Where we eat according to Mayhem.

Mayhem likes to eat out. Specifically Mayhem likes to eat pizza out. He also likes 'rice with sauce' and pancakes. Occasionally he will eat chicken fingers or a grilled cheese sandwich. Sometimes he will eat some of whatever DH & I have ordered. He loves Outback's bloomin shrooms & Chili's asian wings. Mostly I think he likes having a choice. These are the places he suggests we eat

Wee-Gee's - this is a local Italian place. He gets pizza& might eat some calamari
Chilwee Resaraunt - Chili's. He gets the asian chicken appetizer and pizza
Fire Resaurant - this is any Japanese steak house. He eats fried rice in a puddle of ginger sauce. He might eat some tamako sushi & some shrimp
Pancake Resaurant - this is any place that serves breakfast all day, usually one of the diners in town, occasionally IHOP or Dennys. He gets pancakes, no whipped cream, easy on the syrup.
Quito place - this is the local mexican restaurant. He gets taquitos & occasionally a fish taco
Outback - the only place he knows the correct name of. He eats the mushrooms and random things from the kids menu.
Tie resuarant - our local Thai place. He eats nothing. Maybe he'll have a bite of chicken satay, but usually not.

These are the places we take the kids too. There are some other great restaurants in town, but they are not really demon friendly. They serve meals to be savored, meals that take time to prepare, serve and eat. Meals on a timetable not compatible with energetic small kids. Plus they probably wouldn't eat any of the food, given what they are willing to eat.

making yogurt

When I tell people I make my own bread & yogurt I get all sorts of responses, mostly involving the time & effort. Honestly, if either took much time or effort, I wouldn't do them. Bread needs 5-10 minutes of actual effort on my part, most of of the time involved in making bread is spent waiting around - for the mixer to knead it, for it rise, and rise again and to bake and to cool. But you can do other things, even leave the house, while most of that is going on.

Yogurt is the same way, but needs even less effort. Get a quart size glass mason jar, wide mouths are best. Fill it most of the way up with milk (not skim), microwave it for 6-7 minutes until it reaches 180-185 degrees. Stick it in the fridge for about a half hour (check at 20 minutes until you know for sure) until it cools to between 110-115 degrees, stirring occasionally. You can also leave it on the counter for 45-60 minutes. Add to it a quarter cup powdered milk, 2 tablespoons of yogurt from your last batch, or that you bought and a good squeeze of honey. Stir it gently together. Wrap the jar in a bunch of kitchen or hand towels and put in a 6 pack sized insulated tote or small cooler. Fill the corners & crevices with towels/washcloths as well. Wait about 8 hours (at least 6 hours for thinner, up to 10 for thicker). Unwrap the jar & put it in the fridge, wait 8 more hours. Open and enjoy your yogurt. Seriously. The biggest problem you will have with this is finding enough small towels.

I had good intentions

We all know what road is paved with those....

I was really going to try this year to branch out on side dishes; do something more than just microwave some frozen veggie mix - MAKE THINGS! I was going to make things, to serve something more than steamed broccoli with a bit of garlic butter. I was even going to make a few veggie meals. But it's mid-August & it just hasn't happened. I still make the plans to cook these things, but by 6pm most nights just grabbing a bag of frozen peas & tossing them in the microwave seems an effort, especially since no one will eat them anyway. Peas coated in butter, peas with garlic, peas in ginger sauce, pea soup, peas with bacon. The boys will not touch them. It's draining - mentally & emotionally.

It's not just the peas or the veggies in general, it's everything. Just getting them to taste things is a miserable experience. One bite. That all I ask. Before you turn your nose up and announce "That's yuck!" to the room at large TRY THE THING FIRST!!! Just taste it. If you don't like it, fine. It's ok to not like everything. But taste it...please. I want them to like food, I want them to enjoy food. They don't have to be adventurous eaters snacking on fried mosquito larvae, but for crying out loud take a bite of chicken that is not coated in breading once in awhile.

