Friday, September 28, 2007

I cooked! I cooked!

Pasta
Soup
Pizza
Meatloaf
Roast chicken from Food Lion
Broiled salmon

I've actually made something from this list every night. Monday DH was able to get a chicken. We had it with hummas, olives, marinated artichokes, and salad. Tuesday I made meatloaf with sesame ginger broccoli. Wednesday we had chicken & asparagus tortellini with pesto alfredo. Thursday we had take out. Tonight we had pizza with chicken, spinach & artichokes with pesto alfredo. I'm going to try the salmon on Sunday

The boys ate some leaves of salad on Monday & one bite each of chicken. They ate the meatloaf & refused the broccoli (DH liked it. I'm so so about cooked broccoli). They ate the tortellini. They had taquitos on Thursday beacuse it was Thai take out & they don't like anything there. They eat ate a slice & a half of pizza. There was drama Monday, drama Tuesday, and some drama tonight (Havoc decided he cannot stand toppings on pizza, despite having topped his own with his own choice of stuff). I suppose 2 drama free meals is something.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Menu the week of Sept 24

Pasta
Soup
Pizza
Meatloaf
Roast chicken from Food Lion
Broiled salmon

There's a menu for you. So inventive & clever. Lots of great meals going on at our house. I'm currently in full on surrender mode. The boys will only eat about 5 things and I'm tired of stressing about it, so they get them. Pasta is usually a Buitoni ravioli or torellini, chosen by the boys, in a spinach pesto. Sometimes I add chicken to it. Occasionally I get clever & make a gorganzola alfredo sauce & add steak. The boys will eat the pasta, but are not too keen on the add ons. Pizza is usually a chicken-spinach variation. Sometimes pesto, sometimes pesto alfredo, occasionally BBQ sauce with bacon & mushrooms added. Sometimes I add zucchini or broccoli. Sometimes I get pick up from Papa John's. The seem to eat meatloaf 95% of the time, so it is fairly safe & I stick spinach or eggplant in it, so if they refuse the veg & salad they at least get some vitamins.

The soup is for me. I get one meal a week that is what *I* want to eat and the heck with difficult demons. They can eat the salad & bread or sandwich that goes with it. The salmon was Dh's request. I'm doing it with garlic lentils. Maybe the demons will eat it, maybe not

Food Lion is running a special on roast chicken, buy 6 & get the 7th free. But unlike Safeway, which keeps track of your purchases for you (You've bought 3 of your 6 sandwiches to get a free one), Food Lion gives you a printed ticket & expects you to keep track of it. Naturally that means they end up giving away far fewer chickens than Safeway would. But that is just so cheesy. I have an MVP card. Its not like they don't have a record of the chickens I have bought. Making me keep the damn coupons is so cheap of them.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

not doing so good

My plan was

Soup - curried carrot
Pasta - TBD by the demons
Roasted chicken from Food Lion
Pizza - probably chicken
Beef kabobs with pita & assorted salads

I've had 4 opportunities to make those meals. I've made the pasta & that was only because Safeway is right next to the gym & was able to run in & grab some ravioli after my Kickboxing class. Monday I had intended chicken, but when DH went to get it, they were out, so the males had fish sticks & Lipton pasta sides and I had a cheese sandwich. Tuesday I intended to make soup, but had no broth, so we had grilled cheese and salad. Wednesday we had the pasta. Tonight DH called & said "How about Chinese take out?" and since I had failed to cut up the beef to marinate or buy the assorted salads, I said "hell yes!" The kabobs will be tomorrow. Definitely. and I am going to make my own flat bread.

On the upside the boys have eaten dinner every night without protest.

Monday, September 17, 2007

Menu the week of Sept 17

Soup - curried carrot
Pasta - TBD by the demons
Roasted chicken from Food Lion
Pizza - probably chicken
Beef kabobs with pita & assorted salads

There is a catfish fry that DH's company sponsors on Sunday and he'll probably make pancakes for dinner Saturday.

Can you tell I'm not really in the mood to cook? Apart from topping the Boboli & chopping the carrots for soup I'm not doing much this week. I'm just not hungry & when I am not in the mood to eat, I am not in the mood to cook. I'm sort of interested in the soup, but I can take or leave the rest of it.

This will probably come back to bite me in the butt, but right now I am looking forward to the boys being old enough to have some real input in the meal plan. Right now their only suggestions are "pizza!" and "pasta!". I make those, but I'm hoping someday they will say "how about that mustard chicken with artichokes you made a couple weeks ago?" or even "How about if I make some stew Mom?"

