Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

Since my parents are in town at the moment–they live about 5 1/2 hours away–I got to try a recipe for dinner that I’d think twice about for just my kids.  Why, you ask?

Potatoes.

We actually have three issues with potatoes in this house.  Number one is that NONE of my children have liked them until recently (and really, this baffles me.  I mean, aren’t potatoes pretty innocuous?).  The oldest–who is also the least picky–has started to come around, but the middle is NOT a fan and the boy seems pretty underwhelmed thus far.  The second issue is really just habit…before we had kids I worked two jobs and didn’t cook on a regular basis, and you know what eventually go bad (and smell really foul when they do)?  Potatoes.  You know what doesn’t go bad and keeps for an incredibly long time? Pasta.  And rice.  The third issue, however, is the trickiest.  If it weren’t for this, I could overcome the habit problem.  But the sad fact of the matter is this:

Peeling potatoes makes me sneeze.

No, seriously.  It starts a few potatoes in, and by the fourth or fifth, I’m sneezing multiple times a potato, and if I happen to be peeling enough for, say, Thanksgiving–back when I was a kid, and living with my sister who never met a potato she didn’t like–then I can’t breathe through my nose for the rest of the day.  It’s awful.  I don’t know why, and I know it’s weird, but my mother actually started excusing me from potato peeling on major holidays (and you KNOW it’s legit if my mother let me off the hook–I may be the youngest, but she’s not the spoiling type).  My sister–yes, the potato lover, I’ve only got one–started up with the same problem a few years ago, which is much sadder for her than for me.  I can take or leave potatoes, you see.  I’m fine with them, but I don’t miss them when they’re not there (even after living with more than one Idaho potato farmer roommate!).  Mostly I wish they were a better occasional carb option for dinner, but like I said, that’s dicey with my kiddos.

Anyway, since my parents (who, coincidentally, now live in Idaho!) are in town, and they are both fans, I decided to try this Loaded Baked Potato and Chicken Casserole.  It went over much better than expected with the family (not SO much with the Middle, but that was really too much to hope for), and I really enjoyed it.  I sprinkled some Lawry’s Seasoned Vegetable & Pork Rub on top of my serving–I discovered this quite by accident (it’s kind of a funny story, so maybe I’ll tell it sometime!), but it’s my favorite way to flavor a cheesy baked potato.  There are a few issues noted in the comments, but I didn’t find them to be deal-breakers.  When cooked as directed, the potatoes on top of mine were firm but done enough, which is the way I like them; if you like really soft potatoes, I’d dice them fairly small (or up the cook time, or parboil…you get the idea).  I used evaporated milk instead of heavy cream, and it did look curdled when I took it out of the oven, but neither the flavor or texture bothered me.  It didn’t look pretty, but then, I’ve already mentioned that I don’t care all that much about what food looks like (within reason, of course.)  I thought the chicken would be weird, but it absorbed enough cheesy and bacon flavor that I actually enjoyed it, and you really need it for the protein if you want this as a decently filling main course (that is, if you’ve got a metabolism like mine.)  I served broccoli on the side, which seemed thematically fitting, and this was a respectable dinner.  I’m absolutely going to make it again, although I’m open to suggestions about the cream/evaporated milk issue that don’t involve cream of chicken soup (I’m not looking for the flavor change that would bring).  Any ideas?

Well, I warned them.  (That was the seven-year-old, by the way.)  On Saturday, since I wanted the girlies to be in bed by 6:45 in preparation for the time change (the middle to sleep, the oldest to read for her usual 40 minutes or so), I was waffling about what to have for dinner.  My poor hubby has been sick all weekend into today, so he wasn’t going to be eating with us, and I just wanted easy.  EASY.  (It’s hard enough to get kids in bed that early without lots of dinner prep and cleanup besides.)  So I was browsing one of my Pinterest boards, thinking breakfast for dinner sounded promising, and I saw this Cinnamon and Spice Sweet Potato Bread.  HEY! thought I.  I’ve got roasted mashed sweet potato in the freezer from forever ago, and while it was going to be sweet potato gnocchi when I roasted it, that hasn’t exactly happened yet, has it?  And so dinner was born.  I used 3/4 cup of whole wheat flour and white for the rest, and I browned up some deli ham for protein, and the girlies had red pepper strips while the boy and I finished off the grape tomatoes.  (I got maybe two, which is why I went for a grapefruit later.)  Not exactly a Chopped worthy meal, but we hit the major food groups, right?  And it was easy.

