Laundry and Children

There's a Dutch Baby In the Oven

I kid you not.  When I handed my husband his breakfast this morning and told him it was a Dutch Baby, he looked at me aghast and said, "No really.  What is it?"

After a week of rough school days, I was determined to start today off on the right foot with a special breakfast.  When I saw this gluten and casein free recipe for a German Pancake or Dutch Baby on The Spunky Coconut (and could you love that name more?), I knew that I had found what I was looking for.

It was totally delish and so easy to make!  Plus, I got to use my cast iron pan which does not get as much use as it deserves.

Ridiculously Easy Roasted Pepper Soup

It is cold here!  Like "I think I just saw a polar bear and a penguin walk by my window" cold, which would be insane since they don't live anywhere near each other. 

All this cold weather has put me on a bit of a soup jag lately, which is even wierder than polar bears and penguins hanging out together, because I am not a big fan of soup.  Actually, what I've learned is that I don't like broth based soups with limp grey veggies and hunks of ironically dried out meat floating in a brownish liquid.  I can hear you saying, "But it sounds so delicious when you describe it that way."

I do in fact really enjoy a pureed soup with lots of veggies.  It's a warm, easy way to get a bunch of veggies in my belly without a whole lot of effort.  Besides, who wants to eat a cold salad when it's 15 degrees outside.

Today's soup was so ridiculously easy that I hardly feel I can call it a recipe.  Better to just say that some stuff happened in the kitchen and soup came out.

Ridiculously Easy Roasted Pepper Soup

And I'm Not Even Sick

Like most moms I know, I'm fastidious about getting my kids to the doctor for their annual check-up.  However, the last time I took myself to get a physical was when it was court mandated so that I could adopt my older children.  Today, however, I am off for a check-up, because it is the smart and right thing to do, even if I do get the same feeling of guilt and shame as when I go to the priest for Confession.  I know that I am going to have to face up to all the skipped work-outs and second helpings of dessert from the last year(s).  Bless me doctor for I have over-eaten and under-exercised, it has been 6 years since my last check-up.

In other yummier news.  When my sister visited this weekend I made us Butternut Squash Soup for dinner.  Unfortunately, it was one of those "Throw It In The Blender And Pray It Works Out" recipes.  However, the estimated down and dirty of it is this:

• roast cubed butternut squash at 400 until it looks done
• put in blender with about a cup of chicken stock, a half cup of half-half, a tsp or 2 of curry, salt, and pepper
• top with parmesan-garlic croutons (which are just bread cubes that I threw in a zip bag with olive oil, parmesan, and garlic powder then toasted on the same pan I used for the butternut squash for about 5 minutes while I was making the soup) and a sprinkle of parmesan cheese

I had the left overs for dinner since I don't much like Chicken Fried Rice, which is what I made for the family, because they do like it.

Tomatoes in the Winter...Yes Please!

Yesterday I was craving tomato soup, but opted to make butternut squash soup instead.  No matter how good it was, it wasn't tomato soup.  With the bottom about to fall out of our temperatures, I needed a little taste of summer to help prepare myself for the coming onslaught of frigid temps.

As Stephen Covey says, "Begin with the end in mind."

Roasted Tomato Basil Soup with Cheddar and Sourdough

I Am Too Damn Good a Cook to Eat This Crap

Last year was a hard year and it took its toll on just about every area of our life.  Personally, the place it took the biggest toll  was in the health department.  Slowly, slowly I started to let go of many of the healthy eating habits that I had worked really hard to incorporate into our lives.  There just wasn't enough time for everything and it was easier to buy a box of cereal and a loaf of bread at the store instead of finding the time to make granola and bread.  Facing the fight that accompanied the insistence that the children eat fruit with lunch, just wasn't worth the effort.  Rationalizing food choices, to the point that ketchup and french fries became servings of fruit and veggies, made its way into my thinking.  I can give you a million reasons why I got lazy, but the truth of the matter is that I just got lazy and I let things slide.  And slide they did.

