It's good to be home

You know you have been stuck in a car with small children for too damn long when you and your spouse staring high fiving one another when you spot a McD's with a play area.  It took us 9 hours to get out of Florida, a trip that should only take 6. Traffic was moving at 20mph on I75 for nearly the whole time we were on it.  No reason for it. No construction, no accidents, no flat tire or cops having pulled someone over (why would they, we were 50mph under the speed limit). At one point I had to pull over so DH could hack his way into the underbrush & find a spot for Havoc to poop. I'd been hoping to reach an exit for 10 minutes by then & only gone a couple of miles. 

I did not want to make this a 2 day long orgy of McDonalds. But you know, decent places don't offer play areas. Only fast food offers play areas and you can't really send your kids out back to run around the dumpster a few times while waiting for the diner cook to make your sandwiches.  Given that we had stopped for ice cream only a couple hours before (and had to eat it in the car because the ice cream shop was at one end of an extremely busy gas station)I was hoping to be able to get a couple of their fruit snack trays & tide the kids over with that for another hour or so until we could find a place to have dinner.  This McD's had no fruit. No fruit at all, not even apple dippers. It also had no yogurt, no juice & no milk.  They were out of everything not fried or carbonated.  So to justify killing a half hour in their play area I bought a McNugget Happy meal with fries.  The kids split it & after a half hour we were able to drive almost to the SC state line without stopping again. We got a hotel at 8pm and settled for take out from Ruby Tuesday's.  I like their turkey burger with avocado. Pity the don't to take out alcohol. I really needed a drink.

I hate the smell of cooked cabbage

My mom is making a big pot of her bean soup. It includes the ham bone from Tuesday's dinner, a bunch of great northern beans and a whole lot of cabbage.

The smell of it used to drive me out of the house when I was a kid. 

Dinner is over

The meal has been eaten. The men are watching football, Mom & SIL are napping, the little kids are in the swimming pool and I am blogging while watching them play. 

Mom made dinner. Mom always makes dinner & no help is wanted.  I try. I offer to make stuffing or a sweet potato side but Mom is on it & wants no assistance.  SIL is allowed to make kibbeh, which is served as an appetizer & is not something that was ever served in our house before SIL joined the family. We are long settled descendants of Irish, German and English ancestors who by & large came here before 1820. We do not make kibbeh, though many of us eat it.  Perhaps next year I will attempt to offer a curry of some sort.

Dinner was as usual, a large roasted turkey (unbrined, Mom doesn't hold with that brining nonsense) stuffed with Pepperidge Farm stuffing (Mom doesn't hold with that 'stuffing is evil' nonsense), mashed potatoes, Kulski noodles, gravy from a jar & some homemade cranberry sauce.  Not a green veg in sight, not even a salad.  Normally there are some canned green beans or broccoli in a bag but I think this year she gave up the fight on that. The green stuff was only eaten out of a vague sense of obligation, the bite required by manners. Occasionally some sweet potatoes with brown sugar & marshmallows appears, but we had them with ham on Tuesday.  This is the Thanksgiving meal I have eaten for 40 years.  While a part of me would love to convince her to try brining a turkey or to let me make some cornbread & sage stuffing or baked zucchini casserole, I know it really wouldn't be 'right'. It wouldn't be Thanksgiving. When it is my kitchen and my meal, then I'll do those things.  Someday, in the future, when I have more than DH & I to feed (the boys eat so little they barely count as half a serving combined) & it's worth the effort to make all that food, I will have a brined turkey with cornbread stuffing, a smoked salmon appetizer, shredded brussel sprouts with bacon, savory sweet potato casserole and whatever else comes to mind.  Or maybe my kids will look back when they are 40 & say "Ah Thanksgiving....No one could make reservations the way our mom did." 

