On the Plate

Dame was ranting a bit about parenting tactics she had observed with which she did not agree:

Dame: "How can people become parents without *any* of the necessary skills?"

Me: "Actually, it only takes one skill to become a parent, and you don't even need to be that good."

Dame: <eyeroll>

One of the great pleasures of parenting teenagers is being able to make obnoxious off-color remarks to a captive audience.

Anyway, one of the ones she was disagreeing with was requiring a child to either eat the meal served or go hungry. I understand the desire not to waste food or encourage pickiness, but we didn't wind up going that direction. And I had just been thinking today what a good thing that was. 

You see, it was Dash who had the most trouble eating what was served. It also turns out Dash has extensive allergies/food sensitivities which vary depending on exposure. Odds are most if not all of his emotional reactions to dinner were physical reactions he didn't know how to explain. 

Instead I tried to make sure something everybody could eat was available at each meal, treats were only present in small quantities, and if you really needed to, you could go fix something for yourself. Not that this made things easy, necessarily, when you have a small child with a tendency to anxiety and the metabolism of a hummingbird, who is already to the point of hysterics just making it from snack time to dinner time, and now has to think of something to eat that's not actually visible. (We never could figure out a reliable standby.) 

I am quite certain I was not always very patient or understanding through this process. But at least I didn't make things actively worse. And no one ended up unreasonably picky. It's been a good rule of thumb to assume that I don't know everything, and usually kids are acting they are for a reason, even if I can't figure it out right away. 

Cure-All

The last couple of weeks we had a round of nasty colds go through (I think there were at least two separate viruses swapping back and forth).

So last Sunday I took the time to just sit on the couch and Be Sick all day. Except for about fifteen minutes of standing up and chopping long enough to get this chicken soup cooking. This chicken soup contains pretty much everything I've ever heard of being useful against a cold, and if you're not into healing properties of foods it's just an incredibly easy and delicious soup, with none of that grandiose roast this and blend that nonsense that people keep cluttering up honest, simple soup recipes with. Between the soup and the resting, I was back to functional by Monday. All amounts are wildly approximate.

Chicken Curry Cold Cure Soup
 2 onions, chopped
A big ol' spoonful of minced garlic
A glug of olive oil.

Sautee in the bottom of a large pot.

Add
2 quarts chicken broth (Way better with proper homemade broth from bones, of course)
Two cups or so each of chopped carrots, celery, and potatoes
Two cups chopped, cooked chicken
1 T grated fresh ginger
2 T curry powder
1 t. turmeric
1 t. oregano
Salt and black pepper to taste

Cook until the veggies are soft, about twenty minutes. Add 2 cups frozen broccoli and the juice of one lemon; let it all get hot again and serve.

Mooo

Sometime in the last several years, my sinuses started clogging up. I didn't notice, because I don't notice little details like that, and it came on gradually, and I don't go to the doctor very often but I finally did and she said, "Wow, your sinuses are awful."

So we tried nose sprays and allergy  medicines and antibiotics and things got a little less stuffy so that if I took all of everything I could breathe somewhat on occasion. And she said, "You should maybe go see a specialist."

But I have a pretty low tolerance for going to doctors and I already wanted to pursue TMJ treatment first because my jaw hurts a whole lot worst. That took me to a sleep apnea specialist, and he looked at my sinuses and said, "Wow, your sinuses are awful. You should take more allergy meds and go see a specialist."

So I thought about going to a specialist after the TMJ treatment, but that was going to be awhile, and it was going to cost money (as were all those allergy meds being consumed in copious quantities), and my sinuses still hurt pretty bad.

Then one day I suddenly said to myself, "Why don't I just see if it's something I'm consuming all the time. Like, say, milk?"

I stopped consuming milk. Within 24 hours I could breathe while on the allergy meds. Within a week I could breathe even off the allergy meds.

I should be very happy to save myself the trip to the specialist and future allergy meds.

But mostly I just miss milk. Milk milk milk milk. And yogurt. And cheese. And milk chocolate. And stuff that claims to be dark chocolate but actually has milk inside it. And a tall, cold glass of milk alongside all those things.


Every time I find myself reaching for something dairyish I stop and breathe very deeply. Through my nose. It helps, a little.

I still want milk!

(Yes, I know other people suffer with far worse and more extensive food issues. Hey, I've had them myself. I still want milk.)

I'm hoping it's just a temporary intolerance and I can handle it again in moderation after going off it for awhile. Because I don't want any of that faux whipped stuff on my pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving.