Well, it's a new year!  And it is time to start clawing my way back to healthy.  A few years back, when I started this health journey, I lost over 20 pounds (YEAH!) then last year I gained it all back (BOO!).  The worst part is that when I eat crap, I feel like crap.  So why do I do it?  Because it's easy?  Because at the moment of consumption the food tastes good (if not real)?  Because I am too tired, stressed, whatever to think about food?

The worst part is that I LOVE to think about food.  I read cookbooks like novels.  I can waste a whole day perusing cooking blogs.  I get giddy when I put a well made meal on the table.  A new recipe makes me dizzy.  The happiest birthday in my recent memory was a few years ago when I made dinner for about a dozen and a half of my friends.

There are not many domestic areas in which I can say that I truly excel.  I'm a crappy housekeeper.  Sometimes I think my house looks like an episode of Hoarders.  More often than not, my kids have to go searching laundry baskets for clean jeans.  I perhaps yell too much and do crafts with my kids too infrequently.  However, there is one thing that I feel like I am really good at.  I am a damn good cook.  It goes against all my upbringing to brag on myself like that, but it is the one area of my life in which I feel like I am on pretty safe ground to compliment myself.

Today it hit me like a ton of bricks...I am too damn good a cook to eat this crap! 

So today we get back to clean eating!  We get back to whole foods and real ingredients.  There will be more homemade items and less processed food.  There will be food that tastes good and makes me feel good.  No more excuses!

Pancakes?...Yes Please!

In order to get a buy-in from the kids on this new way of eating, I've been focusing on making some of their favorite foods while following our new guidelines.  Some their requests have been a little off the wall, but I am doing my best.

Today for breakfast I tried my hand at pancakes.  Even more so, pancakes that were not from a mix, which we had a few weeks ago.  I think the results were pretty good.  I based the recipe off of the crepe recipe in Babycakes by Erin McKenna.  However, these were definately pancakes.

Also, this was my first exposure to fava and garbanzo flour.  Good gravy this stuff does not smell appitizing.  In fact, it smelled so intense that I canceled my order for more from Amazon.  Probably not the best idea since it ended up tasting (and smelling) much better as it cooked.

Enjoy! (Recipe after the jump.)

Big Changes

In life it seems that every time I say, "I could never..." or "I would never..." God has other plans.  You would think that I would learn, because it has happened yet again.

Years ago, when the Adkins diet was all the rage, I stated emphatically that I would never do that, because I loved my carbs too much.  Give up bread?  No thank  you.  Then a few years ago, I met a friend whose daughter is allergic to wheat.  I thought that what she was doing to keep her daughter healthy was akin to walking on water.  I just knew that I could never do that.

Guess what?  I have a child who allergic to wheat and food dye (and a few other foods as well, but those are the biggies).  So my "can't," "won't," and "never" have had to be replaced with "will," "can," and "let's make this fun."

This transition has not exactly been smooth or easy.  There have been conversations about how berating a sibling with "I wish you could just eat wheat so that things could go back like they were!" is not an appropriate response to mom saying that she is not buying a certain food in the grocery store.  Deep sighs, audible moaning, and dramatic label reading are now the background music of most of my trips to the grocery store.  Public gatherings have brought back my "big purse" so that alternative foods can be brought for my kids.

However, it has not all been deprivation and blandness.  In fact, there have been many successes and newly discovered "favorite" foods.  The gluten free corn dogs were such a hit that even the gluten tolerant sang their praises.  Mini Polenta Pizza Bites have made more than one showing as an easy, yummy, and quick dinner.  And just yesterday, we discovered that 100% fruit juice gelatin is a fabulous afternoon treat.

