bearing blog

Feedback on the Sunday night feeding paradigm.

I wrote a few posts ago

 

--- augh!  I would love to say "a few days ago" but my blogging is so infrequent right now! ---

 

about our shift to eating prepared cold "party food" for Sunday dinners:  cheeses, crackers, cured meats, olives, cut veggies with dip, etc.   So that Sunday can be a day of rest for the cook, but Sunday dinner can still be a feast:

 At least two kinds of crackers... are set out in bowls, and sometimes a take-and-bake baguette is popped in the oven and sliced. Someone slices salami ... someone arranges 2 or 3 kinds of cheese... If we have leftover deli meats of other kinds, those go out as well. (An alternative to the sausage-and-cheese platter: lox and cream cheese on cocktail rye. Mm.) We keep a small stock of jars and cans of fancy olives and preserves and spreads and pâtés and things... and one or two of those goes on the table. We cut up peppers and celery and carrots and radishes, and put them out for dipping, either with bought hummus or with good olive oil, salt, and pepper.... We open wine or beer, and the kids may have juice boxes or soda if they have some. It takes maybe 20 minutes to put on the table and is not hard to clean up.

And it feels like Sunday.

+ + +

 

Today I got some feedback from a reader named Jenny in New Orleans:

 

[T]hank you so much for your recent "what we do about Sunday night dinner" post!!

 

We live mere blocks from the in-laws, and our regular Sunday routine has been Mama-made brunch here after Mass, then over to the in-laws' house in the afternoon for playing-and-supper. As the in-laws are aging, they've decided to drop back to more like twice-a-month Sunday get-togethers (when everyone shows up, my MIL is cooking for 22 people!!).

 

I totally  understand, and actually sort of prefer to have our Sundays to ourselves, but we were definitely languishing in the but what about supper area. We don't have the means to go out every week, but--like yours--my husband wasn't interested in me cooking a whole 'nother meal (especially since we do a fairly full brunch mid-day). And leftovers or sandwiches just weren't special enough.

Well, after your post, we've seen the light!!

Every Christmas, one of our kids' (girls: 8.5, 8.5, 7, 5, 3 months; boy: 2) favorite traditions is eating a "snacky supper" (read: you don't have to sit down, you can walk around, food is arranged in a buffet-type style on the table) while we decorate the tree on Christmas Eve.

And now!! We're doing it on Sundays!!

You're right--it strikes exactly the balance we were looking for between "special" and "easy". (I even put it out on paper plates because I've already run the dishwasher after brunch.) We've done cheese, crackers, fruit, deviled eggs, leftover tuna salad, ham chunks, chips-and-salsa, hot dog bites... it's awesome. Everyone loves it, it relieves the near-temptation to just go out, it's super-easy to clean up, and I can keep my eye out for crackers and such on sale at the store.

And one of the best things, to me, is that it's allowing us to establish our own Special Sunday Routine Treat that will already be in place when the inevitable happens and going-to-grandma's on Sunday is done with. It's flexible and quick enough that we can accommodate the occasional Sunday afternoon outing--a pool party, a quick trip to the museum to catch the closing-today exhibit--and still do our "regular" Sunday Snacky Supper.

So: thanks. It's a great idea, it works perfectly for us, and I'm really glad you mentioned it.

Awesome!  

Anybody else try it?

Thirds on entrées.

One of my real-life friends tried my suggestion to have an entrée with her family dinners for a couple of weeks:  set out a dish at the beginning of the meal as a first course.  

She reported that it had an incredible effect on the pleasantness of the dinner.  I'm paraphrasing her comments here from memory:

• They had time to begin with a prayer and to talk about their day.
• They didn't start off their meal by frantically grabbing to get the best stuff before their brothers and sisters could eat it all.
• Her kids' medications start to wear off towards dinnertime, and that leaves them with a suddenly ravenous appetite.  The slower start, she thought, worked better with their hunger levels and kept them from eating too much right away.
• The kids began to look forward to dinner with interest, asking, "What are we having for appetizer tonight?"

We both agreed that this one little change has a number of different effects on the pace of the dinner, and it's hard to find an explanation for all of them.  It just... alters the environment.  

Because we don't clear away the first dish until (a) everyone has eaten at least a little of it and (b) no one is still working on theirs, we all become a little more aware of the other family members' pace.

There's usually a pause at some point, where we find ourselves talking to each other instead of head pointed down into our bowl, and when we become aware of that we know it's time to get the next course.

Because the rest of the meal arrives somewhat gradually -- I have to get up, take away the salad dishes, and bring the serving dishes to the table one at a time -- the dishes begin to be passed as they arrive, and instead of a free-for-all it's more orderly.  

No one is positively starving when the "good stuff" arrives, and that means everyone has the patience to wait for their turn to help themselves.

+ + +

My friend took it even farther than I do and served dessert, too.  I'm not sure what she made each day, but knowing her family, it might well have been a homemade sweet some days, a packaged sweet on other days, and fruit on yet other days.  She reported that the formalization of the dessert course also added to their enjoyment of the meal.

