Homework for the Parents, Two Years Later

It's state buffet time again. B did her report on Minnesota, and didn't have any idea what we should cook. I posted a request to my Facebook friends, and most people agreed that we should make some sort of "hotdish," preferably with either wild rice or tater tots. Also suggested were rhubarb pie, bundt cake, jello with marshmellows, lutefisk, and anything with wild rice. (I had no idea that Minnesota was known for wild rice.)

In the oven right now is "Mom's Wild Rice & Chicken Casserole", which had all of the ingredients my Minnesota friends felt were necessary: wild rice, chicken or ground beef, cream of mushroom soup. I hope it turns out well!

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 Photo (11:20 am):

Spring Forward is Coming

I need to keep better track of when Daylight Savings Time begins. Silly me, I said "yes" to subbing at a church service this Sunday, not realizing that being there by 8:55 am means 7:55 am body time, or roughly when I get out of bed on a weekday.

It's going to be a busy weekend here (nothing new, I suppose, to readers of this blog!) Saturday, DH has a work event in the morning, so I will be out from 10:00-2:00 delivering kids to and from their activities, and fitting some shopping in during the down time. (The snake needs to be fed, B needs some craft supplies, and we always need stuff at Costco.) At 5:00, DH has another work event, but this one is happening at our house, so from 2:00-5:00 we will be frantically cleaning and organizing. While DH is having his meeting, I will be baking goodies for the next day.

Sunday morning is the aforementioned church service, then Sunday afternoon is the Voci fundraiser. DH is on setup/cleanup crew, I am providing desserts (mini cupcakes this year), and singing and conducting. Fortunately for us, M decided earlier this week that he wants to make dinner for us--he has been making croque madame sandwiches for himself, and wants to share. I suggested that Sunday would be a GREAT day for him to make dinner, and he agreed!

It's All In the Timing

I like to cook, when I have the time, and I usually try to provide home-cooked dinners for my family several times a week. Meals with vegetables, not too much red meat over the course of the week, etc. When DH is away, I let the kids pick the meals they want, as it's a chance for them to ask for things that DH doesn't really like. So, tonight's menu is macaroni and cheese (the kind in the blue box), with added tuna and peas for M and me. Tomorrow night we don't have any activities in the evening, so we're going to have TV dinners (a treat the kids ask for whenever DH travels). Naturally, these are the two days that M has been instructed to log everything he eats for his Wellness class. They're going to think his mother doesn't know how to cook, and that he lives on junk food!

Happy Turkey Day!

I was even more disorganized this year than usual, and Thanksgiving somehow crept up on me before I got around to sending out the usual invitations to stray grad students and friends. So, it's just my family this year: parents, sister, DH, and the kids. Of course, I don't actually know how to downsize my menu, so I suspect we will be eating Thanksgiving leftovers for the next year :-)

Our menu is pretty traditional:

• roast turkey


• sage stuffing (made from white bread}


• mashed potatoes


• gravy


• cranberry sauce (both jellied and whole berry)


• green bean casserole


• pumpkin pie with whipped cream

Some years we've tried sweet potatoes (the ones with the gooey marshmallows on top), but I think we won't be needing them this year!

Have a GREAT Thanksgiving, and try not to eat too much!

Lessons Learned Today

1. Although Corelle dinnerware is generally break- and chip-resistant, dropping a stack of bowls onto a tile floor creates a spectacular mess with little tiny slivers of glass all over the kitchen. (Only the bottom bowl in the stack of three broke, so I guess it does live up to its claim.)

2. Homemade macaroni and cheese has to be made with whole milk: skim milk gives it a weird, grainy texture, and no one will eat it.

A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That

Current mental soundtrack: "Anatevka" from Fiddler on the Roof (Jerry Bock)

Today's accomplishments:

1. Got everyone out of bed at the appointed time. This may not sound like a difficult task, but it is! The kids have been on "summer" time, meaning they've been getting up whenever they felt like it. Since school starts next week, I thought it was time to get them back on a schedule. Last week, they were awakened at 9:00 am. This week, it's 8:00 am. Next week, school starts on Wednesday, so B is going to have to be out the door by 7:45 every morning (M doesn't have to leave until 8:30).


