small things {eggs}

small things #58 ... eggs

Another breakfast has rolled around.  How can it be that we are doing the early morning dance in the kitchen again?!  Didn't we do this yesterday?

Baby S sits happily in her high chair.  A graham cracker clutched in one sticky hand and a handful of banana in the other.  She bangs the cracker on the tray and Gimli stays poised at her side watching for any crumb or cracker to hit the floor.

Ashley fills her plastic blue bowl with Cherrios and waits for me to pour her milk.  She giggles at Baby S and keeps her tray filled with munchies while avoiding the baby's slippery banana-hands.

Lydia balances on the kitchen bench and spoons pink yogurt from the carton.  Most of it makes its way into her breakfast bowl.  The creamy pink splotches she cleans up with her fingers and tongue.  

Aaron is grooving to the music pouring (rather loudly, it seems) from the iPod on the kitchen counter and waits for his bagel to pop out of the toaster.  He has a knife in one hand and is fiddling with the butter dish with the other hand.  He reaches up and pulls the cinnamon sugar out of the cupboard.

Norah stands patiently at the stove top staring intently into her pan of eggs.  She slowly stirs the creamy yellow custard.  She swirls around making a "S" with her white spatula; she is careful to scrape the edges of the pan.  The heat is turned down low and she tenderly keeps the eggs gently moving around the skillet.

She abhors dry eggs.  

She detests "skin" on her eggs.

She refuses to eat eggs that are over-cooked.

She is egg-act in her stirring.  

She is an egg-cellent egg scrambler.  

She has high egg-spectations for her breakfast.

Eggs ... if scrambling eggs was an Olympic sport, Norah would most certainly be medal-worthy.  An egg-stremely egg-citing event! 

What's for Dinner?

There are three things that make me hold my head:  play-doh, not feeling 100% and listening to the clock strike four without a clue as to what's for dinner.  Unfortunately, all three things happened today.  I guess you could say it was the perfect trifecta of woe! :)  Gratefully, my day doesn't typically look like this!

In a moment of weakness :) I agreed to play-doh this afternoon.  Aaron & Ashley asked to pull out the colorful, crumbly, creative clay to play with while waiting for Norah to get home from gymnastics.  I actually shook hands with Ashley ... a verbal agreement that there would be hands-on participants in the cleaning-up process.  They really did have fun (isn't that the way with messy, squishing stuff?) and for the most part, the play-doh was contained to the table.  Aaron was vying for the world record in play-doh noodle length.  He made a string of play-doh a whopping 100 inches long!  That is an accomplishment.  Ashley made several meals including purple french fries and red cookies ... yum!  Speaking of "yum", Lydia ate some of Ashley's items.  Just a typical play-doh play-time!  As agreed, the big kids did help with the de-play-dohing quite a bit ... and Daddy got home just in time!

As for me ... I have an appointment to be healed tomorrow. :)  Just one too many days of a headache, a cough and the blahs.  Hopefully I'll be as good as new in just a few days.  I know my family will be glad to have me back and then they can say goodbye to the slumpy, grumpy lady who has been here the past couple of days!

And then there was dinner.  Aaron had requested earlier in the week to have my home-made chicken noodle soup.  While that might have some good healing agents that would benefit me ... I just couldn't get excited about hot soup when it was up to 90-something today.  So ... while I wandered from fridge to pantry to freezer and back to pantry, I was reminded of how glad I am that I make up a weekly dinner list.  Whew!  It is so great to not have to "come up" with something during that infamous hour before dinner.  Dr. Kevin Leman calls the epoch from 4 pm to dinner time the "piranha hour" and he's so very right on!  This is the one time of the day when I am d-o-n-e done and the kids are done and dinner is not done ... and that, my friends, is a recipe for disaster!

So, in an attempt to minimize the challenges of this time of day, I have long been in the habit of making up my dinner menus on Sunday and having the week planned before we even get started on Monday morning.  Sunday is my time to take a look at the calendar for the next seven days and see what nights have conflicts (or in most cases, what one night are we home!) and plan accordingly.  In light of our recent full family schedule, I have been planning lots of meals that can either be made ahead and served "fresh" from the fridge or crock pot dinners that I can plug in and forget about.  (Just so you know ... I'm working on a crock-pot Food For Thought for this weekend .... yummy!)  I also like to plan meals that I can get two dinners out of.  For example, I have a pork roast for tomorrow that will be enjoyed twice:  half for tacos and half for bbq sandwiches.  Any way that I can simplify my life is awesome and I'm more inclined to have this forethought if I actually thought about it before. :)

Here's a basic breakdown of my weekly planning:

I have a little spiral bound notebook that I use for both my list of meals and my shopping list.

