad and cut up tons of veggies to eat with dip, pot roast with potatoes and carrots, huge pot of spaghetti sauce and lots of meatballs with stuff to make meatball sandwiches with the leftovers, double the pork chops with extra sides, etc.

4. Ben makes Tuesday's dinner on Monday and also grills a bunch of chicken what we can eat in salads and wraps for a couple of days.

5. Skating by on leftovers and breakfast for dinner until Friday when we make dinner and start with whole process over again.

What about you? How are you answering the dinner question lately?

Post-dinner scooter walk-- soon (SO SOON) it will be too dark for such a treat.

5 on a Friday: Random Seasonal Things

 1. Baking

FALL. I love FALL. Especially fall baking! Behold, some ugly pictures of some delicious things I baked last week (and cracked the code on indulging in. I ate them when I made them and then... not again. EASY PEASY).

Pumpkin bars

Apple Crisp

Oatmeal raisin cookies (some for my TAs and some for home; I add a good slug of molasses to the linked recipe)

2. Thinking ahead to the holidays. Do I need 8 of these for my couch? MAYBE.

3. MUMS. Glorious mums. ON SALE.

4. College application season is OVER at this house. I love early college decisions!! YAY JACK!!

5. Sight word season (she slept in that shirt of Coper's and wore it ALL DAY Sunday. When we played rose-bud-thorn at the dinner table, her rose was wearing PJs and playing video game all day (mother of the YEAR)).

September: What I Read

I read some good books this month-- and some real stinkers (Elizabeth Gilbert I am looking at you. Seriously, I disliked this book so much I stopped following her on IG, even).

My top book this month is, perhaps, my BOOK OF THE YEAR (although there are some excellent reads still to be published this final quarter, and the Booker Prize longlist books are excellent)

Random snap of one week's ambitious TBR (and then I got Katabasis on my kindle and returned the hard copy-- I am getting the hang of my Libby Kindle requests!!)

Here's the list from worst to best:

BAD

All the Way to the River by Elizabeth Gilbert: No thank you. **2025

MEH

Tilda Is Visible by Jane Tara: A bit heavy-handed with the metaphor. **2025

The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus by Emma Knight: Liked this but did not love it. *Audio **2025

The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren: Cute but very very very predictable. **KINDLE

My Friends by Fredrik Backman: I usually love him, but this was too Hallmark movie for me. **2025

The Guncle by Steven Rowley: Liked it so much, I snagged the sequel immediately. But then I listened to one million podcasts instead of it... *Audio

Home of the American Circus by Allison Larkin: I liked this, but I would have liked it 100 pages lighter, too. **2025

Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson: YIKES YOU GUYS. *Audio **2025

Sounds Like Love by Ashley Poston: This was sweet and sad and cute. I liked it! *2025

You should read these if you haven't already

Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done by Laura Vanderkam: This was fascinating and made me want to read everything she's written. *Audio

I Know How She Does It: How Successful Women Make the Most of  Their Time by Laura Vanderkam: This was terrific-- I loved all of the advice and the reframe. I do have time to do the things that matter to me. If I don't have time, then maybe if was not a real priority. *Audio

I'll Follow You by Charlene Wang: DARK. LOVED IT. **2025 **KINDLE (Amazon First Read-- these are rarely awesome, but this one is).

Life and Art: Essays by Richard Russo: There is a whole essay where he talks about writing Straight Man (my favorite book ever written) and the character of Hank Devereaux (my favorite character in all of literature), and I was RIVETED. **2025

THESE ARE REALLY REALLY GOOD

Maggie; or a Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar by Katie Yee: THIS IS WONDERFUL. A BOTY contender for sure-- great story, wonderful narrator, funny and sad-- loved it. *KINDLE **2025

Flashlight by Susan Choi: Booker Prize longlist book-- so good. Sad, harrowing funny-- thick. A delight. Not a pool book, though, but that's where I read it. **2025

I'll Come to You by Rebecca Kauffman: This is one of the best books I have read this year-- such a simple plot but such wonderful characters. I highly recommend it. (Also the cover was not appealing to me, so I checked it out and didn't read it and then re-requested it and did';t read it and then finally listened to it). *Audio **2025

Stats

BTM 16

Book books: 7

Kindle books: 3

Audio books 6

2025 books: 11

BTY 140

Book books: 79

Kindle books: 9

Audio books: 59

2025 books: 88

September Love List

 I have fallen in love with the Edit Your Life podcast recently, and I listened to an episode on minimalism (LOL that will never be me) that contained the advice to curate a love list. This was in the context of shopping online-- like, instead of immediately buying something, put it on your love list and see if you still want it or if the act of creating a list satisfies your shopping urge.

