Dinner

M has not been overly fond of our last few dinners. In fact, he asked me the other night, "is this your way of putting me on a diet, fixing meals I don't like?" Well, actually no it isn't. It's just that the rest of us like soups and stews and chili and all sorts of other things M doesn't.

Tonight's dinner was:

Chicken and rice - with some leftover plain rice for M

Baked sweet potatoes (from our garden) - one bite for the kids plus raw carrots for them

Broccoli - raw for M

Fruit and seed bread

A loved it and wanted a second chicken leg - good thing I cut up 5 leg quarters for the pan. We'll have this meal again (mostly) in a few days. I thought it was a very good thing to fix on a night I had to go pick up M after his robotics. The chicken & rice and the sweet potatoes went into the oven about 4:45 and then the bread went in to finish up cooking a bit after we got back. Broccoli in the microwave and we were set to eat.

Oh, and leftover cherry/apple pie for dessert. I was impressed that M actually wanted to try it. His verdict: ok, but not great. He had Halloween candy for dessert instead. Fine by me, all the more pie for me. Mmmmm.... pie - there's still some left that may be part of breakfast tomorrow.

Feeling like Fall

Today has been the first day to really feel like fall, not just late summer. It was cool and drizzly this morning. Then it stopped dripping, but never really warmed up - I think it topped out at about 74. I wore a long sleeve shirt over my t-shirt most of the day. So, when it came time to think about dinner, I thought warm food thoughts. Of course, since I hadn't known it was going to be cool today, I hadn't planned a fall type meal. Truth be told, I hadn't really planned any meal for tonight - that is frequently a problem by the end of the week. Thinking over what I have on hand (and what A's friend who spent the evening (and now the night) might like), I decided on chili. Luckily it turns out that A's friend does like chili. So chili and cornbread it was.

Unfortunately, M, who last winter had gotten to the point of eating the chili, not happily, but eating it - decided not to eat it tonight. So, he ate about 4 bites of the chili and his cornbread and then decided he'd rather go hungry. His choice.

Turn off the TV Week

It's that time of the year again - time for no TV.

In the past, the kids would groan a bit, but never too much, even when they were regularly watching TV (a few hours a week).

This year, though, I can't remember the last time any of us watched actual TV - not a video or DVD. Maybe sometime in February? The kids do watch an occasional movie (or something recorded off TV long ago), but not too often. Don't go thinking that we are all anti-screen though - they have way too much screen time with the computer, Wii and Nintendo DS.

Anyway, since the kids haven't been watching TV, they didn't really care when I told them it was Turn off the TV Week. Less predictably, they said "Oh, OK" when I told them that it meant no Wii this week either (since the Wii needs the TV).

I'm rather pleasantly surprised when they react so calmly when it is an outside authority telling them what to do (or not do). Unfortunately I don't think that would work for me to provide an expert to tell M to try all food with an open mind...

Our non-M friendly dinner

We had decided that tonight would be a good night to go out to eat, since we wouldn't be bound by constraints of where M would find food he likes.  But then we had a hard time trying to figure out where we did want to go.  I really rather felt like Chinese food, but not a buffet.  But I've never managed to get a recommendation for any Chinese places around here that people like.  It's always something like "well, there's X place, but ..." the food was cold, the service terrible, etc. And we don't get much of a chance to try out Chinese places as they don't serve anything M will eat (except rice - and he doesn't even like white rice anymore, only brown rice).

We finally settled on Jamaican, a little place that we took D's brother and wife to last summer.  D was happy to find that they had roti this time.  It was tasty and reminded me a bit of the Ethiopian meal we had over winter break, although the breads are really not at all similar.

My mom and A came with us.  A ordered curried shrimp.  Unfortunately it was spicy hot, even though the waiter told us only the jerk chicken was hot.  Neither the curried goat nor the curried chicken was particularly spicy, so we're not sure what is up.  Anyway, A ended up sharing out most of his shrimp and trying some of the rest of our meals (and he had too much food anyway since his order was the same size as mine - no kid meals available).

