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I am frequently quizzed about my vociferous appetite for takeaway foods. “Do you not get sick of eating out?” my mother will remark, aghast at how one can eat meal after meal and not substitute at least 50% of said meals for good old “tea and toast”.
“HOW can you go for breakfast the morning after going out for dinner?!” my sister asks me this week, when I reveal to her that we had gone for Sunday breakfast less than 12 hours after returning home from a slap-up Saturday night meal.
There are several factors that go into this, many of which will, I hope, be self-explanatory (i.e. that I have an enormous appetite, having worked hard over this past two-year period to expand my stomach to 5,000-calorie-a-day proportions), but what I learned this week is that my eating out is actually a necessity. I simply cannot cook a thing (see photographic evidence, above). Ergo: Holy God wants me to eat out. Or order in, whichever works.
Monday
I used to look on Monday as the start of the working week. I would get up, write a to-do list, FINE largely ignore said to-do list but at the very least I’d get some emails answered.
Now, honestly, I look at Monday as a day to get through. After a weekend having Brandin at home and (usually) seeing Beatrice and the boys and getting out and about a bit, Monday marks a return to a routine that doesn’t allow for much productivity on my part. So I just try to get through it.
We get up, I dress both myself and Atlas and pop him in the jumperoo while I make myself some breakfast of porridge, toasted almond slivers and sliced apples fried in some butter and sprinkled with brown sugar. (Okay, I’ll admit, I’m okay at making breakfast.)
By the time I’m finished eating, it’s time for him to go on his play mat and I empty the dishwasher. Then it’s usually around 9.30am and he’s complaining, so I change and feed him (my answer to complaints is to suggest eating or sleeping) and he falls asleep on me for a little over two hours. SURE THE DAY IS GONE.
When he wakes up I change him again, then lie him on the bed while I put up the washing and then pop him in the crib while I make the bed. Some more complaining so we go downstairs and I put him in his swing while I make myself a toasted cheese sandwich. He doesn’t seem delighted to be ignored so I go against all advice and put on The Muppet Show on Disney+.
While all of this is going on, Target charges me for one of my many Pay in 4 purchases. (For newbies, PayPal allows you to break down your payments into four separate chunks, interest-free, and honestly why would you not do this?!) ($24.72)
I realise, at some stage, that we have two bags of potatoes – excellent planning there – so I decide to make mashed potatoes for dinner, to go with chicken thighs Brandin is going to put on the barbecue. (They call this “grilling” in America. “I’m going to grill them.” The actual grill is called the broiler, and as far as I can tell, is never used.)
I try to emulate my brother-in-law Don’s famed holiday mashed potatoes, which have a load of butter in them, some milk and are then creamed to perfection using the hand blender. Instead of Don’s famed holiday mash, I get potato glue. It adheres to spoon, blender, finger with the strength of Loctite-fortified slime. I am aghast.
“This potato is… gloopy,” says Finn at dinner, while Brandin and I pretend it’s fine.
“I used a different recipe!” I say, weakly. Only myself and Brandin eat the mashed potatoes. Not for the last time this week, I think to myself, cooking is not for me.
We watch an episode of Raised by Wolves before bed. Neither of us has a clue what’s going on (we’re on season one), but it’s very stressful and we can never quite bring ourselves to watch two episodes in a row.
Daily total: $24.72
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