fftf: what we *really* eat, part 1
a real life food diary from my little family
Hello friends!
It feels like SPRING in Pittsburgh this week(!), so everything feels a little brighter, despite our crazy world. Woof, it was a rough winter; the sun and the sprouting flowers are such a welcome sight.
With some extra pep in my step today, I am very excited to share this week’s post! It’s a fun one I’ve been meaning to write for a while…. a day in the life of what my little family eats over a 4-day period. It got really long because I added a lot of context, so I am breaking it into two parts.
I shamelessly copied this idea from one of my favorite features of another newsletter - The Green Spoon - which periodically features these 3-day-food diaries from various food writers/friends of the authors - all about how they feed their kids. Some of them are hilarious (like this one). I know I’m not the only one who finds mundanity interesting, so I hope you enjoy!
Just in case you are new here/for context, this food diary covers me and my two daughters, Jazzy (age 2.5) and Amal (9 months), and I also included my husband when he ate with us. On Wednesdays & Thursdays, I have a nanny who comes 9-4pm. Otherwise I am parenting full-time :). Decided to include these two days with not-that-much cooking since this is real life! The next two days will involve a bit more cooking.
Food Diary, the first two days:
Wednesday, March 5th
8am, BREAKFAST:
“Nanny day” mornings, as I think of them, always feel like a rush. I am usually trying to sleep till the latest possible minute (the 9-month old is still nursing usually once/night around sometime between 1:30-3:30am), which usually means we all wake up between 7-8am, and so I start making breakfast around 8am, which may or may not leave enough time for us all to eat and me to pack up my stuff to get out the door by like 9:15am.
On this particular day, I ambitiously decide to make a new breakfast that I have never made before. The nanny texts me that she has a situation with her kid and is running late. On this day I am actually happy at this news, for more time to make this new breakfast, haha.
One of my favorite local farmers writes beautiful email updates and sometimes shares simple veggie-based recipes. I had recently mentally flagged one: pancakes made from just mashed sweet potato and egg, so I decide to try that this morning. I quickly mash up the sweet potato (which I had already roasted whole the other day and put in the fridge), add one spoon of cottage cheese for extra protein, and add a few eggs. The batter consistency seems good! I’m excited to see how these turn out!
I cook up a few pancakes and am SUPER impressed - they fluff up and get gorgeously crispy just like regular pancakes! Upon tasting, the inside texture is a little disappointing - a bit too crumbly. Flavor-wise, they are ok - not amazing but definitely edible. For the last ~1 cup of batter I add some flour to try to improve the texture, but it doesn’t seem to do much.
Jazzy & Amal eat the pancakes (I get away with them being plain, no sweet toppings); I have a few also, plus a bulletproof coffee (~12oz pour over blended with 2T salted butter and like 1.5 scoops of collagen peptides).
We are low on fresh fruit so I take out frozen blueberries and frozen passionfruit cubes (my latest frozen fruit discovery) to defrost for Jazzy on the counter, for her to eat later with the nanny.
LUNCH: Nanny reports that Jazzy ate most of an apple and more pancakes, and when I get home, I see the remnants of a piece of toast for lunch.
I usually don’t do this, but on this day, instead of going out, I end up staying home, hiding out upstairs for the entirety of the nanny day from 9-4pm. I’m in a weird lazy/tired mood, so it feels kind of good to work on my computer while laying on the bed. One nice thing is that it does work out perfectly for me to nurse Amal - alone in my bed - after both of her naps. This is kind of a treat - to feed her alone while reading my book/just snuggling her - bc normally I have to feed her with Jazzy around, while Jazzy emphatically says: “Amawee. No Feed!” Not sure why she does this but it has become her sometimes-habit.
The nanny leaves at 4pm and I am now starving (having not eaten all day while hiding out upstairs), so I make myself a large snack with Jazzy beside me, hoping she will eat some too. I have some “zippy two-bean salad” (kinda spicy) and a side caesar salad from Brothmonger (local soup shop!) that I bought yesterday. I also eat:
some toasted focaccia from the farmers market that is getting pretty stale
Jazzy’s leftover little bits of toast/old pancake
Jazzy and I make her some passionfruit chia pudding which includes: the now-liquid passionfruit squares, our favorite plain sheep’s yogurt, chia seeds, a few squeezes of date syrup and a little pink salt. Jazzy eats some defrosted blueberries and the not-yet-gelled chia pudding and a few bites of focaccia.
