So easy children can make it!

My son got to name tonight's entry, since he made dinner.  We had class after work & school, so I had ingredients for a pretty quick soup ready at home.  We each grabbed some crackers and I chopped 1 shallot and 3 cloves of garlic.  He added heat and a little olive oil:

Then he added a can of creamed corn:

That simmered in the pan for a few minutes while he peeled then grated two large carrots in the food processor (yes, I assembled that machine). 

The corn had gotten a little toasty and thick by then and smelled wonderful. He added the carrots and a carton of chicken broth and brought it to a boil:

The final additions were 3 cups of extra-wide egg noodles and some diced ham I'd defrosted and diced.  After about 10 minutes boiling on the stove top (with the lid on), dinner was made:

Indeed, it's so easy, children can make it!  My daughter wandered in just as the plates were ready to be served, showing off her new bubble-gum-blowing abilities.  He proudly handed her a bowl, "it's really amazing soup night!" I was hoping for leftovers for tomorrow, but....it was delish!

Egg Toast

If you like having your toast and egg all right there, this is worth trying.  Plus, it's fun for the kids to make (mother's day is coming soon, right!?).  They cut the center out of the bread, warm some butter in the pan, put the bread in and crack an egg into the middle.  We usually flip them over to fry both sides, and put the centers in the toaster oven to crisp (perfect for dipping).  One thing we've found is that a curved frying pan doesn't work well - the egg creeps out under any not-so-flat edges!

This breakfast reminds me a bit of a dish my grandparents used to make for my sisters and me - we called it "stuffed eggs".  They would butter and cube bread, then crack a soft-boiled egg over it and stir with salt and pepper.  It's one of those simple, fulfilling memory-rich foods.  I've made a version of that for my kids when they were little, sometimes with a little breakfast sausage mixed in, but we seem to have settled on this newer version for our weekends.

It does not make crusts more palatable, however!

From Slugs to Soufflé

We ate dinner on the deck last night - it was one of those perfect spring nights around here, cool and crisp. The worst of the pollen blast was over and the deck had been swept and the bugs aren't yet out. The deck is prime chicken-watching territory, and they were busy turning over the earth in their run, since I'd just cleaned it up that morning, adding lots of compost-in-the-making, full of worms.

If you haven't spent time watching chickens (and who would, unless you had some!?), they're more amusing than one initially suspects. And they love to scratch around their yard, kicking up a veritable dirt, leaf, bedding, worm, bug storm in the process. I was laughing over all the worms they must have been finding that evening and my son said something about getting "wormy eggs" in the morning.

"Well, that's better than the time you fed them 25 slugs in one day," I responded, "those were some sluggy eggs!"

"From slugs to soufflé!" he quipped right back. "It was 35 slugs, actually."

I laughed, hard. It's funny and gross, and it makes you think.

The pleasure in opening the egg-door of the coop and finding eggs doesn't go down, no matter how many times we do it. They are not affectionate pets (in fact, they're a bunch of chickens, squawking madly every time I startle them, which isn't hard to do!).

They are not too bright (bird-brains, some might say), but they are entertaining and reliable.  They have their pecking order...nobody is too terribly hen-pecked though...we've learned about nest eggs and brooding, and those terms all have a new richness to them.  The only downside?  I've gotten rather cavalier about the occasional dropped egg in the kitchen because there's more where that one came from (although we try not to count our chickens before they hatch, right?).

Quick Improv

Dinner tonight was fast!  I started with a recipe but several substitutions and a significant modification led to one of the fastest dinners I think we've ever made, short of picking up the phone for pizza....

Chopping peppers, opening cans and putting ingredients in the pan fell to the kid-chefs and dinner was ready by the time we had the table set.  Perfect after a weekend better spent outdoors!

Here's our super-easy chicken with corn and beans:
(feeds 4-6)

2 TB olive oil
1 large shallot, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1-2 red bell peppers, chopped
6 boneless chicken thighs (if you can only find bone-in, see variation below)
1 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 14 oz can of corn
1 14 oz can of black beans
1/2 tsp lemon juice
salt/pepper to taste

In a large non-stick pan, saute shallot and garlic in olive oil until soft, about 4 minutes
Add red pepper and mix with shallots - lay chicken pieces over the vegetables and add broth.
Simmer, covered, about 10 minutes until the chicken is cooked through.  If you can only find bone-in thighs, cook in broth without the red peppers for about 7 minutes, add the red peppers and cook about 10 minutes more.  Add corn, beans and lemon juice.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.  Could be served over rice or couscous.