2. Picked up DH's new iPhone. He's out of town, so it's mine to play with for a couple more days :-)


3. Picked up B's new glasses.


4. Took M to the orthodontist. He's had braces on his front teeth since January, and I think this was the FIRST visit that he did not have any loose brackets. (Which probably means something will break tomorrow.)


5. Cleaned house and cooked dinner for DH's uncle, aunt, and cousin. Cousin P has just returned from a summer-school class in Europe, and his parents drove up here to pick him up at the airport and buy him some furniture for his new apartment.

Daylight Savingzzz

It's now Wednesday, and I think I've finally gotten myself back in sync with the clock. Why are we still subjected to this every year? I find it hard to believe that it saves enough energy to be worth the trouble it cause. Of course, being a night owl, I do like the day in the fall when we "fall back."

It's been a busy week so far: fundraiser for Voci on Sunday, and a major project at work that was due today. I did find time to make dinner tonight: a vegetarian chili recipe I cobbled together from a couple of recipes I found online.

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Vegetarian Three-Bean Chili

1 Tb olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 15-oz can black beans, drained & rinsed*
1 15-oz can pinto beans, drained & rinsed*
1 15-oz can kidney beans, drained & rinsed*
1 14.5-oz can diced tomatoes, undrained
1 c vegetable broth
1/2 c frozen corn
2 Tb chili powder
2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp garlic salt

Saute onions in olive oil until soft, about 5 minutes. Stir in other ingredients. Mix well and reduce heat. Cover and simmer for 20-30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Season to taste with salt & pepper.


*To substitute dried beans, use 3/4 cup dried beans, soak overnight, and cook for 1.5-2 hours. Also add extra 1/2 tsp. garlic salt

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I first came up with this recipe for a party we had a few weeks ago, and it was very popular. I went with chili because we ended up with a huge number of guests (around 40), and I didn't want to spend a fortune on dinner. One vat of chili con carne, one smaller vat of vegetarian three-bean, and side dishes that other people brought. Three of the four members of my family like it, too, so it's a winner. (As any of you with kids know, it's next to impossible to please all four of us at the same time!)

The weather has been nice, and the California poppy seeds I sprinkled in the dirt a few weeks ago are starting to come up. I haven't had a lot of luck with starting things from seed in the past, but I figured that these are wildflowers that bloom next to highways, so how difficult could it be to grow them? We'll see how many of them make it :-)

The Wonderful World Wide Web

Is there anything that you can't find out on the web yet? I'm always amazed by what is out there. This evening, I cooked Spanish Tortillas for the Voci fundraiser that I'm singing in tomorrow. I was assigned the recipe last week, but I didn't get a paper copy of the recipe from the person in charge. So, last Wednesday, links were sent around for suitable recipes. We are to prepare three to four dozen each, and it has to be served on a white, cream, or silver platter. I do not own any white or cream platters, but I do own some silver ones which are rarely used. So, after cooking a zillion tortillas, I went to look for the silver polish. And couldn't find it anywhere. So, off to the web, where I found the following:

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Line pan (or sink) with aluminum foil.
Put silver in, making sure each piece contacts the aluminum foil.
Add equal parts of baking soda and salt. (I dumped 4 heaping tablespoons of each into a kitchen sink with about an inch of water)
Add enough steaming hot water to cover.
Repeat if necessary for heavily tarnished pieces.

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In just a couple of minutes, the silver becomes noticeably less tarnished! Much easier than stinky silver polish (no elbow grease required). The water ends up smelling like sulfur, and the tarnish ends up stuck to the aluminum foil. According to various web sites, the reaction is even more dramatic if you boil the silver on the stove, but I didn't have a pan big enough to boil a platter! I currently have one of my favorite pairs of earrings soaking in a cup, and I can think of several more things to polish now.

