Do I take the clothes off the line at 930 PM, or will it just wait until morning?
Real Food: Part I
Never, ever would I serve hot dogs for dinner to my husband. Lunch, perhaps, especially if I were turning the grill on, too. But not dinner.
But the kids like hot dogs, and I like easy meals, so we do, occasionally, have hot dogs for dinner when Bill is gone. Which is every day for those of you who aren’t paying attention.
In fact, in the interest of happy kids and simplicity, the types of food I’ve been serving for the last 6 weeks have been pretty basic. And now that tomatoes are ripe, I think BLTs for dinner once or twice (or three or four times) per week is perfectly acceptable. A thick slice of fresh tomato is on my top 100 list of proofs that God exists and loves us very much. For my own personal reference, I’m going to include this link to Jenn’s tomato recipes. I’ll be making some salsa this coming week, I think.
*****
A friend and I were trying to coordinate going to confession together. One of us could watch the under 7 crowd outside of the church while the other monitored the behavior of the others standing in line and herself too went to confession. Despite our church’s generous confession schedule of 4 times per week, we were having a difficult time coming up with one that worked for both of us. Finally we got to yesterday, and neither of us had a conflict. In fact, I discovered that her husband would be TDY, and it was her birthday.
(Wouldn’t it be lovely to be born on a Marian feast day? She said as a kid it was awful because she always had to go to church!)
So we decided to meet at the church for confession, stay for Mass and then come to my house for dinner and cake and ice cream. In Part II, I’ll talk about the cake.
For the kids, I decided to do pizza with my homemade and pre-baked crust. Pre-baking the crust and then storing it in the freezer means I can have pizza on the table in 15 minutes. Homemade pizza dough takes 90 minutes to make, and then I shape it into balls and rest it for 10 minutes, then I roll it out and let it rest for another 10 minutes, and then I add toppings and bake for 20 minutes (or just pre-bake for 10 minutes). Pizza is NOT a quickie dinner at our house, usually.
I was trying to come up with something for the grownups to eat, because having someone for whom to cook is the excuse I need to eat more sophisticated fare. I belong to a farm share program (which has been delivering me the yummy tomatoes I’ve been eating), and in this week’s box they included eggplant and this recipe:
Rigatoni with creamy eggplant and mozzarella
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 medium onion, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
2 medium eggplant, medium dice
1 (15 ounce) can crushed tomatoes
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup loosely packed thinly sliced fresh basil leaves
1 pound rigatoni or penne regate
8 ounces buffalo mozzarella, small dice
Saute onion and garlic in the oil in a large frying pan over medium-high heat. When just soft, add the eggplant, stir to coat in oil and then stir rarely until soft and golden brown, about 5 minutes. Remove half the eggplant mixture and reserve.
Meanwhile, cook the pasta according to package directions and drain.
To the eggplant mixture, reduce heat to medium-low, add the tomatoes, cream and half the basil. Simmer, stirring occasionally, for about 4 minutes.
Add sauce to drained pasta and stir to coat. Add reserved eggplant, remaining basil and mozzarella and mix until cheese begins to soften. Serve immediately.
I had never had eggplant before, but I was willing to try this recipe. My friend told me she prepares her eggplant dishes by salting the eggplant at least 30 minutes before using and then rinsing the salt off thoroughly. She said it makes the eggplant less bitter. I left the sliced and salted eggplant in the fridge while I was at a church. Having never had eggplant before, I can not tell if this step made a difference or not.
This dish was very delicious. I wouldn’t have taken the time to type up the recipe if not, right? I don’t think my kids would care for it, but I will make it again sometime and have them try it.
My friend would have been happy had I served her the pizza. I’m glad I used her birthday as an excuse to make and share a new dish. And to eat some real food for a change.
*****
We concluded the evening by praying the rosary together. We couldn’t let that plenary indulgence opportunity go to waste! It was a lovely way to spend the Feast of the Assumption.
Movie Night: What not to pick
Katie’s birthday is Friday and we’re trying to pick out a movie to watch for a birthday movie night.
She had seen previews for The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep and really really really wanted to see it. So I checked it out here.
Now, when Bill was deployed back in 2003, Fritz was 5 and we watched E.T. That’s a fun movie, right? Well, there’s that bit about him dying towards the end, but he comes back and goes home and everybody lives happily ever after.
But the themes of separation, loss and going home were too much for my kids. Instead of smiles, I had sobbing.
I’ve learned to be a bit more selective in choosing themes now when my kids are having rough times.
On to The Water Horse and the USCCB website review says:
“Engaging but, by the end, surprisingly intense fantasy adventure, set during World War II, in which a forlorn Scottish boy (Alex Etel), coping with the absence of his sailor father…”
“…starts off unthreateningly, but gets steadily more ominous as it moves toward a turbulent climax that would likely frighten most young children.”
Yeah, I think we’ll skip this one for now.
Any suggestions for happy, fun, amusing rentals for mixed ages and genders but all 11 and under?
I’m holding him back
Peter: Mommy, I can’t find my Latin book.
Me: You don’t have a Latin book.
Peter: Why not?
Me: Um…do you want me to teach you Latin?
Peter: No.
Me: Well, OK then.
Just like his oldest brother: knows he needs to do Latin, but doesn’t want to.
Via email
From Bill:
As of today, I am 23.194% complete. Only 19.53 weeks or 136.72 days or 3281.17 hours or 196,870.09 minutes or 11,812,205.33 seconds to go.
Not that we’re counting or anything.
Off to an intentionally slow start
I have nothing on my calendar for today – thank goodness. I don’t know how I always get so busy, but it is exhausting.
