Dinner in an hour

This is not a foodie blog and I do not have pictures to go with what I am about to post, but I figured it might be helpful to some mom out there.

We went to a lake to swim with some homeschool friends, so I did not get started on dinner till 4. I had it on the table at 5 (fine, 5:05 for transparency's sake). No, it was not take-out. No, it was not chicken nuggets or frozen pizza. It was a solid dinner: soup, main, starch, veggie. No, it was not a miracle.

This morning I pulled a bag of chicken cutlets from the freezer. Since I buy them at Costco, I usually divide the large family pack into two bags before freezing. This bag had breasts sliced in half, so it defrosted quickly.

At 4 I turned the oven up to 400, rinsed the breasts and put them in the pan. I sprinkled them with sesame oil, soy sauce, onion flakes, garlic powder, ginger and a drizzle of honey. Then I mixed them in the pan so the breasts were well-coated, covered them with foil and stuck them in the oven. Next, I rinsed one cup of rice in another pan, added 1 3/4 cups of water, a drizzle of olive oil, covered that pan, and stuck it in the oven with the chicken.

I usually make this quick zucchini soup. two onions, chopped, 4-6 zucchini, chopped into chunks, vegetable broth to cover, 1/4 cup of rice, bring to a boil, add seasoning, simmer for 20 minutes, puree with immersion blender straight in the pot, voila! Except that I like to doctor it up: add quinoa instead of rice, or throw in extra veggies. Today, as I was reaching for a bag of quinoa, I found a package of edamame noodles from Costco. They were brittle, they were green, and they had zero appeal of the noodles, so they were sitting in the pantry. An evil genius idea of a substitution: why don't I crumble them in instead of quinoa, then puree and nobody will know? Look at all the extra protein! Look at me salvaging what I'm sure were expensive noodles, languishing here! Hehe! So in they went. I made a mental note to remove any traces of what I did before the kids who will come to set the table express their opinion on my substitution without a taste test.

While the soup was simmering, I pulled out a bag of string beans and another pan. I trimmed the ends, tossed them with a bit of olive oil, spread them in a pan and sprinkled with salt. Then they went in the oven together with the chicken and rice.

I checked my phone. I stretched. This dinner was practically cooking itself. I uncovered the chicken so it could get dry in its sauce. I threw a bunch of parsley from my garden into the soup (it's about the only thing that grew in the garden, but it sounds very foodie of me now: freshly snipped parsley! In reality, I was too lazy to go and get scissors, so I twisted and yanked). I pureed the soup while adding cumin and curry and called the kids to set the table.

They fought. Just because I had dinner under control did not mean that they turn into angels. One child provoked another. By the time, I took a bathroom break, a steady wail in stereo leaked under the door. One child touched another. One child lost dessert.

It was dinnertime. Dinner was served.

They ate the soup with the green edamame noodles incorporated into it. Hint: soup croutons make all soup taste better. Some asked for seconds. They discussed how much fun they had playing with their friends, making elaborate sand dams.

Save this post for the next time dinner prep gets in the way of getting together with some friends and spending the day at the beach.

Minimalist Purim gone awry

Dear G-d, if this was supposed to be a joke, I am not finding it to be funny.

Two weeks ago I heard the rabbi speak in shul on the subject of happiness and Purim. He said how there is no specific prescription for happiness because everyone is happy in their own way. So I thought: this year, part of my happiness is not stressing about Purim. I will have a minimalistic Purim. I am no longer running Purim costume gemach that was a source of mitzvah, but also a source of tremendous personal headache. It was also a source of costumes for my kids, as I managed the donations and was on the lookout year-round for costumes to add. So this year, they had to make their own or tell me early enough what they wanted to do so I could buy it. Only 7 yo told me what she wanted to be: a baby (cue in processing complex emotions of not being a baby any more as she is becoming older and there are actual babies in the house). Her costume was footie pajamas, a bib, a giant plastic bottle and a diaper worn on the outside of the pajamas. I sort of tried to warn her that there might be conversations and remarks taking place over that diaper, but she shrugged them off. If rocking a diaper is what you want to do, you go girl! And just like that, she brushed off all the comments and wore her diaper.

To everyone else I suggested going as a swim team: everyone wears already existing bathing suits. 10 yo did it, I wore mine, and I put one on 4 yo and 1 yo. 12 yo went as an old Russian lady: a kerchief on his head, a patched blanket for his back, and a drumstick for a walking cane. He even learned a few Russian phrases to go with his look, for authenticity. My husband went as... drumroll... a doctor. Yeah, we went all out. And I did not stress about the costumes or keeping with a theme.

To continue my quest for minimalism, and to decrease stress, I decided that our mishloach manot will be a simple hamentash and a clementine in a paper bag. But then I panicked that the free-form hamentashen that my kids made were too free-form, so I spent a motzei shabbos making my own batch that would look more traditional. Except that I decided to use half whole wheat flour, to be creative. But I was also impatient, so I dumped it all together with the other ingredients and got sand crumbs instead of dough. Then I panicked and started adding water and oil to make the dough come together. When it did, it did not look nice, more like sand held together with water. So much for simplicity and minimalism. I shaped that batch, baked it, and hoped for the best.

On Friday before Purim I went to work assembling these michloach manot. I used brown paper sandwich bags, stuck a hamentash and a clementine inside and stapled them with a note that proclaimed package's minimalism. I was done in half an hour, feeling so smug about quick and easy way out from this task.

Comes Purim day and we are getting ready to deliver my preassembled batch when I see that the oil from the dough seeped through the paper bags, ripping some and producing ugly oil stains on the others. Now they do not look simple, now they look ready for the garbage... as 12 yo pointed out that I should have placed a hamentash in a plastic bag first (poor environment!) I blew up at him, how he did not lift a finger with these and now tells me what I should have done.

But really, I was mad at G-d.

I just wanted something to be simple. I just wanted something to work out. I wanted to rejoice in the simplicity of stress-free mishloach manot. Usually, we make turkey wraps and give them out with pickles and a hamentash on the side. It has been our staple, but it is labor-intensive and makes distribution difficult, as it needs to be either eaten or refrigerated. Then it also requires a note warning that the wrap is fleishig but the hamentash is parve.

By the time we were ripping open the oily bags, placing hamentashen into ziplocks and I was retyping the note with our name and theme (G-d forbid I would clutter my computer with a file that I wasn't planning on reusing) and then cutting the labels, I wondered out loud whether it would not have been easier to do those turkey wraps in the first place.

Then, as the return michloach manot started to arrive, I thought whether our minimalist package would bring anyone happiness.

I hope it did, come today, the day after Purim, when there is too much candy, too many sweets, and Pesach is only four weeks away.