Step 1: Scavenge the pantry. How does the almond mom joke go? Somehow, women’s eating habits are always the punchline of a joke.
Step 2: Start pouring out granola.
Step 3: Remember to preheat the oven. Preheat the oven.
Step 4: Chop some almonds, chop some walnuts.
Step 5: Realize the knives are dull. Fortunately, you bought a knife sharpener out of impulse a few weeks ago. Sharpen the knives and try again.
Step 6: Pour in the chopped walnut-almond mixture, but spill some of it because you’re holding your phone.
Step 7: Time for the wet ingredients. Pour out some milk but run out halfway through.
Step 8: Adjust the recipe measurements. Decide which mouth won’t get fed today, like they did during the war.
Step 9: Add eggs, honey, vanilla extract, a pinch of cinnamon, a pinch of salt, and a heap of love.
Tip: Eggs demand brutality. Tap them firmly on the counter and crack them open cleanly.
Step 10: Get confused about one of the yolks spreading. Choose to ignore it and keep going.
Step 11: You got ahead of yourself, and it turns out you don’t have vanilla.
Step 12: Contemplate adding random shit instead.
Step 13: Go ahead and do without vanilla.
Step 14: The microwave beeps for the 10th time. Your milk, which you warmed, has probably gone cold. Warm it up again while you whisk in the ingredients you do have.
Step 15: Take a timer selfie from inside the microwave. Do not turn on the microwave. Please.
Step 16: Things come together! You have your mixture, your dries, and it’s time for a pan.
Step 17: No round pan. You find a rectangle. Will it work? Only one way to find out.
Step 18: Pour it. Don’t mess it up.
Step 19: Wonder if it’s too shallow but go ahead and scatter the granola stuff over it anyway.
Step 20: It doesn’t really have a custard vibe…well it might be yum in its own right. Maybe I’ll just sprinkle brown sugar over it.
Step 21: Finally, time for the oven. Good call on letting it preheat extra-long. Never trust an oven’s temperature. Or the time it tells you.
Step 22: Bake for 30+ minutes. Relax.
Step 23: Just kidding. Start cleaning up. Wash dishes, get to work. The domestic sphere is no place for laziness. It’s hard work, keeping up a house.
Step 24: Realize that you forgot to put on a timer. Okay, just guesstimate.
Step 25: Make an omelet while you wait. Let’s hope I won’t cause egg prices to surge again.
Step 26: Marvel at the astonishing beauty of what I baked. While she’s asleep, vacuum the house. It’ll wake her up, conveniently, and knock off another to-do list item. The chores are not the Mother’s Day special; they’re simply the Sunday routine, the labor that must always be done, holiday or not. Enjoy the crunchy pumpkin seeds, though it’s not to your taste, and enjoy the small moment of love you’ve built that transcends the language barrier you guys have, or the generational gap, or whatever division the world seeks to build between home and what lays beyond it.
