Guava Baklava

Cuban pastelitos meet nutty, honey-soaked baklava; bringing home baby at 39 weeks; how time keeps us safe; “house hushing” and our first serious steps into minimalist parenthood.

Hi, I’m Jerrelle, the writer behind The Dinner Ritual, a space where you’re invited to reconnect with your highest Self. I’m here to help you take back your time, your sovereignty, your body and mind—especially if any of these parts felt lost or siphoned during the day. Through the act (and art) of cooking, we transform ordinary moments into sacred pauses, opportunities to ground into the body, tend to our mental health, and return to our innate, God-given sense of joy. Subscribe to join the mission and receive recipes, meditations, and self-healing rituals that will help you reclaim your passion for life and your well-being, one step at a time.

Despite all the things I hoped to finish before we welcomed home our son, my water broke early in the morning after July 4th. I went into labor while my doctor was out of town—even though she specifically instructed me to wait until she returned from her weekend getaway—and gave birth to our baby boy knowing on my way to the hospital we never even had time to assemble the crib for his nursery. We’d gotten clear on a birth plan, we’d made progress on nesting, we’d checked off insanely long to-do lists, yet time had its own plan, and I was reminded again how it always does.

You’ve heard the phrase “delays are God’s protection” Well, that’s true of things that come early too. Timing, whether it feels like a rush or a stall, exists to save us from ourselves. We wouldn’t know want to do if we were granted all our desires at once. Our nervous system wouldn’t be able to hold it all.

We think more time and more preparation equals more peace and more success, or that our lives would be better if we were granted all the things we think we want as soon as possible, but time keeps proving itself a quiet teacher and a devoted protector. It helps me loosen my grip on each moment by inviting me to stop living fearfully in my head in the future, and it shows me that when things arrive it’s exactly when I’m ready for them. Plus, every detour, every scramble, every pause and early arrival I didn’t plan for has forced me to lean more fully into myself during times of uncertainty and get crystal clear on what truly matters, allowing me to experience my own innate knowing—the ultimate gift.

Mental & Material Minimalism

It felt like there was a constant hum of ads, influencers, vlogs and blogs telling me what else I needed to be a smarter, “more prepared” mom. They showed me the top-rated monitoring devices to prevent SIDS, the best tips to prevent tearing during natural births, the ultimate hospital snacks, and the fanciest bassinets that promise to buy us back a couple hours of sleep all for the price of a down payment on a used car…and ironically the more I researched every new gadget and checked every box on my impossibly long list of things to do, the more anxious I felt. Preparing for every single thing was starting to have the opposite effect, leaving me too much in my head to feel calm, ready, or receptive in my body.

Halfway through, it hit me: my parents didn’t have half this stuff, and they managed with me just fine. So now I’m unlearning the noise. I’m reminding myself that you can only prepare so much. The rest, you figure out as you go. That’s true of parenting, but it’s also true of living. Sometimes you have to wade knee-deep into the mess of it before you even know there’s a problem that requires a solution.

One of the best perspective my OB offered weeks ago: “Women can deliver a baby even in a coma. Your body knows what to do.” That truth hits hard. It was an anchor while in the delivery room, but it’s also one for this postpartum life. Our bodies and our instincts are wiser than the chatter around us. It’s our minds and the fear-based marketing that overcomplicate things.

Hushing the Noise

Now that we’re back home, I’m even more serious about clearing out the space. Our condo already felt full with just two of us, and now that we’ve welcomed in a whole extra human with his own oversized furniture, I feel pressed to get honest about what we actually need, what’s just clutter, and what new things we can invite in to help organize what remains. This next chapter is all about decluttering and hushing the house. (Tips on this below!)

With my new limits on time, energy and space, it’s making me see many of the objects we’ve housed for what they really are…Mass Inventory. More things I have to store, clean, move, organize and all around just think about. Each item takes a little claim on my attention that slows me down. I’m realizing this energy could be better spent elsewhere, specifically on the baby. As I start to cherry pick the things I could release, the donation box builds. And every box we carry out of the house clears a little more mental space for me to be more present right now.

While I’ve never struggled with letting things go—when an object makes me happy when I see it or use it, I enjoy keeping it around—I never felt particularly compelled to practice a minimalist lifestyle until right now. I even looped my husband, who likes to hang on to things more than I do, into watching The Minimal Mom, and now even he’s starting to see how much unnecessary “inventory” we keep.

So we officially started our big purge beginning with the books in the bedroom. But I’m side-eying the kitchen as the next space to purge. (We don’t need five sets of tattered oven mitts and 8 chefs knives, and it’s time to let them go without fantasizing about how we maybe, just maybe, might use them in the future.)

Minimal Mom’s suggestion is to ask “Have I used this in the past year?”, or “Do I know for a fact I will use this in the next year?” Or “Does this make me happy to keep around?” If the answers are “no, no and no” it’s time to let it go.

Of course none of this practice is about a lifestyle of deprivation. It’s a philosophy about making more space to honor what actually matters, because it’s impossible to appreciate the fundamental things, when they’re buried beneath clutter, competing for space and attention.

Pastelitos + Baklava (a 2 in 1 special)

I had my hospital bag packed weeks ahead of delivery, but because it sat in the corner of our bedroom for so long, I kept raiding the snacks I’d packed “for postpartum” in the middle of the night. To keep myself from wiping out my stash entirely, I decided to make a little something sweet: a mashup of my two favorite desserts growing up—Cuban pastelitos, flaky pastries filled with guava and cream cheese, and Middle Eastern baklava, made of dozens of buttery, paper-thin layers of phyllo dough, filled with chopped nuts and spices, baked until golden, and soaked in sticky syrup.

HOW TO LAYER THIS EASY-TO-ASSEMBLE BAKLAVA