Food on Thursdays: A day in the life

Alyce, March 2010

4:45 am: Wake up with Shira. I'm not even kidding about this. Nurse Shira for 30 minutes.

5:15 am: Pour some coffee for me, water for Shira, and cut up some pineapple to offer Shira as first breakfast. She turns it down, so I eat it.

5:16 am: Shira nurses again, since she didn't eat first breakfast.

5:28 am: And again.

 Dinner out, March 2010

5:30 am: Start cooking oatmeal for me and Alyce (Shira doesn't care for oatmeal). We use steel cut oats, so they take about 25 minutes to cook on the stove.

6:45 am: Alyce is up and ready for breakfast. I give her a bowl of oatmeal with a mountain of maple syrup (or at least, that what I tell her it is--more like a teaspoon). For second breakfast I offer Shira a bowl of cheerios and milk. She sticks the cheerios to her cheek, dumps out the milk, and then Matt makes her an egg with cheese. She eats eggs every morning, and I should probably just stop trying with the other stuff. But I am not very smart.

6:46 am: Alyce asks for more syrup. Her request is declined. I sit down with my own oatmeal, topped with blueberries, almonds, flax seed meal, and some brown sugar.

Alyce, August 2011

8:00 am: Matt feeds The Children snacks of applesauce (Shira) and yogurt (Alyce).

9:00 am: Now it's my turn for second breakfast: peanut butter on a rice cake and a second coffee.

10:00 am: It's been two hours and naturally The Children are STARVING. So I make smoothies of raspberries, banana, baby spinach (don't tell Alyce), plain yogurt and orange juice. I pair the smoothie with half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

 Shira, June 2011

10:15 am: I start making lunch, an imaginative macaroni and cheese. I've been trying out some gluten-free cooking lately and so I decided to try, without a recipe for some reason, a gluten-free m&c. I used brown rice pasta and threw some gluten-free flour mix into the butter to make a roux (I also added cheese, milk, dijon, and salt and pepper). While that was cooking I added some frozen edamame to boiling water.

11:15 am: Lunch is served. Shira eats her weight in edamame, and they both seem to enjoy the m&c, though not with their usual vigor. After lunch Alyce tells me the following, as I posted on twitter:

Mama, sometimes you make the best mac and cheese, and sometimes it's just o.k. Today it was just o.k.

She said it very sweetly, if that helps.

12:30 pm: While Shira is sleeping, Alyce and I settle down with one of our Valentine's Day cookies, sadly the last two. Alyce tells me that I make the best cookies. I feel vindicated from the earlier mac and cheese feedback.

2:00 pm: We are heading to a friend's house for dinner so I decide that we should make something little for dessert (I'm also bringing pizza dough for dinner). We make rice crispy squares, but, sadly, we don't use enough marshmallows. They are a wee bit hard. It happens.

2:20 pm: Shira wakes up from her nap and it's time for another snack. This afternoon we dine on canned peaches and rice crispy squares. Snack of champions.

3:00pm: I make two batches of pizza dough. Somehow I use completely trash the kitchen in the process.

Valentine's Day Cookies, 2012

4:50 pm: We are in the car driving to our dinner date. Since The Children usually eat dinner at five, we break the no snacking in the car rule (even I have limits) and offer them cheese and crackers. Shira takes control of the crackers and refuses to share with Alyce. There is some discussion about this. She gives Alyce at least three of the giant bag of crackers.

5:30 pm While the grown-ups put pizzas together (one just cheese and chicken, the other topped with cheese and vegetables), the kids are offered hummus, carrots, and rice cakes. Shira eats all of these things, while Alyce just sits near them, choosing to direct 100 percent of her energy to talking about princesses.

6:30 pm We eat pizza. I love pizza. Alyce and her friend (the daughter of our hosts) eat a teeny tiny portion of pizza in hopes of getting to the leftover Valentine's day candy. Shira eats the chicken from four pieces of pizza, grabs a couple of Hershey's kisses, and calls it a night. But only after nursing some more.

Alyce, January 2011

So, I've crunched the numbers and it appears that I spend roughly 96 percent of my day preparing, eating, or cleaning up food. Thank goodness food is so delicious and worth all this work.

Does your day look like this?