But! I love the idea of a love list (kind of like Nicole's favourite things or Elisabeth's happy things Friday) each month where I reflect on the micro delights (another Christine Koh term) that got me through.

Here's what I loved in September:

1. Kodiak Nuts and Seeds Oatmeal: A lot of people said they eat oats and whole grains to get their fiber, and I do, too, but I find myself wanting most of my fiber to come from fruits and veggies because you gotta eat A LOT of whole grains to hit the 30 gram goal, which means there's less room for eating other stuff. Enter this awesome instant oatmeal with 14 grams of protein (more if you eat with 1/2 cup Fairlife milk) and 4 g fiber. Add an apple, and you have a nutritionally dense and super filling meal. The other day, I also mixed in peanut butter, and for under 500 calories, I was full until dinner time. (24 grams of protein and 10 grams of fiber)

2. JOGGING: YOU GUYS. I LOVE TO JOG. And I am in good enough shape to just lace up my shoes and do it. It's wild.

3. Sunset on the prairie: We are soaking up every single second of the most delightful fall weather imaginable, including outside play time after school and after we do dance and dive drop off.

4. Kindergarten: I am lucky enough to volunteer in Minnie's class an hour a week, and I also got to chaperone her first field trip to the pumpkin patch. Kindergarteners are the very best. I am actually thinking about going back to school to get licensed to teach early elementary-- I think I would love it a lot.

5. Big kids

5 on a Friday: So much random stuff I bought at TJ's

 One thing this season of life is affording me is time to grocery shop uninterrupted. WHAT A LUXURY. Unfortch, I am squandering that luxury on utter bullshit. BUT IT IS FUN.

I went to Costco before my meetings the other morning, and LOOK AT THIS PARKING LOT!

IHO 5 on a Friday, here are 5 categories of totally happy but totally non essential things I bought (BY MYSELF) at Trader Joe's:

(Also this podcast episode about TJ's is fascinating).

1. Self care:

TJ's face masks are my ride-or-die, and now Dorothy likes them, too. I also snagged a vanilla pumpkin candle for the stovetop and a pumpkin hand cream for me and a Laneige knock off lip mask in cinnamon roll for Dorothy (who is a Laneige stan, so we shall see)

2. Frozens:

Tiny ice cream cones but make them pink! Jack loves frozen asparagus, and I snagged a few breakfast options.

3. Things I actually needed to make dinner:

4. SNAAAAAAAACKS

I am a sucker for the Pumpkin Walks into a Bar bars and the pumpkin pancake mix. I also love the fall leaf chips. The candy is for poker night. The kids love the tiny chocolate chip cookies, and Coop is the honey roasted peanuts eater. Dorothy's thing is the chocolate pretzels and the pirate's booty. The sugar cookie dough balls are for Minnie to have a fun Friday thing since she's not invited to poker night.

5. Actual grocery items that I might use later:

bananas because the ones from Costco go from green to brown, spaghetti for whenever. Fusilli and pumpkin pasta sauce as a quick dinner option, a variety of lunch meat (I cannot quit lunch meat), cooked lentils from the produce section-- these are so delightfully easy to throw in salads or make into a burrito or burrito bowl.

$200 of totally random things-- but at least there is a coherent meal and a few other meal starter ingredients-- could be so much sillier, I guess.

Goals-- do I even want to keep them?

 One of my goals for 2025 was to make 25 new cookies recipes, and I really thought that, out of everything on the list, this would be goal I crushed. It would be a triumph and a super fun task, like the year I vowed to come up with a go-to from-scratch brownie recipe or the year I decided to master making pie crust.

I started out STRONG with browned butter chocolate chip,  brownie cookies. and iced oatmeal ginger all in January. I made peanut butter cups in February and oatmeal chocolate chips-- not a new cookie, but a new-to-me recipe-- in March. April saw the return of an old family fave: big fat chewy chocolate chip cookies (this recipe is wonderful, and your cookies will come out bakery quality). I also noticed that I was getting really behind on cookies, so I made double chocolate chips in April, too. May saw a batch of blondies (not technically a cookie, but whatevs) and also Fruity Pebble "rice krispie" treats (ditto the not-cookie). Then I stopped eating sugar and also stopped baking much of anything. I managed my go-to chocolate chips in June because the kids were like WHERE HAVE ALL THE COOKIES GONE and then nothing until the first week of school when I made brownie bites (some plain, some with mini m&Ms and some with chocolate chips) for after school snack and then last week when I made peanut butter cookies for my TAs.

