Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

I was looking for some sort of bars to bring to a family thing last month (yes, I forgot to blog about it then, summer happened), and I opted for these Chocolate Coconut Bars, because hey, we all like chocolate and coconut!  I made them the evening before–following the recipe completely, believe it or not!–and they smelled A-MAZ-ING.  OH my gosh.  Even my hubby, who doesn’t have the Demars nose, noticed.  We could hardly wait to try them the next day…and to be completely honest, I snuck a bite before we left on our Amazing Race (which, by the way, was pretty awesome–kudos to my brother- and sister-in-law).

Sadly?  Meh.

They were fine, you understand.  You can’t go THAT wrong with those ingredients.  But they weren’t as moist as they wanted to be on the bottom (possibly my dry-ish sweetened coconut flakes didn’t help, but still), and the sweetness of the bottom contrasted strangely with the darkness of the ganache.  The two layers didn’t quite belong together, if you know what I mean.  And, unfortunately, my in-laws don’t go for dark-ish chocolate nearly as much as milk chocolate, which means that we brought home more than half the pan.

Which I then ate–with help from my hubby.  Because again, you can’t go THAT wrong.

Still, though, I wouldn’t make them again.  They weren’t bad, and someone else might actually appreciate the combination more; both my hubby and I agreed, however, that the smell while they were baking wrote a check that those bars just couldn’t cash.

It was a sad story.

I know, I know.  That seems random, right?  But I finished The Trumpeter of Krakow this week, and it really did give me a completely different sense of Poland.  Up until now, Mel Brooks’ line from his “To Be Or Not To Be” (a movie worth enjoying, by the way) summed up what I knew of the country.  “Poland, the doormat of Europe.  Everybody steps on us.”  I knew that England made Poland their line in the sand and declared war on Germany for invading it in 1939; I knew it had been under Soviet control after WWII.

That’s pretty much it.

Interestingly enough, Trumpeter was written before any of that took place; it won the Newbery Medal in 1929.  Written by an American who studied Polish culture and obviously fell in love with the country, it takes place in medieval Krakow, which was apparently an impressive city.  Andrew Charnetski and his small family arrive from their native Ukraine to find their looked-for refuge vanished and their lives threatened; the secret they guard ultimately touches the lives of most of the city’s inhabitants.  Saying much more feels like a spoiler, so I’ll say this instead–as much as I don’t love reading about medieval times, this story captivates easily.  It also moves quickly, despite its older writing style, and ought to appeal to adventure fans today.  I felt initially that the Charnetskis ended up being too lucky in their friends, but the twists of the plot brought balance, and the ending was surprisingly satisfactory.  Bottom line?  It’s worth taking a look at, especially if you’re looking for books about boys.

This is not going to be a post on why I choose public school for my children; to be honest, I’m WAY too tired tonight to go there!  Instead, I’m throwing my personal ambivalence about school starting again out there.  Do with it what you will.

Cons:

OH, the mornings.  I’m a morning person by nature, but I’m also 36, with four kids…one of them a six-month-old.

I miss my kiddos.  They need time away, and really, so do I, but I miss them when they’re gone.  (Or when we’re on the occasional date.  Etc.)

Less control over my personal schedule, especially when drop off and pick up mess with naptime.

No helpers who can buckle themselves and their siblings in.  My 3-year-old was just learning how when he broke his thumb.  BADLY.  (That also messed up dressing himself.)

Pros:

They love it, and they learn.

My son really, really needs more space from his sisters and more Mommy time right now.

NO MORE KINDERGARTEN PICKUP!  WAHOO!

The joy of errands with only TWO children.

Pros and cons, folks–because nothing is perfect.  I hope your school year gets off to a great start!

Today is my second girlie’s sixth birthday, and while there’s now only one family birthday left in the calendar year, I think I will start a blog tradition anyway.  Because I can.

