Surviving Without Mommy's Cooking!

Over the past two years, I have been away from home numerous times--for several days each time--to attend and/or present at professional conferences for work (refresh your memory). Each time, Susan has been left alone with the girls, responsible for approving their choice of clothes and fixing their hair in the morning, feeding them, getting them to school and to all their extracurricular activities, helping them with homework, and tucking them in each night.

Well, the shoe has been on the other foot the past several days. Susan has been in Mandan since Wednesday morning to participate in the North Dakota Library Association's annual conference. We've been getting nightly telephone calls from her with reports on her days, and it sounds like a productive conference resulting in her professional development and giving her ideas for use in her school library. She's been staying with her brother, who lives in Mandan, and she's been able to see their dad, too, who has spent some time with them.

Meanwhile, Daddy has been solely parenting the children in Dickinson. Thank goodness that they're pretty low-maintenance! They always get themselves ready in the morning and usually prepare their own breakfast, and I take them to school each day anyway, so our morning routine hasn't changed. I have had to pick them up from school at the end of the day, though, whereas they usually walk to the high school where Susan works and wait for her to take them home. I've also done all the driving to and fro church choir, piano lessons, ballet class, and theatre rehearsals, which Susan and I have been trading off.

Furthermore, I've been in charge of the evening meals, which is really Susan's domain. Here's how things have gone in that regard since she's been gone:

Wednesday

This has been Homecoming week at Dickinson State University, and I noted that one scheduled Homecoming activity was a carnival on campus Wednesday from 3:00 to 7:00 P.M. The girls have church choir Wednesdays starting at 6:30, so I figured I'd pick them up from school, take them to the carnival, buy them something for supper at one of the food booths (as we did at the last carnival on campus a couple weeks ago), and then make it on time to choir at church just a few blocks away.

Well, there was no food being served at this carnival--only tons and tons of candy being doled out as prizes for the activities at each booth (including, ironically, the Nursing Students' Association's booth!). A quick survey of the number of booths and the amount of time remaining before church choir told me that there would be no time to go home for supper between the carnival and the trip to church. So I told the girls to eat as much of their hard-won candy as they felt like! (I know: "Bad Dad!") That plus the weekly treat given out at choir* had to tide the girls over until I could make them supper once we got home (about 8:00 P.M.--"Bad Dad!"). However, I made them taco salads full of fresh tomatoes and lettuce and low-fat cheese served on whole wheat tortillas, so I should get props for that.

Thursday

Always a tricky evening: the girls' activities overlap, so one has to be dropped off early and another picked up late in order to get everybody where she needs to go and then back home before the next trip out for another activity. Take Abigail to piano; take Hillary to dance; take Suzanna to piano and pick up Abigail; pick up Suzanna and feed her and Abigail; take Suzanna and Abigail to dance, pick up Hillary, and feed her; pick up Suzanna and Abigail from dance, take them to theatre rehearsal, and remain there with Hillary until they're done and ready to go home and go to bed.

Thanks to Susan's cooking earlier in the week, there were leftovers for me to work with. I found some julienned beef (from fajitas) and some round steak in brown gravy, and I chopped it all, threw it together in a pot, and "doctored" the gravy by adding creamy mushroom and garlic soup, vegetable beef soup, and milk. I reheated some mashed potatoes and served the meat-in-gravy mixture over it. I reheated some steamed broccoli, too, as well as some whole wheat focaccia buns, which I smeared with leftover garlic-herb butter. All that plus leftover fruity Jell-O and glasses of milk equalled supper (dessert was leftover bars*).

Friday

More Homecoming-related plans gone awry. The schedule of DSU activities included a buffet yesterday afternoon/evening, served outdoors at the King Pavilion and "free and open to the public," according to the university's Web-based calendar. So we planned to go to campus to eat. When we got there, however, we found not a trace of food being served outdoors. It was a little chilly and windy, so perhaps they had moved the food indoors and just neglected to post signage to alert people as to where to go for supper. We, therefore, neglected to join them.

Instead, I kept driving in the direction of several restaurants, telling the girls that we would go inside the Student Center to ask about the buffet and that I was just looking for a parking spot. As I got farther and farther away, Suzanna and Abigail caught on that I was headed toward places to dine out, but Hillary took my "just looking for a parking spot" at face value. As we neared several fast food restaurants, I invited the girls to let me know whether we should turn left or right to look for a parking spot. Suzanna directed me right and into the parking lot of McDonald's. She and Abigail joined in my joke, saying that this looked like an excellent parking spot.

Hillary, though, was nearly in tears as we got out and walked up to the entrance to McDonald's. "You mean we have to walk all the way from here?!" Poor little literal child. I saw her point: had I been serious, it would have been a several-mile trek back to campus. As I held open the door to the restaurant, I said, "Well, let's just step in here to get out of the wind and warm up first," but still Hillary was pouting, finding it outrageous that I would propose such a long walk back to campus for the free buffet. Had she had it her way, we would have marched out of McDonald's immediately and gotten back into the vehicle to find a better parking spot closer to campus. Instead, I invited them to select something from the menu, and we ate supper there. It didn't take long for a smile to replace Hillary's frown.

Today

We intended to be at the university's Homecoming parade this morning and then to eat afterward at the free hot dog feed that I saw on the list of the week's Homecoming activities. Well, last night we stayed up late watching TV and eating popcorn, so I let the girls sleep in. By the time Abigail (the last to rise) woke up, the parade had already started, so we hunkered down for a nice brunch at home instead.

Suzanna helped me by making toast (whole wheat with peanut butter and blackberry jelly) and hot chocolate. I chopped some red onion and celery and put it in a pan with some butter and Worcestershire sauce. Then I wilted some fresh spinach into the mixture. I chopped some smoked turkey sausage and some roasted white chicken meat and added it. Then I mixed together six eggs and scrambled them into the concoction. I put shredded Romano cheese on top and melted Swiss cheese slices over that and then served the dish with fresh chopped parsley on it. It was a big hit.

So we did survive Mommy's absence and Daddy's culinary leadership, but we're all looking forward to Susan's return from the conference early this afternoon!

*The kids in children's choir at church sign up to take turns bringing treats for their fellow choir members. Wednesday was the Mobergs' turn to bring treats, by the way, so before she left for the conference, Susan made two pans of bars for me to take on the girls' behalf Wednesday night.