Day 1122: Too Much Food

The dirty secret about recipe development is that it takes a lot of time. So much time, that depending on what you are making, you might not have the time or ingredients to actually make food to eat that day. The dishes! We don’t have a dishwasher and the dishes are exhausting.

Today I perfected the cheese straws recipe and some cold marinated salads to take to Easter tomorrow that will be in the book.

In the morning we picked up the knitting needles we ordered from Michaels. I find putting orders near the door as “grab and go” items a bold choice as we are left with the honor system and no one checks ID or that we picked up the right order.

Not too far away is a new halal place so we picked up lunch there which seemed a little awkward to do during Ramadan (this article was interesting) and I find the use of “halal” to describe this specific style of food interesting, we don’t tend to use “kosher” in the same way. But, I digress, they were open and I’m sure they’d rather have our money than not. That area has very little in the way of food choices so I hope they do well.

While Matt waited for the food, I dashed in the supermarket and got what I wasn’t able to get earlier in the week. I wanted a white onion–why don’t they sell them in bags here? It was so expensive for just one onion, it was more than the head of cabbage. For those nosy, math-loving people reading at home, it was just under $3 for one large-ish onion.

Lunch was very saucy! You can’t even see the salad which took up half the container.

Fingers crossed Easter goes okay. My brother has said several times that he is uninterested and unwilling to contribute anything to holidays or to help with my dad but he is always in attendance and takes home all the leftovers. I told him if he wants dessert tomorrow he has to bring it himself because my dad’s oven broke. I refuse to provide both the main meal and the dessert so my dad was going to make it which obviously isn’t happening now. We will see! At least we have the lamb cake leftovers back at home and we picked up the traditional Rheb’s Easter candy for everyone.

I always loved Easter but it was less fun after my grandfather died (we always played the crack the egg game together) and now with my mom gone (who always made a cake and loved to make us Easter baskets) and it’s just my picky eater brother and father left. The perils of having a small family and neither of us having children! My mom was always so happy to see us, made a real effort to make things nice and was always excited to try whatever we made which went a long way.

I am still trying to figure out how to handle holidays since my mom’s death. Since my brother won’t help and my dad isn’t up to cooking for all of us (he batch cooks and eats very plain, basic leftovers he’s frozen for meals) it keeps falling to me to plan and make a meal that we can all eat. They are both picky, limited eaters. Occasionally they’ve invited friends but they are all picky eaters too!

Every holiday since my mom died there has been some drama involving the meal no matter how much I plan it down to the minute. This time the oven is broken so I had to pivot. Thanksgiving 2021 was such a massive disaster that I am still unsure how as I had reviewed the plan near daily with my dad since August as per his request and all he had to do was have ingredients from the written list ready for me at the house and get the turkey going before I arrived to make everything else. Not a single thing went correctly. We left and got the worst food from a diner I’ve ever had because we had no food at home.

This past Christmas my dad made a huge deal about making cookies and buying candy and then had neither when we arrived with dinner. He had decided against baking because my brother “didn’t seem interested” and didn’t tell me at any of our daily conversations leading up to Christmas. Of course, I didn’t bake or buy candy because he said he would and we had spent hours picking out recipes he was going to make. Even this Easter he said he was going to make cake then decided on a brownie recipe (again after talking to my brother) which neither my husband or I enjoy and then the oven broke. At least we had notice and got our own cake this time. He does not have any issues shopping, planning and preparing his own meals and bakes all the time so it isn’t a skill or memory issue.

I am debating seeing if everyone wants to move to holding “holidays” on different days so I can just do what I want on the holiday and get take out or whatever on another day to get together. I’ve already decided to do that for Christmas this year.

At least the burners are working on his stove so we can heat up the ham in slices in a pan.

And he was able to order a new stove! It’s run by propane since they aren’t hooked up to the county gas lines so I was worried that would be an ordeal but apparently it will be ready in a week or so. Switching to electric was going to mean actual construction would have to happen in his kitchen and he didn’t want to deal with that. I don’t want to either. Running a second household is exhausting. My mom handled everything and my dad tries but it’s a lot to keep straight and he has a very low tech life.

Early in the morning, I spent two hours trying to find out why my dad’s Xfinity bill doubled this month. Customer service is so condescending. It took getting a second person for them to give a me reason that made even a tiny bit of sense–they were waiting for a credit that my dad gets for being a very low income person in a rural area from the state and the federal government. Hopefully, that goes through! His bill was more than he spends on food for the month.

It’s really annoying how they have phased out things like actual landlines and expect everyone to “upgrade” but it costs so much more. My dad doesn’t even have a computer but to get phone service and watch tv he has to have the internet. Not to mention that when he has to verify his identity knowing his name, address, and account number is not enough, they need to text or email me to confirm. It makes everything so tedious. What do people who need help and have no one do? Right now I have to chat with these people and relay the info to my dad in real time over the phone or in-person.

This is also the second time during customer chat they referred to him by my mom’s name which is truly baffling because she had died before he left Verizon (after having an account there since 1976) and got Xfinity. They tell me they have no idea why her name is attached to the account. She was never on it. Truly what is going on here?

Moving on—Matt mowed for the first time this year and Dottie went nuts because we wouldn’t let her outside. You’d think she’d want to be inside with me sniffing the cheese straw air. The yard looks great—it was quite wild.

For dinner Matt picked us up the good Szechuan take out except one dish that’s my favorite was really salty this time and we tried a soup we didn’t love. Still good though and we have leftovers because we over ordered and lunch was huge. He also picked up some scallops for our dinner tomorrow.

I finished a book and write a review.

I guess I got a lot done today? I’m glad I was able to find side dishes from the list for the book that I think my dad and brother would eat so I am not having to eat pounds and pounds of salad myself.

We watched The One I Love and McQueen. Very different but both were good!