The Ten Meal Morning

My last food post was tongue and cheek, then today happened and I just had to continue the thread...

The sign of a good morning is when I've made 10 meals before I walk out the door: 3 breakfasts, 3 lunches and 4 dinners. This morning counted as a great morning. I made breakfast for the girls and I, lunches for the girls and I and put dinner in the crock pot. FYI: Since the Dad is an adult, he doesn't get breakfast or lunch, only dinner. He's a little bitter about my policy, but this is how life is for him. I can only do so much.

Dinner this morning was easy. A little chicken cacciotore in the crock pot: 4 thighs, 4 drumsticks, some tomato sauce, onions, kalamata olives (I know, I didn't have bell peppers or mushrooms) and garlic. Set the thing on low and behold, the traditional italian hunters stew is ready upon my return from work. I carefully set up the crock pot, layering the chicken and the sauce like the recipe described. I adjusted the temperature, plugged the thing in, then packed up the kids, the lunches, the homework, the water because La Nina has PE every Tuesday and headed to work with a hop in my step because I didn't have to worry about dinner tonight.

Tuesdays I almost always use my crock pot. La Nina leaves for dance 45 minutes after I get home from work, so it's really the only way I can feed us all so quickly. Sometimes I use leftovers on Tuesdays, but I find left overs work better in the week when I more frazzled.

At work, I have a standing Tuesday meeting with the same group of people. All of these people happen to be working moms and every single time we get together one of us is getting text messages, phone calls or emails we are sure our male counterparts do not receive. We've gotten questions about homework, the location of dishtowels, the status of babysitters and the reports on vomit when someone's kids has the stomach flu. No one in the room judges the recipient of these messages as at any moment you are likely to receive the next text. Today, it was my turn.

The first message arrived at about 3pm from the Dad: "Is the crock pot supposed to be hot?" I read this and thought...hmmmm...that doesn't sound good. Since I was in a meeting and technically supposed to be paying attention to the topic, not my phone, I answered "in a meeting". A second later, the next message came in: "Major crock pot malfunction. I'll deal with dinner."

With the second text, I was officially no longer listening to the meeting. Why would my stupid crock pot not work? I hope I didn't forget to plug it in again. What can he make in 30 minutes? Should I stop by the store on the way home? Couldn't he have checked it earlier? For crying out loud, what am I going to do with 8 raw pieces of chicken that have been out of the refrigerator for 6 hours? On and on my mind twisted like a limp piece of spaghetti in a strong wind. My great morning was ruined by a silly $30 appliance. How annoying. Depression and defeat set in.

Finally, I noticed there was a pause in the meeting and I looked around the room to find two sets of eyes staring at me like I was supposed to provide input on something, but what I had no idea. So I made up some semi-intelligent statement about doubling timelines and tripling budgets. I'm a project manager. Nine times out of ten, all people want me to tell them is how much it's going to cost and how long it's going to take. Of course, this is all they wanted to know as they carried on with me completely distracted by the disaster at home.

Once I got there, I discovered that my crock pot had indeed died. I guess I should be grateful it didn't happen Saturday night when I was using it for a party. The Dad had pulled a major advanced housekeeping trick in the kitchen and found some leftovers in the freezer. Dinner was saved by some frozen pork, Trader Joe's rice and a bag of broccoli. Thank goodness he was around this afternoon or it would have been canned soup and a couple of stale saltines for the four of us. He didn't gloat despite his success. May be I'll make him breakfast tomorrow.