Monday, September 10, 2007

Grilling is Good

(an article I wrote for our Mom's Group newsletter)

One of my favorite parts of summer is dinner on the grill. The kids seem more willing to eat food, especially veggies, if they come of the grill. Maybe it’s being able to see the fire actually cooking the food. We grill out every weekend and sometimes on weekdays as well. We make hamburgers, BBQ and chicken & beef kabobs. We grill corn, asparagus, sliced zucchini, yellow squash & beets.

I rely a great deal on marinades when we grill, leaving meat & veggies to soak in them all day sometimes. We slice everything up thin before marinating it to get the most coverage & then thread them onto wood skewers or cook them in a foil basket with holes. Thinly sliced meat & veggies cook much faster than whole steaks or chicken breasts. A skewer of steak can be done after cooking 2 minutes each side, chicken takes about 5 minutes a side. Slide the meat in long strips about a quarter inch thick, marinate and then thread onto a metal or wet wooden skewer. Depending on length, 3-4 slices will fit, folded accordion style on one skewer. Cuts of beef at least an inch thick are best for slicing – flank steak & London broil work well, a rib eye is also good. Veggies should be sliced about a half inch thick or so & flipped frequently if skewered or stirred often if using a foil basket.

These are some of my current favorite marinades. They all marinate about 2 pounds of meat.

Spiced up BBQ

1cup of your favored premade BBQ sauce
3 tbls brown sugar
1 tbls paprika
½ teas ground cumin
½ teas cayenne pepper
¼ teas salt
¼ cup cider vinegar

Combine all of the above and marinate thinly sliced chicken strips for 1-8 hours before cooking. This is also good on pork roast (grilled or in the crock pot) and makes excellent pulled pork sandwiches.

Tandoori Marinade

¼ c yogurt
¼ c sour cream
1 tbls lemon juice
1 teas kosher salt
½ teas cayenne pepper
2 teas each – brown sugar, cumin, paprika, tumeric, minced garlic (powdered is ok), minced ginger (ground powdered is ok) and garam masala

Combine all ingredients and marinate thinly sliced chicken 1- 24 hours before cooking
Serve with raita for dipping

Raita
1 cucumed, deseeded & sliced
1 cup of yogurt or ½ c yogurt & ½ c sour cream
1 tbls chopped mint
¼ teas cumin

Blend all together in food processor or blender

Chimichurri Rojo

½ c red wine vinegar
¼ c olive oil
3 tbls tomato paste
2 tbls minced garlic
1 tbls sugar
1 teas ground cumin
1 teas ground black pepper
1 teas red pepper flakes

Combine all and marinate thinly sliced beef for 1-24 hours before cooking

Garlic Marinade

2 tbls minced garlic
½ c cider vingar
¼ c olive oil
½ teas salt

Marinate sliced veggies in this for about an hour.

Saturday, September 08, 2007

I'm in shock

It has been 10 long long years since I have had hot food arrive at my front door, let alone have someone other than my husband be the bearer of this lukewarm food.

But all that is about to change...
Tannery General Store has begun making and delivering pizza! And subs! And, according to the flyer, they will also deliver GROCERIES!, including wine and beer! Be still my beating heart! Pizza AND beer! Brought to my door! Even subs and a gallon of milk! MILK, delivered! Sure they don't sell produce and meat but they have the general bread, soup, chips, dairy things and they will BRING IT TO MY HOUSE!! Can you feel my glee?! I called when I got the flyer, before I let myself get all gleeful, just to check on the delivery radius and they deliver in a 9 mile radius. We live 7.6 miles away. I know because the very next morning I drove there & measured. (its on the way to my kids school, sorta) Since then I have been far to gleeful to actually call in anything. Ever wanted something for so long that when you finally get it you have no idea what to do with it? That's how I feel. Paralyzed by sheer glee.

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Bad, bad baking

I've had a run of bad luck with baking lately. My second to last loaf of sandwich bread did not go over too well with the demons. I have to tread a careful edge on the whole wheat to white flour percentage with them. I thought I had found a good balance but then I tried with this loaf to add some oat bran to it. Apparently it added a barely noticeable density to the bread, which was just too much for them. Their basis for comparison is Wonder bread, which admittedly I love too, so I know I am fighting an uphill battle on the texture front. And I must admit, peanut butter on a slice of dense wheat bread is like eating spackle in my opinion (which i have not voiced to the demons, they arrived a similar conclusion completely on their own). So I decided to make a different loaf of bread, a 'fluffy sandwich loaf' it claimed and it used a similar proportion of wheat to white that had been working ok for me. This loaf had 3 rising periods, which is a pain if you are not around all day to check on it and despite that it turned out like a brick. With DS2 repeatedly begging for 'san-ich, san-ich Mama!' I bought a loaf of Wonder bread.

