I was thinking about our pandemic routine while walking Charlie the pupper this morning, and it struck me that to a surprising extent it's involved me turning into my mom.

I say that because I do basically all of the meal prep in Chateau Steelypips, and over the last several weeks I've been making an effort to actually cook something new every day, not just re-heat leftovers.

("New" here just means "not leftovers," not a new-to-me recipe. I'm mostly cooking our regular staples, but trying to make at least one thing a day that ends up with something we didn't have in the fridge that morning.)

On the one hand, this has been kind of fun, and I've learned a few new things. On the other, it's kind of a grind, particularly since in addition to whatever creative thing I'm making for me, I also have to make the usual boring stuff that the kids will eat.

Anyway, the realization that struck me this morning was that this is what my mom did EVERY DAY for essentially all the years I lived at home. We rarely had meals that were just reheated leftovers, and we lived in the middle of nowhere, so take-out wasn't an option.

I didn't appreciate that enough at the time (and I contributed to the need to cook every day by eating an astonishing amount during my teen years), but the last few weeks have given me a new perspective on what an amazing pain in the ass that must've been.

(I don't want to sell my dad short on this, by the way-- he was in charge of grilling things, which was a pretty regular occurrence. My mom still did side dishes on those nights, though.)

So, anyway, Happy Mother's Day to my mom and all the other mothers out there laboring in the kitchen for their insufficiently grateful offspring. They'll figure it out someday.