Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

I’ve been watching (in bits and pieces) the–what do you call it?  Concert?  Presentation?  Whatever it’s called, the hour-plus Youtube video of Billy Joel receiving the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song.  Billy Joel has been my favorite singer/songwriter for years; I was actually really bugged at an article slamming him that one of my high school friends shared on Facebook.  I have no issue with people’s tastes differing,  you understand, but how can you categorically ridicule an artist if you are only commenting on his greatest hits album (and only the first two volumes of it to boot!)?  In my experience, what’s popular and what’s best often don’t intersect at all as you’d think, and I know that some of my favorite songs by him are not on the albums the reviewer mocked.  (I certainly wouldn’t want to be judged only on my most publicly known accomplishments.)

I digress, however, from my stated topic.  Several of his songs were covered by other artists–some I was familiar with, and some I wasn’t–with (in my humble opinion) varying degrees of success.  I will freely admit that I’m a creature of habit and don’t love changes to things I enjoy; on the other hand, I can at least respect some changes.  Tony Bennett’s cover of “New York State of Mind,” for example, isn’t exactly my style, but I can appreciate that the song works for him and he made it his own in a way I can honor, even if I wouldn’t choose to listen to it again.  Gavin DeGraw’s “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me” worked for me pretty well, and I didn’t so much have problems with J-Gro’s version of “She’s Always a Woman” as I have problems getting past the lyrics of that song regardless of the singer.  (Bob, a fabulous music seller from my Borders days, gave Josh Groban that nickname after a year of his being part of our overhead music selection, and it still makes me giggle.)  I thought he was an interesting choice to cover anything of Billy’s, but that song was probably a good one for him.  I didn’t enjoy LeAnn Rimes’ version of “Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel)”; it may be that I just don’t love her, but she took a gentle song and belted it out like a (slightly deranged) diva instead.  As for the Dixie Chick–Natalie Maines?–I didn’t mind her singing, particularly, but the country-ish guitar in the background was a step down for “She’s Got a Way” as far as I’m concerned.  (I also read a review of the concert before watching her, and the reviewer pointed out that changing the lyrics to third person seemed unnecessary.  This also bugged me, but I can’t swear I would have been as bothered had I not gone into it with that in my head.)  I wanted to like Boyz II Men singing “The Longest Time,” but I just didn’t.  (I’m not really sure why, though.)  My mind almost threw up during John Mellencamp’s cover of “Allentown”–it was physically painful for me.  Just–WHY?  I don’t hate him–I enjoy some of his music–but why do that to a song?  (I don’t like Garth Brooks or country music, but his cover of the same song at the Kennedy Center in 2013 was unobjectionable.)  The most interesting cover of the night, certainly, was the group effort on “Piano Man,” which was–interesting.  Not necessarily my preference, mind you, but certainly memorable and impressive.  I quite enjoyed the surprise of Kevin Spacey–I really didn’t know he sang at all, and his harmonica was the icing on the cake–and while I thought Michael Feinstein looked kind of ridiculous when he sang, I can’t really quibble with his performance.  (I just felt like he was about to sob.)  My opinion of the other artists involved was pretty close to my opinion of their other performances of the night, now that I think about it.

In summary, it’s been an interesting experience for a fan, although I wouldn’t buy a recording of it.  And lest you think that I am incapable of appreciating a good cover, I actually like U2’s version of “Helter Skelter” (from Rattle and Hum) quite a bit better than the original.

Sorry, Beatles fans.

Not forever, you understand.  I just finally used up the last of the Costco box of shredded hashbrowns I bought months ago, and happily it was on a recipe that everyone seemed to enjoy.  This past Friday I changed my meal plan at the last minute and went looking for more hashbrown recipes; I found this Easy Breakfast Casserole on one of my Pinterest boards and thought–hey!  I have ham!  I halved it because I wasn’t sure how it would go over–my hubby and my oldest are iffy with eggs–and it fed our family of five with one good-sized portion left over.  I didn’t make any other recipe changes, and I have to say, it went over better than I thought it would.  The suggested salsa or hot sauce would have been good with it, but I didn’t bother, since my hubby and kids are unlikely to care.  (Also, I habitually cook with sharp cheddar, and that adds flavor to this sort of thing.) I’ve avoided trying breakfast casserole recipes with this many eggs in the past, but my family’s response was encouraging.  (Which is nice, because I like eggs.  So does my generally picky middle.)  To sum up a really short post, it was absolutely worth making again.

