It is important but becoming harder to achieve.
No one tells you that being an adult requires lots of creativity, lots of re-centering yourself, always being on the verge of crying but still doing what is necessary and required, lots of prayer, and trust in yourself to know where to find the magic it requires to not just live for another day, but inspire others to do the same.
Sunday dinner has always been important. My mom always made sure that Sunday dinner was a mainstay in our lives. “A family that eats together stays together,” is something she always says. There are times when life appears more abundant, and sitting around the dinner table doesn’t seem as important, and it would be something that we would do the following week. Now, standing in my own kitchen with my own family, I had to search within myself to conjure up some kitchen magic.
The days before this Sunday were significantly arduous with my husband, son, work, and dog. Everything seemed to be uprooting, changing, ending, everything not lasting, and the money energy not flowing, and everything seemed to be on the fringes, including all our nerves. My husband is stressed at work, a property that we or maybe he should have let go a long time is being forced to give up. His health has never been ok since the last bought with COVID. COVID is such a mystery for long haulers. The dog can’t go to the groomer because his anxiety level is off the chain. His hair was all matted, and it hasn’t been warm enough for me to take him on the balcony of our apartment to give him a haircut. It’s so hard dealing with him, the nipping and bitting. I would pay someone $500 to groom him. My boss at work is MIA, and I don’t really know what is going on. My son is being a teenager, and he is a great kid, but he seems stuck. After he tore his ACL, the path that he had dreamed for himself seemed not to be a straight one, but more a climb up a mountain, and I don’t think he sure he could climb it. To be honest, I’m not sure if I parented enough and gave him better tools for him to achieve this climb. Everything was coming to a head. My husband and I are arguing over money, and us questioning our son about his future has left him thinking he doesn’t care for us because we want to help him be unstuck. So he is barely talking to us, apart from good morning, good night, and thank you. I’m not sure if it was the new month of May, the lunar eclipse, the full moon in Scorpio, or the portal of the fifth month, the fifth day, all happening on a Friday.
Rent was paid, the laundry was done, and the internet was paid, well, kind of. All other bills would have to wait for the next paycheck, and the cycle was exhausting. So there I stood in the kitchen, looking into the refrigerator that was more on the side of half-empty, with cupboards open behind me, looking back and forth, assessing the ingredients I did have and how I would make a meal that would ground us, allow us to feel full, and sustain an extra meal for leftovers and food to take to work and school because there was no extra money to buy lunch at work.
I settled on a bag of elbows and checked how much cheese I had so I could make baked mac and cheese. I had one bag of shredded cheddar, one of mozzarella, one parmesan, and a half tub of ricotta. There was a half container of heavy cream and a little bit of milk in the milk container. No breadcrumbs, so I pulled the drawer in the refrigerator where all the extra ketchup packets and soy sauce lived, and I found a mini bag of croutons from a bag salad that went unused. I opened the freezer to see what protein I could find: a piece of chicken breast, one steak, and a really frozen hamburger patty. I had carbs, protein, but I needed some vegetables. I had a frozen bag of brussels sprouts and I found two sweet potatoes — one was not good and the other was. I had a few yellow onions and about five sweet peppers, two stalks of green onions, five cloves of garlic, and some parsley. I had some cooked lentils I had made a few days prior and figured I would put it to work. I found one cucumber and a half bag of salad. The fridge looked even more empty now. Inflation is making grocery shopping hard; you have to scale back on the quantity of items so as to make the food budget. We are both working at the so-called good job. How is this making sense to people who are not working a good job? If this is not making sense to me, how can it make sense to them?
I washed everything and cut up everything, mise en place, ready to create magic. I butterflied the chicken breast into two pieces and sliced the steak thinly on the bias. I put salted water to boil for the pasta and placed the cubed sweet potato to boil in another pot. I heated both frying pans as I decided to pan-fry the chicken in some browned butter with garlic. For the sliced steak, I started off like I was going to do a New York-style steak: I heated the pan and sprinkled some salt into it. I had the sliced steak on a paper towel to remove the excess blood. When the pan started to smoke, I placed the sliced steak in the pan and waited for the sizzle. I wanted a slight crust on the sliced steak. I flipped it to brown the other side and added a few pieces of garlic and a knob of unsalted butter. I removed the steak from the pan and set it aside. I tossed in the sliced onions and let them melt down a bit and added the sliced red peppers. I deglazed the pan with some red cooking wine. As the alcohol cooked away, I added a bit of chicken stock and a little more butter. I tossed until the sauce was creamy, and I added the steak back, tossed in a few pieces of green onion and some parsley, and removed it from the heat and set it aside.
I strained the pasta and set it aside. I drained the sweet potatoes and set them aside. I preheated the oven and set the temperature to 425. I prepared a baking sheet and a separate bowl. I tossed the Brussels sprouts with salt, some red pepper flakes, olive oil, balsamic vinaigrette, and garlic powder. Then, I added the al dente sweet potatoes to the Brussels sprouts until they were all well coated. I placed them on the baking sheet and put them in the oven to roast. In another pan, I melted some butter and added minced half an onion. As it became fragrant, I added the little milk I had and half a bag of cheddar, a quarter bag of mozzarella, and the half container of ricotta. I added the half container of heavy cream and mixed it until it was saucy. I added some cayenne pepper for a little heat. Then, I tossed in the elbow macaroni until all the pieces were coated. In a prepared baking pan, I sprinkled some cheddar cheese at the bottom and spooned in half the pasta. I sprinkled in some more cheddar and spooned in the rest of the pasta. I crushed the croutons and sprinkled them on top of the pasta. Then, I added the rest of the cheddar cheese and the parmesan cheese on top and placed it in the oven. When it came out of the oven the crust was brown and lovely.
When I was finished cooking and felt a bit accomplished, the dog, in his fresh haircut from the day before, stood in the threshold of the kitchen in anticipation of being fed from the table. My son appeared, and so did my husband, and I plated the food as they set the table. We said grace and sat in silence for a few minutes as the warm food filled our souls. I could see everyone’s shoulders relax as our troubles from the past week melted away. I could see the light return to their eyes, and the dog was happy from the pieces of steak and chicken he received. We decided to go for a walk after dinner and sat on the bench for a bit before retiring inside to clean the kitchen, take out the garbage, iron clothes for the next day, and wind down for the week ahead. Feeling full and steady from the magic of Sunday dinner.
