48 Hours

This past weekend I was able to take my first trip away from my children....ever. I was more anxious about it at first than I thought I would be, but once I got on the plane and landed in Chicago, it was great. Strangely enough I'm not one of those people who misses my kids nonstop. They're also older and not as needy so I wasn't really worried about them. Don't get me wrong: I love my kids immensely, but if I have time away from them, I'm not going to be scrolling my phone looking at their pictures missing them. 

My favorite part of the weekend was not having to cook and being able to eat out every single meal. Growing up, I wasn't raised with this mentality. I had a lot of food trauma and vacations were the worst. We ended up eating a lot of meals at McDonald's and Burger King.  While I don't mind fast food and I'm not a picky eater, we weren't exactly taught to enjoy the experience of food, especially in new places. On top of the food trauma, I got sick almost every single family vacation I can remember which meant I missed out on a lot of food - some of which is even my favorite now! I just couldn't do it with the anxiety + sickness + stress of being with my family. I have a vivid memory of getting sick one year visiting the Northeast. Everyone was eating lobster and I said I'd eat a clam chowder. I love clam chowder now (and probably then) but being that I was barely crawling out of my sickness, I remember simply scooping the soup out of the chowder and leaving everything else. So sad. 

Here's a look at all the food I ate while in Chicago in reverse order. 

My last lunch in Chicago was at Navy Pier. I ordered a lobster shrimp roll and salad. Did I want the fries or bag of chips? I definitely did. However, I was about to go to the airport and get on a plane so I don't think overloading my body with greasy food was going to be a good idea. The salad was delicious and so was this lobster shrimp roll. 

Friday breakfast was a fruit plate because I had eaten leftover cinnamon rolls earlier that morning. 

Saturday evening dinner. We went to a chain and ordered peri peri chicken. Yum. Definitely spicy but flavorful. I had to eat this portion in two sittings. It worked out great. The equivalent of my dinner and second dinner at home. 

Saturday lunch was to-go poke. I enjoyed it in the comfort of our hotel room. Yay. 

Saturday breakfast at Ann Sather's. The sausage was so much more flavorful than anything I make at home. And here are the cinnamon rolls when I first got them. Ate one and saved the other. 

Gelato! Really good flavors. I love the tart fruity ones. That little sour burst gives me a comforting satisfaction. Anyone else or just me?

Dinner on Friday evening when I landed was fancy and wonderful. We shared a sparerib plate. 

And a salad. I took the photo after the first scoop because you can actually see what's inside. Not the most aesthetically pleasing photo of food, but hey, you would have just seen a bowl of cheese otherwise. 

 

I found another olive lover! I can't even remember when I started enjoying olives but I really like them. We ate half at the restaurant and the other half from the beds at the hotel in the evening while we chatted for hours. 

 

I've learned not to think about the cost of food when traveling. There's a reason why you're traveling in the first place - to get away from the normal busyness and stress of life. And if food adds to the experience of having a good trip even if you don't see any other attractions, it makes the cost worth it. 

I'll eventually tabulate how much I spent over the weekend for my trip for our monthly expense/budget, but for now, I'm going to revel in the memories of having a wonderful weekend with a wonderful friend. 🥰 

How to Plan an Organized Holiday Meal (With Kids to Watch!)

Because of cancelled plans and a crazy year, we stayed at home and celebrated Thanksgiving with our little family of four this year. We ended up cooking out Thanksgiving meal two days early because that's what day the turkey ended up thawing on. I bought our 13 pound turkey on Saturday morning and put it into the refrigerator to thaw because there was no room for it in any of our three freezers. Yup, you heard that right. We have THREE freezers - two refrigerator freezers and a chest freezer - and they are ALL full. Full of what? Liquid gold! No, I'm not talking about melted cheese. Breastmilk. And some food. But mostly breastmilk. 

This freezer is completely milk bags. 

I’ve repurposed bubble wrap packaging and empty tissue boxes very well. 

So Tuesday was the day.

I organized Thanksgiving as I was taught to lesson plan during my years of pedagogy and education classes or how to write a paper for everyone else who doesn't go the education route.

1. Pre-planning

I made a list of everything we wanted to eat for Thanksgiving. For us, that included turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, corn, macaroni and cheese, brussel sprouts, and rolls. You might be thinking I'm missing a classic staple of green bean casserole. I'll explain why later. Keep in mind I'm making everything from scratch here so that is why I used recipes for things I wouldn't normally use recipes for. 