A and I went over to the drink case to find something interesting to drink.  He was aiming for the Snapple, but I convinced him to try one of the more interesting drinks.  He ended up with a pineapple/ginger drink.  It was really good, the kick of the ginger really moderated the sweetness of the pineapple.  D had a sorrel/ginger drink - it was ok, but not nearly as good as A's drink.  I ended up sticking with the traditional gingerbeer, good and spicy!

Childfree Night

Amazing - no kids for the night!  

M is off at Space Camp with about 40 other 6th graders from his school.  They left after lunch today and will return Friday evening, exhausted I'm sure.  And just in time for the lock-in at church...  We've pretty much decided he's not spending the night there, but if he's in not too tired, he can go all evening (the only other boy that usually shows up for the middle school church group isn't spending the night either).

A is off with my mom tonight.  She mentioned that perhaps he could sleep over sometime soon and he said "how 'bout tonight?"  So, he's off there.

And what are we doing with these lovely kid-free hours?  Each on a computer, par for the course if the kids were in bed.  But we have plans to go out to dinner tomorrow - somewhere non-M friendly.  Because D still has to go to work Friday, we probably won't go to any really interesting places (no place really interesting exists in this town), but there are places that are tasty and don't serve traditional kid fare.

Happy Chinese New Year!

In honor of the Chinese New Year (Year of the Rat), we had a medley of Chinese food for dinner tonight. (and no, no rats in evidence -though maybe the cats caught one someplace else and ate it all themselves). We had (clockwise from top left) soy ginger carrots, buffalo style wontons, beef lo mein, Thai ginger soup and lemongrass spring rolls. All yummy, but my favorite I think was the lemongrass rolls! With the carrots coming in second - both from Trader Joe's.

As anyone who knows us might expect, A liked pretty much all of it, and M liked none of it. But we all had fun practicing with our chopsticks. M laughed at me when I speared a wonton - it was the only decent way of picking it up with chopsticks!

Turkey Day Update

Thanksgiving went quite nicely. We ended up with 7 adults and 2 kids - a nice tablefull of people. Plenty of food (and plenty of leftovers too - yum). I promised I'd report back on the ginger on the pumpkin pie. It was OK, but not really anything special. I really like crystallized ginger, but somehow it didn't seem to do much for the pie (and M, as predicted, didn't want anything to do with it), so I don't think I'll bother with it again. I'll just much on the ginger plain!

We all had some form of leftovers for lunch today. M just the turkey. A had a turkey and cranberry sauce sandwich. I had turkey/cranberry sauce/stuffing sandwich. D had turkey and mashed pototoes (leftovers, but not from Thanksgiving) with gravy. And then we had full Thanksgiving leftovers for dinner. We've finished off the green beans now and that's fine. It's not quite so fine that we've almost finished off the turkey. I think we'll get one more day of sandwiches, but that's probably it. Now to figure out what we're going to eat all the stuffing with...

Fake Italian dinner

Or rather, it was dinner with a fake Italian accent. I can't remember how it started, but suddenly M was talking like Mario, in a VERY fake Italian accent.

M: Why-a I hava to eata my pototo-as?
me: Becausa if-a you don't-a, I will haffa to maka you swima witha the fishes.
M: I can-a swima witha da fishes.
me: without-a your head-a...

Somehow its just not the same in print. I guess you had to be there... There was much laughter and finally the dreaded pototo-as went down the hatch.

North African Beef Stew

It's what's for dinner.

And it was yummy too. Served over couscous.

For some unknown reason though, neither kid liked it. Go figure. A usually likes everything, but he said he didn't like the sauce - such as it was. It was supposed to be a bit more soupy, but I didn't have the diced tomatoes the recipe called for, so I subbed crushed tomatoes with extra puree - made it a bit thicker of a sauce.

Plan B for dinner

For the last two nights, we've planned something for dinner, only to discover, when cooking time rolled around, that one or more ingredients couldn't be found. Why, you might wonder.... Well, because the contents of my pantry are STILL contained in bins and totes in the dining room (hopefully safely moth free). Or else they are secreted randomly in the freezer - either the fridge freezer or the big freezer in the garage. So, I have a major hunt for ingredients every night.