I bought a head of cabbage a week or two ago so that I could try this Roasted Cabbage with Lemon, and I decided tonight was the night.  I apparently had no idea what my pregnant brain and body were getting me into.

My first issue was relatively minor; I didn’t want the cabbage to stick, but I didn’t want that yucky sticky residue that comes from using Pam (or Kirkland’s comparable product), so I brushed the bottom of my pan with canola oil.  It wasn’t until I was halfway through that I thought–dang. What’s wrong with me?  I have PARCHMENT PAPER.  This oil was completely unnecessary.  And since I think it did give it a greasier feel, I’m still bummed at that mistake.  Although it pales in comparison to what happened next…

I used my 10 by 15 pan to put the cabbage wedges in, since there were 8 of them; it was actually kind of a perfect fit.  Here’s the thing.  It seems mostly like a 9 by 13 pan when you’re using it.  I have no trouble lifting a 9 by 13 pan by the corner, and so I didn’t think  much about the fact that the 10 by 15 is heavier, and my hands are small, and pregnancy makes all of your muscles relax…

You see where this is going, right?  Yep.  I couldn’t save it.  The entire pan of half roasted cabbage (I was taking it out to carefully flip the wedges) got away from me, bounced off the oven door, and fell upside-down onto my anti-fatigue kitchen flooring.  (Did I mention that it had been in a 450 degree oven?)  The positive?  I was not burned, and I am actually really, really grateful for that.   The negative, well…I scooped the cabbage leaves that weren’t dirty back into the pan, stuck it back in the oven, and then had to clean up the remaining leaves.  And the grease.  I then had to just stir the pan contents instead of flip, because there were certainly no wedges at that point–just most of a cabbage’s worth of loose leaves.  Here’s the thing, though.

I still liked it.  Even without the added lemon juice (no one else is as mad for lemon as I am, so I put in the called-for amount and reserved the rest of the juice the lemon yielded for my personal use), it had flavor; my husband said it was better than cauliflower, which means it wasn’t the worst vegetable he’d ever had, and my oldest said she liked it.  The boy was so tired at dinner he was angry at everything, but my middle gave it a thumbs middle and acknowledged that it would have been better warm.  (She was too transfixed by the educational Youtube videos that were distracting her brother enough for him to eat willingly; she ate very, very slowly.  No roasted veggie tastes fantastic cold.)  I want to try it again and see how proper execution affects the texture, but I was really fairly pleased.  (The surprise in that sentence isn’t for me–I figured I’d probably like it–but for my family.  I was honestly expecting it to bomb.)  There are other recipes for roasted cabbage on my Pinterest boards, and I’m thinking they are worth trying as well.

Next time I’ll get two hot pads and use both hands.

It’s been a rough week this week, with both the kids and me adjusting to school again after two weeks of vacation.  (No, I’m not in school.  I just had a two-week break from getting up and making sure the kids get ready for school, as well as making sure the girlies get their homework done in spite of a two-year-old brother who wants to be part of the process in decidedly unhelpful ways.)  Being almost 8 months pregnant means that I get frustrated easily at the end of the day; despite the frustration, however, good things also happened today, and so I’m going to highlight them instead.  Why only focus on gratitude in November?

1)All of the kids ate dinner willingly.   (This always makes your day better.)

2)My oldest, for the first time I can think of, was willing to try a suggestion I made to her when she was frustrated with her piano practicing.  She found that it actually helped, and her practicing ended on a positive note.  This is a truly wonderful thing.

3)The kids ran and enjoyed being outside today, both the girls on the walk to school and all the kids on the walk to piano lessons.

4)I put frozen meat into the crockpot at 2:30 and hoped for the best, and it really got about perfectly done.  This does not always happen.

5)My son may have decided that he actually likes clementines (he certainly stole half of mine).  If this isn’t just a passing thing, it will make winter lunch options SO much easier.

And there you have it.  I have many, many other things for which to be grateful, but when kids are not their best at bedtime, it can be helpful to remind myself that we absolutely had good moments today.  Here’s to more good moments tomorrow!