Meals so far

We arrived Saturday night and Mom had tuna noodle casserole waiting for us. Sunday we had our obligatory Quizno's lunch run. I love Quizno's and there is one only 2 shopping plazas away from my folks place (about 4 miles). I have to drive 40 miles to get Quizno's at home. Sunday night we went for dinner at the Park Place diner, in the same plaza as Quizno's. They had a large menu & do breakfast all day. I had bananas foster French Toast. Delicious. DH had the fish & chips, which were excellent. Dad tried the Greek platter. The kabobs were good but the philo on the spanikopita was too tough to eat. Mom had another greek dish, I forget the name, ground lamb in a creamy sauce. That was good too. Havoc ordered the homemade mac & cheese and was disturbed by their use of large penne noodles. These things were huge! All in all, a very good dinner.

Monday DH & I went to the bookstore & then stopped by a restaurant we's passed on the way called Sushi Thai of Naples. We had an excellent lunch, so excellent in fact we went back on Tuesday. He had Pad Thai, medium hot. He said it had an wonderful flavor & was just right on the spices. I had tempura - shrimp, zucchini, sweet potato and a monster piece of broccoli. The tempura was good but went greasy as it cooled. Our appetizer though was the best. It was sesame tuna. A thick chunk of tuna was crusted with sesame and seared on each side briefly, then sliced thin. Those slices were lightly painted with a sweet teriyaki sauce and then a creamy wasabi sauce was drizzled over it. It was so good. I also have a caliente roll with tempura red snapper in it. Delicious They deliver but not as far as my folk's house which is probably just as well because we can't afford a $35 lunch every day.

Monday night we hit CiCi's pizza for dinner. A great place to do if you have 5 children & 6 adults who all like pizza but can't agree on toppings. Last night we had ham at home. Tonight we are going to Mel's diner for ribs.

I am making the beer batter cheese bread from Cook' Illustrated right now, to use for ham sandwiches. It smells delicious. I had already bought the cheese, knowing full well my mom wouldn't have any. I should have known she wouldn't have any real butter. I had incorrectly assumed she would have flour so I had t go out & get some of that this morning & while I was at it I bought chocolate chips and brown sugar so DH can make cookies and use up the flour & butter I bought.

I hesitate to mention it but,

Mayhem has eaten 3 dinners in a row with a minimum of fuss. Not that they were fuss free or anything, but the fuss was more of a token fuss, a fuss because it is expected, not necessarily because he is actually upset.

Sunday he had taquitos, which were his choice & therefore limited his fussing subjects. He complained about the size of the pieces I had cut for him and there was some grumbling about whether there were too many or not enough pieces on the plate.  Then he ate them and asked for more.

Monday we had cream of veg soup - potato & spinach this time - plus a salad & bread. There was an immediate flurry of protest at this meal that ended with a request that I feed him the required one bite. He eventually ate all the soup, DH feeding him nearly all the bites. He ate the required one bite of lettuce and nibbled at the bread.

Tuesday was noodle casserole with cheese and salad. Basically homemade mac & cheese with some pureed carrot for color.  There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth from Mayhem once he was dragged to the table.  He was persuaded to take the required one bite & he refused to eat more.  However, Daddy distracted him by talking about school, and another bite went in his mouth. Daddy and Havoc started singing the various letter songs that Mayhem is learning in school and in between songs Mayhem would eat another bite.  Eventually he finished the whole bowl.

Now I am in a bit of a quandary.  What should I serve for dinner tonight?  I'd planned on mock tandoori chicken because I need to use up the yogurt. But because Mayhem is eating I'm leaning toward pizza to be sure of keeping up the streak.  Perhaps instead of just baking the yogurt marinated strips plain I could bread them? But I have no bread crumbs.  I do have goldfish crackers though. Goldfish chicken strips!!!! A-ha!  We'll see how that goes.

What do we have in the house?