Last night was supposed to be tacos, with the sale ground beef that needed to be cooked that day. Only problem - I couldn't find the taco seasoning or the bulgur (we mix bulgur half-and-half with the beef - tastes great and a bit better for us). So, plan B was hamburgers. They were yummy and had even been considered earlier and rejected since it was supposed to rain. But, since it wasn't raining at 6, D was willing to grill.

Then today, D suggested chicken stir-fry. Sounds good, we've had a good bit of beef lately, so I took out the frozen chicken breasts to thaw. However, I neglected to find the rice mid-afternoon. I thought it was on the counter with the flour, but evidently I tucked it away somewhere from the bugs. I peered in every bin and I poked around in both freezers, but I didn't manage to come up with the brown rice. I know I threw out the white rice as it had gotten infested, but I was sure the brown rice was still around. Oh, and I found the taco seasoning I was looking for yesterday, but still not the bulgur. I guess the grains are all hanging out somewhere together having a party without me.

Anyway, tonight ended up being chicken fajitas, since the chicken was thawing and we did have the tortillas and the rest of the ingredients.

M says he likes plan B better, having enjoyed burgers more than tacos and fajitas more than stir fry. Though he probably would have liked tacos about as well as fajitas, assuming I had remembered to take out some ground beef before I "sullied" it with taco seasoning. His tacos and burritos tend to be meat and cheese only. Usually with some raw green pepper on the side. Only tonight I didn't have enough extra green pepper, so M had raw carrots as his other veggie (we also had pea pods).

Unfortunately I'm still finding the odd moth around, so I'm not ready to unbox the pantry yet. I need to go ahead and paint in the pantry. Maybe all the paint fumes will do in any remaining moths.... I can hope!

Lunch with M

I had lunch with M today - at the middle school. Some friends had told me that it wasn't cool to eat lunch with your parents in middle school, but I checked with M and he said to come. Of course, he wanted to make sure I would buy him cookies to go with his lunch as long as I was there too...

I had wanted to get there early enough to go through the line with M, but he misremembered when his lunch started and the office couldn't pin it down either, so I got there right after he went through the line - emerging with only 2 things on his tray - a slice of cheese pizza and a pile of french fries. No drink - milk upsets his stomach so he is supposed to have juice, but he says he doesn't like the orange juice or the grape juice. No fruit or veggies. The cafeteria lady I spoke with last week assured me that they always have fruit, but M claims there was none today. I'll have to go again sometime and get there before he goes through the line so I can see for myself.

For me, I went through the hot lunch line and had chicken bites, tater tots (most of which M ate, like he needed more starches for lunch), green beans, corn and a roll. I brought home a chocolate milk for A and got myself and M cups of water. Evidently M can BUY bottled water, but can't get a cup to fill at the water fountain. He says he usually just heads over to the water fountain and gets a drink when he needs it.

I can't say that the food was great - ok, but a bit too fried for my tastes. But I did enjoy eating with M and I got to meet his new BF, K. They have all 5 academic classes together.

It feels like Saturday

Today has felt like Saturday all day.

We have a 3 day weekend this week, due to no snow this summer. The kids are majorly bummed that its been several years since we've had a decent snow. But, we were all happy to have our free snow day today, or as they put it our no-snow day.

M went to a sleepover birthday party last night. Didn't get up until almost 10 am, when the host mom woke them up. That is unheard of for M. He's usually a very early riser - before 7 am, even when he's stayed up late, even after 2 months of summer.

While M l was at his sleepover, D and I took A out to dinner at a Mexican place. It was pretty good. We went there specifically because M doesn't like Mexican food. A had a burrito and was surprised to find it had sauce on it. He liked it, but he was expecting to be able to pick it up and eat it with his hands.

We wanted to go to the pool today, but there's no water in the pool. Well, there's about a foot of water in the deep end. Ack. It's hot here. Maybe not hot enough for ME to go all the way into the pool, but I would certainly stand on the steps while the kids went in. D didn't know they were going to drain the pool and he's on the neighborhood board. I hope they get it filled back up soon. Swim team practice should be starting soon. There was a hint that it might start earlier this year, but I guess not, as Monday would be a week earlier than usual. I hope they can at least start on time.

