I haven't cooked much for four years, seriously, I used to enjoy it, but we moved, and well, it all seemed harder. That's why it was all the funnier that yesterday morning I woke early, got the baby into her highchair with a pile of cheerios in front of her, and started boiling noodles, browning chicken and emptying the cake box mix into a bowl and adding oil, water and eggs.
My mom's recovering from surgery, and I'm taking the girls to see her and my dad this weekend, and it's the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashana, the new year, and my dad's birthday. My babysitter arrived around nine, and was duly impressed. It's not that I don't prepare dinner each night, I do, and I've written about dinner fatigue, the feeling that if you have to procure, prepare and serve dinner one more time, you will have no choice but to take to bed in the tradition of grand old southern ladies who were known to do so. It's that I've lost the power to think ahead and make sure the needed foods are in the house. I have friends who can do this, who can quartermaster and grocery shop well. It's just that I can't, or don't. Or can't. Or don't really want to, except it is so damn nice to have nice dinners. I'm waiting for personal chefs, or at least a service to drop off healthy, warm food at my door each day at 5.30 pm to become financially available to those of us in the middle class. That's what I'm waiting for.
Which leaves me this morning packing corningwares of food into a yellow cooler that I picked up at from someone's recycling heap, covering them with ice packs, and wondering whether a tray of noodle kugel will last a four hour car trip. (Or, for that matter, whether my attempt to follow my mother-in-law's recipe, told to me as "mix two cups, oh, maybe a cup and a half of cottage cheese, and then a few tablespoons of sugar, and if you have some raisins you can add them, and some eggs, maybe a half dozen, something like that, yes, and salt and pepper, and make sure it's liquidy, it should be liquidy..." which always results in wonderousness at her table will similarly work for mine.
A wonderful few days to all.
Next week, join me as I journey around the mom blogosphere, which has been debating issues like popularity and commercialization as of late, and as I get a report on the premiere of the documentary of The Motherhood Manifesto next Thursday at the U.S. Senate, hosted by Senators Clinton, Obama, Kennedy and Dodd.