Dessert is not part of my family culture except on special occasions or sometimes when we have guests.  Instead, Mark and I linger after dinner over our drinks, chatting, as the kids finish up and excuse themselves and run away; later, we call them back to help us clean up (unless we'd rather do the dishes ourselves while we polish off the bottle and continue our conversation), and then we have "bedtime snack."  It's as good as dessert, but it's after dishes; that's just the way we do it.  Ice cream, milkshakes, cereal, the occasional plate of nachos.  I can't see us changing that anytime soon.  It works great for us.

But I've been persisting in the "first course" habit too, despite having to streamline my cooking quite a bit on school days. 

The entrée is sometimes just an afterthought.  A couple of times so far, the first course has just been applesauce from a jar, made slightly fancy by a shake of cinnamon sugar.  (In that case, Mark and I skipped the applesauce and started in early on our wine.)

Yesterday I thawed some leftover chickpea curry, and we had that with rice and greens; I served the grated-carrot-and-lemon-juice salad, usually my go-to-with-curry side dish, as the first course (and replaced its sweet-and-sour flavor in the main course with a bowl of canned pineapple chunks).  

This coming week, my son is making hamburgers and tater tots for dinner, and he's going to start us off with a Caesar salad (from a bagged kit, but hey, it's his turn to cook and his turn to decide).

I'm going to make some kind of a beef and pepper and rice skillet on Saturday, and I think it'll be easy enough to do a black bean and corn salad at the same time.  I'll add avocadoes if any are ripe by then.

I'll make black-eyed pea soup on Tuesday with bread.  I'll buy some bagged baby spinach and mandarin oranges, and hope that the spinach stays crisp long enough to turn that into a salad; but if it wilts, we'll just have extra oranges and I'll put the spinach in the soup.

Not much fresh stuff will be left by a week from today, so Wednesday's appetizer will be a cabbage-apple salad -- or just a coleslaw if the apples have all been eaten by then.

I have a few emergency things up my sleeve, too -- the aforementioned applesauce is one, but I also have some frozen edamame in the pod, and I think perhaps I might buy some frozen cooked shrimp and some cocktail sauce to have on hand, too.  The whole thing has been very fun, and hasn't added a lot of work.  Try it and let me know what you think.

 

Seconds on entrées.

A second post, that is.

Last night I tried serving soup first, in this case a bean soup; and that didn't seem to Mark and me to have quite as much utility as serving vegetables first.  

On the other hand, it certainly fulfilled the rule that one should eat the leftovers one already has before creating new ones.  The bean soup was eaten instead of lingering for another day.   And I did have it (along with bread) on the table when we sat down, which helped a bit with the pacing.  But I had to hop up midway through and toss the salad, which was less relaxing.

 I think in the future I'll stick with vegetable starters.

+ + +

So, I did a little research on French websites to get a list of simple vegetable entrées (using italics here to highlight that I am using the word in the French sense, meaning "starter," i.e., "entry into the meal," and not the English meaning of "main dish").  

That was fun -- I don't know why I don't do that more often.  Here are some of the websites I looked at:

• La cuisine d'Annie (Annie's Kitchen)-- Food and recipe blog associated with a newsmagazine
• Toutes les recettes (All recipes) -- Not, I think, the same as Allrecipes.com
• Koocook -- Includes a weekly menu planner
• Manger Bouger (Eat, Move) -- French government's healthy eating website, includes a menu planner
• Marmiton -- General recipe site

Anyway,  here's what French websites offer as suggested starters.  These include some that are quite out of season now, by the way.

• Melon slices with olives and parma ham
• Sliced raw tomato drizzled with dressing
• Salad of diced, cold cooked beets on a bed of lettuce with dressing
• Cold beet soup
• Leek and potato soup, with or without cream
• Chopped orange-fennel salad
• Grated carrots with lemon dressing
• Onion-spinach-orange salad
• Grated apple and fennel slaw
• Avocado slices with tuna and herbs
• Salad of tender lettuce and corn
• Skillet of green beans and leeks
• Celeriac and apple salad
• Cooked cold leeks in vinaigrette
• Crunchy slaw of cabbage and Granny Smith apples
• Corn in vinaigrette (boy, I'd want some diced bell pepper with that)
• Endive and corn salad
• Marinated mushrooms
• Kiwifruit and cold cooked shrimp
• Roasted broccoli salad

Slightly more complicated suggestions included:

• Quiche with tomatoes, chèvre, and basil (not sure what you'd follow that up with... but I guess if they were small slices and you were having a main-dish salad or light pasta) 
• Custard of zucchini and smoked salmon, served cold
• Puff pastries stuffed with apple and comté cheese

But I don't have to make a lot of new things in order to have starters.  Plenty of my ordinary side dishes and salads work just as well as a first course.  We have carottes râpées, dressed with nothing but lemon juice and salt, all the time.  Cole slaw of various types, too.  Almost any salad that isn't a main-dish type of salad.  Green beans stewed in tomatoes and onions -- one of my favorite crock-pot recipes -- makes a great starter, especially if there isn't much available per person, and you strew a little feta cheese on top.

Just some idea.