DINNER, 6:30pm: We get back later than is ideal from a family walk/playground time, and I am on my own for dinner & bedtime while my husband goes to play soccer1. When on my own in the evenings, I sometimes do a snacky, eat-whatever-we-can-find dinner, which is what happens tonight…
For myself, I warm up:
leftover pot roast I made (has some potatoes in it) and I put some (a-few-days-old) green sauce on top - pretty tasty!
Jazzy eats:
the same passion fruit chia pudding we made earlier
cold leftover oatmeal with the defrosted frozen blueberries added - (the oatmeal had some maple syrup, cinnamon, and collagen powder mixed in)
some bites of my pot roast with green sauce
some “warmed up” some frozen raspberries, ie, frozen raspberries with hot water poured over it to defrost them a bit, lol
Amal eats:
cold leftover oatmeal - (the oatmeal had some collagen, NO maple syrup but frozen raspberries for sweetness, altho I taste it and they did not really sweeten it, which is why maybe the baby is not super into it? just trying to eat up all our food in the fridge!!)
some defrosted wild blueberries
little bits of my pot roast meat which she SCARFS DOWN VORACIOUSLY
Amal starts to get overtired so I quickly clean her up, nurse her and get her to bed with Jazzy tagging along. (Thank goodness, Amal loves to sleep and now LAUNCHES herself into her crib at bedtime). We then come back down to clean up a bit. I am lacking in greens and decide to make myself a quick salad to take up with me to eat while Jazzy plays in the bath. I never usually do this (bring food upstairs) but it seems like a good idea because sometimes after bedtime I am too tired/lazy to make more food for myself, even if I am still hungry. I throw together a quick salad with: some microsprouts I bought at the farmers market that need to be eaten/are going bad, little cucumber slices, oil and my fav vinegar.
I bring it up with us to eat for myself while Jazzy gets a bath, but then Jazzy wants to eat some too, so we end up sitting on the floor outside the bathroom, her on my lap, and she picks at/eats a decent portion of my sprout salad! She doesn’t like/love salad yet, but of course my dream is to turn her into a salad lover like me, so I don’t mind that this is prolonging bedtime, nor do I mind (mostly) that she is now stealing my salad.
Thursday, March 6th:
7:30am, BREAKFAST:
I am up and at ‘em today so I have time to make “special pancake,” ie, a Dutch baby, which, as I’ve mentioned, is one of our favorite breakfasts. It takes ~20 minutes to bake, so while we wait, I toast a piece of going-stale focaccia from the farmers market, topped with cream cheese and smoked salmon. This is supposed to be for me, but Jazzy co-opts it, so I make us another one.
When it comes out of the oven, Jazzy eats like half a piece of special pancake with maple syrup. She sees in the fridge and then insists on getting out the passion fruit chia pudding from the night before. She mostly stirs it, but took maybe a few bites while waiting for other food.
Amal eats little bits of special pancake and smoked salmon.
After my focaccia with cream cheese and smoked salmon, I also eat a few pieces of dutch baby (I still love it so much), plus another bulletproof coffee (same as yesterday, pour over with like 2T butter and a scoop or two of collagen, blended with immersion blender).
It was a good morning because I actually had enough time to sit at the table with the girls and eat my food and drink my coffee and the nanny arrived when I was just about done eating.
I see Jazzy’s leftover salmon focaccia and hope that my husband will eat it when he comes down on his way to work, heehee. Can you tell I hate food waste?! 🙈
A quick aside - one of my big wins for this year is that I have decided on a set schedule/plan for my nanny days. I am currently protecting these two days - ie, not using it for errands or social time. I now aim to workout first thing, followed by spending the day working on my computer at my favorite coffee shop, KLVN. This saves me from wondering what to do with this time, or trying to figure out a new place to go with questionable wifi, seating, etc. During my computer time, I work on this newsletter and one other important project I am working on, or sometimes just catch up on other personal computer tasks. With my workout schedule, I try to keep it SET: on Wednesdays I go for a hike or run in my favorite park. On Thursdays I go to 9:30am yoga. I am very lucky that I happen to live in quick walking distance to my favorite yoga studio.