(That is, if you don’t count listening to your four-year-old, by force of habit, call it banana bread.  Every time.  Which wouldn’t have bothered me except that her seven-year-old sister then felt the need to correct her.  EVERY TIME.)

The real question, of course, is whether or not it was both easy and good enough to make again, and the answer is–probably.

This isn’t an indictment of the recipe, you understand.  It’s just that I used the spice amounts the recipe called for, and I really should have known better.  They’re probably right for a vast majority of the world’s population, but I, my friends, I am MAD FOR NUTMEG.  Seriously.  I love the stuff.  I wished I’d upped that and lowered the amount of allspice (and really, a touch of cloves would not have gone amiss).   I love my fall spices, but I’m kind of particular about how much of each I can taste.

By the way, I also got my jury duty info in Saturday’s mail.  I get to call this Friday night, and if I have to go in, my fabulous mother-in-law gets to come spend the day with my kiddos.

Hmm.  I better write down the directions for preschool carpool…

I’m completely blaming my niece for this, by the way.  And my chocoholic hubby.  I’d put the girlies to bed and my 20-month-old was hanging with Daddy, and my fabulous almost-17-year-old niece called and asked me for the recipe for Chocolate Pudding Cake.  (This goes by many names, by the way…my in-laws call it Hot Fudge Sundae Cake.)  I don’t use the recipe we had growing up–I think I copied it down wrong, because I never could get it to come out right–so I gave her this Chocolate Cobbler version, which is more or less the same thing.  And then my hubby, who’s been sick all weekend and has just gotten his appetite back, thought it sounded kind of good, so while the 20-month-old mooched pizza off of Daddy like a champ, I popped this surprisingly lowfat concoction into the oven.  And then the boy went to bed, and there was warm, gooey chocolate goodness and cold, soft vanilla creaminess to be had.   Mmmmmmmm.

(By the way, come to think of it, I might not have actually copied the recipe down wrong.  I spent a decade wondering why the things I baked growing up never came out quite right anymore before it finally dawned on me that going from sea level to over 4,000 feet above sea level might just have something to do with it.)

I should really feel more guilty about stuffing myself so badly, because I just don’t bounce back in an hour or two the way I used to!  On the other hand, I got one less hour of sleep last night, and I had a child with digestive issues at my bedside at 4:30 this morning (not to mention a Diaper of Doom just before bedtime, which meant Daddy (who has a bad back) got to read stories to the girlies while I got to bathe a boy an hour early in what little hot water his sisters left him), so I’m just not going to judge myself too harshly.  And to be honest with you, I wouldn’t have eaten so much to begin with except that the one downside to this recipe is the timing.  It is AMAZING right out of the oven.  You put whipped cream or vanilla ice cream on top and you’re in heaven.  The day after, on the other hand?  Meh.  It’s not BAD, really, but it’s a pale shadow of the amazing goodness it once was.  (A warning, by the way.  Pay attention to the self-rising flour thing.  If you don’t have any–and I never do–the substitution is listed and simple, but you do have to do it.  If, say, you’re pregnant and craving this and your husband makes it but doesn’t notice that part of the recipe, well…let’s just say it doesn’t end well.  Or terribly edibly.  Which should really be a word.)

(Incidentally, I should report that my upping bedtime incrementally all week long paid off.  The girls did well.  The boy, well…he’s having bedtime issues at the moment.  The but-I-was-having-fun-why-do-I-have-to-go-to-bed kind of issues.  He’s getting better, though.)

Of course, eating too much is one thing.  Staying up too late after the night we had is quite another…and on that note, it’s off to bed for me.

