My Grandmother Tour Of Duty

It's my last day here. For the past four weeks I've had the honor and great privilege to be here to welcome this new baby girl to the family. To be helping hands to the brand new parents. To help in the middle of the night when the mommy and daddy were both so tired. To keep everyone in clean clothes and to keep the refrigerator stocked and meals cooked.

But being a grandmother is more than doing the practical. It's about offering encouragement to the new parents. It's about loving. It's about passing on that feeling of being loved beyond measure that I always felt when I was with my own grandmother. I adored my grandmother and hope that years down the road all these girls will feel the same about me.

In my time here I've felt all the feels that come with rocking a tiny (less than 6 lbs.) baby in the middle of the night. I've remembered how terrified I was my first couple of weeks as a new mom. I've remembered the rush of love that overwhelmed me when I would watch my tiny sleeping baby. (When she ever would go to sleep.) And I've remembered that at the very same time I was overwhelmed with love, I could be overwhelmed with anxiety. How will I do this? What am I even supposed to do? And here we are, over 30 years later, and my babies are grown, well-adjusted adults. I know we didn't do everything right, but we did okay.

And in these weeks I've watched my own baby—yes, Jessica is my baby—grow in confidence and skill as she learns to do the things that mothers do. When it's your first, it's all new and unknown and.... Well, you moms know. She's made me proud.

I've been interested in watching mothering in the age of the internet. All I had was the Dr. Spock book and the weekly long distance phone call to my mother. Now there is a crazy amount of information at your fingertips. Maybe too much information. But it's also wonderful that you can text your new mom friends and ask questions and share what's going on. Friends are only a tap-on-your-phone away. How wonderful that would have been for me back in the day.

Sausage Butternut Squash Breakfast Casserole

I've made several new-to-me recipes while I've been here. Recipes from Jessica's repertoire. I'll share a few of these as I get home and my life settles back down. I'm putting the recipes here so that I can find them again. The easiest of these new recipes was the sausage/vegetable breakfast bake. I'm going to share how I did it. I couldn't find chorizo and we swapped out the fresh spiralized sweet potato for frozen squash. Certainly no time around here to spiralized fresh potatoes! Here is the link to the original recipe.

SAUSAGE BUTTERNUT SQUASH BREAKFAST CASSEROLE

1 lb sausage (I used Jimmy Dean Regular)
1 bag frozen spiralized butternut squash (12-oz, I think)
8 large eggs
1 tsp kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

3/4 cup milk or heavy cream (I used 2% milk)
1/2 to 1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese (who measures this?)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and spray a 9x13 baking dish with non-stick cooking spray.

Heat a large skillet over medium heat. Brown the sausage, breaking apart, until cooked through, about 8 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside. 

In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, salt, pepper, and milk until very well combined and frothy. Set aside. 

Spread the frozen squash across the bottom of the prepared baking dish. Next, spread the cooked sausage over the top of the spiralized squash. Then, pour the egg mixture over the top. Sprinkle the cheese over the top. 

Place into the oven and cook until the eggs have just set, 35-45 minutes (depending on your oven). 

This was a delicious supper. It also was good reheated for breakfast. The squash was a fun substitute for the more traditional hash browns. I think this may have started as a Whole30 recipe. Maybe I should say it's now "Whole30-ish."