 

Entrées.

While I was in France with my family, I posted about wanting to be changed permanently in some way by my vacations.  

I know better than to think, even for a minute, that I have time to do much of the fancy sort of French cooking. But surely I have time to make my quick meals more civilized? With the good kind of canned tuna that is packed in olive oil? With better cheeses on my salad? With tiny, ice-cold glasses of fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice? 

Because even the quick things are so very much better here. 

Being changed by them, and one hopes for the better:  It's really the only way you can "take it with you," back home, in a tangible way. 

+ + + 

So, one thing I noticed that I liked is the serving of meals in courses.  Yes, I know that is a totally normal thing to do "over here," but it's nothing we ever do; we tend to put all the serving dishes in the middle of the table and help ourselves to everything at once.  

There's nothing wrong with that per se, but I wonder if I could slow us down just a wee bit, and have a first course.  

Not make anything extra.  I typically have two or more vegetable side dishes at each meal anyway.  Just take that salad, or that soup, and put it out ahead of time so we can warm up to the table and to each other before we start snarfing down our meat and carbs.

+ + +

I tried this the other day when we were having one of my simplest busy-day meals, an everything-in-the-oven arrangement:  baked potatoes and sliced kielbasa roasted on top of a layer of frozen brussels sprouts.  (The potatoes go in about an hour ahead of the kielbasa and sprouts, but roast at the same temperature; it's a really easy way to put dinner on the table.)  I had some leftover lima beans and just a bit of lettuce, so I decided to make a mustard vinaigrette, with some parsley and minced onion, and marinate the beans with diced carrots.  

Before I pulled the other things out of the oven, I plated little portions of salad, a scoop of marinated vegetables atop a few lettuce leaves, and set them out on the table.  

I plated the food in a slightly unorthodox, inelegant way.  We typically use divided plates for dinner; it's not super elegant, but it's good for portion control and dealing with the children who reject  Food That Touches Other Food.  I gave the children small "tasting" portions of salad in little ramekins, which I placed on their "regular" plate:  

You'll have to imagine the salad.

This doesn't represent an "extra" dish, by the way.  They always get their salad in a ramekin anyway.

The bigger kids got larger ramekins (I have some that hold about 8 oz) but otherwise it was the same presentation.  As for Mark and me, I just stacked our dinner plates nearby and we had our salad out of normal-sized salad bowls.

Yes, inelegant, but workable for our usual patterns.

"Is this all we get?" wailed the four-year-old when he saw his plate.  

"No," explained Mark, "this is your salad course.  When we're done with that we will have the rest of the food."

"Do we have to finish it all to get any meat?" asked my 8yo daughter with a worried look on her face.

"No, but you have to practice liking it by taking a couple of bites, and you have to wait till the rest of us have eaten as much as we want."

So Mark and I sat there, and ate our salad, and chatted with each other about our day.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw everybody take at least a few nibbles.  The 4yo stayed upset, but no out-and-out insubordination occurred.

After Mark and I were finished, I got up, whisked the salad bowls away without commenting on who had or hadn't finished theirs, and carried the platters of potatoes, meat, and vegetables to the table.  And we all ate the rest of the meal.

+ + +

I noticed that, however unhappy the kids were with the salad, it was still a noticeably more peaceful beginning.  Instead of saying grace only to be immediately faced with "Pass this! Pass that!  Don't take so much!  Yes, you have to put that on your plate!" there was a pause when there wasn't anything to pass and there wasn't anything to ask for.  

I doubt it's a panacea, and like most experiments there will probably come a time when I give up altogether because there's too much trouble involved.  But it's fun to try, for now.

Tonight, the starter will be bean soup (from a few days ago; yes, it's a leftover) followed by salad and mini meatloaf.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Bearing on bearing.

Rebecca Frech at Shoved To Them is writing about playing the self-presentation game, something that's become necessary as she has searched for a diagnosis for the apparent degeneration of her  ten-year-old daughter's lower-body strength.

All morning, I've been thinking back to the girl I was in junior high and high school. I was a little bit hopeless. While my friends could execute the eleborately sculpted hairstyles of the 80s and 90s, and perfectly swipe on the latest make-up trends, I couldn't. I wanted to, but I always ended up looking as if I'd gotten ready in a very dark room. I would slide back to my comfortable default of tomboy, and hang out there. 

As a young mom, my go-to look became either a naked face and simple ponytail, or the bare minimum of mascara and lipgloss. I wanted to look pulled together, but it was really a lot more work than I was willing to do. Which makes mornings like this amusing and a little sad to me. 

 

In the time since Ella's arthritis journey began, I've become an expert with a flat iron. I've learned more than I ever wanted to know about the nuances of eyeshadow, and have debated the merits of different mascara brands. My jewelry box overflows with accessories, a far cry from the few funky pieces I once owned and loved.

 

Part of my transformation is due to maturity and the influence of one very style savvy friend, but more so to the quest for credibility.

 

Two years ago in a rheumatologist's office, I realized that my intelligence is tied into the perfection of my eyeliner. The more put-together I look, the more seriously medical professionals take what I have to say. My naked face makes me invisible, while a full face of make-up makes me worthy of being heard. It's a game of perception.