That is what is for dinner this week. Due to nearly $400 in unexpected eye expenses (Havoc is apparently very nearsighted) and another $300 yet unreimbursed, we had, after filling the car, less than $10 to last us until Friday. I bought milk, OJ, sugar & combined a coupon with a BOGO special on bagged salad mix, with that $10 this morning. Naturally tonight is the 3rd anniversary of the Thai restaurant and everything is half off. Alas. It was soup & salad in our house. Tomorrow night will be spaghetti & salad. Wednesday is mock tandoori chicken and, naturally, salad. I'll be having salad for lunch all week. Thursday evening is the school play & hopefully we'll be picking up those pricey glasses of Havoc's in the afternoon. Combined that makes dinner tricky. Normally I'd run though McD's or Arbys but $1.38 will barely get me one item off the dollar menu with tax. So probably PB&J & applesauce in a cup in the backseat.

We're leaving on vacation Friday morning so I would have been eating the soup, the chicken, and using up the pasta sauce anyway to clean out the fridge. I'm taking the apples & grapes with us for snacking on the trip (18 hour drive over 2 days), along with any juice, cheese & yogurt in the cooler. Last year we left a nearly empty gallon jug of milk on the counter for the 10 days we were gone. Oh.my.god. the smell! Both of us thought the other was going to dump it & rinse the jug.

Our colorful meal tonight.

My NaBloPoMo posts for the last 3 days are on my other 2 blogs.

So, what will they eat?

It's not as if they don't eat anything but goldfish crackers & pizza. They do like a variety of foods, some of them are even nutritious & many are vitamin fortified.

Havoc will eat - whole grain bagels with honey, toast with butter or honey, peanut butter & jelly sandwiches (on soft bread), Tyson chicken patties, Mrs Paul's fish sticks, taquitos, apples, bananas, oranges, watermelon, sometimes mango, dried apricots, any type of pasta in any sort of sauce (as long as it isn't chunky), pretzel, yogurt pretzels, yogurt, scrambled eggs, pizza (any sauce but only cheese, though sometimes pepperoni is ok), assorted cookies that are not solid chocolate (he's not fond of chocolate baked goods), hot dogs, meatloaf, tater tots, curly fries, tempura fried veggies (except broccoli), rice, tamako sushi, chicken noodle soup, vanilla ice cream, most breakfast cereals, pancakes and applesauce

Mayhem will eat - whole grain bagels with peanut butter, peanut butter sandwiches (on soft bread), Tyson chicken patties, Mrs Paul's fish sticks, taquitos, apples, grapes, dried pineapple, raisins, yogurt covered raisins, any type of pasta in any sort of sauce (as long as it isn't chunky), pretzel, yogurt pretzels, yogurt, pizza (any sauce but only cheese, but maybe artichokes or zucchini), assorted cookies, hot dog buns, hamburgers, meatloaf, tater tots, curly fries, tempura fried veggies (except broccoli), rice (only with spicy sauce), ice cream, most breakfast cereals, pancakes, waffles with peanut butter and most hard cheeses.

They drink heavily watered down juice, often V-8 Fusion because it has veggies in it, and milk with breakfast.

Given the above lists, is it any real wonder that I put spinach in my meatloaf and purees in my pizza and pasta sauce? Or make pumpkin waffles and sweet potato pancakes, zucchini bread, banana muffins and carrot cake?

Never the same loaf twice

Now that fall is finally here and cool weather has arrived for good, I can have the oven on for more than 15 minutes.  I have been baking more bread and making more meatloaf.  The one always affects the other.  I use the leftover bread for breadcrumbs in the meatloaf.  I make a different bread every week, so the meatloaf is never the same boring old meatloaf.  You never know what concoction I am going to serve you when I say I am making meatloaf.

Normally it involves a pound of ground beef and a third pound of ground pork.  But sometimes I add ground turkey as well or ground lamb and sometimes I buy 'meatloaf mix' and add more beef.  There was a time when I used a meat substitute to replace both the pork and the breadcrumbs.  It added a nice texture but I haven't been able to find it in stores in years.

The filler is almost always some kind of bread. I've used crumbs from cans, stuffing mix, and crumbled bread. I'm partial to using stale sage cornbread muffins when I have them. But often I never have any left.  I'll use roasted eggplant if I've made some already but that doesn't happen very often.  Roasted eggplant makes a very tasty meatloaf.  Moist and tender.  Thawed frozen spinach gets added as well.

