The Skeptic’s Whole30: Day 2
Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2018
This post is part of a series. For the previous post, click here. For the whole series, click here.
When I woke up I was gripped by this irrational fear that the wrong kind of food would somehow make its way into my mouth without my putting it there. I wonder what that’s about. I mean, I know it’s about fear that I won’t be able to stick to the plan. But I don’t know why I would ever feel as if it’s possible for me to eat involuntarily. I’m afraid of being mindless.
Breakfast was going to be some roasted spaghetti squash with fresh fruit on the side. The kids would eat frozen French toast sticks, also with fresh fruit. They were still on school vacation, but my husband was back to work.
Today would present my first lifestyle challenge of the Whole30: I wanted to take the kids out all day, which would mean I’d have to eat lunch away from the house. I had hoped to eat the leftover Chicken Zoodle Pho for lunch, but how was I going to take it with me? I couldn’t get lunch at a restaurant, the way I would normally do in this situation.
We were going to New York City to see the Joy Brown sculptures. Last summer, these giant bronze sculptures had been installed up and down Broadway on the west side of Manhattan from 72nd to 166th Streets, and I had fallen in love the instant I saw one. They are semi-abstract human figures, big and round and cuddly with serene expressions on their minimal faces. The first one I saw was at 96th and Broadway, called “One Holding Small One.” It was a large one of these figures, seated, cradling a little one, like a toddler, in its arms. I was just about to type “in her arms.” It was so redolent of the love of motherhood. My heart felt like it would burst with joy whenever I saw it.
These sculptures were meant for people to climb on and sit on. They were public art, designed to be interacted with. They were so — well, I hesitate to use the word cute to describe thousand-pound pieces of art — but let’s say, lovable, that I knew my kids would love them. I wanted to take them for an art crawl to see all of them, stopping to eat and meander around along the way.
I had planned this outing ever since last summer, but never got around to taking the kids. Now the installation was finally going to be taken down, this Thursday. It was my last chance. And, what luck, the kids had a mini-break this week, and it was supposed to be unseasonably warm. So today would be a fine day to go see the sculptures.
I thought, maybe I could bring a thermos. Would that really work? Would a thermos keep the soup hot enough for it to be appetizing? Did I even have a thermos? I hadn’t used one since I was a 7-year-old at day camp. In 1980. Most of my experiences with trying to keep food at a certain temperature while not at home had been failures.
Well, I guess I had a thermos. One evening in 2012, when Big Kid was less than 2 and Little Kid wasn’t yet born, my husband and Big Kid and I stopped off at Target on the way to somewhere else, to do a little errand, and I got to run into Target while my husband waited with Big Kid in the car. As a first-time mom of a young toddler, I was all about seizing any opportunity I could find to be by myself and do something for myself, even just for a few minutes. So inside Target, I zipped around the store just to see if there was anything else I wanted aside from what I was really there for.
I spied a table of heavily discounted items from the Tory Burch for Target collaboration. Wow, they were pretty. And cheap! Did I really need a Tory Burch insulated neoprene lunchbox or a Tory Burch thermos? Well, for $2 each, I could probably find a use for them.
The lunchbox soon became a carrying case for Big Kid’s superhero action figures, and proved indispensable whenever we went on a trip. The thermos stayed in a kitchen cabinet.
Until now! But was a cheap piece of crap from Target really going to keep my soup hot for 3 or 4 hours? Yesterday evening, my husband suggested I fill it with hot water and then see in a few hours if the water was still hot. It took me a few minutes to find the thermos, as I wasn’t even sure which cabinet I had it stashed in. I filled it with hot water. Three hours later, the water was still hot. This morning, it was STILL hot.
I was free! We could do our art crawl!
Meanwhile, the spaghetti squash turned out OK. It was really too bland unless you sprinkled it with a lot of salt. To my surprise, the kids both wanted to try it, and Big Kid loved it. “We should have this for dinner sometime,” he said. Well, he was in luck — I planned to make Pork-Apple Meatball Noodle Bowls later in the week, which required spaghetti squash. There was a lot of squash left over, so I put it in the fridge to use in that recipe.
We got ready to go, which meant I microwaved the soup, poured it into the thermos, and put the thermos along with a bowl and soup spoon into a soft cooler. I stuck Little Kid’s sippy cup into one of the pockets, in case he needed it, and we were off.
Damn, the art crawl was intense. It was fun, and joyful, and I got plenty of adorable photos of my kids interacting with the sculptures. We started at 166th Street, where we parked at a 2-hour meter, then walked to the sculpture at 157th, took a bus to the one on 148th, and got on the subway to 117th.
At 148th the kids were thirsty so we went into a sushi place that happened to be there and I bought them each a passion-fruit juice to go. I had one sip of the juice — there’s probably sugar added, but I figured, one sip, and I was so thirsty, so not a huge deal. There is a Shake Shack near 117th where we stopped for lunch (yes, another Shake Shack — I swear, we don’t ordinarily eat there every other day). I got food for them and seltzer for myself. We sat down at a table and I poured myself my soup. It was still STEAMING hot. And delicious. So delicious that I didn’t even feel any craving for the fries in front of me.
Then we subwayed back to 166th to retrieve the car, and drove further downtown to see the sculptures at 103rd, 96th, 79th, and 72nd, with a yogurt snack for the kids in the middle. The whole art crawl, including lunch, took about five hours.
Little Kid is currently in this vexing stage where he really needs a daytime nap, but can’t get to sleep at night if he has one, and often doesn’t take one. When he doesn’t nap, he usually gets crazy and impulsive around 3pm and it just escalates until he crashes. By 5pm, he was pretty out of control, insisting on walking backwards as we crossed the street and running away from me suddenly and stuff like that. He still wanted to see all of the sculptures, though. By the time we were done, we were all exhausted. They got to nap in the car.
I was also starving. And the last thing I wanted to do when I got home was to cook an elaborate dinner that involved handling raw meat and chopping lots of vegetables, but that was the only option open to me. So I powered through. I made the Fajita Beef Skillet, which is relatively tame as regards chopping and raw-meat-handling — you only have to chop an onion, pepper, and garlic, and you can put the entire block of ground beef in the skillet, straight from the package, and the rest is easy stuff like spices and lime juice.
Then I served it to myself and the kids, and they wouldn’t eat it.
“That looks disgusting,” Big Kid said, as I chowed down. It tasted great. And I was starving.
Little Kid ate the avocado slices that topped his portion, but wouldn’t touch the rest. Big Kid left the room and wouldn’t come back. I knew he would like it if he would just taste it — he loves hamburgers, and this was the same basic idea — but I could tell his problem was with the presentation. Kids don’t like plates full of mush with pieces of different things in it.
I told him, “It’s just like a taco, but without the tortilla. Would you like to eat it as a taco? Would you just try that?” I asked. To my surprise, he went for it! Just because I can’t eat tortillas doesn’t mean they can’t. He ate one whole taco with a healthy amount of filling. The most I could get Little Kid to do was eat one tortilla with avocado in it. But I was learning what I would have to do to get the kids through this month.
My mom gave me a “Tricerataco” taco holder, shaped like a triceratops. I’ll need to try putting that in play, to increase the kid-friendly factor, next time.