In gardening news, I yanked up two more bucketfuls of weeds from the back yard, and bought a dwarf lime tree to put in a container. I've been meaning to buy a dwarf lime since moving to California six years ago, but somehow haven't gotten around to it until now. I did plan ahead and buy casters for the pot before filling it with dirt and tree, since we're going to have to wheel it indoors during the winter.

Hornswogglers and Snozzwangers

My new MacBook arrived today! A 13-inch black 2.4 GHz machine. I've been happily using a a 12-inch PowerBook for the last couple of years, but it's reached an age where the latest software won't install on it, and there wasn't enough space on the hard drive for everything I wanted. My boss wanted me to upgrade a while ago, but I was really hoping that a new 12-inch model would be announced. Instead, Apple chose to unveil the MacBook Air, which is a really pretty machine, but without enough guts for me. The hard drive wouldn't have been any bigger than the old one, and the lack of a CD/DVD drive would annoy me. So, we ordered a 13-inch MacBook, since my personal definition of a laptop requires that I be able to lift it with one hand from the coffee table :-) .

Apple makes it as easy as it could possibly be to upgrade. First, I backed up everything onto an external hard drive (not a required step, but since DH's last two machine "upgrades" have eaten various files belonging to me, I thought it would be a good idea). Next, I turned on the new computer, which walked me through the steps to connect it to the old laptop. Then, I had lunch and read a magazine for a while while the Migration Assistant copied everything over to the new computer. Desktop pictures, applications, all my files. My only complaint about Migration Assistant is the countdown. I expect a bit of inaccuracy, and it doesn't bother me when it takes a while at the beginning to decide if this is going to be a six-hour job or a one-hour job, but when the "less than a minute remaining" stays on my screen for 30 minutes, I find it to be really annoying.

This afternoon I played for the school musical again. The Oompa Loompas did their blocking for the first Oompa Loompa song, and the golden-ticket winners and their parents blocked their boat trip in the chocolate factory. Last night I finally got around to watching the DVD we'd bought of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the original, with Gene Wilder). I'd forgotten a lot of the details--I can't remember how long it's been since I last saw it.

Tonight's dinner was an experiment, and it turned out quite well. I'm always looking for quick meals that can go in the crockpot, and I decided this week that I wanted chicken pot pie for dinner. After a little web surfing for ideas, I invented this recipe:

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Chicken Crockpot Pie

2 medium potatoes
1 medium onion
2–3 chicken breasts
1 stalk celery
1 family-size can cream of chicken soup
1 lb. frozen mixed vegetables
1 can large buttermilk biscuits

Peel and dice potatoes and onion. Dice celery and chicken. Put in crockpot with cream of chicken soup and 2/3 can water. Stir. Cook on low until chicken is completely cooked.

1–2 hours before serving, add frozen vegetables and stir.

15 minutes before serving, flatten biscuits to fit tops of bowls. Bake according to package directions until browned (approximately 10 minutes).

Ladle chicken mixture into bowls. Top each with browned biscuit.

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Cooking without cooking

Yesterday I dug up what seemed like a million dandelions from the back yard. I don't remember SEEING any dandelions last year, but I think that's because Otto likes to eat the yellow flowers. Maybe I should leave a few for him :-)

Today the kids got out of school early for a staff development day. We went to the grocery store, where B enjoyed gliding up and down the aisles in her brother's old Heelys. We "baked" a banana cream pie (using a Pillsbury Refrigerated Pie Crust, Jello Instant Pudding, and some bananas) and are waiting for it to set. M claims he's never had banana cream pie before, which I think is unlikely, considering my fondness for it. We are leaving in another hour or so for M's fencing class. Tonight DH is going to make spaghetti with meatballs and garlic bread for us, since he'll get home first. I bought a loaf of Semifreddi's ciabiatta for the bread, and the rest of the meal is mostly from Costco (Prego sauce by the half-gallon & Kirkland Italian meatballs). So, if "cooking from scratch" is the real thing, what's the proper term for "cooking using convenience foods because I don't have time to do it the old-fashioned way"?