 

...Authority figures are perfection. That's what I've learned in the past two years.

 

If all the world is a stage, and we are merely players, I'm playing my part today. I've painted on the mask of rational and reasonable motherhood. I put on my visible intelligence along with my jewelry. I spritzed on confidence along with my perfume. It's an act, a carefully fashioned persona. It's ridiculous and maddening, and dead necessary.

One last check in the mirror, and a final tug at the shape wear that's smoothing out my imperfections. My two year old pats my leg and smiles up at me, "Pretty mama" comes from behind her paci. And I know I'm done.

 

The flawless image of calm perfection this morning is all part of a absurd game, but it's the most important one I'll ever play. I didn't make the rules, butI've learned how to play by them, and I'm going to win.

I don't have an urgent reason to put on a mask, the way Rebecca does right now.  But I relate to a lot of what she says here anyway.  I understand defaulting to a not-wanting-to-bother-with-all-that crud.  I couldn't quite figure any of it out, either, and couldn't see the point.  Ridiculous.

I didn't want to play some stupid game of presentation.

Much later, I understood that other people are going to play the game of perceiving whether we want them to or not, and opting out of that game is ... not exactly impossible... but let's say, it's a privilege to be able to  opt out of it.

You sometimes don't run up against it until, all of a sudden, a gatekeeper of some kind finds a reason to interpret their perception of you in the worst possible way.  

Rebecca needs to look like an intelligent adult, concerned for her child because of a non-imaginary reason.  Above all she needs the professionals she deals with to be able to see themselves in her place:  concerned that time is running out, frustrated by a diagnosis because it is difficult to pin down, not because it is not real.  For her daughter not to be dismissed, she needs to be undismissable. 

+ + + 

As for me, I don't have the urgent problem that Rebecca is facing; but in a way that seemed a bit backward at the time, my morning self-care routine started to get slightly more complicated the more children I had.  

As I finished up graduate school in the wake of having had my first baby (and my second), and as I realized I wasn't likely to be looking for a job anytime soon after graduate school, I neglected "professional" behavior:  I skipped out on every seminar and extra duty I could get away with, I brought the baby with me to my office and to conferences,  I worked from home, I dropped to part-time.  All this worked well enough for me given my priorities -- we kept the kids out of childcare, I graduated -- but I could feel the air turn just a bit colder.  I developed a strong aversion to the sense of not appearing to belong.    I still carry that aversion with me.  

 I do not have a "personal style" to speak of.   When it comes to dressing myself, I'm constantly waffling between two mostly-false personae:  

• the Deliberately Low-Maintenance, Vaguely Athletic (Tevas, performance-fabric hoodies, quick-dry skorts -- see the Title Nine catalogue for what I'm going for) ; and
• Simple, Classic, A Bit Retro (less-outrageous John Fluevog shoes, tailored pants and fitted dresses, lots of black, jeans carefully selected at considerable time and expense, a curated closet of a few versatile pieces).   

What these two personae have in common is only what they are not:  Sloppy Mommy.  

They are the two things I can somewhat convincingly be -- in order not to be Sloppy Mommy.  

I felt that Sloppy Mommy was somewhat forgivable, early in my parenting years.  But nowadays, when I am liable to show up at the art museum at noon or at a local family restaurant late on a Tuesday evening with five children, I'm very, very determined to avoid it.  

+ + +

Sometime during my fifth pregnancy, I went from Bare-Faced But With Decent Hair to  mascara and tinted lip balm.  

I can't decide if this is an advance or a retreat.

+ + +

As time goes on, though, it's less about who I don't want to be, and more about who I want to be.  And there's another thing those two personae have in common, another thing that separates them from the specter of Sloppy Mommy:  they look like they did it on purpose.   Athletic Me, at least in my mind, might have just came from the gym (wet hair, therefore, is totally okay) or is about to go kayaking or something.  Simple But Classic Me might be on her way to work, or to meet her husband for a dinner date.  

Both personae appear to have plans.  Options.  I'm choosing to be here, where I am, with you.  

+ + +

In college sometimes, a classmate here or there, normally unshaven in a grunge shirt and jeans full of the tiny holes that mark you as having done your time in organic chemistry lab, would suddenly show up to class in a pressed button down shirt and suit-pants, the coat hung carefully in the back of the classroom.  Or if it was a woman, the Birks traded for heels and pantyhose.  Everyone knows what that means:  Job interview today.  We accept it.  But everyone knows, yes even the interviewer knows, that The Suit is not who we really are. 

It's necessary, I guess, so we can prove that we can play the game if it's called for.  Because unwillingness to play the game is one thing, but inability is another.  

+ + +

How to maintain a belief -- simultaneously -- that invisible character is far more important than appearance -- at the same time as conceding the practical advantage of cultivating a useful appearance?  These questions never seemed to matter too much until I had children to teach.  We are trying to teach them to see beyond appearances while, simultaneously, teaching them to give no one else a reason to dismiss them because of their own appearances.  

