Pre Kaia’s arrival, Sunday was always the day I did most of the cooking for the week. We’d usually never go anywhere or make plans that day unless it was near home, and I’d focus on food for the week. Then, I’d usually experiment with something new, project-type cooking that would require lots of different ingredients sourced from all over the place, lots of steps, and potentially take hours if not all day. Not much of that type of cooking has happened since she was born, but today almost felt like it. I finally decided that since I saw beef chuck on sale at Whole Foods that I would get to making beef rendang with Auria’s spice blend. I’d had so many rendang packets accumulated, but never got around to making it because I knew that even though she simplified the process by putting all the necessary spices in one pouch, it would still take hours of nursing over the stove and stirring every ten minutes. I decided this was the weekend. I put the oil, water, coconut milk, and spice blend in the Dutch oven. I let it come to a bubble, then added the beef chuck chunks, and then simmered… for FOUR hours. I had to stir it periodically in the beginning, then the last hour, stir every ten minutes, but the result was worth it: it tasted restaurant quality, and it was HOT. I just added some extra sliced makrut lime leaves and salt to the adult portion, and set aside a small bowl for Kaia’s meals this week. I knew it would be good, but I didn’t think that much about HOW good it would be.

On top of the beef rendang, which was already a project, I also made pumpkin spiced mini muffins, quinoa with homemade frozen stock, as well as pessarattu (spiced whole green moong dal pancakes) for the baby, plus white jasmine rice to go with the rendang. That’s five different things in a single day! This was almost like pre-Kaia Sunday cooking, except this time around, I was way more tired. I did all this in between feeding her, pumping, and cleaning. This is really what multi tasking looks like now as a working mom.