Leftover Symbiosis

This will probably totally destroy my intelligent homeschooling mother credibility, but I really like to play computer games. I know, I'm supposed to restrict myself to intelligent and domestic hobbies while bemoaning the devotion my husband and children have to the screen. But, although I love to read, I don't love to do it all the time. I read fast, and a half hour or so of reading gives me enough mental food to chew on all day. I don't often enjoy reading fluff. I don't like watching TV or movies by myself and I have less than no interest in sports. Although I have the full complement of domestic skills, I am too clumsy to do crafts for the fun of it. Plus, they involve mess and quite possibly the expenditure of money.

Computer games are not at all messy and, if one watches for sales, not very expensive. They may not sound impressive, but despite the specter of people sitting at their screens while they lose their job, families, and sanity, most people do not become hopelessly addicted (and those that do would probably have become addicted to something regardless, addiction being more a function of the mind seeking an anchor than the object that it ties to). In balance, they're like jigsaw or crossword or logic puzzles, or following politics or sports--a nice way to give the brain something to do when the body needs a rest. And for rainy days, long winter evenings, and recovering from the flu or a sprained foot, they are a lot more fun than staring at the wall and a lot less stressful than stupid internet fights or reading domestic blogs where everybody's house is better decorated, meals are better cooked, and children are better dressed.

Last weekend, DOB packed me off to Bookworm's under a diagnosis of an acute case of four children. He and B5 managed to hold down (or up? how many forts are in danger of floating away?) the fort in my absence, supplemented by cold cereal and hot dogs, both rare and awe-inspring treats around here. (Well, hot dogs get mixed reviews.)  I finished up the work project that had pushed me over the edge of frazzlement and then read a Wodehouse cover to cover and then some Sayers. After several hours of no one asking for food while I was trying to document the obligations of insurance carriers, my right eyelid stopped twitching.

And then I felt like a new computer game, so I bought one I'd been wanting for a long time: Reus. You get to control various giants who plant resources on a tiny globe, which is then settled by tiny people. The challenge is helping the little towns grow without letting them become too greedy. The graphics are pretty (and two dimensional, a deciding factor for me, since the tiniest whiff of the third dimension nauseates me). To get things to advance very far, you have to take advantage of the symbiosis built into the game: this thing next to that thing makes more good stuff, but that thing also likes to be next to the other thing . . . It gets quite involved and a makes for a fun puzzle with many possible solutions.

OK, so it is kind of like housework. Such as cooking with leftovers. My current theory is to cook up a big ol' chunk of meat on Friday nights--a couple of chickens, a pork roast, or a ham. (Not beef--the price of beef is insane lately.) After supper the bones go in the crockpot with water for broth. The uberhealthy bone broth fans don't talk about it, but ham and pork bones make a lovely broth that gels up just fine. Then on Saturday morning I can strain the broth, pick the rest of the meat off the bones, and make up a couple of casseroles for the next few days with the extra meat and any beans and such left over from earlier in the week. The broth goes into soup or beans for Monday. Tuesday night is usually pizza with the last remnants of meat and vegetables, which cleans out the fridge and makes easily portable leftovers for our weekly outing, which includes grocery stopping, at which we restock the fridge and have meals heavy on the fresh vegetables and extra frozen meat until Friday comes around again. When it works, it's a beautiful thing of symbiosis. And when it doesn't, nasty things start growing in the back of the fridge, finding their own symbiosis.

You've (not) Come a Long Way, Baby Weight

Several eons ago in internet time--last month, maybe--Facebook was filled with a happy little meme on the theme of "Let's End the Mommy Wars," with women holding various signs showing that they can be friends despite different parenting styles and achievements.

Being the sort of person I am, I can hardly let such harmony and goodwill go uncriticized. So I'd like to hone in on one of the pictures, the one where one mom is holding a sign that says, "I lost all my baby weight," and the other mom is holding a sign that says, "I'm still working on losing the baby weight."

In other words, guess what is still *not* an acceptable option in this love fest of moms who do and don't breastfeed, co-sleep and eat organic? That's right--it's not caring about the baby weight. You don't have to lose the baby weight, necessarily, but you have to *try.* If you cannot return your body to its mythical pre-baby state, you at the very least should have the decency to feel badly about it.

(And before someone starts droning on about the Serious Public Health Problem of Obesity, let me point out that the mom holding the "I'm still trying" sign is not, by the most extravagant stretch of the imagination, fat in any way that threatens her health or even would be noticeable to another human being. It's the scale and the idealization of the Pre-Baby Body that is driving her quest.)