If you’ve read my maiden post, so to speak–the one about my Newbery project–you’ll notice that I said I can count on one hand the number of Newberys I’ve actively disliked.  And this is true.  If you happened to make a list, however, of books I sort of expected to dislike, it’d be longer. To be honest with you, I put off reading Holes and Maniac Magee because I assumed–yes, we all know what happens when we assume–that they’d be so boy-oriented I wouldn’t really like them.  (THAT was clearly not the case, by the way.  Loved.  Them.  Both.)  And The Underneath and Elijah of Buxton looked so depressing (the latter by virtue of the general topic, really) that I put each of them off for a few years before bravely picking them up and–loving them, too.  You’d think I’d learn, right?  Then again, there was that Awful Experience that was reading The Planet of Junior Brown.  (If anyone out there really liked that one, please comment and tell me why.  Because I found it just SO VERY BIZARRE. And not really in a good way.)

Anyway, to make a long story short–too late! LOVE “Clue”!–I didn’t actually expect to like Doll Bones that much.  I’m not much of a ghost story person–it’s not that they freak me out, necessarily, so much as I’m generally not that interested–and really, between the cover and the premise, it looked like a creepy ghost story.  And it was, I suppose.  Except that telling the story through Zach’s eyes meant that the writing wasn’t atmospherically creepy, if you know what I mean.  He’s a twelve-year-old boy, and his observations sometimes made me giggle.  Even better than the non-creepy tone, however, was the emphasis on relationships throughout the book.  At the end of the day, those were even more important than the ghost story, although the ghost story was the catalyst for all of the relationship change.  I liked Zach, Poppy, and Alice; I liked learning more about them; and I enjoyed following them on their ‘quest.’  I could see the story being creepier for kids or people who get freaked out by that sort of thing, mind you.  It’s not that it wasn’t creepy at all.  (And it’s not that things don’t scare me.  I would never claim that.  This just doesn’t happen to be the sort of thing that does, particularly.)  The point is that it’s so much MORE than just creepy.  Doll Bones is officially the newest title on my list of pleasant surprises.

My neighbor had a hip transplant this week, and he and his wife are pretty much the best neighbors ever (together with the Beatties, my awesome neighbors when I was a kid), so the girlies made him get well cards and I made treats.  And on Tuesday night I brought him over the cards and the plate of treats.  I did.

And then there was the rest of the pan.

And now it’s gone.

It is true that I gave a few to the kiddos–more so to the ones who are home for lunch–and my hubby had a couple.  I also gave one to a friend today, in a tragic ‘too little too late’ attempt at self-defense.  As for the rest?

Yeah, I ate them.

I cannot tell a lie.  I’m pretty sure I ate more than half the pan in three days.  And no, I’m not proud of this, but they kept calling to me. Seductively.  In that ‘just one little piece, no one’s looking!’ kind of way.  And I caved.  Every time.

I think part of the problem was that I wasn’t quite expecting them to be THAT good.  I was looking for a really easy recipe, so I broke out 101 Things to Do with a Cake Mix and picked something that looked enjoyable, but I wasn’t expecting the yumminess that was the Reese’s Pieces Bars.  I love homemade, from-scratch treats, but a little easy warm sweet goodness is never a bad thing.  Here goes:

You take 1 yellow cake mix, 2 eggs, and 1/3 cup oil.  Mix them together, add 1 1/2 cups of Reese’s Pieces and mix them in, and bake at 350 for 13-19 minutes in a greased 9 x 13 pan.  Take them out when they’re golden brown, let them cool just enough to cut, and go to town.  (I have a slow oven, so I did 19 minutes, although the original recipe actually said 13-17.)  You have to like Reese’s Pieces, of course, and it takes a bigger bag to be sure to get the full cup and a half, but oh, my.  I really just couldn’t stop eating them.

And to my husband, who always reads my posts and only got three bars in three days?

Sorry, honey.

