The Skeptic’s Whole30: Day 25
Thursday, March 15, 2018
This post is part of a series. For the previous post, click here. For the whole series, click here.
Dammit, I still didn’t have anything in the house for breakfast. I was famished after eating a banana, and the kids were home until 10:30 this morning because Big Kid had a pre-scheduled 2-hour delay (for staff development, not for the weather) and our babysitter/housekeeper was coming over from 9 to 10:30, and then we all left at the same time. I took Big Kid to school, and Little Kid and I came home, by which time I was ravenous, and rounded out my “breakfast” with some cashews. Not the greatest breakfast — a banana and cashews — but you can’t win ’em all.
Lunch was the leftover steak with a freshly made hashbrown. The steak was realllllly overdone, since when I reheated it it got even more done. But it was still passable, if not amazing. I was sooo tired, though. I kind of nodded off while Little Kid was watching “Trolls” on TV. He had peanut butter and jelly for lunch, as usual.
This afternoon was going to be a challenge, and I wasn’t looking forward to it. Big Kid had Chemistry club after school, which meant I had to pick him up from school at 4:10. Then he had tae kwon do, for which we had to leave the house at 5. We would get home from that around 6:20, at which point I would have to prepare tonight’s dinner, North African Chicken with Sweet Potato Noodles, and be done eating it by 8, at which time I had a Skype session scheduled with my therapist, who has been ill the past month and so hasn’t been able to see me in person as usual.
After Chemistry club I let the kids play on the playground for a really short time and then took them home and got ready for tae kwon do. I spiralized the sweet potatoes before we left, so that would be one less thing I’d need to do later. Little Kid fell asleep in the car on the way to tae kwon do, since he hadn’t napped at all today, and was cranky and difficult when he woke up. Big Kid realized, when we pulled up to the studio, that he had forgotten his belt, and started refusing to go in. NO WAY was I going to drive home after coming all the way here just because he forgot his belt. He was entirely capable of doing tae kwon do without it. I assured him that he would still be allowed to take class without a belt, and maybe they would even lend him one, but he wouldn’t budge. Finally I had to resort to telling him he couldn’t go to graduation the next day if he didn’t go in to class now. That worked, but I hated having to do it.
During the class I tried to go to the CVS drive-thru to pick up a prescription but the line was too long and we ended up having to go back to pick Big Kid up before I made it to the front of the line. On the way home the two of them were being combative with each other and loud and demanding and I was just about ready to short circuit, but first I had to go make a complicated chicken dish with chicken that I didn’t even know was fully defrosted or not.
The chicken, it turned out, was not fully defrosted. I was able to pull the individual pieces apart from one another, but especially the deepest insides of these boneless breasts were still pretty hard. The recipe said you had to flatten each piece with a mallet before putting them in the skillet, and some of them wouldn’t flatten no matter how hard I hit them. Ultimately I just put them in the skillet anyway, feeling nervous about the fact that they would take longer to cook and I was risking having them be undercooked.
The recipe was one of those delectable Moroccan-ish combinations, cinnamon and dried fruit and paprika and shallots. It smelled amazing as it neared readiness, and ultimately toward the last part of cooking I ended up breaking the pieces of chicken breast into large chunks, so it would be more of a stew than the “piece of chicken with a side dish” thing that it was originally supposed to be.
I did this so I could make sure that even the thickest pieces were getting cooked through, and to make them cook through more quickly if they weren’t yet. I figured, for the kids I’ll have to cut up their chicken anyway so why not do it while the thing was still cooking?
I loved it, and so did Big Kid. We each cleaned our plate. Little Kid was reluctant to try it. However, he was also exhausted. I now have enough leftovers of it that I could probably have it for lunch AND dinner tomorrow if I wanted to. That would be cool because we’ll be at graduation all evening.
I went and had my therapy session, and it was so relaxing just to sit in my room with the door closed and talk to her. Then I put Little Kid to bed — he didn’t take long to fall asleep — and came downstairs to prepare some banana chia pudding to eat for breakfast tomorrow. The sink is full of dishes but I can’t stand the thought of washing them tonight.
Tomorrow: A much-needed chance to relax via eating leftovers.