Crock Pot Stew

Nights like tonight, I love the crock pot.  I knew we'd get home late and hungry.  Last night, I tossed together a beef stew and stashed the crock in the fridge.  This morning, I put it in the crock pot, set one of those timers in the outlet and plugged 'er in.  An hour or so after we left the house, it turned on, cooking:

1.5 lbs stew beef, cut into chunks

3 yukon gold potatos, cut into chunks

4 large carrotts, peeled and cut into 2-inch lengths

4 scallions, roughly chopped

2 14-ounce cans of fire-roasted diced tomatos

1 can of tomato paste

2 cups of broth

2 bay leaves

several grinds of black pepper

a dash of salt....

When we're not in such a famished state, I like to cook some egg noodles or some rice to serve with the stew, but this evening, dinner was on the table in a record 3 minutes.
Thank goodness!

The Hunting Grounds

After a couple of days out of town I returned home to....the empty fridge.  So, after a quick dinner of defrosted leftovers, we headed to the grocery store.  Now that there are no carseats, diapers, etc. to deal with, shopping with the kids is more fun.

I've used various diversions to keep it interesting.  Sometimes they're in charge of the list, crossing things off as we find them.  Sometimes I give them secret lists and they have to find their items without helping each other.  We've even tried having them order at the deli counter but not being tall enough to catch the attendant's attention proved to be an issue.  It dawned on me today that our trips are the modern hunter-gatherer model at work!  Not only do we capture our food more quickly, but I have the chance to impart my midwestern-tribal grocery store ways (smell a cantelope to know if it's ripe) and engage in instructional-brainwashing we mothers can't resist (don't choose yogurt with fake sugar in it - it's soooo bad for you). 

And I love not having to push the cart!

It's not the most fun we have together, but it gets done.  No buffalo tonight, but we harvested at least three days worth of meals - a success!

The Right Tool for the Job

For a long time, I made do with some hand-me-down kitchen supplies: the too-small frying pan that was losing its non-stickiness, the assorted wooden spoons—some burnt, some bent—and one small knife. Over the years, I’ve slowly rounded out my kitchen with better knives and pans but I don’t tend to buy a lot of kitchen paraphernalia. For one thing, I don’t have a lot of space to store equipment, and I have an unreasonable tendency to drool over the one-task-expensive-gadgets, not the ones I actually need.  It's like wanting to buy gowns, when what you really need are jeans.
In an effort to invest a bit in the things I need, I spent $48 dollars on a set of six lightweight metal bowls.

I’ve wanted a set of bowls like this for a long time. The glass ones I have are heavy, I don’t like stacking them together, I’m afraid of dropping them (yes, I can be a bit over enthusiastic in the kitchen!), and they’re not big enough. To be big enough, they’d weight twice as much. So I finally got what I wanted, and now I’m wondering why I waited so long.

I read once that we overestimate the happiness we get from the big things in life (a cruise! a fancy car!) and we underestimate the unhappiness of not fixing the small things (the door that bangs every time you use it, the broken window handle) and I find this holds true in the kitchen as well.  Having a set of lousy knives means you wish you had better ones every time you chop something.  Same with the bowls - every time I used one, I experienced the minor annoyance that it wasn't comfortable.  I don't believe in spoiling, but I now believe in having the right tool for the job. 

My kids have a kitchen drawer with their own equipment – the grater shaped like a mouse, the brightly colored measuring spoons and cups, the small rolling pin. The step stool means they can reach the counters.

Having tools their size, that they can enjoy using makes working together in the kitchen more fun for us all. My bowls aren’t nearly as colorful, but I’m looking forward to using them. And they’ll be easier for the kids to manage too.

Now, if only they didn’t come with all those stickers!

Food is for Sharing

My sisters sent my son a box of cookies for his birthday.  A perfect gift, in his opinion.  He opened the box, counted the cookies, and promptly offered to share with his sister.

For the record, I don't think I ever had the impuse to share my birthday or holiday stash with my sisters.

"She's nice to me," was his reason.

"I wasn't that generous with my sisters," I mused out loud.

"Well, your cookies would have been gone faster!" he reasoned.  True, one sister versus three. 

I think they just get along really well, but it remided me of one of the reasons I want my kids to learn how to cook.  Because food is for sharing.

Although I still find it easier to share dinner than my personal stash of chocolates, maybe I'll take a lesson from the younger ones and share those chocolates.  Tomorrow night.

Spring (cleaning) Fever

We all have our dreams.  One of my dreams is to have a pantry as well-organized and beautiful as my mother's.  She keeps things well organized, visible and lovely in row upon row of glass jars.