I keep telling myself it is just a stage, normal & natural. But is it. Other people's kids seem to eat more variety, eat more willingly, don't shout 'yuck' when presented with anything but pizza for dinner. Other children will take the one bite without being asked or told to do so. I don't compare my kids to other peoples in anything but this. Learning to crawl, read, ride a bike, these are things kids do in their own time. They are skills you develop when you are physically & mentally ready to do so. What about trying food? Is this my fault? Are my genes to blame? My parenting? Somedays it just so overwhelming to me that all I can do is order pizza and savor the site of them eating something willingly.

My Favorite Muffins

Finally something baked came out right! Possibly because I used the bread flour from the fridge instead of the regular flour in the bin on the counter. I have over soft bananas so it was time for Banana Yogurt muffins. I love this muffin recipe. It's delicious! My only problem with it is I always end up needing 1.5 bananas & what do you do with half a mushy banana? I made a smoothie out of it but that isn't always an option.

This makes 12 muffins

Preheat your oven to 375 and set paper liners into 12 muffin cups.

Combine these ingredients:

1 2/3c flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

Then cut in,using 2 forks or a pastry blender until crumbly:

1/2c soft butter

Then stir in:

2/3c bran (I prefer oat, but wheat works too)

1/2c mini chocolate chips

In a larger bowl mix together:

1 egg

2/3c well mashed bananas

1/2c yogurt plain (vanilla is good too)

1/2c brown sugar

1 tblsp molassas

Then add the dry ingredients and mix until just blended, don't overmix.

Scoop batter into the paper line muffin tins. Bake about 25 minutes.

where does he get this?

The younger of the little demons, er, angels, loves spicy food. Where did that come from. DH & I are not spicy food eaters. I like flavorful stuff but heat turns me off. I am a bland eater. I'm not fond of mexican due to the peppers & I like mild forms of Indian & Thai food. I love the flavors in Japanese food & non-hot Chinese food. I like unusual spices but not heat. DH like thigs a bit hoter than me but even then he is an American Hot sort of eater (as opposed to Mexican Hot or Thai Hot, the grades that appear in several of our local ethnic restuarants). DS2 however likes it HOT. He likes spicy curry. He'll eat Wasabi ranch dip with a fork. He loves spicy taco meat. I am a bland cook & I have joked that I need to just start shaking Tabasco sauce on his food to get him to eat it. Turns out it really isn't a joke. I bought chicken taquitos because the store was out of the usual beef & cheese ones. The chicken ones are bland, even to me (and that is sayin something). DS2 loves taquitos but he doesn't like the chicken ones because thy are bland. The beef ones don't really qualify as spicy but they do at least have a nice flavor. He's only 2 and a half & doens't understand that we don't have the taquitos he wants. He sees the box and wants taquitos. Explaining they are the chicken ones he won't eat makes no difference. All he knows is that I am denying him the taquitos of his dreams. So today I went through my spice rack, looking for something to dress up the taquitos. I'd though I had some red pepper (though why I though I would have that is a mystery). What I found was curry powder (and why I have that is a bigger mystery). I made the taquitos and then sprinkled a bit of curry powder on them. They smelled good. DS2 ate them up with speed and requested more. I made another batch, including some for myself. They were delicious. DS1 was not as approving, but he is a bland eater too. He did eat them eventually.

My quest for this evening is to go through my recipie cards and find the reason I bought the curry powder so I can make it for dinner tomorrow. I'm assuming it was a Rachel Ray meal, the only other cookbook I have been using in the past few months is Giada DiLorentis & curry doens't feature much in Italian food.

Bread, lots of bread

I've been baking. Oh my have I been baking! I bake a loaf of 'sandwich' bread every week, plus I've been experimenting with random specialty loaves once a week as well. Just the past 3 days alone I have made sandwich bread, naan and a most excellent wheaty cheddar bread. I've made more bread this month with no bread machine than I made in half of 2006 with a bread machine. The Kitchen Aid mixer has been getting quite a work out between my bread explorations and DH's weekly cookie bake. We've decided it is time for an upgrade. We have the Heavy Duty version, which actually has the lowest RPMs of any of the mixers and the smallest bowl. It was a gift about 7 years ago. We're going for the 6qt professional model. Just as soon as I come across a factory refurb of an appropriate color. They are $150 less on average, but mostly of that stainless steel or gunmetal gray sort of finish which would look damn odd in my medium wood, slate and cheap white applianced kitchen. Our current one is black, which is ok, I don't want a white one. I'm hoping to find a green one but black will do.

