A (Thurs)day in My Cooking Life

I told a friend I was making our bread, and without yeast. She said, “You must spend all your time in the kitchen!” While making sure our kids didn’t maim each other (or anyone else) in play group, I mentioned to another mom that we are no longer eating food that comes out of commercial packages. She said, “You must spend all your time cooking!” My husband tells me that he was sharing some of our new experiences with coworkers and one of the working moms said, “The only reason you can manage that is that your wife stays at home all day.”

To say I put a lot of effort into my family’s meals would be an understatement. But, the idea that I spend all my time cooking, or that I am “at home all day”… (*sigh*) Well, that’s just plain ludicrous. My week is packed. I’m a full-time stay-at-home mom with two volunteer jobs, who willingly gave up her professional housekeeper and opts to do it all herself—with the help of a really awesome husband. Most weeks, Mia and I are so busy with the business of exposing her to the right kind of learning experiences and managing our volunteer time that I have to work to squeeze in errands like banking and food shopping. I do a lot more than just cook! (Obviously I’m spending a lot of time writing about cooking too, right?).

Brian stirs the curtido in the morning.

If you had told me three years ago, when I had a full time job and Mia was just a little hope on the breeze, that I had time to cook the way I do now, I would have said you were nuts. (Heck, I probably would have said you were nuts three months ago!) Before having a baby I had a solid list of reasons I didn’t have time. But, parenthood gives you a new perspective on your responsibilities and your ability to manage them. The complete lack of down time allows you to see that you either choose to do something or you don’t. When you choose to do, the excuses fall away. When you choose don’t, the excuses help you feel better about it.

The food part of my day needs to run efficiently. This means multitasking. It means periodically checking in with myself over the course of the day and asking, “Are you doing everything you can do?” As well as, “What do you really need to be doing right now?” Sometimes what I need to be doing is reading a book, drinking a cool beverage, and soaking myself in a tub. And then, that’s what I do. Other times I’m exercising, cooking, reading to the baby, getting us loaded into the van to go hike or have a play date, loading us both into a bath so I can shower and bathe her at the same time! Or, I’m exercising my creative muscle writing blogs or working on my forever in-the-works novels. It’s all about listening to myself so I can sustain the energy and the momentum to get it done.

A delicious lunch of bruschetta.

Today I started the day with several food objectives. First, I needed to pull together the day’s meals. This is something I now start days in advance, so after 15 seconds of panic while I remembered what we were having, I realized I was pretty much good to go. Second, I needed to think about what I have to do for tomorrow. Tomorrow is bread day, so the culture had to be fed. Third, I had to consider what foods I needed to prep for a few days from now. I knew we needed crackers for next week, so putting the grain in to soak is on my list, but I’m off the hook on that one for at least another day. However, sauerkraut and pickled beets were on today’s list. If I didn’t do those today, the veggies might go bad and that just isn’t very green! After all that thinking, which took about a minute, I prioritized, made a mental list, and started knocking it out, one item at a time.

Oatmeal. Eggs. Tea. I have our usual breakfast down to a science. (I do something a little different with our oatmeal now that I’m a hard core traditionalist, and will get that recipe posted soon.) Feeding the culture can be done while I’m cooking breakfast and if I have two or more chores for the morning, I’ll enlist one of my sweeties to do it—usually Brian, because Mia’s idea of feeding the culture is a bit different from ours and often involves a mop and no bread that week! Today, Brian fed the culture while I sliced up cabbage, a Santa Barbara pepper, and onion to make curtido, or a traditional Salvadorian sauerkraut that is delicious paired with many Hispanic foods, homemade Tex-Mex, or just a simple sandwich! (Recipe will follow in the very near future! I promise). While I loaded the dishwasher, Brian spent 10 minutes pounding the cabbage into submission and then we put it in jars. (It’s whey fermented, so there is no need to can. It just sits at room temperature for 3 days and then gets moved to the top shelf of the fridge. It should keep several months, even longer. We tend to eat it before we find out how long it can go!)

Mia helps herself to lunch!

After that, we got on with our day. Showering, getting dressed, brushing our teeth and rushing out the door. Mia and I often take our lunches with us, but today we came home and had homemade bruschetta-inspired sandwiches and sprouted quinoa in homemade chicken broth. (I made the bruschetta with homemade cream cheese, homemade bologna*, onion, basil, and tomato.) This took me just minutes to make—less time than I used to spend driving from my office to lunch. It’s something I can easily see someone preparing in their office kitchen. Later, we had a snack of home popped popcorn, made in my whirley pop.

Buttery popcorn! The best snack on earth!

For dinner, I made one of our new favorites—sourdough pizzas, which are my take on the modern French bread microwave standby. I already had the sauce and meatballs in the fridge, leftover from last night’s dinner. The sauce is made from Pomi tomatoes—canned tomatoes are one of the very few prepared foods I will occasionally use—shredded zucchini, fresh onion, garlic, and basil from our CSA. (This is another recipe I’ll have to post, in time!) The meatballs are simple, with no fillers, and the meat is from a local farmer. The cheese too was made by the farmer. The bread was, of course, made by me and my family. My pizza, of course, is cooked in the oven. (An example of how hard core I've become: I haven't used my microwave in two months!)

Just looking at this picture of sourdough pizza makes me wish I could eat it again!

To cap off the day, Brian and I made a cup of rooibos tea with milk. We realized that we had forgotten to make the pickled beets, so we decided to do it. We baked them in the oven for almost 3 hours. I peeled and julienned them, then put them in a jar with whey, water and spices. Like the curtido, there is no need for canning. After lining our pickles up on a shelf in my kitchen, we made another cup of tea with milk, I put the oatmeal out to soak for the next morning, and were done for the day.

Oops! The forgotten beets!

Note:

*The bologna is homemade, but not by me. I would love to make it and will when I can figure out how to do it. For now, I get it from the same farmer who raises my meat and makes my cheese and yogurt. I’m OK with this compromise because I know that he makes it exactly as I would myself, with nothing in it that I would not include if making it.