Witching Hour

Dinner prep time, aka, the witching hour. It’s one of my least favorite times of the day for good reason. How about you? If you love it and have it figured out, throw a girl a bone and tell me your secretes!! There are moments when all seems to be fine in the house and I’m left to myself to make dinner. Last night I had a few moments of dinner prep heaven.

I was going to make ravioli, which is one pretty easy, quick, and yummy dinner. In all honesty I’m not totally sure what my kids were up to. I do know that a show was on, I could see and hear it going. I also know that all of my kids were safe in the family room. We live in a multi level house, so I have direct eye shot of our family room that is 5 steps down from our kitchen and living room. It is open and it’s one of the many things I loved about our house. I sometimes I feel if I take the effort to walk over to get a better look at what my kids are doing I have this feeling like I will ruin all the sunshine bliss that I call happy witching hour. Because most of the time Miss S is right by me, crying and wanting to be held.

Miss L keeps coming into the kitchen saying she wants a treat or a snack, and I’m thinking, really? REALLY? I’m making dinner and not to long ago we just had a snack. My darling three year old with eating habits just like me, you are in for a long road of always being hungry. I’m sorry! But at least you’ll be able to eat what you want, when you want without compromising your waist line. Wait, hold up, that used to be me. My best friend joklying, geeze I hope she was joking, once told me that she hopes I will be a fat grandma because I could eat whatever and my metabolism did it’s thing and I was fine. That was years ago and I’m learning that I have to try to make better choices. Notice that I said try?! Lol. I’m a work in progress. 🙂

Anyways, back to happy witching hour. It was totally amazing. I realized, after digging through my freezer, that we had already finished the open bag of ravioli. But all was still great in happy witching hour because I was going to make zucchini noodles from two lovely looking zucchinis from our garden anyways and adding spaghetti noodles to the menu was a no biggie. Before dinner I was looking for a delicious spaghetti sauce recipe that my dad had made a few weeks back. I thought I knew which cook book it came from but my online search wasn’t helpful this time. I guess it could have been me… But I did find a yummy looking sauce for freezing. That got me thinking of using our usual Hunt’s spaghetti sauce but sprucing it up with some roasted veggies. This is something I’m all over but the rest of my family really isn’t, with the exception of Miss L. I started to cut up carrots, red onion, different colored bell peppers, then came yellow squash and zucchini from my garden. 

I added some salt, paper, olive oil, and garlic into the cut up veggies.

I swear I could hear my stomach saying, “well done Steph” as I put this yummyiness into the oven. Still happy witching hour was going great! That is until I had to go to the bathroom. I think Miss S has a radar for when I need to go because she stopped, dead cold, what she was doing and followed me into the bathroom. Ok, fine, stay with me again. But, please keep playing when we get out so my happy witching hour can continue. No such luck with my cute Miss S. This is when an extra set of hands or at least one hand would be great. I could continue holding her while I make dinner. In this fantasy let’s also make is super easy for me to be 6 months pregnant and be able to hold all my kiddos when they want and for however long they want. Sounds good, right?

Even though there were some tears and whinnying while making dinner I was pretty pleased with myself that I stayed so calm when my girls wanted to help with using the Spiralizer. It’s a pretty great kitchen gadget that I haven’t really played around with too much. It’s easy for my three year old and one year old to spin the handle. I do need to help with putting pressure so the zucchini gets cut.

I know I am light years away from permanent happy witching hour. By that time my darling kiddos will be older and out of the house. I bet I will find myself longing for witching hour to come knocking on my door. I guess I will enjoy my littles a little more tonight as I make dinner and hope that time doesn’t fly by too quickly.

Xoxo

Stephanie