In the interest of honesty, let me say that I am, by the official government numbers, overweight. I never lost the baby weight, and carrying twins full term packs on a good bit. I breastfed for a year, I eat a well-balanced diet of whole foods, and I exercise moderately but regularly because I like to. Doesn't make a difference. This is the weight I am (I'm not going to say a number because comparisons are exactly the thing I'm trying to get away from here) and, barring extravagant measures, this is where I'm going to stay.

Yes, I'm noticeably heavier than I was pre-children. I also don't melt down into a screaming lunatic at 5 p.m. if I haven't eaten. Or need to take a nap in the morning despite an uninterrupted night's sleep and working at a desk. In other words, I'm healthier and stronger. And heavier and bigger around. (Ironically, although it never bothered me much, I really did think I was on the chunky side back in those days, when any sane person could, and sometimes did, tell me I was borderline emaciated. My family runs to large bones and dense muscles and the BMI doesn't really apply.)

Increasing stoutness with middle age, and especially with child-bearing, is not, after all, anything new or tied to our evil modern lifestyle. It's the normal human condition, in settings with adequate food. There are always a few naturally slim folk who avoid it, but it is not especially virtuous or healthy to try to dodge it if you aren't one of those. (And I'm not going to call them lucky. They're not luckier, they're just different. There are tradeoffs to everything. As you get old--which I'm sure we all want to do, given the alternative--less fat just means more wrinkles.) 

If we really are seriously concerned about problematic obesity, then the *last* thing we should be doing is encouraging mothers to worry about how their body will look after the baby. Because restricting a mother's diet before the baby is born sets the child up for metabolic syndrome and truly serious weight problems.

It's good to encourage people to eat a healthy, well-balanced diet and to exercise regularly, because those things really are beneficial. But they won't necessarily make you thin, especially not if you've been through an event that may have reset your base weight, like pregnancy. It's important to be honest about that. As soon as thinness becomes the goal, people start being lured into diets and exercise programs that are not really healthy and not really sustainable.

Please don't tell me about how you have found the one common-sense dietary program that really works. In five years it will be discredited and you yourself will have forgotten about it. They always are. They all boil down to some combination of (1) not eating specific kinds of food; (2) not eating enough food; (3) not eating often enough; (4) following rules for eating so complicated that it's just too much trouble. All of those have problems in the long run.

And exercise is fine, but intense programs that lead to injury and then inactivity are not good for your long-term health. Better to do something moderate and unimpressive (but fun) that you can keep doing for the next 50 years.

Guess what? It probably won't make you thin. It will help you live longer and leave you free to laugh and enjoy the time you have and eat ice cream occasionally without making a big deal about it.

Simplicity Itself

A couple of weeks ago, I was so tired that I ordered pizza.

That probably doesn't sound blogworthy, but you would have to understand how bad things have to be before I order pizza. I feel about ordering pizza as a pacifist president feels about pushing the red button. It's just not on my list of Things I Might Do. There's the agony of knowing how much it costs compared to pretty much anything that could be made at home; there's the dubious nutritional value; and then there's the fact that the kind of pizzas you can get delivered to your door just don't taste all that good. (On very special occasions we have been known to get the Papa Murphy's take and bake, which do taste good, at least. Only with a coupon, though.) Also, formerly, there was the challenge of composing my thoughts on the phone, which, if I am tired enough to be ordering pizza, I am definitely too tired to be doing.

Anyway, the pizza places have taken away that last objection by online ordering, and even when I am too tired to speak, I can usually still point and click. So I ordered it, and luckily DOB woke up in time to answer the door, because even walking that far was out of the question at that point.

But I have since been devoting myself to the project of Not Needing to Order Pizza. Wondergirl and His Majesty kindly saw to it that the chest freezer finally got moved from my grandparents' garage to the shed, and I am stocking it with cooked hamburger and grated cheese, and yes, hot dogs. Even hot dogs are cheaper and healthier than pizza, and the Duchess can cook them, although the freezer is not yet full enough for me to trust any child to go fetch things from it without falling in.

Shortly thereafter I was reading an online discussion on simplifying life, something I always fantasize about. And then the toaster broke. On the one hand, life might be visually simpler with one less thing on the counter. On the other hand, I kept burning the toast under the broiler and the kids couldn't make toast unsupervised any more and bread and butter was out of the question because the house is too cold for pliable butter.

 So, I had DOB get me a new toaster. And I snagged one of the pancake griddles from Grandpa's house, which, although it will be difficult to store, makes a family-sized meal of french toast in ten minutes. And that's what I call simple.

Bad Parenting Confession

At Easter, the ducklings got bags of candy from the church Easter egg hunt. In a fit of hurried Easter cleaning, I tucked them out of the way up high in their closet, intending to get back to them later. We do not take a Wonka Sr. approach to candy, but we do try to dole it out very slowly and, in the past, under supervision.