Shrimp with Rice Noodles

M went to Wednesday night service at church with my mom, so I took advantage of his abscence and made a dish he wouldn't like. Shrimp with rice noodles. A pronounced it "yummy".

I found the recipe in the food section a few weeks ago and thought I had all the ingredients. Well, almost - I'd gotten the rice noodles, but not fish sauce. Of course I only discovered this as I got the recipe out and started to fix it. Oh well, no fish sauce, just try spicy black bean sauce I found in the fridge. Then I discovered that we were almost out of soy sauce. Oh well, again, just dump in all we have. I added some pea pods too. It all came together quite nicely.

We set the table with chopsticks. A likes trying to use chopsticks, but doesn't really have the hang of them yet. However, he managed to eat his entire meal, including the canteloupe with chopsticks and without a fork! We cut up the cantaloupe slices with the edge of the chopstick and then he speared the canteloupe on the chopstick. I ate similarly. D ate most of the noodles with chopsticks, but resorted to a fork for the last of the noodles and all the canteloupe.

Dinner with a Picky Eater

I'm tired of having a picky eater. I've heard all the stuff about serving it 10 times and then they will eat it. And sometimes (but very rarely) it works. But so far with M, it works on maybe 1 food per year. At this rate, he will be 439 before he is eating normally!

Tonight's dinner was salmon, cheese grits, broccoli slaw and spinach/mandarin orange salad. I fixed salmon both with and without seasoning (Tony Chachere's Creole seasoning). A tried the seasoned salmon and said it was a bit too spicy, so both kids had it plain. A had a good helping of everything and enjoyed it all.

M, well, that's another story. He ate his salad - served separately - but he does eat raw spinach leaves without complaining. I gave him carrots rather than slaw (enough things he didn't like else in dinner and we had slaw Monday night to great complaints). He complained about the salmon, but finally ate it. He sat there and stared at the one tiny bite of cheese grits (that he insisted were mashed potatoes) for a long time before choking them down. Why?

I don't think I did anything particularly different between the 2 kids. I'm finally accepting (slowly) it is just who they are. Helped by knowing a family with twins where one is picky and the other an adventurous eater. That doesn't mean I have to like it, though. Or that I won't keep trying to broaden M's food horizons.

M's off camping

We dropped M off to go on his first camping trip with the Boy Scouts. He joined the Boy Scout troop 3 weeks ago. Each patrol will be cooking their own meals. His patrol is 6 5th graders. I hope they have one of the older Scouts supervising....

The menu they planned sounds good, though perhaps a bit unrealistic. They are having pancakes for breakfast tomorrow - I know how long it takes to make pancakes for 4 - pancakes for 6, on probably a smaller griddle sounds painfully long. But, hey, I'm not there, so it won't bother me!

For lunch all the new Scouts are cooking together - D thinks he heard it will include biscuits and grilled cheese and bacon sandwiches. Sounds good to me, though M says he doesn't want bacon in his sandwich. Maybe he can eat it on the side, maybe he will have to suffer through the combo.

Dinner we heard was some combo of pizza, quesadillas (M likes both of those) and 2 other things that he didn't like so much - maybe burritos and tacos?

M did comment that he wished there was some fruit. I hadn't thought about it, but he's right - there's no fruit on the menu and not much veggies. Maybe he'll speak up and suggest some fruit for their next campout. Since each patrol plans their own menu, he can certainly suggest/request fruit.

Meanwhile, we had scalloped potato and ham casserole for dinner. A said "yummy". M hates it. He had one tiny bite when I made it on Wed. I made sure we would enjoy food that M doesn't while he's not here. It's a win-win situation. He doesn't have to eat it and I don't have to listen to the complaining.

I don't know what else M will be doing on this camping trip, but it should be fun. They've got beautiful weather for it too.

It's odd for me, knowing so little of what they will be doing. D has been going to the meetings with M, so I don't even have that first-hand info. Going up to Boy Scouts is a lot different than in Cub Scouts. They really do seem to be letting the boys plan and lead things as much as possible. The parents are mostly background.

I guess some of this is early training for the changes next year in middle school too...