Does the one lesson undermine the other?

I can grasp at a few ways to reconcile the disconnect.  Rebecca has found one, an adversarial interpretation:  it's a game she didn't choose to play, but having been dropped into the arena, she intends to win.  Those polished nails are sharp.

I tend to take a fake-it-till-you-make it approach, dressing as the woman I would like to be (only I'm a bit schizophrenic about exactly who that is).  Self-confidence is good to have, I might say, and it's the kind of thing that travels both directions:  when we feel confident we look polished, or at least purposeful; and when we take time to be deliberate about appearance, we feel more confident.   

Opting out is a possibility, too, but I fear it only really works when it's authentically radical:  St. Francis of Assisi, Frida Kahlo.

How about you?  Is that a mask, or is it real?

Ramping up and focusing on what's mine.

Now that May has rolled around again, I am already turning my thoughts toward the next school year.  

To be honest, I've kind of given up on this one.  

After the baby was born at Christmastime, and then H.'s twins in February, and then some drastic changes in plans for our friends in the other family we co-school with --

it became pretty clear that we were not going to finish out the year as planned.

This happens a lot in home schools, when babies are born.

So instead we have turned to a sort of schooling that I think of as "rehearsal for next year."    The big changes have already come.  Now we can try to get used to them, and work around them.

+ + +

Those pictures up above are my new schoolroom layout.  I think I've finally found the best desk arrangement for the space.  I don't know why it took me so long to come up with it, other than I have been stuck inside the "rectangle" box.  

• The extra space it creates in the corner by the windows gives me enough room to put a bassinet (or later, a playpen type thing, maybe).  
• Students sitting in three of the desks can see the dry-erase board, and all four of them can see the windows, which I sometimes use as a dry-erase surface.  
• The easy chair can be turned to face the desks, so a nursing mom can sit while teaching.
• My seven- and ten-year-olds can be seated out of arms' reach of one another.

+ + +

H. and I have been getting together to teach for a little while, once or twice a week, only for half days.  I re-started teaching geometry first, a double lesson once a week; then H. began working on English literature again.   That's kind of our limit for now; Latin is on hiatus.  We'll return to a simplified, but complete, schedule in the fall for our oldests' ninth grade year.

Yesterday was the first time H. came to my house since the twins were born.  I cleaned up an old bassinet for the occasion, the one I kept in my office when I had my first baby while I was in grad school.  H. brought a portable one and added that to another portable one that I had set up in the living room.

(Action shot:  nursing singleton in the foreground, diaper changing twins in the background.)

H. arrived around eleven; we had a cup of coffee together; I taught geometry for 45 minutes; lunch (turkey sandwiches) was served by our daughters; then I worked on next year's curricula while H. taught language arts, and then we had tea.  

The weather turned poor, so H. stayed to share in our pizza dinner while waiting out the storm.  A good day.  I think we're going to be able to make it work pretty well, and believe me, ramping back up slowly is a big part of that.

+ + +

My house is beautifully clean, as clean as it gets, because the housecleaner just left.  I've decided that Every Three Weeks is the right frequency to get a deep cleaning, and the best way for it to happen is to hire someone else to do it.

 We all still have to work the night before to clear the floors and counters, make room in the laundry and so forth, so that we really get our money's worth.  But do the math:  it takes the housecleaner about four hours to vacuum, dust, scrub, and mop the house from top to bottom.

Meanwhile, I teach a half day of school.  

I resisted hiring outside help for a long time.    I finally started hiring cleaners after my now-four-year-old became a toddler.   It took me a while to get used to having some other person come into my home and clean my stuff, but now I'm sold on it.  The woman who comes in to clean now is the second regular housecleaner we have hired; the first was a young man who was wonderfully cheap -- that's what finally convinced me to give outside help a try -- but in the end could not keep his business afloat.  I pay more now, but since she really does a better job, I don't mind.

I know plenty of homeschoolers prefer to save their money and put their kids to work instead.  I think this is largely a matter of choice. Yes, it's important to teach kids to care for a home, and so technically we could spend a half day or a full day on cleaning projects every month and it would still have educational value.  Yes, it's money that could be spent on other things.  I get that. 

But specialization is not a bad thing.  We have the money, and I think it does good work when I spend it this way; it stays in our local economy, after all, and helps support another family.  She's faster than I would be, and definitely more thorough; while she was here, I was supervising math and oil painting.   And (unlike when the kids help me clean) I didn't feel the need to yell at anyone, so the money bought me a measure of emotional peace as well.  

I've definitely figured out that next year, my duties have to be streamlined if I want to do them well.  

+ + +

H. is making some similar changes, at least temporarily while the twins are small.  She laughs about how everything comes on a truck now:  clean cloth diapers arrive (and dirty ones leave); groceries come in a truck; clothes for the children, school supplies, everything.  Errand-running had to be trimmed back to the absolute minimum, hence, no shopping in physical stores anymore.  

Focus will be the watchword for next year.  Both of us need to focus our energies.  She, because she finds herself in such a rare and intense kind of parenting; me, because I'm always tempted to sprawl them all out onto everything except one-on-one connection with my children, and I sense that with the birth of my fifth child I have tipped past the point of being able to pretend I have a handle on everything and everyone.

