cake for breakfast vol. 18

It’s September, the kids are back at school as of yesterday, and I can’t see any temperatures above 25°C forecast in my app, so I am feeling gooooood. I had been kind of dreading the school summer vacation, but in the end it was pretty ok - we were fortunate to spend quite a bit of time away, and somehow managed to get through the weeks at home without too much struggle. That said, I am very glad that we all get to spend some hours of our days apart from each other again now, and that we can get stuck back into the routine afforded by school.

If anyone was paying attention, you may have noticed that I didn’t publish cake for breakfast or the SAD Girl’s Guide to Summer last month. I did try to publish a post from the app while I was on vacation (I didn’t have my laptop with me), but after I closed the app and came back to it, it had disappeared. When I reached out to Substack’s AI chat feature, it told me that sometimes the app glitches and doesn’t save, and it doesn’t sync with the desktop version??!! Come on, do better

Substack

!! So then I was basically pissed off with Substack and also feeling like 100% of my energy had to go into staying sane with kids home 24/7¹, so I didn’t post.

petits plaisirs

I have always thought of myself as a “words of affirmation” kinda girl, but I recently had the realisation that I actually much prefer “acts of service”. Perhaps it’s because, as a mum, I am constantly doing things for other people (or at least trying to - see the next section), so when people do things for me, it feels pretty luxurious. I mentioned this to my husband recently, and let him make me a few cups of tea, which is something I never usually allow because non-Brits don’t know how to make tea. But alas, he actually made some really drinkable ones! That I didn’t have to make myself! Although a cup of tea that I didn’t make myself very rarely tastes as good as one that I did (my mum can make a good one except that she uses half fat milk???), having somebody bring me a cup of tea is definitely a plaisir, so I should be more willing to loosen the reigns on that.

thoughts

There is much talk about how busy mums are, but I’ve come to realise that what I find hardest is not the busyness, but the enforced… sitting down, for much of the day, especially with babies and toddlers. The days when I feel like I am going to absolutely lose my mind are not the ones when I am rushed off my feet, but the ones when it feels like I can’t get a single task done because I’m constantly interrupted/my skirt is being yanked on. My 4y/o son captured this candid shot of me and the toddler earlier today, and I think my expression says it all…

Note the birthday cards from January and April birthdays still up on the shelf, as well as a Lego snowman, and two plastic dinosaurs next to me on the sofa.

I’m sure a day will come when I will miss having a child who wants nothing but to snuggle me on the sofa, and I can enjoy it in small doses. But I believe what preceded this shot was that I was trying to cook dinner, and the toddler was trying to play with pans in a cupboard that was behind my legs, and when I moved, the door opened much more suddenly than he was expecting and bonked him in the face, meaning I had to interrupt dinner making to sit on the sofa and soothe him for five or ten minutes before getting back to it.

These moments sound comic when you recount them to others, but they can be pretty maddening at the time. It’s not the fact that I have to make dinner (or whatever other task), it’s the fact that I have to make dinner yet I can’t do it without multiple interruptions. I haven’t yet mastered the whole “facing frustrations with grace” thing.

la vie en france

My daughter started école élémentaire yesterday, which I won’t insult your intelligence by translating. In France, most schools require a cartable for elementary students, which is a specific type of rectangular, boxy backpack. I’m not entirely sure what the rationale is, and some little kids look pretty much ready to topple over under these fairly large bags. In any case, they are distinctively French and generally quite classy looking, and my daughter has been very excited to get one. We spent a pretty penny on it, but they are very ergonomically designed and well made, so hopefully it will last her throughout elementary (she’s been warned that if she ruins this one, it will be replaced with a boring navy blue one, which is a horrifying prospect to her).

Any guesses for her favourite colour? I had to talk her out of wearing an ankle length pink dress with her new sparkly pink sneakers…

(This article about the distinctive Japanese backpack, the randoseru, was an interesting point of comparison, but cartables are available for all budgets whereas it sounds a randoseru could require a second mortgage…)

what’s cooking

I made this orecchiette salad with halloumi croutons a few weeks ago and it was so good, so much better than it sounds. Just so tasty and fresh and satisfying. I used ditalini instead or orecchiette and although I can’t say for sure since I haven’t compared, I actually think it worked better as orecchiette tends to cook a bit unevenly and I think a salad would be less forgiving of that than a hot pasta dish.

If you can’t find halloumi, the comments suggest various other grillable cheeses that could work. I would also possibly suggest using parsley instead of cilantro - I adore cilantro, I’m just not sure it’s the best choice here.

Again, it tastes much better than it sounds/looks. I ate this large portion and could happily have eaten a second serving.

If anyone wants the recipe and can’t get past the paywall, lmk and I can “gift” it to you, as I am a paid NYT subscriber and get a number of articles and recipes to gift each month.

things i thought were good

I can think of literally nothing to go here, so dry has my reading and listening life been lately. I’m about to start reading Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor to read along with

Close Reads HQ

, and I am happy that there’s a new season of Represent on Netflix, which me and my husband find absolutely hysterical (although it definitely would be less so if you don’t live in France, which I realise is most of you). If anyone has read/watched/listened to anything fantastic lately, hmu!

That’s it for today dears, see you in October when it will officially be autumn!

1. Homeschool parents, I salute you. I love my kids like crazy but we definitely all love each other more when we are not with each other alllllll the time.