Spices are usually garlic, ground mustard, onion powder, a bit of soy sauce and some pomegranate chipoltle sauce.  Sometimes dijon mustard if I am out of the pomegranate stuff.  Never ketchup. The first time I made meatloaf my husband said "I don't really like meatloaf, I'm not that fond of ketchup." He was surprised to learn I didn't use ketchup & happy to discover he actually did like meatloaf. 

I've had the mix go awry a few times over the years. I've used too many fatty cuts of meat, or too much filler. I've put in entirely too much mustard and not enough garlic. I've baked it too long & not long enough. But it's nearly always good, even if it isn't quite right.  I know people don't consider meatloaf to be a very creative dish but I think it is. I think it has a nice scope for variety & personal expression. It is one of my favorite meals to make

Today's meatloaf is made with ground beef & ground pork. It also includes bread crumbs from the Pepperoni Pecorino loaf I made last night. It has spinach, soy, ground mustard, garlic and the pomegranate sauce. I can't give an actual recipe because, apart from the meat, I have no idea how much of anything I used. 

Loaf of the Week - Pepperoni Bread

I decided to make this loaf to go with the beer & cheddar soup we are having for dinner. I admit that had the Food Lion had any loaves of sourdough in the bakery I would have bought that instead. But our Food Lion is pathetic, no organics, small selection in the deli & bakery. Its only redeeming feature is it sells Hornsby Crisp Apple Cider.

This is one of my favorite breads. It goes well with creamy soup, especially cheesy potato soup. It also makes a great grilled ham & cheese or toasted chicken salad sandwich.

This is adapted from the Best Little Bread Machine Cookbook, for a smaller and, non bread machine loaf.
1.5 teas yeast
2 c flour
2 tblsp wheat bran
1 tblsp sugar
1 teas salt
.25 teas pepper
1 egg
1 tbls oil
2/3 c water
1/2c Pecorino
1/4c diced pepperoni

Mix all together & knead with Kitchen Aid mixer for about 7 minutes. Let rise in a warmish place for an hour.Knead briefly, form into loaf and place in loaf pan, let rise for an hour. Bake at 350 for 35 minutes.

My bread notebook specifically states "Don't mess about with the flour. Use white!" Previous experiments with portions of whole wheat, soy and multigrained flour have not turned out well. I hadn't tried flax meal though, so this time I replaced 2 tablespoons of flour with flax meal. The dough was stickier that it should have been, but the rise was ok.

Dinner this week - Nov 5th

There is of course the ubiquitous pizza, pasta, soup, roast chicken combination. But then what? Meatloaf probably; I have a pound of ground beef I need to use and the demons will eat meatloaf.
Veggie pizza, with zucchini, yellow squash & artichoke tonight I think. Then tomorrow we can try the Cheddar Ale soup from Safeway and I'll make some pepperoni bread to go with it. Meatloaf on Wednesday with zucchini patties breaded & fried. I'm sort of tired of roast chicken. Even with the various sides & salads I serve. I think I'll make mock tandoori chicken instead and rice with carrots. That can be Thursday and I can bake a plain breast to add to some ziti forFriday. Saturday DH's boss is having a company fish fry at his home. The boys will eat hush puppies but not the fish so I'll serve them some fish sticks before we leave. (Why is Mrs. Pauls fish acceptable but not homemade? Why?) I wonder if I could ask him to cut some fillets into strips?

Sunday we have a sitter!!! I'd love to go for German but we can't afford the meal, let alone the extra babysitting time right now. I think we'll try the new Japanese place. The only other place we haven't tried is Glory Days and I'm not really in the mood for that.

Restaurant review -Thai

We have a Thai restaurant in our small town. How authentic is it? Well, the owners are Thai, from Thailand, so I'm assuming it is at least mostly authentic, especially if you get the 'Thai hot' spice option. People who have been to Thailand say it is very authentic. Did those people eat in actual Thai restaurants & homes or did they eat 'tourist Thai'. I have no idea. I don't really care either. The authenticity of the taste is of less concern to me than the taste itself.

