playdate

Fresh Baked Guilt

I feel like a bad mother if my children don’t have fresh, homemade, healthy baked goods on hand for snacks.

I agree, I’m an idiot, but, hear me out: like many of us, I have two small girls that seem to always be hungry, and sometimes they are hungry at inconvenient times. Sometimes, I am just not able to fart around preparing cheese and crackers, slicing up an apple, or making monkey pancakes with blueberry smiley faces (yes, those are often requested.)

You Say Potato, I Say Disaster

I love it when friends and family come for dinner, and I love it when they entertain my children so that I can have a full couple of hours for real food prep time. I love putting food on the table and having people compliment me on my mad kitchen skillz.

And I love it when my two hours of prep and the enthusiasm of my dinner guests culminates in a dish that sucks serious donkey balls.

Grr.

Warm Me Up

Crikey, it’s cold out there. I don’t know if the cold makes me hungry, but it certainly makes me eat. Maybe it’s that humans are hard-wired to instinctively pack on the blubber when the mercury drops, or maybe it’s just that, when nights are spent huddled under a blanket on the couch, one naturally wants something hot, steamy and delicious in hand.

And since my husband is working late, I’ll settle for cocoa.

Food Challenge 2009?

I wish that I had the foresight, creativity and organizational skills to take on a 365-day food challenge. You know, something like, The Elimination Diet: My Suck-Ass Year of Quinoa and Black Beans, or like, 365 Days of Bacon – you know, one that’s really exciting and would segue into a lucrative book deal, but I totally don’t, save for saying something like, ‘I will eat. Every. Single. Day. For the entire year. And so will my kids.' How’s that?

Not so much, huh?

Christmas Dinners

Christmas was awesome. I love spending time with my husband’s (my) family, and I could have easily extended our 5-day stay with them. There are many things I admire about my mother-in-law, and her ability to plan and execute 15 meals for a houseful of people without getting stressed is definitely one of them. Since I can barely plan one meal for 4 (ish) mouths without feeling stretched creatively, emotionally and nutritionally, I spent a good deal of time at my mother-in-law’s side last week, hoping to eat the rumballs before they were devoured by the rest of the household some of her experience would wear off on me. 

Get Your Festive On

We had our family Hanukkah party this weekend, and it was really, really lovely. In previous years, we have gathered at my mum’s apartment and gorged ourselves on latkes and chocolate, and passed around usually homemade gifts. (Hanukkah does not really come with a gift-giving precedent like Christmas, so for us, it was always hand-kinit slippers, some chocolate raisins and a box of our favourite tea.)

However, things have been getting a bit fancier ‘round the holidays, and while latkes, chocolate and fresh-knit goods still take centre stage, we have definitely kicked it up a notch.

Get 'Em While They're Young

I was a totally picky eater when I was a kid. As in, no rhyme or reason to it, give-my-mother-an-ulcer kind of picky. I think that after exhausting her efforts, she would have been ok dealing with a situation where I would only eat hamburgers or plain pasta, but even there I would not offer some (stress) relief. I just found something to hate about everything that was put in front of me, and it took a looooong time for me to get over those issues.

Today, as a mother, I am fully prepared to deal with whatever karmic diet retribution the universe wants to throw at me, but I am also doing my damndest to ensure that that my own kids do not turn out to be the little brat that I was.

C Is for Can I Get a Do-Over?

Every year around this time, I join some sort of Stepford-like office cookie cult club and promise to bake six-dozen yummy things by Friday to swap with six other overachieving, guilt-ridden moms women. Cookie Swap sounds like fun, but for three years I opted in, and for three years, I screwed off to watch TV  got preoccupied with something very important the night before, and showed up to the cookie swap empty-handed. Boo, hiss – bad form, Karen, bad form.

Putting My Money Where My Mouth Is

Well, for months now, I’ve been going on bullying you sharing my thoughts on the importance of maintaining high nutritional standards for you and your family. I’ve been writing about family dinners, organic fare, eating your greens and how to pack a healthy punch into the all of the things you eat.

Which was all fine and good while I was a keener stay-at-home mom, flush with protect-my-brood, post-natal hormones, a save-the-world idealism that summer so easily encourages, plus the added bonus of a husband working mainly from home for months at a time.

Don't Stew Over Dinner

Ok, two themes this week:

1. It’s (still) effing cold outside and I (still) just want to hibernate until June; and
2. I am back at work now. And however I feel about it I don’t want to get into right now (There are no tears in food writing. There are no tears in food writing. There are no tears in food writing.), but I will tell you this – I will not let working outside of the home threaten my status as Domestic Goddess. No siree, I have a reputation to uphold, bookmarks to cross-stitch and muffins to bake.

And that leads me to today’s column:

How to Stay Warm, Cozy and Nutritionally Sound While Working Outside of the Home