Six Reasons I Love My Six-Year-Old

1.  Her smile lights up her entire face.  It is transcendent.

2.  She is sweet and affectionate.  (She’s also a hothead.)

3.  She loves her family and shows it.

4.  She’s learned to eat new foods; she even learns to like some of them.

5.  She likes to involve her baby sister when they play outside.  (And she hasn’t dropped her.  Yet.)

6.  She surprises me.  (By, for example, making a friend at a McDonald’s playplace BY HERSELF, even though she’s incredibly shy.)

And yes, her birthday food involved five sticks of butter.  One for the cake; one for the frosting; one for the alfredo sauce at dinner; one for the muffin batter at breakfast; and one to melt and dip the muffin tops into (so the cinnamon sugar would stick, of course!).

Mmmmm.

If you have a learning-to-reader, you really need to check out Houndsley and Catina (and its sequels). (How’s that for hopping straight into the subject matter?  Can you tell I’ve got a lot to do in the next 48 hours?)  It was an impulse book at the library; I saw the author, thought hey, that’s the Bunnicula guy!, and figured it was worth a try.

It was.

Its three chapters give us a peek into the comfortable friendship between–you guessed it!–a dog and a cat.  Houndsley likes to cook and is very considerate of his feline friend’s preferences (she’s a vegetarian), while Catina aspires to be a famous writer and asks for her friend’s opinion of her work.  The honesty and kindness in their friendship is delightful, and Howe manages to be both moving and amusing in his storytelling.  In a few months I suspect my almost-six-year-old will be reading this series by herself; for now, it’s perfect for reading aloud to her.  Don’t miss it!

I was due for a post yesterday, I know, but my niece was moving out of her summer dorm and needed a place to stash her stuff for a couple of weeks.  I got to go down to Provo, feed her and her poor roommate (the roommate was having a bad day already, and that thing she was sadly consuming looked like an abomination, not a pizza), and drive back with a stuffed panda half the size of Texas in my car…all the while remembering my aunt, who died of cancer just before I got married, doing the same thing for me. I still miss her–you’d be surprised at how much–but getting to be a little like her for an evening was a beautiful thing.

(I also missed some projectile vomiting at home.  Sorry, honey.  At least it was only formula…)

I went to Wal-Mart today with the kiddos–we were a one-family circus, with my son running every which way no matter what I said, the little stinker–and I was brutally attacked by a bag of the newest ‘special edition’ variety of Oreo.  (Have I mentioned that ever since my third pregnancy–the Oreo pregnancy–I have not been able to resist trying Oreo flavors?)  I’d like to say I feel guilty about this–I really would–but seriously.  They were Brownie Batter Oreos.  Tell me you would have passed them by. (If you had, it would have been a mistake, by the way.  Those things are TASTY.)

Unfortunately, I failed in my quest to find more funky-flavored Lays.  I tried three of last year’s four contestants (I don’t drink coffee, so I skipped the cappuccino), but I’ve only found two of this year’s thus far, and I’ve yet to open the Truffle Fries bag.  (I was disappointed in the kettle-cooked Greektown Gyros; I wanted to taste feta and tzatziki, but they’re meaty and herbal.)  My old boss alerted me to the existence of New York Reuben chips, which I tried and failed to find at Wal-Mart today.  (Believe you me, I’ll keep looking for those.)  The Southern Biscuits and Gravy isn’t so much a draw for me, as I’m weirdly sensitive to black pepper, but I’d probably buy a bag out of sheer curiosity.

I also (briefly) considered trying the sloppy joe-flavored potato chips put out by Herr’s (I think), but passed, since the Fire-Roasted Sweet Corn ones by the same people were just–strange.  I still remember the Late Night Cheeseburger Doritos from a few years ago (they tasted freakishly like a McDonald’s cheeseburger.)

What funky flavors have YOU tried?

I was looking for a taquito recipe to try the other week, and when I saw these Slow Cooker Cream Cheese Chicken Taquitos I thought–hey!  That means I don’t have to cook the chicken and then mix up the filling!  I am ALL OVER that!  I made them for dinner the next night thinking they would go over okay with everyone but #2 (the one that doesn’t like Mexican food)…yeah.

Not so much.

