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In transit

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As planned, I boarded the 11 am bus today fully armed with a special mom-prepared lunch. Here it is pre-assembly last night:

turkey salad, 1/4 avocado, toasted whole wheat pita

turkey salad, 1/4 avocado, toasted whole wheat pita

And professionally arranged on a plate because I didn’t think the bus would have the right ambience (and because I would have felt silly taking 20 pictures of my sandwich in front of the little old lady sitting next to me):

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I held off on breaking into it as long as possible (a whole hour and 20 minutes!) because I was worried about the onion causing smell drama on the bus. But hunger won out at 12:20, and I daintily opened the baggie . . . and inhaled the sandwich in approximately 30 seconds:

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Notice the expertly chopped cabbage throughout (that was my contribution to the meal). Mmmmmmm. On the side, I had some crunchy green beans, a kitchen sink muffin, and a two hour nap (my other great love, after food and babies).

Next stop: Brooklyn!

Last hurrah!

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My inventiveness was back in time for breakfast this morning. I rounded up the last of the grainmeal:

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And the last of the lavender candies:

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And I pitted lots of cherries:

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And made the most deeeeeeelicious Cherry-Lavender Grainmeal:

topped with 1/3 cup Greek yogurt and accompanied by my Nutcracker Sweet tea

topped with 1/3 cup Greek yogurt and accompanied by my Nutcracker Sweet tea

If you look closely, you can actually see the pool of melty lavender syrup:
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And with that, it was time to begin the journey back to regular life! (Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy does my vacation have to end????)

Midnight snack

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My mom was on a roll last night with the cooking. She couldn’t stop (now you see where I get it). After dinner, she started throwing together ingredients for a grapenut pudding recipe she recently discovered.

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The recipe supposedly comes from Paula Deen, but I couldn’t find it anywhere online. As usual (and as is necessary when you’re working with a Paula Deen recipe and don’t want to die of a heart attack tomorrow), mom made several adjustments. The recipe called for four cups of milk — mom used two cups of skim and two cups of light eggnog (to finish the carton, yay!). The recipe called for four eggs — mom used two eggs and two egg whites. Finally, the recipe called for one cup of sugar — mom used 1/4 cup of her mixture of erythritol and xylitol because the eggnog already added sugar and also because no one really needs that much sugar anyway.

A crazy chemical reaction sort of thing happened when she added the ‘itols and the vanilla. The whole mixture started bubbling and swirling, almost like that baking soda volcano you made in 3rd grade:

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Finally, after two hours of baking (mom doubled the recipe, so the custard needed twice as much time to set), the pudding was done!

mmm, perfectly golden brown

mmm, perfectly golden brown

look at all that custard!

look at all that custard!

I had to sample some right away:
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And then I scraped all of the “crumbs” from the baking dish and ate them, too. Soooo good. You can bet I packed some to-go containers of this to bring back to NY with me!

Cooked out!

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My cooking energy was almost non-existent today — this week has wiped me out! — so I was happy to let mom be the boss. She spent the afternoon and early evening going through the turkey left from our Hannukah party to divide it into soupable pieces, cat pieces, and fat. Here she is with her fan club looking on:

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I chopped celery (ewwwww), carrots, and onions for the soup:

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The fridge looks so empty now because most of its contents went into the soup, yayyyy! Here’s the huge soup pot, stuffed to the gills:

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And finally, our 10 pm dinner! I only had a little mug of soup because I had eaten my way through a hefty percentage of the carrots, cauliflower, and cabbage as I chopped. That’s a matzoh ball in front — mom found a few in the freezer and threw them in, mmmmmmmm:

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Mom also found some peach pie in the freezer that she made over the summer. While that was heating in the oven, I set us up with a dessert appetizer: the teeeeeeeeny piece of rice pudding I rescued as we left the party last night. My bite:

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You can’t tell from the picture, but the rice pudding is on a little tea bag-sized saucer and accompanied by my baby spoon. For perspective, here it is next to my tea (decaf Earl Grey and a splash of light eggnog):

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And finally, this delicious peach pie! Mom can’t remember what she put in it (as usual), but it tasted perfect and not at all as if it had been in the freezer for the past six months:

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I’ll be heading back to Brooklyn tomorrow morning armed with loads of food (I may not even have to grocery shop this week!) and a mom-made lunch for the bus. Booooo, end of vacation :-(.

Getting to the bottom of it …

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Almost done with the leftovers! Phew, right? Now you’ll be able to sleep tonight.

Here’s my lunch plate with the last of the roasted veggies and latkes (plus two pineapple rings and some sweet potato custard I swiped as we left the party last night):

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And a teeny bit of fruit salad left over from the party, too:

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Did you notice my itty bitty fork? I always eat on the smallest dishes and smallest utensils I can find. It makes the food look bigger and last longer :-).