I can outsource the housecleaning.  I can outsource some of the teaching.  I can't outsource being wife and mother.  I have always known this, but it's finally sinking in.

Task-switching (with bread machine recipes).

I've been keeping up with my practice of making shorter to-do lists on index cards very well.

 (Recall that I do have a master to-do list of ALL THE THINGS!!!! out of sight on my Wunderlist account.  So I'm not losing track of those things that don't make the cut today, but still need to be done sometime.  And I have a calendar, of course.)

So, today I made my little index card list, and it had eight items on it:

• Review evolutionary biology textbook for next year
• Check if high school Excel tutorial matches version on laptop
• Blog post
• See if we can use new geometry curriculum
• Help 7-yo with her AHG sports pin
• Grade papers on counter
• Put laundry away
• Clean out a shelf of china cabinet [so we can get rid of the cabinet when it's empty]

Later I thought of one more thing I wanted to put on my list, and as luck would have it, there was one line remaining on the index card, so I added it below:

• Print science quizzes for next module

So far so good.  Nine items on my list, including some for school, some for housework, some for personal creative outlet.   By lunchtime I had crossed a few of them off.

• ✓Review evolutionary biology textbook for next year
•   Check if high school Excel tutorial matches version on laptop
•   Blog post
•   See if we can use new geometry curriculum
• ✓Help 7-yo with her AHG sports pin
•   Grade papers on counter
• ✓Put laundry away
• ✓Clean out a shelf of china cabinet [so we can get rid of the cabinet when it's empty]

Then I got on Facebook and was reading a discussion about bread recipes.  It started in a post by  Melanie about bread machines, how she doesn't have one but relies on her stand mixer, and how I don't ever bake bread except using my bread machine.  Melanie posted her sandwich loaf recipe yesterday (scroll down to the second recipe), and I adapted it for the bread machine last night and tried the loaf this morning, and it was really good.  

That got me thinking it was time to update the chart of bread recipes that has been hanging on my fridge for a while, and that has accumulated Post-it notes and wedged-in index cards with new recipes, as well as layers of added notes scribbled on since I hung up the chart.

So I sat down at the computer and made a nice new chart, and printed it up and hung it on the fridge.

Lovely isn't it?  Ingredients down the left (in order of addition to the pan), recipes across the top, measurements in the grid.  Those are the eight recipes we make most often.  The bottom row has added instructions, such as which cycle to use.

Only of course this project was not something that had been on my index card.  So I had to sacrifice some other task from the card.  Out with grading papers:

• ✓Review evolutionary biology textbook for next year
•   Check if high school Excel tutorial matches version on laptop
•   Blog post
•   See if we can use new geometry curriculum
• ✓Help 7-yo with her AHG sports pin
• ✓  Grade papers on counter  Bread machine spreadsheet
• ✓Put laundry away
• ✓Clean out a shelf of china cabinet [so we can get rid of the cabinet when it's empty]

I guess I'll grade the papers another day, or maybe on the weekend.  The lesson here:  when you add one thing, something else has to give.

And hey!  I can now check off "Blog post."

P.S.   Download Bread machine spreadsheet

You're welcome!

 NOTE:  The file was updated a few hours after posting to correct the pizza dough recipe:  2 cups each of whole wheat and bread flour.

Service dog support.

Here's a little vignette that, I hope, will inspire you with gratitude and perspective.  And perhaps some generosity.  Share the link and enjoy.

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My friend Cathie (who's also my three-year-old's godmother, by the way!) has recently turned to GoFundMe to beg funds for a peanut-sniffing service dog, ASAP, to protect her teen daughter Julia.  I thought I'd put a plug in for them here.

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Julia is a lovely young woman, fond of crafts, children, chess, and literature.  She is Cathie's oldest daughter, number two in a family of six.  

 

Homeschooling has been the right choice for their family, in part because Julia and her sisters and brothers live with numerous different food allergies and sensitivities, some of them immediately life-threatening.   Tree nuts, finfish, shellfish, wheat, eggs, dairy, rice, you name it -- somebody in their house is sensitive to it.   

Julia's mother is, as you might imagine, an extremely versatile cook, and very good at streamlining and doing things such as making one kind of meal for one child and a different kind for another and a third kind for herself.  I have had lunch at their house and personally observed three different pizza crusts being prepared at the same meal.  

Very tasty pizza crusts, I might add.  If anyone could rock multiple food sensitivities in a family of eight, it would be Cathie.

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But while one can adapt meals for kids and adults with "mere" sensitivities, peanuts (along with a few other things) have to be Protein Non Grata in Julia's household.  

Everyone knows some people are allergic to peanuts, a few of them quite severely.  Lots of kids have epi-pens stored with the school nurse.  It seems that more and more parents every year have to carefully vet each good-faith proffered piece of candy or baked goods.  We all know it's a growing problem.  

