Note to self: must remember to buy food!

You would think that the ripe old age of 30+ (I’ve stopped counting my exact age now – well, in fact, I often forget what actually it really is), having had to more or less stand on my own two feet since the age of 18, that I’d have got the hang of food shopping.  After all I’m a mum now – and food shopping is one of those things we ‘do’, right?

Wrong.

Sunday evening saw us eating a truly dire meal of plain pasta, with a bit of cream cheese mixed in, along with the remainder of a can of mixed beans!  That was honestly the best I could come up with.  The babe thought the pasta was acceptable, but (quite rightly I suppose) turned her nose up at the random beans on her plate: “what are THOSE?”

To be fair, I hadn’t expected to have to cater for tea on Sunday.  The three of us had been away on a weekend ‘mini-break’, and weren’t due back til later on that evening.  The plan was to leave at 7pm after dinner, so the little lady would fall asleep in the car and be gently lifted into her cot upon arrival home.  But as I should have learnt by now, things generally don’t go to plan.

My original dream had been for the three of us to whisk ourselves away to somewhere exotic, luxurious and warm for some winter sun, but after googling Dubai, Oman, the Canaries, Greece etc etc, we’d settled on the more realistic proposition of staying in a wonderful B&B in Wales, visiting good friends and their gorgeous brand new baby boy – perfect.  Just perfect

And most of it was – the B&B was comfortable, stylish, cosy, and the owners very welcoming; the weather was gorgeous – crisp, sunny Autumn days; madam loved being in the back-pack carrier (especially as she could pull BOTH of daddy’s ears); and cuddles with our friends’ newborn were just glorious.  But for some reason – was it teething pain, wet bum, too cold, too hot, a nightmare, sore throat, too dark, unusual place, the three of us in one room, who knows? – the babe woke up throughout both nights, screaming, waking the whole B&B and only settling in our bed lying on my chest.  So by Sunday, I was pretty tired and made the decision to head home early.

Now, what I SHOULD have done after the pasta disaster is jumped on the internet Sunday evening and ordered some groceries to be delivered Monday morning.  What I actually did was flop in front of the X-Factor results show and fall into bed at 9pm.  House utter utter tip, fridge completely empty.

After dropping the bairn off at nursery Monday morning, I hurried back to the house to clean and tidy ahead of a loft company coming over for a quote.  Once the house was looking in a respectable state, I realised there was no milk for tea or coffee, so rushed down to the Spar shop to grab a pint, and while I was there I thought as my morning’s work would be non-existent, I should grab something quick that I could eat in front of the computer.  The least offensive choice was a really cheap and nasty Hawaiian pizza.  I tried jazz it up with a bit of extra cheese, a few sundried tomatoes we had left and some extra pineapple I had at the back of the can cupboard, but it wasn’t great.  ‘Pudding’ was a packet of sweets I remembered was in the pocket of a coat – urgh!  How shameful!  And when I was faced with the prospect of eating the second half of the pizza for dinner, I had one of those “I need salad, or veg, or just something fresh with vitamins!!” moments that you would often get at uni.  I bought a salad from the supermarket on the way home from nursery, and had that for dinner with some fresh orange and cranberry juice – life started to flood back into my body.

Yesterday I bought some more ‘real food’ so the fridge is looking a lot happier (as am I!)  And my ‘to do’ today is to plan our meals for Thursday – Sunday and then do the shop accordingly.

But I must must get better at doing is remembering that whilst the babe gets her meals provided three days a week, I still have to remember to feed myself something more nutritious than a Tracker bar on those days too.

Note to self: must remember to buy food!