Prepping a DIY crepe lunch. Cause I'm a "bad, bad mummy"

My daughter was singing today at school.  She was singing in honor of me, in fact.

This particular custom-reworked classic is sung to the tune of The Ballad of Buster Baxter by Art Garfunkle - you can hear it at around 2:40 on this YouTube clip.  It's from an episode of Arthur on PBS Kids from long, long ago when we regularly watched such things.


It goes like this.  "She's a bad, bad mummy.  A bad, bad mummy.  Life isn't funny when you gotta bad, bad mummy."  Yes, it's about me.  And, yes, this gets sung whenever I mess up.  It's a familiar tune to my children - it used to be sung quite often.  I must be doing a better job.  I hadn't heard it for a while.

Today, however, was one of those days when the song could be heard.  It was heard at school.  At her table.  In the lunchroom.  Oh, the shame of it all.

Seems I forgot to pack a hot lunch in a thermos for my 10 year-old so she very nearly went without.  Gasp!  And when I said I would bring it before the noon hour, I didn't come through with it.  Faint!  But at the 11th hour - actually, with 6 minutes left in the lunch period - this same mummy raced home, quickly scrambled up some eggs, popped out some whole wheat toast and poured out some frozen peas (she loves em) to go with it.  Today, it really paid off to live so darn close to the school!

In order to ensure this doesn't happen again tomorrow, E and I decided to plan ahead tonight.  Everyone needs to do this to be successful, we agreed.  Mothers, students, teachers, business owners, pilots...  you get the picture.  It became a life lesson in preparedness.

And a delicious one, at that.  E decided to make crepes for her lunch.  She will cook them on her own in the morning but made the batter "to order" tonight.  It's a solo job.  With floor space that's around 6 ft x 6 ft, there's only room for one cook at a time in this tiny kitchen.

After showering up for the night, E wrapped up her hair and went to work.  She bases her crepes on a recipe found on page 134 of a classic Canadian small-town cookbook Company's Coming by Jean Pare.

E's recipe included:

4 eggs
1 cup water
1 cup milk
1 tsp of vanilla (E does it "to taste")
a dash of salt
sugar "to taste".  In her case, it's usually 1 tsp per egg used.  This made for 4 tsp tonight.
2 cups of "premium all-purpose" flour.

As we are from Canada, we can't really deal with US all-purpose.  We just like the familiarity of dealing with flour from harder wheat.  It's what we are used to.  It's predictable.

I watched her beat the eggs first with a fork.  Then she measured out the milk, water, and vanilla.  All were combined with the eggs and beaten again with a large whisk.  She added salt, sugar and finally combined it all with the flour.  A quick beating left a loose and slightly lumpy batter which went into the fridge to sit overnight.

She will use a soup ladle in the morning to scoop out batter for the crepes she cooks on a non-stick pan lightly wiped with canola oil or butter.  She has been cooking these up since she was 7 so she pretty much knows how to get them just right in the pan.

This will be her Friday lunch - and probably breakfast too.  This prep will hopefully mean she will be singing a very different tune tomorrow.

With the crepe batter stowed safely in the fridge until morning, there still remained the issue of a bed-time snack for the girls.  With the thought of those sweet crepes on her mind, once again E took the initiative and made herself something.  Something a little out of the ordinary.

Now, I love that my kids are independent and comfortable in the kitchen.  They fix themselves a snack before bed each night freeing me up to do something else while I enjoy my evening coffee.  Tonight, this is how it went.  They were fixing snack and I was plunking away on the computer, entering the piece on the crepes.  I was feeling I had redeemed myself somewhat in my daughter's eyes tonight.

Then, as the kettle whistled it's readiness for my French press decaf 45 minutes ago, I walked into the kitchen and saw this on her plate.  And there had been four others like these - all of them covered in whipped cream - already eaten.  Such bed-time snack decadence!

I'm not feeling too badly for her anymore but not really sure how to score this one for myself either.  I do know that she was hardly suffering by the end of the day.

I think I can close this one out tonight with a fairly clear conscience.  And with The Ballad of Buster Baxter still ringing in my head.