I have THIRTEEN RECIPES TO GO! And only a few months left! And I am still not eating sugar (often-- I have eaten it kind of a lot during the end of birthday season/our anniversary, and I am very much a don't--break-the-chain person, so it is hard for me to get back on the horse). ANYWAY. Is this even a goal I want to keep? IDK. Maybe I can bake for my TAs every Monday and speed through?

I have already given up on any writing related goals. I was doing really well in January and then I interviewed for a new job, got the job, got a retention offer, and just sort of used all of my extra brain power for stewing and NEVER RESUMED THE WORK. (see what I mean about the chain??). After that, the perimenopause made my life hellacious a little bit at a time, and when the pot finally boiled over in May, they year was almost half over.

I have read 6/25 books on my Kindle. I'm having a hard time managing Libby holds for e-books (I use it mostly for audio), so I will continue to work on this. I recently added my work library card to Libby, so now I have the potential for 35 total holds across 2 library systems-- I am hopeful things will improve. Can I read 19 Kindle books in 3 months? Sure. Do I want to buy those books? ABSOLUTELY NOT. Or at least, not all of them. (I have read Every Tom Dick, and Harry, Ward D, The Blue Castle, Three Days in June, Maggie; or a Man and a Woman Walk into a Bar, and The Paradise Problem.)

I have seen live performances, met a couple of bloggers, and curated a new music playlist. I love checking in with new music each month, trying new restaurants, and making sure to go out with Ben. We are on track with our donation of things from around the house goal, and I have replaced yoga with strength training. 2025 is chugging along nicely from a goals standpoint, I guess.

Except the writing, Kindle reading and cookie baking...

Minnie's like this is what it's come to? I have to get my warm cookies at COSTCO now??

at least back-to-school mom got her ish together

Fall Rhythms

 A really sweet and lovely dance mom whom I have apparently known for years (I introduced myself to her in the hallway outside Minnie's jazz class, and she was like oh we know each other from the little gym; you shared your pearls of wisdom and then I felt like a total tool on at least 2 levels) was talking about the fall busy season (she has 4 kids elementary school and younger) and said something so wise: we need to live our schedule for a couple of weeks before we figure out what's working and what's not.

Well, I am impatient, so I am writing this after living our full schedule (school plus gymnastics for Min  plus dance for Dorothy and Min plus diving plus crew for the fall play and speech season prep work and fall work schedule for Jack) for just one week, and right away, I can see that I need to spend less time putting food in boxes. OMG.

this is the kind of after school snack I bring Cooper 4 days a week and Dorothy twice. it is a meal.

A few things that are working well:

Making Friday night fun! So far we have done a movie night (K Pop Demon Hunters, natch) and a stuff-your-stanley ice cream event

Therapeutic coloring: In an effort to make the house a cozy place that the kids feel like they can totally relax and unwind on because they are so busy these days outside the house, I bought a bunch of color-on table cloths and leave them out with baskets of crayons and markers, and we pretty much all love it. Everyone stops by the table at some point to do some coloring. Minnie also likes access to workbooks and markers after school, which buys me some much-needed catch up time before the pick up/drop off onslaught

Making weekends as fun as possible. YES we do tons of chores and weekly prep, but we also have so much downtime, thanks to dance and diving being low weekend commitment sports. We have been trying to go out more as a family and also to make errands fun by pairing them with a treat of some kind. Ben and I have started going to Costco solo after we run on Saturday or Sunday because if we are going to spend that much cash at a place, we might as well enjoy ourselves.

Don't remember where we were going, but we looked happy about it

quick trip after school to grab bread for grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner turned into a junk food binge and Dorothy having a friend over to make frozen gummy bears (frozen in sprite)

Making sure the activities are darling

Appreciating the sunrise, as long as I have to be up walking the dog and starting my day

Leaning into carpooling and also the sun setting after dinner

our leg of the car pool is always better with baked goods. my car is a mess.

Working from couch with my stuffed animal come to life

How is the new season treating you so far?