“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by me.” — Douglas Adams (English humorist and science fiction novelist)

I used to say that if I worked more than 15 hours a week, my whole family fell apart. Or maybe it was 20. Or 10. I can’t remember the number but do recall thinking how ridiculous it sounded.

Although our family does run better when I have less work, those days are over. I have more time and we need the money. Journalism hasn’t exactly been lucrative of late. But now I have a new, interesting, and regular freelance gig — plus two huge projects back to back. Good for the bank account. Not so good for the family.

So, menus of the next few weeks will be a bit simpler than those of the past. What that means is no recipes other than those I know in my own head. I’m not sure whether it’s actually faster to cook a memorized recipe, but I know it’s a lot less stressful. We have a refrigerator full of fresh fruit and veggies from Saturday’s co-op pickup, so that will be the basis of this week’s menus.

Oh, we’re also broke until these checks start rolling in. So, with little time and money to spare, here’s this week’s menu plan:

Sunday: We celebrated my nephew’s 15th birthday (wow) with the family in Waxahachie. Didn’t technically eat at the same table — adults ate Dickey’s in the living room, kids in the adjoining kitchen — but did share our fourth meal of the day (leftovers and chocolate mousse) once we got home. Apparently dinner at 4 pm doesn’t count. Fun, free, no cooking for me. Maybe we can make this a daily thing?

Monday: Fairly easy day for me, family-wise. Somebody else is picking up both kids and taking them to their activities this afternoon. Making my favorite Italian soup (aka, “Tracy soup”) for my favorite 9-year-old cancer patient and her family. (OK, she’s the only 9-year-0ld cancer patient I know. But even if I knew others, she’d still likely be my favorite.) We’ll have the same (a veggie version for Noah with no-chicken broth), ciabatta, and a salad. I have some kale that is on its last legs in the refrigerator so will toss that with olive oil, salt and pepper and broil that, too. Clyde will pick up Noah from climbing practice at 7, so we’ll all be home and ready to eat by 7:45 pm.

Tuesday: Another long stretch of work time for me as I don’t have to get the kids until 4:30 pm from school (tutorials for one, chess for the other). We’ll have an easy ham steak with cabbage and potatoes. Potatoes because everyone loves them and, if I add some cool stuff to them, they can be Noah’s main meal. Think I’ll add goat cheese, garlic, and parsley — because it sounds delicious and we have all three.

Wednesday: Kids just have guitar from 5-5:30 pm, so we can eat early (making Sawyer very happy) if we’re on the ball. We have some chicken in the freezer (Clyde can grill that up for us and have some leftovers to freeze for Grandma), sauteed spinach, broccoli (we like both; kids only like the latter), with some brown rice I cooked with wine and no-chicken broth and froze last week. I’ll get some fake chicken for Noah. UPDATE: All prepped and ready for Clyde to throw together while we were at guitar … only for him to find we were out of propane. What’s the No. 1 rule of the family dinner? Flexibility. Off we dashed to our favorite cheap Italian restaurant, Tony’s, for a lovely meal. The kids read the entire time so it was almost like a date. Saved the dinner for an easy quick meal on Friday.

Thursday: I’ll be at rock climbing practice most of the evening with Noah, while Clyde is at a church meeting. Sawyer will be at one or the other, whichever he finds least offensive. So we’ll have a family breakfast and Fend For Yourself Night for dinner. For breakfast, I’m thinking this fruit & oat muesli I meant to try a couple of weeks ago and didn’t. It can be made the night before, is healthy, and will use up a lot of that co-op fruit.

Friday: We may be having our third African feast tonight; still waiting to hear confirmation. If not tonight, we’ll swap around menus with Saturday. Not sure what I’m planning yet, but the high is 41 and we have a lot of sweet potatoes so those factors may come into play. Update to come as the week (and plans) progress. UPDATE: Wednesday’s dinner will become tonight’s dinner once we get the propane.

Saturday: Our third African feast with a friend of Clyde’s, her Nigerian husband, and their daughter. Noah will be gone, unfortunately, so it’ll be a small affair. Menu to come.

“We will all starve.” — Sheik Ali Gab on what will happen if the U.S. continues to delay aid to Somalia because of fears that aid is assisting terrorists

What I knew about Somalia before today was this: Pirates are having a field day off its coast, and the U.S. had a failed mission there in the early ’90s during the Clinton administration (detailed in the movie and book Black Hawk Down), a failed mission that forever became the reason we didn’t get involved in the Rwandan genocide.

Some other interesting facts:

1. Flooding just this month has driven 16,000 more people from their homes in the Horn of African country where about 1.5 million have been uprooted since the start of 2007, Reuters reports. This brings the total of those in need of international assistance to 3.6 million — twice as many as this time last year.

Relief from America for victims of floods in Somalia

2. One in five Somali children suffers from malnutrition and tens of thousands need urgent medical care to survive, according to The New York Times. The U.S. is delaying aid because it is worried that aid is helping terrorists.

3. The U.S. is the largest donor to Somalia, providing about 40 percent of the $850 million annual aid budget and feeding more than three million people.

4. Only 13 percent of boys and 7 percent of girls attend primary school.

5. Somalia is a predominantly Muslim nation.

6. An estimated 9.8 million people live in Somalia, which is about the size of Texas. Population estimates are difficult because of the number of nomads and refugees in the country.

7. The leopard is the national symbol of Somalia.

A woman feeds a child a ready-to-eat therapeutic food at a displacement camp in the city of Jowhar, Somalia.

8. Meat is served only a few times a month, and many people — especially nomads and herdsmen — drink many quarts of milk daily. Common foods/drinks are milk (from camels, goats, and cows), aging camels (which may be slaughtered for their meat),  durra (a grain sorghum), honey, dates, rice, tea, corn, beans, millet, squash, and muufo, a flat bread made from ground corn flour.

9. Italy once occupied Somalia, so the people also have a love for pasta and marinara sauce.

10. Rural Somalis eat by scooping up their food with the first three fingers of their right hand or by using a rolled banana leaf.

How you can help:

• Donate to the World Food Programme. Just 25 cents fills the red cup the WFP gives to hungry child while they are at school. $50 feeds one child that meal at lunch for an entire year.

• Donate to Doctors Without Borders, which right now is working in places like the city of Galkayo. Located in the bone-dry central Somalia, the city is divided in half by warring militias and separatist regional governments that continuously clash in armed confrontations.

• Donate to UNICEF, which is is doing many things in Somalia, including creating Peace Schools, assisting with malaria education/treatment, providing food and safe water, as well as creating a Safe Motherhood Project to keep mothers and babies safe at birth.

• Donate to Oxfam International, which is currently providing hot meals to more than 60,000 people across Mogadishu every day, water to 200,000 people who have been forced to flee their homes, carrying out life saving relief programs, providing cash to the most vulnerable sections of society, and working with local Somali organizations to provide them with the tools to make a positive contribution to their own country’s future.