What are your cooking skills? How have they improved/changed??

I'm a pretty good cook & for the most part I enjoy it. It can be frustrating from time to time due to my diners. Little boys are not in general the most appreciative of audiences unless I am heating up Tyson chicken patties.

I've always enjoyed cooking and been fairly good at it when I wanted to be. What I have been working on the since the boys were born was planning. Before them I would call DH at 10am and say "What do you want for dinner?" and search up recipes on the web & buy the stuff I needed on the way home from work. And if I didn't feel like cooking it was no big deal because the other person in my house was a grown adult who could find himself something to eat on his own (and was a short order cook in college). Now I have other people to feed & dinner by Tyson every night is just not my style. I end up feeling bad for eating all the processed foods. Don't get me wrong, I *like* processed foods, especially breakfast cereal, but apart from that I think it should be kept to a minimum. But lack of sleep & 2 babies pushed me into lots of boxes of meals for a couple years & I lost interest in food really. I have been slowly getting back to where I was, which makes me feel more like me again. But I have had to get a handle on planning. I make long range goals. My goal in 2004 was just to make 4 meals a week. From scratch mostly, no Hamburger Helper (HH was for the other 3 nights). I also got my recipe collection organized & went through my several dozen cookbooks and did up cards on any recipe I found interesting. For 2005 it was 5 meals a week with one new or rarely made recipe a week. Plus start keeping a log of how they turned out and changes I made. My 2006 goal was planning for 2 weeks of dinners, using the leftovers from a couple of meals creatively in other meals in the period. And baking at least a couple loaves of bread a month. My 2007 goals were to get a handle on side dishes (insread of just nuking whatever frozen veggie I have on hand or making a spinach salad. I don't like veggies but I can't let the boys know that so I need to make interesting veggie dishes to interest all of us) and to prep ahead, like when I make crock pot beef stew - prep 2 or 3 times as many veggies and freeze them so next time all I have to do is open a bag. And since my bread machine finally died on me in February while kneading a loaf of Pepperoni Pecarino Bread, I am making bread without it. The variety and scope of my bread making has expanded greatly since the machine died & in the end I think I am probably not going to replace it.

Apart from bread I don't bake. Baking requires an attention to detail I don't have. DH bakes. He has spent the past year perfecting his chocolate chip cookies. Now he is branching out into mousse! :)

Back to Blogging

It's August, the last VBS is over & school starts in 2 weeks, so it is time to get back to the routine.  That means trying to blog regularly again.

It's Lammas today, the festival of the first wheat harvest of the year, the loaf-mass.  Given that i am so fond of baking bread, I naturally planned to make a loaf for the occasion & had considered a few of my favorites.  By morning I had decided that family dynamics required pizza for dinner so I would make pizza dough.  Well, the morning went by.  I took DS1 to VBS, did laundry, I did some homework, I read to DS2, & then it was time to pick DS1 up and no dough had been started.  I knew I wouldn't get home in time to start some for dinner so I decided to buy some, even if it meant going into the crappy Food Lion (I like most Food Lions, it's just this one that sucks).  As usual the Food Lion lived up to my expectations - no frozen dough, no premade crusts, not even Chef Boyardee Pizza in a box. I ended up buying crescent rolls, generic ones because they were out of Pillsbury, and using them.  I should have just made a biscuit crust but that didn't occur to me until after dinner.  So for Lammas we had 'bread' about as far removed from fresh ground wheat as you can possibly get.  My sabbat intentions always fall through.  However, last Sunday I prepared a feast for a dozen people that included hot flat bread grilled by me on open fire (ok it was a gas grill, but there was actual fire & I have the scorched arm hair to prove it).  everyone said the meal was delicious & satisfying & this sunday I am making cheese bread for our coven's Lammas feast.  I think that covers me.  I may not have celebrated on the exact day, but I did and will be celebrating anyway.