But Julia has one of those instant, frightening, call-911 peanut allergies that make it hard even to enter public spaces.   Here's Cathie, recounting the event that caused them to bite the bullet and start raising money for a service dog:

On Sunday we called 911 after arriving home from our Montana vacation. Julia had touched something with peanut residue at a restaurant on the way home. Within minutes, her fingers, knuckles and hands were swollen and covered with hives. She must have also brushed her lips because they were swelling up, too....

...We are quite certain that the contact happened when she touched something in the bathroom at the restaurant, possibly the bathroom door.   Whatever it was, it was small enough to not be visible or smell-able because she is overly scrupulous about what she touches.

Cathie has told me that Julia cannot shop in grocery stores that have an open bin of bulk whole peanuts because the tiny dust particles sent into the air from the shells as they are scooped and poured trigger an allergic reaction in her airway.  Some time ago, at a friend's house that had been thought "clean," Julia (walking barefoot on the carpet) stepped on a fraction of a piece of dry cereal, just a crumb, on the carpet.  "Her entire foot swelled up," Cathie told me.  "Within minutes."

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Julia is of high school age now.  She is active in a scouting organization, in church, and in several academic clubs, and hopes to attend college, hold down a job, travel, serve the community, and all the other things that young people dream of doing.  But at this point, she and her family have had to reckon with severe limitations on her activities in public spaces.  

• Young people with allergies as severe as Julia's cannot safely hold many typical teenagers' jobs, such as food service or babysitting.  
• Looking to the future, it's impractical to expect that prospective employers would be willing to enforce peanut-free policies.  
• It's unrealistic to expect that the young people she might meet while away at college will carefully keep peanut products off the surfaces in a college residence hall.   
• Maintaining a social and professional life will be challenging if she cannot safely enter most restaurants, coffee shops, or break rooms.

Of course,  most restaurants, coffee shops, and breakrooms are not, in fact, contaminated invisibly with peanut residue.  Most of them are, in fact,  safe for Julia to enter and use... but she doesn't have a good way of finding out when they're not safe.  

This is why a service animal seems to be an appealing choice for Julia.  Service animals are allowed to workin most public places by statute.  We are most familiar with dogs that have been specially trained to assist people who cannot see well enough to safely navigate public spaces and streets, and with dogs (and a few other animals) that perform routine tasks for people that have limited mobility.   

In Julia's case, an "allergen alert" dog -- using capabilities similar to those exploited by police dogs that detect narcotics or explosives -- offers her the hope of quickly assessing her environment as she moves through it.  Rather than avoiding EVERY place and event where she MIGHT come into contact with dangerous residue or dust, she hopes to be able to enter spaces freely, and rely on the service dog to alert on particular contaminated objects and surfaces.

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Julia's family recently returned from a trip to visit I Smell Trouble, LLC, a trainer of allergen alert dogs in Bozeman, Montana.   Julia's pictured above with one of their dogs, which I guess they were taking out for a test drive.

(Some care had to be taken before the trip to identify a breed whose dander would not trigger sensitivities in any of the family members. Fortunately there are a few viable choices, so they do not find themselves in the especially unenviable position of being allergic to all the allergen alert animals.)

Here's Cathie:

 The trainer has an opening for a dog for Julia if we can raise the money quickly and locate the breed we need - an Australian Labradoodle or Standard Poodle, due to their hypoallergenic properties. This is an almost two year process to get a puppy and have it fully trained and certified as a peanut detection dog...

We've been contemplating getting a peanut detection dog for Julia for almost a year now, but there is just no way we can afford it. 

Today we decided we just have to ask for help.

Please check out our fundraising site. 

I thought I'd lend my blog today to tell Julia's story, raise awareness of severe and immediately life-threatening environmental allergy, and -- perhaps -- encourage readers to pass the story on and help Julia raise the funds she needs to get on the list to acquire a service animal.  

Julia would be about sixteen years old by the time her service animal is ready -- the perfect coming-out gift for a young woman who has a lot to offer the world, as soon as she can move freely in it.

Semiannual maintenance post, May 2013.

Five years ago this week, I woke up one day and decided to try being hungry for a change.  Those of you who've been through my archives know that this decision eventually led to my dropping 40 pounds and 6 pants sizes, and returning myself from BMI-obese to BMI normal.

I guess it's sticking for now.  I guess it's real.

I try to remain detached from the number if I can.  For instance, I always keep in mind that if I have another pregnancy, or when I go through menopause, I could wind up at another weight.  Mostly I think I've learned to manage that detachment, but from time to time I forget.

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Last month I forgot for a while.  

From time to time I think back to the months while the number on the scale was dropping.  During those months -- May to November of 2008 -- I was, frankly, obsessed and controlling and fearful (that whatever magic was working would stop working).   I was developing good habits, but at the same time I felt very driven by the numbers.  And yet I look back at that time with amazement at my power and self-control.  

Sometimes I start worrying, "What if I gain weight and I need to lose it again?  Will I ever be able to do what I did then?  Maybe I'll never recapture it, if I ever need it."

