The January issue of Bon Appetit arrived a week or so before Christmas. It was chock full of healthy, light recipes, and in the midst of the sugar and butter glut, each page was like a breath of fresh air. Most of the recipes, however, were decadent in their over-the-top expensive ingredients and complicated procedures. Green smoothie with almond butter and flaxseed oil and agave syrup and matcha and—? It was again too much, just in the other direction.

Still, I’m pretty good at hacking away at the fru-fru fluff and getting down to the heart of the matter. Or the heart of the recipe, as it were. So when my eyes lighted on a 5-Grain Porridge with Bee Pollen, Apples, and Coconut, I skipped right over the bee pollen part (because yeah right) and headed for the freezers to take stock of my Weird Grain Collection. I didn’t have all the grains, but the headnote was generous about my inadequacies. “Use what you’ve got—just bump up the quantity,” they said. So I did, and the porridge was lovely.

The topping, the apples and coconut, while obviously rather irrelevant, did sound interesting. Plus, I had some softening apples on the windowsill and some large-flake, toasted and sweetened snacking coconut in the pantry. It was worth a shot.

And it was worth a shot. The sauteed apples, cinnamon, and coconut were so delicious that they pretty much defeated the purpose of the porridge. I mean, isn’t porridge all about eating healthy, sparingly, lightly? Because here I was fighting off urges to pig, gorge, stuff myself. The situation seemed rather counterproductive. And positively delightful.

PS. My husband abhors oatmeal, steel cut oats, polenta, etc. Yesterday morning I coaxed him into eating a bowlful of this porridge. While eating, he accidentally made mm-mmm noises. We were both startled.

PPS. And just as I finished typing that last paragraph, my husband went to the kitchen to fix his morning bowl of granola and said, “I’m surprised you didn’t make me that porridge this morning. It was pretty good. It filled me up till 2 o’clock. Not that you give a rat’s heinie.” (Because I am typing this and ignoring him.) “For a bowl of oatmeal, it was all right. It has the John Murch seal of approval.”

5-Grain Porridge with Apples
Adapted from the January 2015 issue of Bon Appetit.

For my first round, I didn’t have quinoa, amaranth, or wheat bran, so I added oat bran and steel cut oats. I like the idea of a wide variety of grains, though, so I may actually go out and buy some amaranth and quinoa before I make my next pot of porridge.

This recipe makes a large amount of porridge and only enough apple-coconut topping for about two servings. Either increase the amount of topping, or just make more when you need it (I’ve been doing the latter).

Update: leftover porridge is marvelous when used in place of the cooked cracked wheat in these pancakes.

for the porridge: 
½ cup each brown rice and quinoa
¼ cup each amaranth, millet, and wheat bran
¾ teaspoon salt
6 cups water

Combine all ingredients in a saucepan. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium low and simmer, partially covered, for 30-50 minutes, stirring frequently. (They say it takes 40-50 minutes, but mine was done at the 30-minute mark.)

for the apples: 
small dollop of coconut oil
1 tart-sweet apple, peeled, cored, and cut into chunks
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ cup coconut flakes
brown sugar
milk

Melt the coconut oil in a skillet and add the apple chunks and cinnamon. Stir once and then let the apples cook, undisturbed. You want them to get caramelized, not mushy. Once they are brown on one side, give them a stir and let them cook on the other side.

to serve:
Spoon some porridge into a bowl. Add half of the apples and coconut, and a spoonful of brown sugar. Top with cold milk.

This same time, years previous: constant motion, the quotidian (1.2.12), not a true confession, lentil sausage soup, baguettes, loose ends, of an evening (and a morning), cranberry sauce, and when cars dance.

I was grumpy about Christmas this year. I’m not exactly sure why. It just felt too much, I guess.

Too much work.
Too much energy.
Too much time.
Too much money.
Too much sugar.
Too much,
Too much,
Too much.

I resent being coerced into feeling and doing, and this Christmas Thing is a big bossy beast. All the hoopla feels contrived. There’s the tree and the colored sugar, the stockings, the special meats and cheeses, the candles and lights, the gifts, the ceremonies, blah, blah, blah, BLAH. Everything is expected. We are expected to prepare. We are expected to wait. We are expected to gather. We are expected to be joyful.