I admit up front I do not order things Thai hot, or even American hot. If a dish comes with a spicy garlic sauce I will try it, but I am not going to ask to kick it up a notch and I lean toward more mild meals like Pad Thai or Lad Na. If am feel extravagant I'll get the Crispy Duckling & if I just want some duck I'll get the Honey Roasted Duck soup. Both are a wonderful combination of sweet & spicy. 'Authentically' both probably would have more chilies, but I'm happy with the amount as they are. My fall back dish is Pad See Ew, usually with shrimp. I prefer the wide rice noodles to the thinner ones in Pad Thai. It is flavorful buy not hot. I have been meaning to try the red curry but what I really want is someone else at my table to get the red curry so I can try it first. It is listed as 'Mexican hot' which is a bit much for me usually. I don't want to order a dish & find it is too hot for me to eat, but I don't want ask them to bland it down until I know how hot it actually is. It smells delicious, but things that smell delicious are often too hot for me to eat.

The service is better than most in the area, probably because none of the employees are from the area. They have a nice wine list too. I really enjoy this restaurant and am glad they seem to be doing well.

the Dinner that Never Ended

Last night I made my chicken & sweet potato salad for dinner. It consists of chunks of grilled chicken, steamed sweet potatoes, avocados, & crumbled bacon in a mustardy vinaigrette on a bed of spinach. People seem to really like it. I get many requests to bring it to cook outs & pot lucks. Its good hot or cold. Adults & kids both eat it willingly. except my kids.

All I really ask of them is they at least taste the food they are given before rejecting it. One bite of the stuff, that is it. In this case that means you have to eat a bite sized chunk of chicken & sweet potato. 2 bites of food, that you have eaten in the past without issue. If it has become hideous to you in the 5-6 weeks since you last ate it then fine, you don't have to finish it & can go have a mini bagel or an apple. Is that too much? Am I horrible parent for expecting this? 2 freaking bites of good tasting food you have eaten before? My kids don't seem to have figured or or like the time honored kid traditions of smothering disagreeable food in ketchup or ranch dressing or using the whole glass of juice to wash down the unwanted stuff while chewing quickly. By the time I was Havoc's age I could swallow lima beans whole with one gulp of water. I attribute my ability to swallow any size pill I am given to that early training.

Havoc eventually choked down the required bites, though each one took him well over 5 minutes to eat because he tucked in his cheek and wouldn't chew or swallow it until threatened with being served it for breakfast.

Mayhem never tried it. He just sat there saying "That's yuck." when asked to eat it, which got him moved to the time out chair for a few minutes & then back to the table and repeat. When told it would be his breakfast he said 'no it won't'. And nothing in his experience led him to believe otherwise. That threat had been made before & come to nothing because Daddy wasn't sufficiently frustrated to follow through the next morning. (Daddy does breakfast, which means pouring out the kid's cereal or toasting a waffle & then going back to bed for a half hour. He'd actually have to stay up if he followed through on the threat) Daddy seemed to have reached his point last night because the bowl was wrapped up & put in the fridge. Mayhem was given nothing else but a glass of watered juice.

This morning he asked for breakfast & was offered his dinner. He pitched a fit & ate nothing. At morning snack he said he was super hungry & asked for a PB sandwich & was again offered his dinner. He was told that once he had eaten a bite of chicken & a bite of potato, he could have a PB sandwich or a waffle or whatever he wanted, but he had to eat those 2 bites first. He protested a bit, then said ok. But when faced with sweet potato on his fork he took a sniff, announced "that yuk!" and refused to eat it. DH took the boys along on a small work expedition at a tower, he packed juice, snacks & Mayhem's dinner. He is going to take them to McD's for a late lunch when he is done, but Mayhem has to eat his 2 bites first. I told him meatloaf was for dinner & he loves meatloaf & he isn't happy he's got to eat the 2 bites first.