And I say to myself, "I know how I can make myself feel better.  I'll prove I can still do it.  I'll lose 1 pound, starting right now.  Even though I don't objectively need to lose any pounds, I'll just lose 1.  If I still have what it takes, it won't take long, just a couple of weeks, a month at most once I get back in the groove again.  I'll crack down really hard on myself and I'll lose 1 pound, and I'll prove to myself that I could still lose weight again any time I want to."

And then I can't "crack down on myself" as hard as I think I should, and the little line I still plot on a chart most days goes down a little and up a little and down a little just like it always does, and I fret some more.  Maybe I'll never get that groove back, even if I need it.  If I can't make it happen whenever I want to, whether I need it or not, will I be able to make it happen someday if I do need it?

And then I imagine a future where everyone makes fun of me because I blogged about overcoming gluttony but then I got fat again.  Seriously?  This is what I worry about?  Becoming a data point on the nobody can lose weight and keep it off side?  Or is it being proven wrong?  Am I a thin-person impostor?  Are the size 2's only a disguise?

This is not a healthy mental space to be in.

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So, last month I confessed to Mark that I was trying to lose ONE POUND and I couldn't manage to do it.  

(I mean, obviously my weight fluctuates day to day, but I wasn't seeing a permanent shift downward that would stick.)

And he reminded me:  

You are getting it backwards again.  

If you are worried about putting the weight back on, look at your behavior, not at the numbers.

Look at your habits.  Are you developing habits you don't want to develop?  Are you losing good habits you wanted to keep?

Because if you are slipping back into old patterns that you associate with the time when you were heavy and when you ate constantly, then that is a problem.  And it's a problem you can do something about.

But if all your habits are good, then you don't need to try to force the numbers to do ANYTHING.

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He's right.  He's absolutely right.  And I know this.  I don't know why I keep forgetting it.

But I do forget it from time to time.

I cannot directly control the number on the scale.  

I can directly control the choices that I make.

And I want to make choices every day that are compatible with living out the rest of my life in a healthy relationship to food and physical activity.

That's what I want.  To make choices now that are good for the rest of my life.

I can't really go wrong doing that, no matter what the numbers do.

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Fretting about the numbers often accompanies feelings of loss of control over those good habits.  And I usually find that, if I can remember to examine the habits instead of the numbers, I find that I have some places I should re-commit to.

The "diet mentality" has always been a mistake for me.  The idea that I can or should deprive myself strictly for some temporary period and then return to "normal" eating once I've acheived some number.   This has only been destructive.

(The only exception:  On occasion, I've found it helpful to cut out sugar and cut back on carbs for a few days, just to break a spiraling descent into a carb-craving cycle.   I don't think of it as dieting.  I call it detox even though I know that's a stupid word for it.)

Instead, I need to look at each behavior I engage in, and ask:  

Do I feel confident that repeating this behavior, regularly, for the rest of my life, would be good for me?  

If I made it to the end of a long life and looked back, what habits would I be telling everyone were my secret?

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Here are some of them, I think:

• Eat just enough at meals so that I have a real appetite when I sit down at the next one.  Pay attention to how much that takes, and learn.
• Have sweets and desserts at any meal time that I wish, but keep them small.  
• Go to bed a little bit hungry.  Have a drink in the evening instead of a snack. 
• Keep alcohol portions modest at dinner--or at least put off the drinking until the food's cleared away.
• Sugarless gum after meals -- good for teeth, and good for reminding me not to nibble as I clean up.
• Prefer dressed vegetables to carbs.  Use carbs judiciously to extract the maximum textural experience from each portion.
• I only typically need one snack, in midafternoon:  make it small, balanced, pleasant, and on a plate.
• Share my food with people who ask.
• Half sandwiches.    Most sandwiches are too damn big, at least for me. 
• Graciously accept some of whatever I'm offered, but I don't have to eat all of it.
• Refuse to think of an occasional, deliberate choice to enjoy food for pure pleasure as a "failure." 

These are not difficult to live by and don't represent deprivation, but they do take a little bit of attention.  And when my attention slips, I make choices that aren't as good.  It's as simple as that.  I need to pay a little attention to make good choices regularly, but the choices I want to make are choices I can feel happy about for the rest of my life.

At your service.

A video detailing something I've never heard of that made my jaw drop.  The Atlantic Monthly headlined their short piece on it, "How 4,000 Men Hand-Deliver 175,000 Lunches Around Mumbai in One Day:"

Dabbawalla from The Perennial Plate on Vimeo.

“Dabbawalla” comes from the term "tiffin dabba," referring to a tiered lunch box and “walla,” a carrier or vendor. As Saritha Rai explains in The New York Times, India’s dabbawalla network originated during the British colonial occupation after cities were flooded with new, regional workers as a way to bridge the distance [both literally and figuratively] between their work sites and their homes. Each morning, after the recipient has gone to work, family members who remain at home (mothers, wives, grandmothers, and sisters) prepare a freshly-cooked meal to be picked up by a dabbawalla, sorted and distributed at railway stations, and hand-delivered to their loved one at the office.

Today, Mumbai is home to approximately 4,000 dabbawallas who deliver tens of thousands of lunches via an intricate, 125-year-old coding system without fail. 

The NYT article is here.