Quite frankly, expectation isn’t much fun. Expectation is just a bunch of intense hopefulness for a whole lot of days, one euphoric moment (if we’re lucky), and then, inevitably, a lot of disappointment, otherwise known as “coming back down to earth.” And then there’s the recuperation. Actually, the recuperation—a book, a sofa, and a fire for hours on end—is pretty sweet. The crashing, irritable children, not so much.

Yet what other option do we have but to prepare, hope, and expect? No one wants to be a scrooge. And if we want things to be special, we surely have to work for it. This year, though, it felt more like the demand to make Christmas special came from the outside and not from in me. And quite frankly (again), at this point, if it weren’t for the childers, I’d be ditching a whole lot of traditions in favor of Taking It Easy.

Back to the “preparing for the special” part. Compare Sundays to Christmas for a sec. Both require preparation, expectation, and then a few hours of smooth sailing (hopefully). But while Sundays are ordinary and consistent enough to recharge my batteries (and to make it through to the next week if one goes awry), Christmas in all its once-a-year glory feels pressurized and daunting. Sure, there are moments of sweet fun scattered about, but in comparison to all the preparation, expectation, waiting, and sugar sugar sugar, the few moments of ho-ho-ho thrills do not measure up.

At least not this year. This year all the work felt like a drudge. And the special moments were too sticky sweet. They made me feel sickish.

Sometimes I am all puffy-chested proud that we have succeeded in minimizing the holidays as much as we have. No gifts, no big day-of gatherings, no parties to host, etc. Just a tree, a muted Christmas eve service, a supper of cheese and crackers, stockings in the morning, a new game to play together, a ham.

But other times—this year, for example—these few traditions feel totally over-the-top. Twenty-nine freaking dollars for a tree. All that money and time spent on finding junk, literal junk, for the stockings. The smallest ham I can find for only—ONLY—twenty-five dollars. The crick in my neck from icing pieces of baked dough. The money spent shopping for fancy chocolates and then melting them down and turning them into other candy when it’d actually be a whole heck of a lot simpler (and quite possibly even tastier) if I’d just buy the candy already made. You know what? Our annual donut party that feeds dozens is easier and cheaper than our down-home, “simple” Christmas.

One thing I didn’t do this year: hand out tins of candy to our neighbors. I bought the tins and I made the candy, but then I didn’t hand anything out. After three batches of chocolate peanut butter fudge, I couldn’t stand another bite of the stuff or inflict it on anyone else. The empty tins are on the fridge, and the buckets of candy are sitting up there, too. But now that I’ve decided to scratch that gift-giving event (and most likely chuck the candy), I’m awash in glorious relief. One less thing to do, yessss.

Since we’d be having ham at the extended family gathering on the 26th, we forewent our traditional ham (I returned the twenty-five dollar hunk of pig) in favor of pizza.

Except then my husband and older daughter got sick so we didn’t have pizza either. We mostly just ate candy and cookies and pistachios and popcorn. It was kinda gross.

We did have lots of green smoothies, thanks to my Brilliant Mama Move: stocking up on fresh spinach and bananas.

The best part of Christmas was the family gathering in Pennsylvania. We didn’t know if we’d all make it, what with being sick and all. But we did (except we skipped the visit to the great grandparents—we didn’t want to risk passing our delightful germ to them) and it was loads of fun.

It wasn’t fun because it was Christmas, mind you, but because we got to hang out together. It’s just as much fun when we gather in the summer.

This year we gave our kids their first Christmas gifts ever. (Well, our older son got gifts his first two Christmases, but those don’t count.) Each kid got one present. They didn’t know about this ahead of time and were pleasantly surprised. One kid was thrilled. The gifts were nice but not necessary. Next year it will probably feel necessary. Expectations, you know.

But guess what: Christmas is what I make it.

I am NOT some hapless victim, beaten and bullied by our capitalist, consummeristic culture.


I am in charge. ROAR.

Probably, my disgruntlement is simply a healthy indicator that it’s time to reevaluate our Christmas traditions. In other words, I will henceforth cherish my grumpy streak. It is, perhaps, my best attribute, my very own personal Voice Of Reason.

Ho, ho, ho.

P.S. My sincere apologies for extending my Christmas funk into the new year. I didn’t really have an option, though, since my husband backed it up, reinstalled everything, and nearly murdered the poor thing. My brother, bless his heart, rescued us and now I can write again. Happy New Year.

