Both Ben and Sophia were exceptionally content babies, but on the rare occasions when they fussed, I swear it was because they were too tired to eat and too hungry to sleep. That’s some bad mojo, but it is possible that in my dotage, I have slipped into fussy infant mode myself.
When I get home from work, I’m ravenous and exhausted, but as Ben so eloquently puts it, “I gotta eat!” The show must go on. Last week, while watching “The Kitchen” we were lured in by a delicious looking fall stir fry and a caramel apple cream pie. What, in the name of all that is good, right, and holy made me think that we could do all that on a weekday? Sure, stir fry (I refer you to the “I gotta eat” clause.) But pie? Pie?!? Beyond the pale. Had I come to my senses by the end of the weekend, that would have been one thing, but once a meal is posted on the fridge menu, it is what Ben considers to be a legally binding agreement.
On the particular night that this incontrovertible meal was slated to occur, I was hungry and tired. We needed all hands on deck, and we made some substitutions, but when the fall stir fry finally came together, it was delicious! We subbed in edamame for squash to keep Phil in the game.
https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/jeff-mauro/fall-stir-fry-3869707
We actually made the pie first, and it was good, but not something we’d trouble with again. The sweetness was a selling point for Ben, but I felt the caramel overshadowed the apple aspect, making it just more calories that I could have allocated differently.
https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/caramel-apple-cream-pie-3869713
I don’t know how long the meal took to make (a long time) and consume (mere seconds) but the best days are when dinner is more than just a meal. Every morning, we disperse by daybreak to our individual lives, filled with tiny triumphs and absurdities. We collect details, something somebody in our daytime sphere did or said, and think, “Wait til I get home and tell them that!” In the evening, we return home wearing the day – ahead, behind, break even, or maybe even a little broken – to cook and eat together, to recount our days, to make adequate pies we need not have made. We eat fast and talk long. Sometimes, we may even poke our heads out of the stream we are swimming in long enough to notice that meals don’t have to be great to be perfect.