We've had a few other dietary changes that seem to be making a difference as well.  We switched to all local, pasture raised meat and eggs (I would like to find a local milk source as well).  I gave up all store bought bread for Lent, and we haven't really gone back.  I've become an obsessive label reader, and my kids will mutter under their breath comment, "If we can't say it, we probably shouldn't be eating it." while I have my eyes glued to the ingredient list of some product or other.

Anyway, I thought that I might document some of the changes that we are making here on the good ole blog.  My hits and misses.  Successes and failures.  I think it is going to be an interesting journey.

 

SPIDERS!!!

I feel like most of my life is spent trying to keep the messes from happening.  So, it takes quite a bit of strength to do crafts with my kids.  It is like I am inviting them in to make a mess.  However, that is counter balanced by how much fun they have.

Today we read Miss Spider's Wedding and made sock spiders. 

Nothin' Makes the House Look Dirty Like Knowing Company's Coming

I used to say that I was a "bad housekeeper."  I think I will change that to "relaxed housekeeper."  It sounds more like a choice and less like a personal shortcoming.

There was a time, when I was a new mother and had only  half the number of kids, I spent every evening cleaning the house.  All toys were put away and the floor was vacuumed and mopped daily.  I remember thinking, "If I ever get behind, I will never catch up."  More prophetic words were never uttered.

I have to confess that cleaning, neatness, and organization have never been my thing.  My parents love to regale my children with tales of my slovenly bedroom growing up.  I however always contended that if they didn't want to see the mess, they should have just stayed out of my room.  But I digress.

I like to say that my house has a "lived in" feel.  My mantra is "The cleaning will be there forever, but I only get a few years with the kids."  Honestly though, the version of this that I hear in my head is, "The cleaning will be there forever, but I only get a few years with the kids and after they're gone I'm hiring a maid."  Still, even that sounds nicer than what I can often be heard muttering while I pick up the clothes encircle the hamper because someone's toss from down the hall didn't quit make it and going and picking up the shirt off the floor would clearly signal that the shirt had won and you just can't have that, "You try keeping up with 4 heathen mess-makers who leave a trail of disaster behind them like bread crumbs leading them back to the trough."

There are times when the house reaches critical mass and I keep looking out the window for the hosts of Hoarders to show up, but in general I do alright.  That is until I know that someone else is coming over.  Then I start looking at the mess with the eyes of an outsider and I'm horrified.  My husband however loves when company is coming over, because he comes home to a spotless house.  A rare treat in this chaotic place.

 

He Looks Like a Boy, But He's Really a Mule

Jack is sitting at the school table staring at the walls.  After an hour and a half of trying to get him to focus on his schoolwork, I decided that I was finished playing his games.  I told him that I was off to do other things and to call me when he was ready to get to work.  He didn't have to do school work since clearly he didn't want to, but he wasn't allowed to waste my time and he wasn't allowed to leave the table until he did all his work for today.  He has been sitting there for over an hour.

Every 10 minutes or so, I ask him if he is ready to get started.  Every time he tells me "No." and then goes on staring off into space, or rolling his pencil back and forth, or pushing around scraps of paper on the table, or trying to talk to his siblings who are working at the other desks.  One time he yelled out, "I'm ready," but when I sat down at the table with him, he looked up, a twinkle in his eye and said, "Oh, I wasn't talking to you.  That was just part of my game that I made up here at the table."

I've tried everything to make the world around him more interesting than sitting at the table.  I baked cookies.  I've encouraged the other boys to play loud games.  I've told him that he can't get up even for lunch until he finishes.  And yet, still he sits.

I used to think that I was stubborn.  That is until I gave birth to a mule.  Oh sure, he looks like a boy.  He wears clothes and often eats at the table.  However, I am convinced that in actuality he is a mule in boy's clothing.

I would like to think that at some point this stubbornness will serve him well.  Perhaps, he will change the world.  Perhaps, he will be uncompromising his beleifs.  Perhaps, he will find a cure for some desease because he'll never give up.  Perhaps, he'll lead a revolution.  But, he won't do any of that if he never leaves the school table.