Then yesterday I decided to make a cake. I had some yogurt that I needed to use in the next day or so and a recipe for yogurt cake I wanted to try out. I baked it the initial 40 minutes but it was underdone so I baked it a bit longer & the toothpick came out clean (I've been having that issue with my oven with everything lately. I need to get a new oven thermometer, the last one got fried when DH ran the the 'cleaning' cycle) It smelled good and looked good. It cooled & I iced it. Dessert time came around & I started to cut it. I have never had to SAW slices off of a cake before but I knew when my steak knife was having issues sliding through it there was a problem. The outer couple inches of the edges of the cake were overbaked & rock hard. The inside was underbaked. I cannot recall the last time I have spit food out, let alone cake, but I couldn't bring myself to finish chewing it. The icing was ok, but it was Duncan Hines.

So I am on a baking hiatus. The cake problem can possibly be blamed on the high humidity - there was too much flour in the mix. Also I am just hopeless baking sweets. I can bake bread and make a delicious cobbler, but that is it as far as baking goes for me. The bread flour is kept in the fridge at a constant humidity, though I suppose possibly the humidity did something during the risings... or there could be a problem with the overm I won't know about that for awhile. It's too damn hot to be using the oven now anyway.

Saturday, September 01, 2007

Baggage - labels

The mental & emotional kind, not the kind that gets x-rayed at airport security.

I have baggage. Everyone I know has baggage of some sort. Among my friends it is religious or cultural mostly, but educational, athletic and economic bags also sit on the luggage cart was well. We all have things that our family made us do, or wouldn't let us do, or were inflicted upon us by our peers. We swear these things will not happen to our children. We will do it differently. We will do it right .

My baggage is food related (with a carry on of organized sports issues). There was little variety in the meals in our house. I was labeled a picky eater at an early age, but never really encouraged to try new things. No one in my family ate new things either, at least not in front of me. I assume when my parents were in Japan and the Philippines my dad, at least, tried new foods. My mom I know existed on Mc D's french fries & milkshakes. It was a case of the pot calling the kettle black. But as a child I could not see that. I now realize that the limited variety of foods in my house was due to my parents own baggage. Dad had issues with things he would not eat from his poor childhood. Mom just lacks a desire to try new foods. So we were left with what what my dad was willing to eat of what my mom was willing to eat. Ground beef, pork chops, ham steak & the occasional grilled steak. Chicken was expensive when I was child, so we had something called 'city chicken', which was breaded pork kabobs. There was also spaghetti, lasagna & tuna noodle casserole. Vegetables were canned green beans, canned corn, canned succotash, frozen broccoli & cauliflower, both smothered in a cheese sauce. There may have been carrots, but I think not. My dad doesn't like peas. There were no other vegetables in my world, apart from iceberg lettuce

So really, looking back it is not surprising I was a reluctant eater. I can't stand canned green beans. Loathe them, always have, but as they were the veg of choice they were on offer 2 or 3 times a week. Limiting my already limited menu caused me to be labeled a picky eater. I never turned my nose up at zucchini or kohlrabi or asparagus. I was never offered them. Maybe I might have liked them. Maybe if I had seen my parents trying new foods from time to time I would have as well. Maybe not. Maybe the list of foods I refused to eat would have gotten longer. But I know now I was not and am not a picky eater. I like different things than my parents do.

Even knowing this on an intellectual level, I still carry this big bag labeled picky eater with me into every kitchen, grocery store, market & restaurant. "What's that thing?" a suspicious child's voice in mind wonders looking at a star fruit. "Eww, that's yuck." the voice says looking at the okra. "Are there onion chunks in that?" it ponders, looking closely at the stir fry on the plate. "You haven't even tried it yet."the adult me asserts. "Give it a chance." I seem to spend as much time trying to convince myself to try things as I do trying to convince my children. I succeed with myself only because the guilt of being a good example tends to overcome the reluctance. I have lived outside my parent's home for 22 years. I have made my own food choices for longer than I had to live with theirs. But the early training is still there. The reluctance to step outside the known, the encouragement to stick with the familiar. "What if is is yucky?" is the question in my mind.

I don't want that for my children. I want them to look at new foods and ask "What if it is wonderful?" So I eat the slimy okra & find other ways of preparing it. I eat the starfruit and the stir fry. I try my best to range outside my own food comfort zone & provide them with variety. And when people say my child is a picky eater I say "He isn't picky. He just doesn't like everything we do and that is ok."