* WordPress won’t let me upload pictures anymore (HTTP error). I did look into WordPress support but I can’t even understand the language they speak so we’ll have to do this the old fashioned way and imagine things in our heads. Failing that, you know that I am on Instagram as @happy_chaos_ right? That will work too.

This week I decided that the pain of disorganization wasn’t worth the reward of not having to live by a schedule. You know what I mean if schedules give you hives, as they do to me. Routines and I repulse each other. We’re the opposite of velcro. For a long time, I considered routines limiting. I’m a “target of opportunity” kind of person: strike while the iron is hot, create when the creating vibe hits you, make supper when everyone is about to eat their shoes. Over the years, as children outnumbered me by a factor of 9, I learned that I can accomplish much more by being somewhat organized and this — sadly — involves routines. Nowadays, routines annoy the heck out of me because nothing guarantees more interruptions that trying to get something done. The children have a sixth sense, and infortunately it’s not seeing dead people.

The first thing on my list of Things to Improve is getting supper on the table early. Someone was asking me how I dealt with the witching hour and in theory it’s quite simple: I feed the kids. In practice, I often end-up like most of you, trying to make supper while the children are raiding the pantry, the baby is crying and the teenagers are making grilled-cheese “to wait for supper.” Having supper ready for 5:15 pm is a huge improvement to my quality of life. It means that the children can be fed before they turn into gremlins, we can clean-up the kitchen before starting bedtime routines and once all the littles are asleep, there is time left for writing, reading and trying to launch a new venture (add: reading WordPress Support posts).

How to get supper ready on time? Well, that’s always the challenge isn’t it? The best way I found is to make supper and lunch at the same time. This way, I deconstruct the kitchen once and clean it up once. To make this possible, I have to “reverse-engineer” my day starting with supper, making sure that our homeschooling is done by noon. To add an extra level of motivation, I was alone with the littles 3 evenings last week. So it had to work.

MONDAY

Monday I thawed a whole wad of Costco ground beef and made hamburgers with half of it and meat balls with the other half. Then we learned that red meat is now a class 1 carcinogen, make that 1+ if you BBQ it. Wonderful.

TUESDAY

On Tuesday, we ate some beef (again?) curry from the freezer with white rice and broccoli.

WEDNESDAY

Wednesday we went to Value Village to get some Halloween costumes before music classes. It was a rainy, miserable day to run errands. When we came home, I made chicken fried rice with wild rice, celery, carrots, chicken and ham (cured meat, another class 1 carcinogen). At least it was wild rice, no?

THURSDAY

On Thursday, I made pumpkin black bean soup from Smitten Kitchen. This soup is just delicious. I made enough to share with a friend who is having a tough time health-wise.

FRIDAY

On Friday we had meatballs (from Monday) in tomato sauce with spaghetti and zucchini noodles.

SATURDAY WAS HALLOWEEN!

Saturday was Halloween and I made some soul cakes for the children. I used this recipe from Food.com, which was adequate but next year I’ll try this yeasted version from CatholicCulture.org. We trick-or-treated with friends in the suburbs where the houses are not so few and far between. We had Aero bars and rockets for diner with Coffee Crisps for dessert. The twins barfed it all back between Midnight and 1 am the following night. But it was fine because we gained an hour overnight… **YAWN**

In other news, I am pursuing my clean-eating journey (speaking of rockets…), eliminating gluten, almost all grains, most dairy and a whole lot of sugar . I’m not sure yet if it’s helping anything but Holy Cow, two mini Coffee Crisps and some Skittles are not a nice way to break your clean eating streak: my gut may never forgive me.

Along the way I discovered the gluten-free products by Purest and they are excellent (this is not a sponsored post and no-one is footing my significant grocery budget to say nice things about them). Purest is a local (to me!) company based in Perth (ON). I use their products to make this gluten-free flour mix, with great results (for instance, I made this cranberry orange loaf ). I also use their Artisan Bread mix, which is excellent. The recipe for the bread mix is on the bag and has to be followed scrupulously:use a hand mixer or the paddle attachment to your stand mixer, mix it for at least 3 minutes (more won’t hurt it, less will.) I tried it using butter instead of oil for a more “brioche-ey” version. It worked but didn’t rise as high.

SUNDAY

On Sunday I had my 9 children under my roof for the day and it was a great joy. I made chili from the Whole30 cookbook, gluten-free corn bread and Savoy cabbage slaw.

Have a good week everyone and wish me luck to keep-up my winning early supper streak.