Making Do

"Mothers are the necessity of invention." -Bill Watterson

"Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity." -Voltaire

This week I discovered, as I often do, that my month was bigger than my paycheck.

And while I'm not exactly destitute, I am stubbornly committed to honoring my grocery budget and living within my temporarily limited means. Which means that for the next few days - until the next paycheck hits - I'll need to get creative in order to feed my family the meals to which they have become accustomed. In other words, I'll be making do.

* * * * *

For my husband, the problem is granola.

Every weekday morning, after hitting his snooze exactly once, my husband rolls out of bed at 4:30 a.m. I know that because many days, I'm still drifting off to sleep as his alarm is calling him to action.

By five a.m., he's downstairs feeding Gracie her first meal of the day, which after eating she promptly sprints back upstairs and claims his pillow as her own, and fixing a little something for himself: a cup of Chobani Greek yogurt with a handful of granola stirred in.

Blueberry,
raspberry,
blackberry,
and cherry

are his yogurt flavors of choice, and every weekend he picks up five fresh cups to get him through the work week ahead. Since he shopped last weekend before the money ran out, his yogurt supply will coast through to the beginning of the next pay period, no problem.

His granola situation is a different matter. We're fresh out of the Quaker product that he normally uses. So tonight I got my Betty Crocker on, and baked him up a batch of simple, quick, and easy homemade granola.

Forget Betty Crocker, I actually channeled Euell Gibbons, that wacky natural food activist from the 1960s who asked us if we ever ate a pine tree while advertising Post Grape Nuts. Though this recipe called for neither parts of a pine tree, cattail, or any of the other random plants Euell pitched to us, my homemade granola is hearty, healthy and best of all, darn tasty. 

I may just start a little granola habit of my own.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, my fourth-born is facing a bit of a struggle with her work lunches. Inventive as she is, packing such delicacies as baked beans, hummus and carrots, apples and peanut butter, or leftover enchiladas, lately she has been craving sandwiches made on French bread.

Of which we are fresh out.

So why not, I decided, bake her some French bread from scratch?

Digging into my cookbook stash, I found what I was looking for: James Beard's Book on Breads, purchased by me circa 1984 and used fairly consistently ever since. Running a quick finger through the index, I found a straightforward recipe for French-style bread - ever the perfectionist, Mr. Beard notes that this is not technically proper French bread but a reasonable facsimile which is good enough for me. Setting the dough to rise before dinner and popping the shaped loaves into the oven afterwards, I soon had two pretty loaves of crusty bread cooling on my kitchen counter.

And within minutes, my family discovered this bounty. A small bread-sampling party ensued, complete with warm butter and lingonberry jam.

I'm happy to report that six sandwich-sized segments of bread were protected from the lip-smacking horde, safely wrapped and eventually stashed in the freezer, where only my fourth-born will remember to look when she's ready to pack her next work lunch.

I've already promised to bake more when this batch runs out.

* * * * *

With this quick one-two punch of normally-I-buy-it-but-today-I'm-gonna-make-it success under my belt, I'm wondering what else I might take on as a pantry-to-table DIY.

Pita bread?
Almond crackers?
Baba ganoush?

I do have that leftover eggplant kicking around my vegetable drawer.

We shall just have to wait and see what I might cook up next in the name of making do.