3 p.m. I have no appetite but suddenly have an idea for a vegetable dish I want to put in my next cookbook. I’m not working on a third cookbook yet officially. My first came out in 2012, my second in 2017 and I don’t like to rush things. But I’ve been logging recipe ideas for the book for the last year and a half.

4 p.m. I prepare the raspberry bars and attempt to shoot an Instagram Story video to go with it, but my neither my phone nor I are working.

5:45 p.m. Both kids tell me as they walk in the door that they want to get in their pajamas right away, which is unprecedented. Still in denial we’re getting sick.

Thursday

7:30 a.m. We’re all dragging. I cancel my trainer, lunch plans with a friend (the pastry chef David Lebovitz) and an eye appointment.

9:30 a.m. Working at the coffee shop. I had a meeting last month with a production company, which followed up with a one-sheet concept for a potential cooking show. It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind and I’m finally writing up a list of things that didn’t sit well with me and my vision.

Despite having kids who are everything to me, I don’t consider it the defining feature of my cooking life. I’m less interested in catering to the appetite whims of 3-year-olds than I am in making food we love and trying to find ways to coax the new-food resistant along for the ride. Thus, a “busy mom cooking”-style show is not for me. I cooked before I had young kids and I’ll cook after. It bums me out in general that once you’re a mom, people want you to be little else. Nobody does this to men once they have kids: decide that they’re a dad above all else and every creative pursuit should be from the dad perspective. My husband and I would much rather reach out to interesting people who just happen to be parents — or not parents! Is this … radical? It shouldn’t be.

11 a.m. I draft an email to the editor of a newspaper section where I am to begin a column this year, but the conversation has stalled. While I’m sure it’s because we’re both too busy right now, I wonder if we might finesse the concept a little.