Sweet-and-Sour Mustard

I keep a spreadsheet of every grocery receipt. I have done this since 2003. I will not stop. The week was a fall week, the kind where the light through the kitchen window arrives at a particular angle and the freezer hums in a different register depending on the temperature in the garage. I made notes in my prep notebook on Sunday afternoon, the way I always do: meal name, ingredient list, cost per serving, prep time, freezer instructions. Twenty-eight bags. Two hours and eleven minutes. A little slow this week, by my standards, but Brandon was helping and the conversation was good, and I have learned, slowly and against my own grain, that the conversation is sometimes the point and the time is sometimes a courtesy I extend to my husband for being willing to chop onions on a Sunday afternoon.

Brandon golfed Saturday morning, attended his executive secretary meeting Sunday morning, and did the dishes Wednesday night, which is the rhythm of our life now. We have been married a long time. The arithmetic of it is the arithmetic of my whole life. There were years we missed each other in the same room, and there are years we find each other in the silences, and this is one of the latter, and I am old enough now to know that the latter is the achievement and the former was the cost.

The recipe of the week was sheet-pan honey mustard chicken, which I have made some specific number of times in my life and have refined to a system that I now hand to other people in printed form. The version I made this week fed eight, cost under fifteen dollars, and required twenty-six minutes of active prep, which is within my requirements and not a coincidence. Sunday prep is twenty-eight bags. I time myself. The accountant never leaves. I have stopped explaining the freezer-meal philosophy to people who already follow my work, and I have stopped apologizing for it to people who do not. The philosophy is simple: tomorrow is coming whether you are ready or not. You can either be ready or not. I pick ready.

The children are doing what they do, which is the central report of every week of my adult life. Ethan, 20, is in the Philippines on his mission. He sends emails on Mondays. I read them on Mondays. The day is now structured around his email. Olivia is 18, at BYU studying elementary education — the path she chose at age seven and has not deviated from once. Mason, 16, is in Brazil on his mission. His weekly emails are short and full of jokes. He does not write much about the work. He writes about the food. Lily is 14, in high school, asking the kind of questions in Sunday School that make the teachers uncomfortable, which I find difficult and also, secretly, admirable. Noah is 11, the comedian, the performer — the kid who does an impression of my disappointed face in front of company, and gets away with it. That is the family report. I do not have a system for these reports. I just listen and remember and call back when I said I would call back, which is most of the time and not all of the time, and the difference between most and all is the territory of motherhood.

I will close the laptop in a moment. I will go to bed. I will get up tomorrow. The freezer will be there. The photograph will be there. The work will be there. So will I.

The sheet-pan chicken is the meal, but this mustard is the reason it gets requested. Every time I print out that recipe card and hand it to someone, the first question is always about the sauce — what’s in it, how long it keeps, whether they can make a double batch and freeze it. The answer to all three is: yes, you can, and you should. It takes fifteen minutes, it costs almost nothing, and it is the kind of thing that turns a practical Sunday into something Brandon will mention on Wednesday, which, after all these years, is the highest compliment I know.

Prep Time: 5 min | Cook Time: 10 min | Total Time: 15 min | Servings: 16 (about 1 tablespoon each)

Ingredients

1/2 cup dry mustard powder
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
2 large eggs, beaten
1/4 teaspoon salt

Instructions

Combine dry ingredients. In a small saucepan, whisk together the dry mustard powder, sugar, and salt until evenly blended with no lumps remaining.
Add wet ingredients. Whisk in the apple cider vinegar and beaten eggs until the mixture is completely smooth.
Cook over low heat. Place the saucepan over low heat and cook, stirring constantly with a whisk or wooden spoon, for 8—10 minutes until the sauce thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon. Do not boil.
Cool and store. Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature. Transfer to a sealed jar or container. Refrigerate for up to 3 weeks, or freeze in small portions for up to 3 months.
Serve. Use as a glaze for sheet-pan chicken, a dipping sauce for pretzels or sausage, or a spread for sandwiches and wraps.

Nutrition (per serving)

Sweet-and-Sour Mustard — The Sauce Behind the System