A little lazy

I have had a doozy of a week.  Parenting is hard, yo.

I feel like I’ve been cutting a few corners in the kitchen as a result.  It’s sink or swim and in order to stay afloat I’m enlisting the help of the middle aisles in the grocery stores.  And home delivery meal kit services.

Ok, first off, I got this coconut yogurt at WF last weekend.

It’s plain, but still tastes sweet enough.  You can’t find bulk non-dairy yogurt here in Davis anymore, so I have lists of WF things for my weekly Fremont trips (the WF is across the street from the oit clinic).  I also got bulk bin candied ginger. Anyway, I don’t think I’ve given them cereal for breakfast more than 3 times in their lives, but if ever there were a time, this past week was it.

And if you add nuts and seeds and fruit (along with the cereal) it isn’t a total sugar bomb.  They ate this a few times this week.

I can’t find Earth Balance’s vegan mac ‘n cheese here in Davis either (I used to get it at WF – how sick are you of my whining about not having a WF in town anymore?!?!).  I got Annie’s only vegan options at Nugget and the kids love it!

I was nervous at first because I wasn’t sure how good pumpkin and sweet potato are at mimicking cheese, but they were into it, so yay!

I added frozen peas and boom – lunches are served.  I made real meals for the rest of the week, but it was definitely a relief to have this as a pinch hitter for a few days.

Heaping on the kale per usual, only swapping in smoked salmon for mac nuts for a few days.

Still can’t resist those salty nuts though…

Here’s how quiet time has been going.

That’s his cd player he’s cuddled up next to…

Gobble meal kit numero dos!  Maple balsamic pork with sauteed pears, prunes and butternut squash risotto.

The portions are really quite generous.  I gave the kids some of the meat, pears and prunes, and still had plenty.  The risotto had dairy so none for P, but I actually ate some and it was reallllllly good.  Hashtag worth it.

I made it pretty quickly, too, although not quite in under 10 minutes.  That’s hardly any time!  And I’m fast in the kitchen, so I don’t know who could possibly be doing things that fast.

But guys this was so GOOD!!

I really have nothing but good things to say about gobble and I wish we could afford to keep it in our budget, but alas, it’s going to have to be reserved for weeks that I need a break. It’s super awesome because I still get to cook and the recipes are amazing and we eat cool new exciting stuff that I get to pretend I kinda made.

Dessert followed by hours of dealing with my new non-sleeper.

A new day, a new attempt at patient parenting.  😉  And a banana muffin eaten in haste as we attempt to get to open gym on time.  As I loaded the kids in the car, P said “I’m sorry you didn’t get to eat breakfast mama, but you can have lunch and dinner.”  Sooooo close to being sweet.

I made a few loaves of banana bread on Sunday (for a friend who recently had a baby), and the batter had enough extra for a couple of muffins.  I’m really glad I didn’t freeze them for later because they were perfect to stuff in my mouth on the run!

Arts and crafts, library fun, and park play…all in a rainy day’s work.

Thanks goodness we got a peak of sun that evening.

Lately he has been trying to come up with recipes and I’ve been so impressed with them!  For lunch this day, he came up with wild rice, dates, sunflower seeds, and turkey. Not bad right?  We had been brainstorming during breakfast and they both agreed lunch had to include dates…so I asked him what else and he pretty much came up with the rest on his own!  Full disclosure: he wanted wild rice and quinoa but I told him to pick one or the other.

I put wild rice in the rice cooker then and there and so the rest came together in no time. Both kids loved it, too.

From the left to the right in a cool 10 minutes thanks to gobble.

Ok, so it actually took longer, like it always has, but I divided up the work this time.  Gobble seems to rely on a microwave for at least one step per recipe – usually steaming something that’s already been par-cooked.  Anyway, I don’t mind since I have a bunch of glass mixing bowls.  So during nap time I just got everything ready to assemble into bowls later that night.

I love that the produce has so clearly been recently picked (locally), because it is fresh and crunchy and usually still has a little dirt on it. Like that cute little romaine!

This was actually a tricky night because we had Pattycakes’ open house from 6-730 (aka when they are eating dinner and then going to bed).  Moreover, it was preceded by his swim class at 5. Soooo, I decided to go unconventional and bring dinner to swim class!