Then I sort of forgot about the candy, or at least it sifted down to the very large receptacle in my brain labeled, "Things I Really Ought To Do Something About One of These Days." Until one day I was tidying up their room (let's not go into THAT parenting question) and came across a sizable stash of candy wrappers. Evidently they had not forgotten about them. So then I thought perhaps I really should address it except I wasn't quite sure how. They hadn't eaten all the candy, so evidently they were not consuming it recklessly, I hadn't expressly forbidden the candy, and mostly I just really didn't want to be bothered with it.

I continued taking the blind-eye approach until I saw the boys dashing past me outside with something in their mouths. This raised two red flags in my mind--one being that actively hiding something from parents is a different category from not bothering to mention it, the second being that just possibly they were eating something dangerous from outside (though on reflection, the latter was very unlikely). So I made them tell me what they were eating and assured them that it was fine--eating a piece or two of candy once a day was not going to hurt them, just not to bother me about it.

No such luck. Immediately, and ever since, I have been barraged with questions. Can you get the bags down? My bag is out and everyone else still has some! How many can we eat? Can we eat this kind?

I kind of wish I had just let them keep hiding it.

The Food With a Thousand Faces

Some people who decide to go vegetarian vow they will eat nothing with a face.

We've decided to add more fish to our diet. That means we're buying a lot more food with its face still attached.

Conveniently, the discount grocery store we frequent has just massively expanded its fish section. This grocery store apparently caters to a large immigrant population, both Hispanic and Asian. (We practice our Spanish by eavesdropping in the produce section.) So a lot of the selections are . . . not what you'd find at Safeway. You can get salmon heads for only 99 cents a pound. I haven't tried that yet.

However, if it costs less than $3 a pound, was caught in the wild, and has enough meat on it that I can throw away the eyeballs, I'm willing to give it a try. I am learning to gut fish--it's not so hard, you just start pulling things out until they stop coming--but I still don't know how to debone. So far we've had mackerel and something called butter fish, plus salmon (minus the heads), of course. Really, everything tastes pretty much the same once you put enough tartar sauce on it.

DOB has mixed feelings about this--on the one hand, eating more fish was his idea. On the other hand, he prefers food in the range from thick stew to thin casserole. Things that can be eaten one-handed, with a spoon, while reading. Having to participate in the dismemberment of his meal does not enhance his dining experience.

Two Recipes I Want to Save

I'm not going vegan, but I am interested in a cake recipe that doesn't waste eggs and butter on what is basically just a vehicle for berries: Vanilla Eggless and Dairy Free Cake. I used cow milk.

And, still not going vegetarian, why have I never discovered pasta e fagioli before? (Or let's go by the Dean Martin name, Pasta Fazool). It's cheap, it's nutritious, it's really, really easy. The kids called it "spaghetti soup" and devoured it with enthusiasm. (Unfortunately, not with parmesan, because we were out. It's better with, as we discovered on the leftovers.)

House of Pancakes

The Saturday morning pancake breakfast is a family tradition that dates back to when it hardly counted as a tradition and was more just something we did because, well, there we all were and we had to eat something for breakfast.

The pancakes in question are sourdough, but before you Nourishing Tradition people get all excited, let me assure you that they must be made with white flour (a brief flirtation with whole wheat was quickly abandoned) and drowned in peanut butter and cheap bulk syrup. Large quantities of scrambled eggs and link sausages--not to mention a few types of homemade jam for when peanut butter and syrup begins to pall--round out the menu. The basic goal is to sustain everyone through a day of hard labor on the farm so that it is not necessary to stop for lunch.

Now that we have returned to the Family Compound, the number of people has reached the point that a Grownup Table and Children's Table are necessary. This is nice, because the older cousins will help the older ducklings with cutting up their pancakes. It also provides fodder for competition.

The oldest cousin (C1) is a ten-year-old farm boy, with the appetite that implies, and hence the ability to regard eating as a competitive sport and still crawl through fences. After our first Saturday breakfast, he went around tallying the totals consumed by the Grownups and by the Children, and announced the Children as the winners, having consumed the most pancakes. There was some dispute over the legitimacy of this title, as he had counted the twins as Children even though they sat near the Grownup table, but the main trouble DOB saw was that he had not been warned about the competition until it was over.

The next time we gathered, DOB was prepared to show how old age and treachery could overcome youth and a high metabolism. (Not that DOB's metabolism has slowed down much yet.) Carefully DOB selected the smallest pancakes from the platter, thus consuming more numerically, certain he would push the Grownup total over what the Children could consume, especially when you factored in that after tummyaches on the previous occasion we had forbidden D1 and D2 from eating more than three or four each.