My pantry at present is a set of home-improvement store plastic utility shelves in the mudroom off the kitchen.  Although I have a young collection of glass jars (thanks to a glass factory outlet trip with my mother, where she introduced me to her source), the pantry was being overcome by some unwise purchases and disorganized stashing.

This past weekend, when the cleaning fever hit, it hit that room hard.  I knew there were things lurking on those shelves that were well past their "use by" dates, if only I could find them...not to mention too many broths and some missing staples. 

I try to keep some things up front, like the giant pickle jar that gets used for school snacks during the off months, the flour, sugar, raisins and other things the kids drag out for cooking.  It was the back areas where things were getting out of control.

One trash bag and some cold-eyed purging later (no, I was never going to use the three-year-old box of matzo ball mix, or the I-can't-tell-you-how-old preserved cherries that looked suspicious when I first received them as a gift), things were shaping up.

I've been thinking about how to organize our meals and shopping better.  This felt like a good start.  I read yesterday that the average family throws out something like $300 worth of food a year.  It's challenging to find the right combinations to fit a busy, sometimes unpredictable schedule, but I think having a less-full pantry may actually help.  If anyone has tips, please pass them on!

Marvelous Leftovers

The only cooking we did tonight was in the microwave, on defrost. 

I love leftovers.

We were on vacation last week and yesterday’s Easter dinner was light and the extra ham is in the freezer. So after returning everyone to school and work this morning, cooking was a no-brainer. I took a dinner-sized portion of lamb shepherd’s pie from the freezer.

I made this pie a while back, a special birthday request, and it’s easily a half-day endeavor.

There’s the chopping,

the browning,

the cooking,

and the stewing...

We enjoyed several hours of delightful scents in the kitchen the day before the dinner and let the stew sit in the refrigerator.

The next day, the kids helped me peel potatoes and top the pie for a reheating after work. It was delicious. I’m pleased to spend the time to make something my kids love, but the leftovers….that’s the delightful part! I froze a four-person dinner for another night, two lunch-sized portions and tonight’s dinner portion. And there’s nothing like having an instant gourmet dinner!

Coconut Cake

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

My son’s birthday was coming up and I had a recipe for coconut cake I’d wanted to try. He’s pretty adventurous and working with a fresh coconut had a certain attraction. Namely, a hammer.

The recipe had a sidebar with instruction and illustrations on getting the milk out of the coconut. He hammered three holes into the eyes and we tipped the coconut over a measuring cup.

Three drops of milk plopped out. Then….nothing. We shook, we could hear the sloshing inside, a few more dribbles came out. We stuck the nail back in, twisted it around and produced a few more dribbles. My daughter went to the drawer where all the random plastic things accumulate and pulled out a straw. We stuck it in one hole, I covered the second and he blew. Finally, the coconut was emptied. It didn’t produce the 1 cup the recipe said it would, but we proceeded.

The cake turned out fine. Next step: toasting the ribbons of coconut flesh. A couple of wacks with the hammer, and the coconut fell open after baking, just at the second sidebar had described. I looked for the instructions on toasting the shavings. Nothing.

I was about to learn that there is a reason people buy shredded coconut in bags. Coconut is concave, the peelers are straight. See the problem?

After some pretty tough attempts to get those delightful ribbons of flesh, I pulled the box grater out of the cupboard. No instructions on how to toast the coconut either? I guessed. 350’ and some Pam on the cooking sheet worked just fine.

Now, 10:35pm on a Sunday, it was time to move on to the icing. I do not have a good track record with icings, and the kids were long in bed. This time, I had a new weapon: a candy thermometer. What a difference having the right tools makes.

No guessing over soft-ball or hard-ball stages of the sugar solution – I watched the blue-mercury-substitute rise and voila – a crystalline, bubbling mass transformed my egg whites into pearly ripples of Italian meringue. It was delightful.

I iced, pressed toasted coconut into the sides and called it a night.

When the candles were lit the next night, it looked fantastic. And tasted pretty good too.

No Foolin'

I admit it: I love April Fool's jokes.

This past week, we were on vacation, but I managed to pack some cheerios for a "special" breakfast.  I borrowed this joke from "The Happiness Project," a book I recently read.  Wednesday night, I froze two bowls of cheerios then set them out for breakfast on Thursday.

"But I don't like cheerios," one child protested.

"Just eat them," I answered in my stern-mommy-voice.

"They're...frozen!"

"April Fool's"

I had my share of frozen coffee, snakes, lizards and...the wrong ferry!?, but that hearty breafast saw us through!