The first night of our more organized life was a success. We ate at 6:45, the baby didn’t scream, the big kid didn’t freak out, everyone was nice and polite. We all got to relax and enjoy Monday’s meal: Garlic Shrimp and White Beans with a simple salad.
After dinner, we even had time for dessert and a nice game of push the scooter. Not to mention a blog post.
Tomorrow is Pizza Tuesday, in case you’re keeping track.
When a stomach virus ripped through our household like a tornado this week, knocking 6 of the 7 in our household down, it became clear that we had fallen apart, and not just physically.
This virus was bad, all stomach bugs are, but this one had some extra kick. One minute you’re fine, the next you’re really, really not. I’m talking the delirious, crawling to bed kind of not-ok.
The only one who escaped was my dad, who’s recovering from knee replacement surgery and wasn’t exactly fit to nurse us back to health.
In it’s wake, the virus left some of us in a dark, contemplative, wholly-unpleasant headspace which I’m hoping will prove to be a catalyst for change. What’s become clear over the past few days, is that things are not working.
As if to drive that point home, on the first night in many that we were more or less able to eat, we all sat down to dinner together and had a horrible time. Sid started screaming 5 minutes into the meal, as he does, which set Rose off, as it does. Dinner devolved into a chaotic noisy mess of shushing, threats, reprimands and general unpleasantness.
But it wasn’t just that we weren’t feeling well, this is what dinner has been like for us all the time lately.
We have 7 people in our household now. The four of us, plus my mom and dad, and my aunt Gail (the saint) who has come to help out during my dad’s convalescence. When you have 7 people under one roof, you need to get organized, and that’s what we’re going to do.
The morning after the “bad dinner”—it was actually an excellent dinner, food-wise, which Shane totally rallied to get on the table—my mom called a family pancake breakfast meeting. It was agreed that things are messed up and we decided to do the following in order to fix them:
Three things. We can totally do this.
I am not going to be able to cook on weekdays and I have to accept that. When I get home, baby Sid wants me. He wants to be held by me and no one else, and he will not tolerate being put down for one second. And I get that. Poor kid is thinking his mom has been who-knows-where for the past 11 hours and he wants some physical contact, dammit. Fair enough.
After our breakfast meeting I sat down and made a meal plan for the week, and my mom started the two-day process of making elaborate vegetable lasagnas to freeze for busy weeknights.
The good news is that weekly meal planning is not entirely new to us. We went through a similar overhaul (which you can read about here and here) when Rose ramped up her gymnastics training last year.
This time around, the weekly plan is a bit more complex since I’m no longer working from home and there are many more adults and caregivers in the picture. The matrix for this week shows meal times for each day, and has a space to fill in who’s responsible for shopping, cooking or ordering pizza, there’s a list of ingredients for each meal as well as recipes and instructions.
Below is a preview of Wednesday’s meal. I’ll let you know how it goes.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t post about my eldest’s 7th birthday. By request we had hamburgers for dinner and (gasp) a store-bought cake. I know it’s very unlike us to buy a cake, but have you seen the amazing creations from Party Favors? 
There was a homemade cake too, of course. For her birthday party Shane made the now-famous-in-our-household Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake. But we didn’t stop there. Shane and half-brother-in-law Chris invented an amazing thing called the Cake n’ Cone, which is a slice of birthday cake and a scoop of ice cream in a waffle cone. Genius!
Happy Birthday Rose!
Hi friends,
Just a quick note to let you know we’re still here.
We’re still here, still eating dinner together every night, but not posting. This is probably because we’ve really turned our world completely upside down and are currently hovering with one tippy toe just barely on the ground.
We moved out of our own home and in with my parents, we changed jobs, primary wage earner roles, working hours, schools and childcare arrangements.
We went from MTA to MBTA, from car alarms to crickets, from ‘water bugs’ to wild turkeys, and from crowded playgrounds to empty ‘paahks.’
Like us, The Steady Table has still not settled into it’s new life here. But we’re working on it.
One day, hopefully soon, we’ll start to feel like we have a home again, and I’ll find a way to carve out some time for dinner blogging.
I hope you’ll still be here when I do.
Love,
Nina Max at The Steady Table
Sweet, sweet Cal’s 2nd birthday party on Cape Cod.
In short: Gifts, balloons, cat cake! Chowder, grilled cheese, chicken wings & salad. Cat cake! Rad leggings. Dinner (burgers, Tater Tots, man’s salad & salad). Man’s salad! Tater tots with chipotle mayo. Waffle cones with a slice of cake and two scoops of ice cream.
(That’s a slice of birthday cake, in an ice cream cone, with ice cream.
Happy Birthday Cal!
It a’int easy, this working full time thing. Leaving home at 7:30 and not returning until 6:30 leaves little time for planning, let alone actually cooking dinner. Fortunately, we have my parents, and Shane who hasn’t started working yet.
Although friends and family alike have been encouraging me to relinquish dinner to those more able, I can’t let it go completely. At least once a week, I try my hand at getting dinner on the table before 9pm (school’s starting soon, after all). Occasionally I succeed.
Here are some of the meals I’ve managed to make: Chicken Baked in Creamy Tomato Sauce – tip: add white beans and it doubles as a loose-interpretation vegetarian meal. Fusili with Ricotta and Spinach – easy, quick and can be a one-dish meal, sort of. Make a tomato salad too, if you’re ambitious, or my mom. Nachos – what the heck, right? Pile some chips with beans and shredded cheese and bung ’em in the broiler. A jar of salsa, guacamole, leftover steak and an easy salad is all you need on the side.
This post is a bit out of order. I’ve been photographing every meal, but with my new full-time job, heck if I can’t find the time to blog. So here you go, the week before last, which was our second week living in Boston.
Here are some of the recipes: Rita’s Lasagna, Parmesan Chicken Goujon, Pasta with Tomatoes & Tzatziki, Salmon Baked in Parchment, Baked Greek Shrimp with Feta and Tomatoes
It was just us ‘youngsters’ today. We spent the day walking, exploring our new/old neighborhood, looking at wildlife (turkeys & bunnies), and realized that we are not going to get fat. Our 5th floor walk-up apartment has been replaced by a house at the tippy top of a steep hill.
Oddly, this is not just my old neighborhood, but Shane’s as well. One of his first apartments when he emigrated to the US, was a very short walk away from where we’re living now.
In keeping with re-living/re-discovering our past, we ordered pizza from Pino’s, which has been around for as long as I can remember. We ate outside on a threadbare tablecloth which I remember fondly from my childhood. Nice.
Tonight my mom took the dinner reins with a delicious Marcella Hazan frittata, homemade shrimp cocktail and (of course) an amazing salad. You might recall that Shane doesn’t approve of eggs for dinner, but even he gobbled up the frittata. And I don’t think he was just doing it to be polite.
The recipe for Frittata with Onion, Tomato and Basil comes from Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking.
For dessert we had Drumsticks!
We’ve been in our new, temporary digs for a week now. I haven’t had time to post because we’re running around registering for school, opening bank accounts, interviewing childcare providers, going to the Cape and who knows what else. Frankly things are hectic.
Here’s the (not very thorough) week in review, in pictures.
I have a plan for how I’m going to keep this blog going once I start my job. Stay tuned!