My hubby gets his choice of a ham, a turkey, or a roast from his work every Christmas, and I’m a fan of the ham.  Besides its salty, smoky goodness, ham is also versatile; I usually don’t even bother to serve it as a main course.  Instead, I dice it and freeze it in one cup containers, so that I can grab a couple when I’m in the mood for a ham recipe.  I haven’t gotten the whole ham take care of yet, sadly, but on Saturday I diced enough to freeze two cups and make this Chunky Cheese Soup.  Shockingly, I follow all the directions when I  make this (unless you count subbing a grind or two of my pepper grinder for however much pepper a recipe calls for, but that’s because I’m freakishly sensitive to black pepper), although I was generous with some of the amounts.  (It’s soup, after all.  I figure you’re better off heaping up the measuring cup than figuring out what to do with an extra tablespoon or two of diced celery.)

Anyway, this soup has a lovely cheesy, hammy flavor, and it’s fast, which is nice.  One recipe fed our family of five (keep in mind, our kids are young and two out of three aren’t soup fans) with enough left over for my lunch the next day; I would have doubled it, but cheesy soups don’t freeze well. I always use sharp cheddar, because that’s what I buy, and I think the flavor it brings is important.  My oldest really likes this one, and my youngest was pretty willing to eat it when I fed it to him (soup is hard when you’re two!).  My middle did better than she usually does with soup, which I’ll take.  In summation (I’m feeling formal today, apparently), it’s a relatively fast and easy soup if you’ve got ham on hand.  Give this one a try!

I did, in fact, finish Natalie Kinsey-Warnock’s A Doctor Like Papa on New Year’s Day, but don’t be overly impressed–its 73 pages include several full-page illustrations, and the font is definitely on the large side.  (And I didn’t start it on New Year’s Day.)  That said, I still really enjoyed this one.  It made such a nice contrast to the last Kinsey-Warnock book I read, which was her first novel and not her best.  In it, ten-year-old Margaret wants to be (surprise surprise!) a doctor like her father, but when she meets the reality of the influenza pandemic of 1918, she begins to wonder if she’s ready to make the necessary sacrifices.  How she proves that she is completes a satisfying tale for young readers that is just poignant enough for its intended audience.

I just finished Rachel Baker’s The First Woman Doctor, and while I absolutely found Elizabeth Blackwell’s life fascinating, I realized that I’ve become a bit spoiled in the children’s non-fiction department.  After all, because of my Newbery quest, I’ve read quite a few books by Russell Freedman, as well as a couple of Susan Campbell Bartoletti’s; not all of them were biographies, of course, but they were all meticulously researched and well-told accounts of either historic events or famous people.  The First Woman Doctor, by contrast, has a certain tone that’s not uncommon in biographies written for children, especially those written in the latter half of the 20th century; it’s an inspiring story told to children in such a way that an adult reader can easily recognize the signs of assumptions and opinions throughout the book.  That’s not to say that it’s willfully inaccurate, necessarily; it’s just that the book has a definite spin.  No negative aspects of Elizabeth Blackwell’s personality come up at all (unless you count her restlessness, which is essential to her story); it isn’t that I want dirt on someone, but this sort of biography is an idealized portrait, rather than a vivid snapshot.  It’s a style of biography that describes a life in a certain way and likely omits details that interfere with that vision.  I’m not saying that the facts in the book are inaccurate, mind you, but it would certainly make an interesting lesson on fact and opinion for high school students.  I think I might enjoy reading the book with them and then discussing different aspects–is this a fact or an opinion?  Can the author prove this?  What ideas and happenings are presented as true that are inherently subjective?

Which, again, makes it seem more like TMI than it is.  I’ve had Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life in the downstairs bathroom for at least three months, and several times a week, I’ve shampooed my girls’ hair in the shower and then read 1-2 pages while waiting for them to rinse.  (They actually shower every day, but sometimes I switch laundry instead.  The glamour of it all!)  The format lends itself perfectly to this sort of reading, because the book is exactly what it says it is:  an encyclopedia with entries centered around one woman’s (fairly) ordinary life.  It’s set up alphabetically, with entries for Answering Machine; Kids’ Meals on Flights; Opinion, Fragile Foundation of Strong; and Winking.  (To name a few.)  The author makes it clear at the beginning that lists and definitions and, well, encyclopedic entries are her preferred way of writing, and while it’s a bit odd, it does work.  (Except, of course, when you read another book by the same author at the same time, and some of the random bits seem repetitive.  One can hardly blame AKR for that, though.)  Some of the entries, indeed, are laugh-out-loud funny; some are mundanely insightful; and some, granted, just make you shake your head and wonder why someone would think such a random thing in the first place.  (After all, no one ever completely understands another human being, right?)

