There is not a thing to eat in this house. The canister of coffee has ten beans in it. Panda and I just ate the last four eggs, soft-boiled, without toast because there is neither bread, nor butter to be had. The produce drawers in the fridge are empty. I think I could manage chili if I needed to. The truth is I haven't cooked a dinner all week. With the advent of spring sports, the weeknights are dissolving.
Mondays are my city day and I get home around 7:00. Jeeps made tacos on Monday.
Tuesdays Panda has her dance classes and Redman will have soccer practice, and the family eats together, but not until 7:30. This Tuesday I brought home Boston Chicken.
Wednesday is a universal free day, but I am whipped, fried, exhausted from work. Wednesday I made the lima bean salad which we ate with leftover chicken, and I did make Oma's cake.
Thursdays Panda has dance again and Redman will have baseball. This Thursday we had pizza.
Fridays are free, thank God, but last night Redman had a Cub Scout thing and I had been in the city for a meeting. I pulled into the driveway just in time to see the boys off, they were going to grab a piece of pizza in town before the scout meeting. I made two ham-and-cheese pizzas for us girls, and another lima bean salad, improvising because I had neither parsley nor parmesan. The dishwasher hadn't been run. Panda and I ate without silverware, sharing a plastic spoon as we dipped the lima beans right out of the serving bowl, watching Food Network together. All our favorite shows: Iron Chef America, Chopped, and Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. We had a fine time and this is what I need to hold onto because she is getting so tall, and there are moments when I look at her and my heart turns inside out. Better to cuddle on the couch holding hands and eating lima beans.
I don't know what I'm going to do about blogging. Just keep doing it, I guess. Often I just make dinner out of whatever's around, and the blog works the same way. I love to cook but when you get down to it, who cooks something different every day, all year long? Cooking is cyclical. You have a dependable, seasonal repertoire of recipes that you circle through, occasionally throwing in a surprise. Cooking is a source of comfort in the dark, winter months, but as the weather gets nicer, I only want to be outside. As my garden grows, I look to see what's ready to harvest and build dinner around that. But right now Spring seems to be sulking. I'm just waiting for seeds to sprout and wondering what the hell happened to those daffodils—this time last year they were in full bloom along my stone wall, and this year they are nowhere to be found. If I didn't have pictures of them, I'd swear I dreamed them up.
Right now I'm really tired and I have to take Panda to dance class in an hour. So I'm going to put on my boots and go outside.
Come with?
