I am inspired. One of my Facebook friends shares, it seems, everything that she makes for lunches and treats and dinners, and every single photo is terrible and unappetising. A page I follow, on the other hand, shares what she eats and what she makes for healthy everything, and everything looks fantastic and healthy and an Anna Thing To Eat. In my “I can do that, too” mentality, and with the amount of food prep that actually happens Friday-Sunday (usually), I now plan to do a roundup of that on Mondays for you. You’re welcome. Actually it’s also part of me reminding myself of achievements. If I feel like I’ve just been opening yoghurt pouches and doing the washing and chopping up oranges and doing the washing and separating squabbling children and doing the washing and sorting the washing and doing more washing, noting the other things really helps. Yes, I did all those other things too, but now I also have a record of the snacks and other things prepared. Lots of them include chocolate chips.

Friday normally gets me baking something but we had stuff to do so, no. Saturday morning, though, I baked sweet potato and apple oatmeal, sweet potato and banana chocolate chip bread, and “4 ingredient peanut butter banana bars”. That’s in quotes because, as is so often the case with recipes with a small number of ingredients, whoever did the recipe didn’t actually count. Out of bananas, peanut butter, vanilla, oats, salt, baking powder and chocolate chips, some of those are clearly more special than others. I am not, however, game to omit any. And also, I couldn’t find the silicone loaf pan I wanted so as the recipe makes 6-8 bars, I used a 6-hole silicone muffin pan and I will be making these again. New favourite, despite the lack of accountability (ha pun).

You may have noticed a theme with both bananas and sweet potato. We suddenly had a glut of 12 very ripe (black) bananas. Although I love Our Go-To Banana Bread, I had made it recently as bread and muffins and mini muffins and there was only so much I could take. With recent baking and Saturday’s baking, I cleared the build-up just in time for a fresh bunch to start going spotty. Good times. The sweet potato was from our farm box. Not the most recent one. The one a fortnight before that. I didn’t weigh it, but it was about the size of a toddler’s torso. Glenn used some in a couple of meals. I reserved some for baked oatmeal and then had enough to try this bread as well. The bread is fantastic and will be made again.

Less exciting meal prep but very necessary meal prep happens on Sunday evening. If we have eggs, I hard boil four of them. C and I both enjoy them during the day. Everyone else does, too, but E and S are not so adept at peeling or biting without the egg bouncing away. I also do a batch of overnight oats which will do me for three breakfasts. I did not do either of those things for a few weekends in a row and I was really feeling it. Mornings were a bit more rushed. Snacks were a little less varied and less protein-rich. I’m back on track now, though, and much relieved.

Top left: Sweet potato and apple baked oatmeal https://thenaturalnurturer.com/baked-apple-sweet-potato-oatmeal/

Top right: Sweet potato and banana bread https://thenaturalnurturer.com/sweet-potato-banana-bread/

Bottom left: “4 ingredient peanut butter banana bars” https://sammibrondo.com/peanut-butter-banana-bars/

Bottom right: hard boiled eggs. I draw on them so we know they’re boiled and not not-boiled. I am not good at drawing flowers.