Imaginary Mom's Breakfast Risotto

There's nothing like weekday breakfast to get the day off to a guilt-laden start. I realize that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, kids who eat breakfast do better in school, etc. etc. And I've read all the info about a balanced breakfast, and how anything in a box pretty much isn't one and how we've all fallen prey to the marketing hype that would have us believe that Lucky Charms is a good source of essential vitamins and minerals. I don't want to send my kids off in the morning with bloodstreams full of easily-metabolized sugar and simply carbohydrates that will make them peak before their morning at school has even begun. I want to balance out their proteins and carbohydrates with a nutritionally sound breakfast that I have crafted from scratch with my own loving hands. I want, in short, to be Imaginary Mom.

Imaginary Mom is the bane of my existence. She's the person that I occasionally think I would be if I didn't have a job and devoted myself to being a full-time wife and mother and homemaker. Imaginary Mom has the backpacks packed the night before, the clean and pressed (matched) clothes laid out for her glowing, perfect children every morning. Imaginary Mom volunteers in the classroom, bakes cookies for the neighbors, and is on time for everything. Imaginary Mom vacuums in high heels and greets her husband at the door every evening with a smile and a kiss. Imaginary Mom makes hot breakfasts for her children on weekdays.

Let's be perfectly clear: I know that actual stay-at-home moms aren't like that (I was one). I know that if I had that much extra bandwidth in any given day, none of that would happen (I would stay up too late every night and still oversleep in the morning). I acknowledge that there was an anomolous period of time during which I was waking up at 5:30 a.m. to run 3 miles every day, but hot breakfasts from scratch didn't happen on those days either. My first breakfast inclination is still a bottle of Tahitian Treat and a Hostess cupcake.

So here's a nice compromise solution, a hot apply-cinnamony rice dish that cooks in the crockpot, keeps in the fridge, and reheats like a dream. Imaginary Mom gets up to make this from scratch at 4 a.m. but I most surely do not.

Imaginary Mom's Breakfast Risotto

3-4 tablespoons butter (or butter substitute, if you're dairy-free)
4 medium Granny Smith apples, cored and diced if you're feeling ambitious or roughly chopped if you're not
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups arborio rice
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
4 cups apple juice, or an equivalent amount of apple cider diluted with a little water (in the event that your kids decided they hate cider after you buy a gallon of it, and you need to use it up before it turns into vinegar)
1 teaspoon vanilla

Melt the butter in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add the apples and spices and cook until the apples start to release some juice, about 5 minutes.

Spray the inside of the slow cooker with non-stick cooking spray (you skip this step at your peril). Put the apple mixture and all the remaining ingredients in the the slow cooker and stir. Cover and cook on HIGH for about 2 hours or until all the liquid is absorbed. If you have a slow cooker that reliably turns itself onto the WARM setting when something is done, set this up the night before, cook it on LOW, and feel really virtuous in the morning when you have an awesome from-scratch hot breakfast.

This is excellent served hot with milk poured over it and some nuts and dried fruit sprinkled on top. It's also excellent eaten straight out of the fridge while you throw together peanut butter sandwiches and wonder if Imaginary Mom will tell the Nutrition Police if the kids don't get a vegetable in their lunches.

I've Worked Too Hard For This To Be Sunday Cherry Lime Rickey

Sometime between Beer-Thirty and Cocktail O'Clock comes the point in the day when you realize that you've just been too ambitious, and whatever you're planning to do with the rest of your day isn't going to get done. This is the point in your weekend when it makes sense to whip up some sort of cold drinky thingy and sit on the deck watching the kids in the midst of their latest terrifying project. Everyone is going to be happier if you just put away the to-do list.

This particular drink happened in just that way. It's an unreasonably hot day and we decided that heading out to the Arts Beats & Eats festival wasn't going to happen in the wake of buying/assembling new deck furniture, doing 6 loads of laundry, grocery shopping, cleaning the kitchen, and getting the kids ready for the first day of school. Margaritas sounded perfect, but we're out of tequila, we forgot to put mixers on the grocery list, and if we wanted to head out again we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place. Something fruity and light sounded good, so the bourbon was out. The giant bottle of fancy-schmancy cider was either going to be way too much or not nearly enough, since we're expecting company for dinner tonight.

A quick survey of the kitchen reveals: (1) lots of liquor (2) lots of citrus (3) tonic water, diet Coke, and Anna's lemon-flavored sparkling water that we previously decided tastes like Lemon Pledge. Hmm.....

I've Worked Too Hard for This to be Sunday Cherry-Lime Rickey

juice of 2 limes (juice fresh ones, don't use the reconstituted stuff)
about the same amount of maraschino cherry juice from the jar in the fridge that you forgot about after the cupcake-decorating party
3 oz. cherry vodka
1 oz. creme de cassis (or a cherry-flavored liqueur, if you have one. We didn't so I improvised)

Shake all these ingredients together in the nifty bar shaker you got for your wedding shower and only recently rediscovered. Put 3 maraschino cherries into the bottom of a tall glass, add some ice, and pour half the contents of the shaker into the glass. Top with sparkling water (preferably not the stuff that tastes like Lemon Pledge, but if that's all you have the vodka will blunt the worst of it) or Sprite. Stir.

Take out on the deck and compose a blog post while you sip.