You wouldn’t BELIEVE the cheers from my girlies when they found out we were having artichokes with dinner tonight.  When they actually made it to the table–I kid you not!–my 7YO did a little chant.  “What are we eating?”  Cue the 4YO:  “Artichokes!”  “What do we love?”  “Artichokes!”  I’m pretty sure this isn’t normal–but I love it!

The problem with artichokes, of course, is that I bought them a couple of weeks ago and started cooking them tonight before remembering  that my prime objective this week is to make bedtime a little earlier each night, in order to prepare for the WEEKEND OF DOOM.  Yes, folks, that’s right.  This weekend we spring forward.

The inhumanity.

Before I had kids, I didn’t actually ENJOY springing forward, but I did love falling back, and really, how much did it matter anyway?  No biggie, right?  You get used to it.  Just don’t forget the clocks and be late.

Ah, the good old days.  Now I spend the week before springing forward in a frantic rush to start accustoming my children to their new bedtime, and while it makes for a hectic week, come Sunday morning?  It’s totally worth it.  We never make it the whole hour ahead, of course, but even 25-35 minutes is a really good start.  And honestly, in some ways, springing forward can be easier.  If you’re one of those parents whose kids sleep in naturally, well, that may not make sense, but putting my kids to bed earlier, in a dark and quiet room, is easier than teaching my poor 7YO to sleep in.  (Her siblings don’t really either, but they, unlike the 7YO, conk quickly at night.)

But wait.  You’re wondering how artichokes matter in this scenario.

Have you ever seen a pre-schooler eat an artichoke?  Because they don’t exactly do it quickly.  And then the 20-month-old gets restless, and you find Curious George on Youtube on your kitchen computer (which your awesome, awesome husband installed for you), because if you let him down from the high chair he’ll just climb up on the dining room chairs and dump the butter, or the plate of artichoke leaves, or his sisters’ water cups…you get the idea.  And you know what happens when Curious George comes on?  Both of the girlies start eating in slow motion.  And since Daddy isn’t home from work yet to distract the 20-month-old, and toddlers don’t really get the concept of how to eat artichokes, it becomes the longest dinner ever.  Which makes an early bedtime routine that much more difficult!

We managed, though.  More or less.  Now starts the week of the kids being up a little earlier each day, which is less than ideal, but still the better option.

Did I mention that I hate, loathe, despise, and abominate Daylight Savings Time?  (I do like old movies, though.  Kudos for you if you know the reference!)  There is hope, though.  Someday I’m going to have teenagers, right?  And teenagers like to sleep in, right?  Which means that this whole time change/parental torture thing will get better, right?  RIGHT?

Of course, then I’ll have teenagers.

We’ll just focus on the silver lining right now, shall we?

It’s been kind of a crazy weekend, what with my sister-in-law and her family in town from Alaska, but I did get the chance last night to finish the old Newbery I’ve been reading.  And I have to say, I really enjoyed it!  The Avion My Uncle Flew was written a year or two after WWII ended, and it’s a thoroughly enjoyable adventure tale of a boy sent to stay with his uncle in a French village while his–the boy’s–bad leg heals.  While there, of course, he helps his uncle build an ‘avion’–really a glider– and discovers signs of a Nazi spy hiding out in the mountains.  Newberys tend to be coming-of-age stories most of the time, and there was certainly some of that, but it was still very much a historical adventure tale.  I don’t read as many of those, I suppose, which is why it’s always a nice change of pace.  Fun is rarely the FIRST adjective I use in describing a book, and while that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the more poignant tales I so often read, every once in a while it’s nice to be taken on this sort of a ride.  (I felt the same way about Gordon Korman’s Ungifted, which is also totally worth the read.  Not at all the same kind of book, really, except that reading it was, again, just fun.)

Anyway, the boy in the story is 13, but there’s nothing to worry about content-wise, so this is a good read for kids in general.  (Although you may have to fill in some blanks in a young reader’s knowledge of WWII and post-WWII France.  Basic stuff, nothing complicated.)  Go out and get this one–AND Ungifted.  You’ll be glad you did!