What day is it – By Jennifer

Ok, I will be honest, I have lost track of how many days that I have been in Quarantine! I have baked, cooked, scrubbed and more! I have a twelve-year-old boy that lives in my house. He is not quite a teenager, but certainly eats like one. I cannot stop what I am doing every time he is hungry, so I have taken to leaving dishes out for him like he is a puppy. Today, I had to actually call into a conference call at 9:30am. I thought it was going to be a ZOOM, so this mom, got up, took a shower (this happens everyday, but not usually before noon!) and anticipated that this kid was going to wake up and be hungry and I was going to be on this call and not be able to attend to him. I made more of these pancake muffins with chocolate chips and sprinkles. I also had some protein pancake mix on hand from Aldi, which the kids tend not to like, but I made breakfast sausage and snuck some of those bad boys in there. I finished my call and he had made a decent dent in the muffins (this is the after photo). I had some additional follow-up work, but then it got close to lunch-time. They are getting tired of eating leftovers, so I have taken to reinventing the leftover. Chicken that I made earlier this week is now chicken quesadillas. Hooray for new food! I used to turn leftover chicken soup into chicken pot pie muffins. We are all starting to get restless, but I am learning so much from this! I am brushing up on my Words with Friends skills. I am realizing that I have way more time than I ever realized! TV is now even boring, but I am still loyal to my shows, but have taken to watching them and cooking, working out and more. I have been sneaking in more and more squats and lunges to try and make up for the baked goods that I have been making. I am totally rethinking this being prepared thing. I keep a lot of chicken in my freezer to begin with, as I do not like to bring my kids to the store-they end up costing me 50% more with the “kid tax” as I like to call it. There are only so many times that I can say no before I am ultimately worn down and say, “whatever”. You know you do it-don’t judge. I am totally thinking that my new survival list needs to be 50lbs of flour, 8 dozen eggs, 25lbs of sugar, endless pounds of butter, egg substitute that can be frozen, 50lbs of ground chicken, corn meal ( can I really make my own taco shells???), a plethora of frozen fruits to include citrus, scurvy really is a thing! I am so grateful for the internet! How would I have been able to come up with all these great recipes without it??

I am getting paid during this Quarantine, but at a very small fraction of what I would normally earn during a week, as I am only able to work here and there with what work is available, as my boss is barely working as well. We are trying to not waste food and conserve as we can to limit going to the store. We just went yesterday (and by “we” I mean the hubster who had to go to work anyway and stopped for eggs, milk and tried to get pancake mix) for the first time since Quarantine. The kids are on Spring Break this week, so we set up a tent and the kids have been “camping” in the backyard. It got too cold to sleep out there, so they came in with a bang late night. We are trying to keep them busy, as we really cannot go out anywhere. I have taken my son rollerblading around an empty parking lot. That was a lot of fun! We went hiking around a local lake. It is sort of fun getting back to the basics!

I hope you are all staying sane out there and enjoying this time!