How is this going to turn out? Which side will win? Why has it come to this? How did it come to this? I didn't set out for a battle of wills when I made dinner last night. All I wanted was something we all were likely to eat & involved the avocado that was perfectly ripe & had to be used right now. What am I teaching him, to eat the food he is given? That I am bigger than him & can make him do things? To try new things? Possibly for the rest of his life he will hate this meal because of the drama associated with it. To this day I won't eat frozen pizza because of a drama between me & my dad when I was 10 that resulted in my crying non stop while choking down 2 frozen slices.

We pick our battles, we try to keep them as few & far between as possible, but when we do choose to have them, we go to the mat. I can't imagine a good outcome to this. He isn't going to eat those 2 bites, decide they actually taste good & ask for more. We can't back down because you undermine yourself if you do that. Don't issue ultimatums unless you are willing to follow through. The best I can hope for is at some point the desire for food he likes will force him to eat the 2 bites and next time we say 'eat a bite or it's for breakfast' he'll just eat the bite & we can all get on with our lives.

Baggage - breakfast

My husband likes cookies. He has baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies every Thursday evening for about 3 years now. He also made them on Mondays for awhile, until his pants stopped fitting. Now he takes half of every batch into the office for his co-workers to enjoy. He loves Oreos. Whenever we go past and Oreo display in the grocery store Mayhem shouts "Those the cookies Daddy wikes! We buy cookies for Daddy?" Mayhem has a prodigious memory. I have not bought a bag of Oreos in well over a year, specifically because Daddy loves the Oreos. A 2lb bag will be gone in less than 48 hours. I will have eat 4 of them & the boys each had a couple. He knows he has a problem with chocolate cookies, so I just don't buy them.

He hands this baggage of his off the children by banning Cookie Crisp from the house. Not all sugary cereal, not all chocolate cereal. They eat Frosted Flakes, Apple Jacks and even Coco Puffs at times. Theoretically he has no problem with them eating Chocolate Captain Crunch. Its only a theory because they have never asked for it, but odds are he wouldn't blink an eye. His issue is that Cookie Crisp looks like cookies and you can't have cookies for breakfast. You can have sugar in any other shape, just not cookies. I go along with prohibition because it's minor & I understand that it's his 'thing'. But really...I don't get it. Its cereal. I ate it as a kid, he ate it as a kid. Neither of us have cookies for breakfast now.

The boys have had Cookie Crisp twice, before DH told me he would really prefer I not buy it. They thought it was ok, they prefer Apple Jacks & yogurt Cheerios. But now that I have to say "Sorry you can't have that" they are fascinated with Cookie Crisp. I can't say they are desperate to eat it, they just love talking about it. We can't go down the cereal aisle without a discussion about how Daddy doesn't want them eating Cookie Crisp. "Daddy no like cookie cereal." they announce. "We not allowed to eat it. How come Daddy no like cookie cereal? Daddy like Oreos." I'm sure every stock boy in Safeway is now completely familiar with my husband's cookie issues.

I saw a recipe recently for "breakfast cookies" made with whole wheat & dried fruit & a few other wholesome breakfast-y things. If I try it I'll have to call it 'breakfast bars'

NaBloPoMo?

I think I am going to give it a try this year, even though I already know there are 4 days this month when I will be unable to blog due to travel. Still, I plan to blog all the other days, so I think I am keeping with the spirit, if not the letter of the rules. I've been blogging fairly regularly since August & blogging daily will be a good challenge for me

They suggest keeping with a theme this year. The past couple of months have been very stressful at mealtimes & I think focusing more on food, why I love food, and what I love to cook, as well as my ongoing attempts to get the little demons to eat, might be a rewarding thing. If all goes well, someday in the future I can look back at this chronicle of seemingly endless dinner drama & laugh. Boys eventually eat you out of house & home right? Teenage boys are ravening beast that inhale whatever is put in front of them, yes? That's what I am told anyway. So when those days finally arrive & I spend my time wondering how I will feed them enough, rather than how I will get them to eat anything at all, this will be an entertaining read, right? I suppose time will tell.