This same time, years previous: cranberry crumble bars.

Lately, my mind has been wandering back to Guatemala. We were only there for nine months, and it’s been fifteen months since we returned. The intensity of the experience is fast becoming a distant memory, squished and compacted into the mind’s recesses.

I have no illusions about our time there. Just the other day when I was out for a walk, the memory of walking home from town flooded back—my backpack weighted with pasta and boxes of milk, dirt in my sandals, the hot sun beating down, my permanently bloated stomach, the slinking dogs and trash-filled gutters—and I was profoundly relieved that at that moment I was walking for the pure pleasure of it and not because we had no car. There were so many things I didn’t enjoy about Guatemala—the cavernous, cold house, the crowded microbuses, the painstaking hurdle to acquire the basic necessities, the loneliness.

And yet.

And yet I miss that time.

For nine months, we made a go of it on our own. We traveled and explored and fought and cried and lived, all in a foreign place many miles away from family and friends. It was hard and intense and lonely and incredibly special. In my mind, the memories glow.

The other evening I was helping my younger son clean up his room. My husband walked by and, in Spanish, I told him we should probably just chuck all the junk since the kids never played with it anyway. My younger son didn’t bat an eye.

I hammed it up, ranting about how I wanted to get rid of their stuff once and for all.

Nothing.

My husband and I looked at each other. “It’s gone,” I said. “He doesn’t understand it any more.”

If he’s lost the language, then have the memories evaporated, too?

Part of me aches to travel.

What about Kenya? I ask my husband. We could run the guesthouse in Nairobi.

I scroll through the job openings on the MCC website. I toy with the idea of traveling around the country doing relief aid with MDS. We’d make a kicker team, I tell my husband. You could do all the building stuff and I could feed people.

But then I think—really think—about actually leaving and I crash back to reality.

Recently I had an affair with an idea: I could go to Iraq to teach English for five weeks.

It’s not completely preposterous. I have a degree in Teaching English as a Second Language. If I was accepted to the program, my way would be paid. The children are old enough that they could stay with other people or at home alone while my husband works. I have friends in Iraq. I like to teach.

But when I thought on it harder, I realized that even if it was logistically doable, I couldn’t handle it emotionally. I would miss my children too much. It would detract from the joy of the adventure.

And then I dreamed I had to send my children to another country so my husband and I could travel and it was horrible.

That clinched the deal. My affair was over.

Ten years from now, I think I’ll look back at our nine months in Guatemala as perhaps the richest, most unique period in the entirety of our parenting gig. And yet when I think of doing something like that again, my insides shrivel. We have so much here—comfort, routine, dear ones, security. Why would I want to step away from it all?

But if our months in Guatemala were so special, why wouldn’t I?

In any endeavor, the level of difficulty is in direct proportion to the level of satisfaction. Also, anything that takes time and energy feels daunting, especially if it’s not a person’s norm. So how to apply this to my desire for stability and my desire for adventure?

We have made other decisions that have done more to shape our family life than simply moving to Guatemala for nine months. Two biggies are 1) living in the country on one income, and 2) homeschooling, neither of which are a walk in the park. When I’m an toothless old lady, I’ll remember these rip-roaring times and my entire body will light up like an LED bulb.

Here’s a thought. Maybe living at home around the people we love (though—important clarification—don’t always enjoy), day in and day out, is actually a great adventure in its own right. Maybe mastering and appreciating the mundane actually yields the greatest rewards. I believe there is truth to this. And beauty. So much beauty. 

And yet there is beauty in the adventure. There is beauty in being stretched impossibly, terrifyingly thin. There is beauty in the cramped buses, the smokey street food, the torrential downpours, the cheek-kisses, the strange plants and weird insects. There is beauty in the discombobulation, the independence and isolation, the new friendships and new places. And there is astounding beauty in watching your children struggle with, comprehend, navigate, and (finally!) begin to master the foreign with a grace and ease that adults can only dream of.

I miss that beauty. The beauty of being stretched, the beauty of the different.

I miss hearing my children roll their ‘r’s.

That’s all.

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (12.23.13), cheese ball, a mistake-based education, hot buttered rolls, bacon-jalapeno cheese ball, giant sausage and leek quiche, Christmas 2010, spaghetti carbonara, for my walls, windows at dusk-time, marmalade-glazed ham, and a little elaboration.