Look at her!  I went to the front desk to pay, leaving them in the play area before his class started. For. Literally. A. Minute.  And in that time she swooped on his goggles and put them on, while doing puzzles. Hilarious.

After his lesson, I got him dried up and dressed and then fed them sweet potatoes, turkey patties (I made a bunch in bulk during nap time – and froze the rest), and green beans. I brought his milk dose too, so once he was good to go, we walked next door to his school.  🙂

He was such a proud big brother strutting in with her hand! And as you can tell, she was on the same level with her excitement.

Which only grew once she found out she could play with all his school stuff AND have a cupcake.

This little one…

Kyle met us there and we stayed until each kid was 90% melted down, and then I got to drive them both home…yay!  Kyle met me back home though, and as soon as we got them in bed, I served us up.

The real reason I have been liking the gooble dishes is the sauces and dressings that go on them. Because obviously I could make a Mexican bowl just fine on my own. But the chipotle ranch dressing and cotija cheese takes it over the edge into MEGA yum territory.  And the sauce don’t have fillers and crap that you’d buy in pre-made stuff at the store, so it’s still home-made but just not by me.  I find that to be the most important distinction between gobble and other delivery food prep kits.  The sauces and dressings are already made for you.  So you can cook the protein and chop veggies and all that, but then it gets elevated to fancy pants when you add the sauce.

This was heavenly and I went balls to the wall on it, knowing I wasn’t going to have dessert that night (because we were eating kinda late).  I had chips too, and it was fabulous.

I would eat this 10 times again this next week and if I could buy the chipotle ranch dressing I would get that as well.

Sadly gobble doesn’t post their recipes (just the ingredient list) online.  I wrote them and asked for the recipe though, so we will see if they get back to me.

See, look!?  I just ordered more meals for next week!  (Kyle’s out of town again)

Zucchini bread and moon juice for my breakfast. The vanilla fig fix was SOO insanely sweet I couldn’t even stand it.  I added it to a cup with 4 parts plain almond milk to drown out the pucker inducing sweet situation.  I have a major sweet tooth, so for me to say this is big.  It was very figgy, though, which I appreciated.  But definitely too sweet.

Pancakes and strawberries for the wee ones.

They like using the teeny tiny ones I make as eyes for pancake faces 🙂

Easter prep fail because brown eggs?????  They ended up working ok, but I’ll have to go get white ones before I do it with both kids on Sunday (I did some with V at her school already).

More lazy corners being cut with prepared pizza dough.

Vicolo and Simple Mills because I like both and couldn’t decide which I wanted more.

P has been my nap time cooking buddy so he did the marinara, cheese and topping portion of this meal.

[He didn’t do Kyle’s cow milk pizza]

First time in the side by side seat cart at Target and they were loving every second of it.  I loved this book from the children’s section.  Well done! And speaking of the Supreme Court, when will more of my favorite podcast episodes be returning (if you haven’t heard More Perfect, it’s awesome).

Set my oven to cook these bad boys while we were gone at t-ball practice….and came home to a really good smelling casa.

This meal was also Pacman’s idea.  Did I already mention that?  He wanted bell peppers and day cheese.  And next time he said mushrooms and pepperoni.  I think pizza night could be a regular thing because of what a hit it is.  How typical of us.  Family pizza night.

My portion.  Round one.

I saved a few slices for lunch leftovers.

Yes!  Recommend.  Yes.

Waiting room…

Turns out he has 20/20 and all is fine.  Phew!  Not that there’s anything wrong with glasses, but it’s still hard to hear about ways your child isn’t 100% healthy…

He was so interested in every different tool and machine, and the MD was patient and awesome and answered every question and talked with him forever.  He was quite smitten with my little guy and appreciated how well behaved he was.  Silver lining to OIT?  P is a champ with medical staff and procedures.

I had this waiting for us at home, which P helped conceptualize and cook. He actually came up with most of the dish.  I had bought sausage at the store, which he knew, so he requested that in a meal.  So then I asked what else we should put it with.  He said “quinoa and lettuce, maybe kale?” so I said done and done.  Looks like he’s caught on to my lazy formula of green + grain + protein.  It was dreary and rainy all morning so this was my quickie back up to farmer’s market.  When will the weather finally get warm!  It was in the 40s and rainy AGAIN for most of this week.  Boo!  Hopefully Easter will be nice because I think the Easter Bunny has plans for an egg hunt  😉