Here’s the kicker.  My hubby thought they were fine, but #1 didn’t like them much better than #2 did. Which is kind of baffling, because I thought she’d be fine with them.  (The boy, by the way, ate 2 with gusto.  He likes Mexican food.)  I enjoyed them, I have to say.  Not in a “these are so amazing!” kind of way, but in a “this was a beautifully easy recipe that’s pleasant to eat” kind of way.  We need those in our lives, right?  They were creamy and flavorful, although the flavors involved weren’t terribly complex.  I actually followed the recipe except for the amount of chicken.  It called for two chicken breasts; I used four plus a can of Costco brand chicken when I shredded the cooked meat and saw that it was still pretty saucy.  If you have the Dolly Parton style chicken breasts, two might work; if they’re smaller, definitely use more.  (By the way, I only made enough taquitos to feed the family the first night, so I used the rest of the filling up in quesadillas.  It worked nicely.)  We served them with salsa because that’s what we had, but more toppings would certainly be enjoyable.  (Olives rolled up inside the taquitos would have been nice.)

As far as dessert goes, I have a disclaimer; I didn’t actually make these Oatmeal Cookie S’Mores Gooey Bars.  My hubby did.  He made them with three-year-old help, actually, and admittedly stale marshmallows, and so I can’t swear that they won’t turn out for you.  For us, however, the mixture didn’t really bake together, and while it certainly didn’t taste bad, it didn’t actually turn into bars.  (I called it dessert granola.)  We brought it to a family reunion and it was too crumbly for people to eat.  Perhaps soft marshmallows and a lack of preschool help would make a difference, perhaps not.

I’ll leave you to decide.

It’s probably fairly obvious that I don’t read a lot of church books, since I review all of the books that I read on this blog; it isn’t that I’m not religious, but reading is a relaxing hobby for me (it’s my downtime!), and doctrinal books require a level of concentration that is, by definition, not relaxing. Recently, however, my mother-in-law gave me Sheri Dew’s Amazed by Grace.  It’s incredibly short, and so when I decided to revive an old habit of reading a more faith-related book on Sundays to help set the day apart, it seemed like a good place to start.

Grace, Sister Dew points out, is an infrequently discussed concept in our faith.  (We believe that it is ‘by grace we are saved, after all that we can do,’ and we tend to focus on the doing because that’s more obviously our responsibility.)  The book, therefore, discusses what grace is, as well as how we can receive it and apply it in our lives.  It’s not the easiest book to read, perhaps–she is pithy, and I really did have to concentrate–but I found it incredibly rewarding.  I even highlighted a few passages, and that’s not something I do terribly often.  It is, ultimately, a denominational book, but I think anyone interested in the topic would find it worth his or her time.

When I was little, I read all of the Thornton W. Burgess animal books that we had.  Oddly, I never looked for more at the library, but maybe that was because even then I knew they were old; I grew up in the 80s, and the books in questions had been gifts to my father as a child.  When my parents moved out of the house I grew up in, my father asked if I wanted those same books, and I jumped at the chance.  They’ve been sitting on my shelves for a year or two, and today I finished reading Happy Jack to my 2nd girlie.  (I picked it for her first Burgess book because I remembered re-reading it as a child.)

Happy Jack is a grey squirrel who stores nuts for the winter and hides from Shadow the Weasel, the one predator who can climb as well as he can AND fit into similarly small spaces.  On paper, I suppose, it doesn’t look that interesting, but I still enjoyed it at 36; Burgess has a folksy, grandfatherly sort of tone, and I learned quite a few random facts about wildlife from reading his books.  My girlie enjoyed it, despite our stop-and-go progress (it’s been a busy summer), and says she wants to read more.  I love reading to her and I’m excited for her to enjoy books I remember enjoying, but I confess–there’s something extra special about reading a book to my daughter with this inscription on the inside cover:

Stanford from Daddy and Mommy

Jan. 23, 1949

That’s my dad, and on January 23, 1949, he turned 7.  His health isn’t what it used to be, now, nor his memory, but he still snuggles with and reads to my children, and it makes my heart happy to hold such a book in my hand and read it to my daughter.

Such are the simple joys of parenthood.