We started “school-lite” this week: math and Latin. That’s more than enough. I really do like easing into the school year. My two boys are using DIVE videos for the first time, so we’re figuring out how that works and also doing time management.
Two subjects, four students.
But to give you an example of the challenges I face, one student who has no desire to do math or Latin and who thinks that giving me a hard time will – I don’t know – make me decide that we should just skip those subjects? Really, I have no idea what he hopes to accomplish. Anyway, he was showing me just how difficult math is by wrinkling his brow and acting constipated. And what exactly was the problem that was giving him such trouble? Complex algebra? Long division? Word problems written in French?
9 + 8
I told him he should have picked something just a tad more difficult if he were going to pull such dramatics.
So, this is why I am glad we’re starting off small. 90 minutes more or less of school is good for the first week, especially when nobody else in the area has even begun to think about it.
One other sure sign that school has begun in my house is the antics of the younger crowd, including Jenny who is not learning Latin and whose math takes all of 15 minutes. Peter keeps begging for a playmate, so we will work on following the full school year routine I laid out which actually has someone assigned to him to keep him occupied. Jenny’s downtime has been relatively benign.
Here is her self portrait taken while waiting for Katie to finish math.
She took a half dozen pictures of the sunroom: things on the wall, the ceiling fan. Harmless, quiet self-absorption. Wish she did this more often.
Mary, of course, is the biggest trouble-maker. It’s her age-appropriate nature. First she got her hands on the white-out pens. Fortunately, I own some Goof Off. The linoleum looks just fine now.
Then it was the magic markers. She currently into body art. And even washable markers take several days for the ink to get off skin. I buy markers once a year – at the beginning of the school year. When they’re gone, they’re gone. If the kids can’t keep them put away and monitored closely when in use, they will be gone very soon.
Then it was the half-eaten yogurt all over her and the dining room table.
If you look closely, you can see the lines from the markers. Her legs are twice as bad.
Right now she’s soaking wet from playing with soapy water in the sink. It’s what I have to do to type a blog post. The floor is wet, too, but this is an easy cleanup compared to hand soap rubbed all over the bathroom mirror, another of her favorite pastimes. She’s bored now, and thus ends my writing for today.
Cookies to the Front
Last weekend we made cookies.
Rather, I made cookies.
I have realized that I am a selfish chef. I do not like to have my children helping me in the kitchen. I find cooking and baking to be a gloriously solitary pursuit. I’m working on this. I do consider competence in the kitchen to be a prerequisite for adulthood, and it is my responsibility to teach it. But for these cookies, it was mostly just me.
I made three different types: crinkled molasses cookies, peanut butter with chocolate chips, and a variation on snickerdoodles. I have a different recipe than the one listed here, but they are all fairly similar: it’s a sugar cookie rolled in cinnamon sugar. These were a favorite from my childhood, and I make them every so often for my kids. Sometimes, I make what I call cinnerdoodles instead, and I put the cinnamon in the dough and just roll them in sugar. They are a bit more cinnamon-y. That’s what I did this time.
Of course, the cookies weren’t really for us, they were for my husband. I hope they survive the journey.
We saved some for us, too.Yesterday we headed to the post office, and I asked Fritz to carry the heavy box out to the van.
“What’s in here?” he groaned.
“Cookies, M&Ms, magazines, your dad’s Cincinnati Reds hat, a cigar cutter…”
“Cigars?!?“
“Yes, I ordered your dad some cigars for his birthday.”
“They’re allowed to smoke there?”
“Yes, honey, they can’t drink, but they can smoke.”
“That doesn’t make any sense! Smoking is much worse than drinking!”
These are the life lessons my kids are learning. Of course, the drinking that goes on here is very moderate. I grew up with a dad who smoked a pipe, but rarely drank – not because he thought alcohol was bad, but because it just wasn’t his thing. I considered (still consider) pipe and cigar smoking, in moderation, as a harmless and rather pleasant pastime, but as a kid thought drinking was dangerous and even bad. Interesting.
Lost his head
It’s a good thing I knew that Katie wanted a picture of her daddy for an inexpensive heart-shaped locket she owned. She abandoned her work, I suppose to retrieve the locket, and I happened upon this disturbing scene:
Ouch!
On the Road Again
Yes, no helmet and no shoes. I survived childhood without them, and I’m sure my kids will, too.
Peter is riding a balance bike. It has two wheels but no pedals. He loves it. Loves loves loves it.
We bought him a balance bike two Christmases ago. He was 2 1/2. It was an inexpensive wooden model, and it was just a tad too big for him. But that’s OK. Kansas is pretty cold in the winter time. By spring, he was big enough and had already gotten the hang of it by riding in the basement.
He loved that bike. But it was an inexpensive wooden model, and it kept falling apart. We kept putting it back together, but when the falling apart started happening more often than the staying together, and when the falling apart started causing injuries (especially since he wears no shoes or helmet), we decided it was time to get him another one.
Supposedly, little European children use balance bikes instead of tricycles and then when they are four, they go straight to two-wheels with no training wheels. Peter is four, but I knew there would be a learning curve with a two-wheeler, plus we have a bike all ready for him when he’s five. So I opted to stick with what he loves, just better.
This time I went with a Strider bike which is metal and has an easily adjustable seat and handle bars. On the lowest setting, Mary (22 months and small) could have fit on it. Peter’s setting is about halfway up, so he has room to grow.
This kid is so happy. For several days after he got the bike, he was glowing. He would sigh happy sighs and give me hugs and kisses all.day.long. He said thank you and I love you a bazillion times. He just loves this bike.
Google Me
Somebody found my blog by googling “crazy old mom.”
Happy Monday!
Reit This Way 