But this week, C1 never went around to get the tally from each table. Instead, he merely proudly announced his *personal* total of fifteen, which DOB had not been able to manage even in small pancakes.

We await further devious maneuvers as DOB tries to get ahead of the rule-changing.

Countdown Menus

One of those basic housekeeping tasks I've never done before is planning a week of menus and then shopping on that basis. I have been following a general outline of menus--the same basic two-week-rotation with tweaks--since D2 was a baby and my brain started to fry, and then I just keep the kitchen and pantry stocked with basics plus what's on sale. Supposedly this is in fact even cheaper than regular menu planning, but I've never done the math. Plenty of pantry and freezer space has made me careless of getting duplicates. (Quintuplicates?)

But, this week I face the challenge of getting the pantry down to as little as possible before we go. Actual planning seemed in order. And since I'm rather pleased with myself for doing it, and, more importantly, since this slip of paper is almost certain to get lost or thrown away before the end of the week, I shall document it here.

Monday: Pizza Pasta (using up some of the many cans of diced tomatoes that had overtaken the pantry, plus the last of the mushrooms, olives, pre-cooked hamburger, and all but the last half-box of pasta.) I forgot to serve the corn--we have a lot of corn in the freezer--which goes to show why I don't usually bother with detailed planning.

Tuesday: Chicken (probably just pan-fried with spices) with roast veggies (using squash from the garden), peas (from freezer).

Wednesday: A simplified version of Lengua, using the last can of chiles from the pantry, more of those tomatoes, corn from the freezer, and of course, tongue. (DOB tries to forget that this is in it, since the thought grosses him out but the dish is delicious.) Crisp for dessert using mystery berries from the freezer and possibly pantry.

Thursday: Turkey sausage and fried potatoes; salad of whatever is left; whatever frozen vegetables are left.

After that the dishes and pots will be packed.

Pancakes

Today we went to the license bureau to get our new license plates. On the way out, I caught a whiff of the pancake house a couple storefronts down.

Naturally, even though I had just eaten three poached eggs on toast for breakfast, this set me off into pancake craving. Pancakes are not something we usually have, because we lack a griddle and it just seems like too much trouble. But this time I could not deny; I went home and mixed up a double batch of blender pancakes and a pan of brown sugar syrup.

I ate half of it. All by myself. Two hours after breakfast.

It wasn't that hard (the cooking--or the eating, for that matter). I wondered why I didn't fix this for breakfast more often. Then I remembered: oh yeah, I just ate half the pancakes. All by myself. There are at least three other people who need breakfast, too. But the blender won't hold more batter.

We seem to be outgrowing all standard kitchen equipment. I should know what bigger families do, but I can't seem to get my head around what we should do. It seems to me all the big families I know have taller kitchen helpers, which makes multiple batches or multiple dishes more doable. (That, and I don't know any little kids who eat as much as the ducklings.) I'm not sure what to do until my assistants top four feet. Buy an industrial-sized blender?

The good news is, I'm not that hungry for lunch, so there should be enough to go around. And we've got some nice leftover pancakes for snacks.

Four-Star Menu Planning

There seem to be four factors that matter to me in selecting a meal: cost, ease of preparation, appeal to the ducklings, and messiness. (All of our meals, after various adjustments and justifications are pretty healthy, and I don't cook foods the grownups don't like.) The ideal menu, then, would get four stars, one for each category.

I tried seriously applying this to my menu plans, and discovered that I only have about one four-star menu a week. Those are the days when I look at the menu and think, "Hooray!" Most of the menus are three-star, which usually means either the ducklings don't care much for it or it's messy. (Spaghetti, for instance, is cheap and easy to fix and beloved by the ducklings, but is oh so very messy. Same goes for black beans. Pasta salad, on the other hand, is cheap and easy to fix and not messy, but for some reason the ducklings don't usually get too excited about it.)

I only have one two-star menu: cottage cheese enchiladas. It's expensive (because I refuse to buy cottage cheese with fillers) and messes up the whole kitchen. But everyone loves it so much that I can't quite bring myself to drop it from the plan.

It seems to me that the way to upgrade a menu from three-star to four-star would be for the ducklings to learn to like it. This doesn't work very quickly, but I persist, especially if it's something I know they already like all the ingredients of and therefore ought to like together. (Hey, it took me twelve years, but I eventually did learn to like lasagna.) That, or they could learn to eat more neatly.

But perhaps I should look into some modifications to bring more menus into the four-star category. Anyway, now I know where the problems are.