2. Planning

I wrote out a brief outline of my Thanksgiving dishes. This included finding the recipes for dishes I was using recipes for and writing out which kitchen appliances I would be using for each dish. This is a key step of organization that makes everything go SO much smoother. We all know how many dishes can take up the oven for Thanksgiving. Well, an oven only has so much room and a house only has so many ovens. We have one oven. I could have made every single dish on our list in the oven, but that would be a terrible decision because it would take an entire day to cook and by the time the last dish was done, the first would be cold. This is why we nixed green bean casserole off the list because as much as we both love green bean casserole, it would have lengthened our cooking time by at least an hour. And when you have two mobile children to look after while cooking, time is of the essence. 

These were the recipes that I used for the dishes involving recipes:

Turkey: https://tastesbetterfromscratch.com/easy-no-fuss-thanksgiving-turkey/

Mac and Cheese: https://thestayathomechef.com/stovetop-mac-and-cheese/

Rolls: I used the recipe on the back of my yeast packet.

Stuffing: https://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-stovetop-thanksgiving-stuffing-225090

Giblet Gravy: https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/giblet_gravy/

3. Cooking

For my 8 items to cook, I cooked one the day before: Mashed potatoes. I chose to cook my mashed potatoes ahead because I thought they were the most reheatable dish on the list without losing out on flavor and texture. Everything else we cooked on the day of. To maximize your time, you have to cook everything in overlapping times. While the turkey was in the oven, I was starting my gravy, starting my corn, making mac and cheese, prepping brussel sprouts, and preparing dough for my rolls. If I wasn't doing any of that, I was doing the dishes so the pile in the sink wouldn't reach the ceiling. 

Somehow, in five hours, everything got done, and my two kids didn't get into anything dangerous or cause any trouble. Yes, we were taking turns glancing over to watch them play or feeding them. So no, we did not completely ignore or neglect our kids for five hours. In fact, my daughter helped me wash dishes and make the rolls. 

By 5pm, everything was cooked and we were eating around 5:15 pm.

By 6 pm, we were done eating.

By 7 pm, everything was cleaned up, the turkey bone was simmering on the stove for stock, and we began the kids' bedtime routine.

So all in, it was a very busy 7 hours in the kitchen cooking and cleaning, but it was absolutely worth it to make a turkey dinner once a year. If we ever do Thanksgiving again at our house in the future, I may consider pre-making a green bean casserole and then just using the oven to heat it up on the day of to save time and still be able to use the oven for the turkey. 

As for Christmas this year....we'll most likely be cooking ham instead. And you guessed it. I’ve already started planning 😉.

Gee-ko

 I have fond memories from last summer of watching geckos with my daughter. At the time, her bedtime was close to 10pm or later on some nights. I have no idea how she could sleep so late. She was waking up around 8 in the morning and napping for 2-3 hours, but she still wouldn't sleep before 9 pm at the earliest if that. Even now, my daughter sleeps 11 hours at night max.

With this late bedtime, we were able to watch the geckos come out after the sun went down. She was very amused to see little lizards crawling on our windows. Small geckos would somehow find their way into our house. My husband would catch them and let them out again. He's not afraid of picking them up. I'm grateful for this. One time, he caught the gecko and put it on her leg while I videoed her reaction. She was more afraid of the skittering movements than the gecko itself. 

She called them"gee-kos" with a long E, so we all started saying gee-ko.

Her bedtime has since normalized and she's in bed by 8:30 (although asleep is a different story). We haven't gotten to watch geckos together this summer. But last night after putting her to bed, I walked over to our window and took a look myself instead of continuing the rest of my usual nighttime routine.

I had noticed more geckos than usual hanging around the window as well as a good number of moths flying around or hanging around the window. I stood there for a while, watching, and then hubby came by and joined me. We stood by our window and watched the moths fly around and the geckos circle cautiously.

The predators.

The (un?)suspecting prey.

We stood and watched for a few minutes. I really wanted to watch a gecko eat a moth. And we did! But I didn't catch a picture of it because by the time I pulled out my phone to get a picture, he had devoured 95% of that moth. So we stood there a while longer to see if another one would get eaten. Sure enough, another moth was caught and this time I was ready!

Stuck!

This moth really tried to wriggle free. Unfortunately, he did not.

After watching for what seemed like about 10-15 minutes, we resumed our normal nightly routine, but I felt a strange sense of satisfaction being able to witness some geckos eating their fill for the evening. I would still never touch one with my hands, but watching behind a sheet of glass works great for me! We don't get to have a lot of "fun" these days between parenting a toddler and a baby and staying safe from the virus, but this was actually a lot of fun.