365: Day 342- Cooking One Day Ahead

12/9/13: The first snowfall of the season fell on Monday and Tuesday of this week. Monday was more of a "wintry mix", but it was enough to get S&Z very excited first thing in the morning!

The first snow of the season calls for one thing: hot chocolate!

And marshmallows!

Mmm mmm mmm!!

*****

I took the day off from work on Monday in order to do some Christmas shopping. While the kids were at school Derek and I ended up getting ourselves a Christmas present. Behold the Technivorm Moccamaster!

Derek did a bunch of research until he found this, the Cadillac of all coffee makers. It brews the best cup of coffee either of us has ever tasted! In < 8 minutes!

*****

Cook's Notes: The issue for me with cooking during the week is that because I'm a single parent most nights I can't really start making dinner until the kids go to bed. By the time dinner is ready it's between 8:30 and 9:00 and I'm absolutely starving. I end up eating a bunch of junk to tide me over until dinner is ready, and then I still end up eating too much at too late of an hour.

For me cooking on the weekend is the best solution to this problem. This weekend was so busy, however, that there was no time to get anything more than food shopping done ahead of time. Starting the week with a meal-free fridge, I realized there is a next best solution: cooking one day ahead. On Monday night I made a salad for dinner when I got home, and then prepared Stir-Fried Shiitake Mushrooms and Napa Cabbage to eat on Tuesday for dinner. On Tuesday night I ate the stir fry when I got home, and then made Turkey Bolognese after the kids went to bed, which was dinner for Wednesday night. This "one day ahead" approach seems to be a good compromise for weeks when "cooking for the week" is not realistic...

How do you handle feeding yourself/your family amidst the weekly grind?

Comments

Silas' Blog

Well it's been a busy 3 years since I last posted! Stay tuned as we may have more posts coming now that it looks like I have a new contributor... Silas recently read a book called "Starting Your Own Blog", and now he is bound and determined for us to let him start his own blog! We convinced him that he should start out by drafting content and a posting calendar. We made templates this morning and he wrote his first "post" today!

Parks

We decided to get Zoe's haircut on Saturday morning at a place geared towards kids called Snip-Its . Neither Derek nor I anticipated what a meltdown Zoe was going to have. The haircut is half-assed at best and Derek will have to fix it when she's more calm. We were so traumatized that we headed to the park to get the day going on a better foot! We went back to Larz Anderson, the park where the Psychiatry picnic was held on Thursday . It is really close to our house and is lovely and shaded. I think it's one of my new favorite spots! The kids like it too :) S&Z love playing with wood chips, so there was a lot of that! Snacks were enjoyed on the bench and I tried to get a few pictures of the haircut... Excuse me, I'm chewing pretzels :) This morning we met up with Wendy, Dave, Sydney & Ivy at the Newton Center Playground. It was HOT HOT HOT, and there wasn't too much shade. The kids have inherited my low tolerance for heat, so they spe...

Sickness Update

We saw the pediatrician again this morning - it was our 4th visit in as many weeks. Both kids have an antibiotic-resistant sinus infection. Zoe also still has an ear infection after 5 days of meds; thankfully Silas' double ear infection is finally gone after the 10-day round of amoxicillin. While in the waiting room, we noticed that a rash had appeared on Silas' arms and trunk. Since this coincided with being on meds, Dr. Rundquist had to assume it might have been related to the amoxicillin. Silas was going to get a non-amox antibiotic for the continued sinus infection, and because it's easier to have them on the same meds they were both prescribed Suprax. Silas' O2 saturation was also down a little and he was wheezing during the exam. Apparently he also has broncholitis and he'll be treated with albuterol. He was given a nebulizer treatment in the doctor's office that he tolerated amazingly well at the end of a very long doctor's visit (we were there for 2 ...

The Zoe and Silas Show

Search This Blog