All in all, then, I quite enjoyed this book (although the impact was probably lessened by the amount of time it took me to read).  It was another Borders promo, and I’m both glad I picked it up in the first place and glad of the chance to pass it on.  I absolutely enjoyed it, but I don’t see myself re-reading it; on the other hand, I’m pleased at the thought that passing it on means someone else will have the chance to enjoy it as well.

I was contemplating dinner the other night, and since it was the night before Christmas Eve, and there was going to be a lot of cooking then, I decided to go with my easy standby, breakfast for dinner.  (I know.  You’re shocked.  But the kids had also had Frosties with Grandma at 3-ish, so I didn’t want to make a huge meal; I didn’t know how hungry they’d be.)  I scanned Pinterest for something I had all of the ingredients for, and these PB&J Lunchbox Muffins caught my eye.  Why not?  After all, I had all of the ingredients on hand, and it would certainly be something different than our normal fare.  The decision made, I went to town.  I halved them, because really, that’s a lot of muffins for a first try, but my other changes were minor. I didn’t have coconut oil, so I subbed in canola and threw in a few drops of coconut extract; luckily, I was chatting with my friend Andrea while I was mixing them, because I was unaware that coconut oil will fluff more like butter when creaming in the mixer. (The lack of fluffiness didn’t seem to hurt anything, mind you–I’m just glad I was warned so I didn’t get frustrated.)  I also subbed about 1/3 cup of the flour for whole wheat flour (I was being more conservative than usual; I’d probably do more next time.)  Other than that, I pretty much followed the recipe, except for the whole “Cool for at least 1 hour before serving” thing.  (I didn’t see that until we were pretty much at the table and the oven had less than a minute left.  It so wasn’t happening.)

Anyway, the kids’ reactions were funny.  I wish I could give you a soundbite of the eye-rolling kind of voice in which my oldest said, “Are we having peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner?”  (She’s got my sense of smell.  She could tell what ingredients were involved by sniffing the kitchen.)   Nobody seemed any too sure about them, but they all ended up enjoying them quite a bit.  I did do some with grape and some with strawberry jam, but I don’t know that the difference was as pronounced as I thought it would be.  (Although I will say that the strawberry freezer jam’s still slightly frozen quality seemed to prevent it from sinking to the bottom of the muffins quite as badly.)  I may just try serving these up for lunch one of these days.  After all, they got a thumbs up from everyone!

I finished The Mother’s Guide to the Meaning of Life:  What Being a Mom Has Taught Me about Resiliency, Guilt, Acceptance, and Love a few days ago.  And here’s the thing–it was funny.  I enjoyed it.  Amy Krouse Rosenthal writes amazing picture books for children, but her adult writing is entertaining as well.  (Possibly not quite AS entertaining, but that’s partly due to just how fun her picture books are; note the link to one of our favorites.)  Her style, however, is on the strange side.  She likes to make random lists, and tables, and write random paragraphs, and throw it all in together.  (It’s actually kind of fun, although it takes a bit of getting used to.)  The problem I had with that tendency in Mother’s Guide, however, was that I am also reading her Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life–I’m most of the way through it, in fact–and some of the vignettes and thoughts are repeated.  That made some of the end of Mother’s Guide less entertaining for me.  Of course, unless you happen to end up reading two books by the same author at the same time in this way, this isn’t a problem you’re likely to have!

(For the record, the doubling up happened because Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life has been my downstairs bathroom book for months.  And while that sounds like TMI, it’s actually not; it’s there to pick up in that 3-5 minute window I sometimes have between when I shampoo my girls’ hair in their shower and when they’re ready to get out and have me put their lotion on.  Sometimes I switch laundry in the gap, or put it away; sometimes I do other brief tasks; sometimes, however, I don’t have time to do anything productive.  And so I keep a book that lends itself well to being read a page or two at a time in their bathroom.)

On a different note, I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas, or a wonderful Hanukkah, or an enjoyable holiday.  We’ve been blessed to have been able to spend time with a lot of family.  And while I’d love to elaborate further, I am 7 plus months pregnant and exhausted from making magic for my three kiddos, so I will bid you all goodnight!