On this day, for the first time in ~3 years, I get to yoga at 9:32am, and the door is already locked (eek)! I am a little annoyed at myself, but instead decide to be impressed that this has never happened before now, since I always feel like I will be late for yoga. But, I still have to come up with a new plan for the day.
My husband has just joined a new coworking space, also nearby, so I have a brilliant idea to see if I can go be his guest for the day. This will help me make it to the next class - 12pm yoga. I quickly call him and he says yes, he can have two guests per month. Win!
Another aside: I haven’t worked at a coworking space since like, late 2019/early 2020, pre-pandemic, when I had just joined WeWork in SF. Being in one is really taking me back to that time period! I was single, biking around to check out all the many (then hopping!) WeWork offices in SF, and one of my purposes of joining was just to be near more people, with the secret hope that maybe I would meet someone at a WeWork! Always amazed at how so much can change in a mere 5 years.
My husband and I are never alone together out in public without our kids, unless we’re on a date, so all the sudden this day feels a little extra fun & special, kinda like a date even though we are working!
…that is until he asks me if I can go grab him some food on my way back from 12pm yoga. I’m like: NO! Not my duty today!! (Also there’s nowhere good that’s super close.) But I decide to give him a break since he is literally like 3 days in to going to this working space, and I remember how long it took me to get in the habit of packing myself a lunch/snack to take with me on nanny days. So I decide to generously share my own snack with him, and enjoy the novelty of preparing a not-sad-desk lunch for us in the working space shared kitchen, on this quasi-working-date.
LUNCH:
Here’s our (mostly?) not-sad-desk-lunch: leftover Brothmonger bean salad (to which I added black beans I made from dry) mixed up with half an avocado each, and my extra salad dressing from the night before, which was a mix of leftover green sauce, goat cheese, and extra oil/vinegar. Split an apple too.
I am not sure what the girls ate with the nanny today. Later in the fridge I find a seemingly untouched tiny bowl of yogurt and granola.
When I get home around 4pm, Jazzy insists on defrosting more passionfruit and making more chia pudding with “yittle seeds” (little seeds, ie, chia seeds). She can’t wait so we just dump the chia seeds right onto the frozen passionfruit squares and try to mix it up. She ends up eating about half of this between now/through dinner.
DINNER:
Our go-to fast protein, my husband grills flat iron steaks (defrosted quickly from the freezer, we get our beef from a local farm), topped before grilling with our obsession: steak masala from Diaspora Co. We also eat coconut soup from Brothmonger.
Jazzy, like her parents, also loves steak, so she eats some with us. Depending on the night, she may scarf it down, or just take a few bites. Tonight was somewhere in the middle of that range. She eats maybe a few bites of soup.
I feed the baby soft chickpeas, carrots, and spinach picked out of the soup, and some tiny bites of steak which I pre-chew myself and then give to her - kind of like a baby bird, LOL. This may sound very weird/gross, but, like, birds do it right?! Isn’t iron super important for babies?
I put the baby down to bed and decide to take a little time to make the three of us a fun fruit dessert. Jazzy is very interested in “helping” me, standing in the tower while I remove the skin and cut up a whole papaya (saving a tiny bit in the fridge to give the baby tomorrow), sprinkling it with pink salt and a lot of lime juice. Note: papaya is SO much bettter this way!
The three of us sit down together and devour this plate:
That was a long-winded diary for a regular Wednesday & Thursday. Stay tuned for the next two days of our eating diary! I hope you enjoyed!
Also (putting this here so I do it!), I am working on my personal guide to baby-feeding - not that I’m an expert, but just some notes on what I have done that works, and my favorite helpful-stuff-for-baby-feeding that you’ll still want in your kitchen when the baby phase is over. Trying to get this done in the next couple weeks bc I have SO many friends who are about to start feeding their babies. Making this for you! xoxo
Love,
Jess
My husband and I try to say “yes” to each other when we each ask to go out alone in the evenings - dinner/bedtime with both is manageable but not easy yet, and possible as long as there’s some food ready in the fridge.
I love Bon Appetit’s The Receipt which is a week in the life food diary. Love yours and subscribed to Green Spoon too!