No comments regarding my handwriting. :)

On the right side I have the the days of the week and then my meal plans including sides, salads and breads.  I try to be as specific as I can be so that I can shop accordingly and so that I don't have to get creative when I'm ... you got it:  done.  On the left is my shopping list for the week.  I make my list from the ingredients needed for the recipes and then add anything else that we need around the house:  pantry items, baking supplies, breakfast options and anything specific the kids asked for on their lunch check list.  By having my shopping list and menu list attached, I have saved myself the trouble of getting home only to realize that I need two pasta sauces, one for two different nights.  Often times, if I have planned to grill something, I plan the rest of the meal, but wait until I get to the store to decide what meat to buy.  That allows me to shop for something on sale or to check over in the Manager's Mark-down area (there are awesome deals there sometimes!)

As for meal ideas, I like having my little notebook because I can look back over previous weeks and get ideas for things people really liked.  It also works well because I can steer clear of meals that didn't go over too great, as well.  Most of my dinner ideas from just a few places.  I have my grungy recipe box which is bursting with grubby index cards.  :) I have a few cookbooks I like and use often.  One is my mom's family cookbook ... it's almost been used to smithereens!  The other one is  "The Dinner Doctor" by Anne Byrn.  I like it because she uses a lot of "ready-made food" to make really fresh dinners.  I also have subscriptions to two magazines:  FoodNetwork Magazine and Taste of Home Cooking.  I would highly recommend either of those for family meal inspiration.  And they're also good for browsing and day-dreaming about the day when mac-n-cheese won't be the top-rated meal from your kitchen!

I also have a fantastic app on my iPod ... my life-saver in the kitchen trenches.  It is called Epicurious, or Epi for short.  I understand that there is full-scale website you can use, but I like the handiness of this app and the fact that I can take it with me to the store and then back to the kitchen!  (And it's free!)  You really just have to check it out for yourself, but here is a basic description.  At the main menu you have the option to choose from a long list of meal-types (seasonal, holiday, health restrictions, ease of preparation, etc.)  Or ... and this is what I use ... you can type in your ingredients (say:  tomatoes, eggplant and zucchini) and then select if you are looking for a salad, main course, or hot side dish and then hit "search".  In the blink of an eye you have, literally at your finger-tips, 150 recipes that fit your description.  You can narrow it down further by adding additional info or just start browsing.  Each recipe has a source, a list of ingredients, detailed directions and, in many cases, a picture and ratings & reviews by other readers/cooks.  When you find one that might work, you simply add it to your "favorites" and keep browsing.  When you have a few recipes to choose from, you can go back to your "favorites" and compare and revisit your options.  When you find the winner for the night, you can view the shopping list and you are set to go!  It's great and so very easy to use!

So ... that is my meal-making in a nutshell.  I hope that you find it a tad bit helpful and I would highly recommend that you give it a try.  I can almost guarantee that if you did this for a month, you wouldn't go back to the "Hmmmm ... what I can do with a frozen pound of beef and this package of creamed spinach?"-style of dinner planning! :)

It's the Little Things

As you may have noticed though out this blog, I do like spending time in the kitchen:  cooking and baking.  I'm sure it has a lot to do with the fact that my mom also enjoys cooking and baking and when we were kids, we spent much of our time right alongside my mom "helping out".  Our kitchen, growing up, was certainly the center of the home, the place where we spent time cooking, eating and being together.  I have wonderful snapshot memories of dancing cornish game hens, playing the "what's that seasoning?" game with Allison and preparing the huge, burrito buffet when the Gansers came to visit.

Not surprisingly, our home is much the same!  We have a stencil on the kitchen wall that reads "The Gathering Place" and I love that the kids gravitate to the kitchen.  We often joke that we have 2,200 square feet, but we all end up in the kitchen!  It's where we eat, chat and sometimes dance.  (Although, truth be told, there are times when I would rather be able to hide in the kitchen and have some peace and quiet!)

Seeing as I spend about half my day in the kitchen, I have learned a few little "tricks of the trade" that I thought I would pass on to you.  These are all just little things that make a big difference in the ease of preparing food and also in the final result.  They are not in any particular order ... just as they have come to mind:

• I use a "garbage bowl" when preparing meals.  I got the idea from Rachel Ray.  I have a red bowl I bought from Wal-Mart for $1 and I use it for all the scraps that I cut off, peel and trim from the meal's makings.  It saves me multiple trips to the trashcan.  We are considering composting and I'm sure that this will come in handy for that sorting, too.
• When I make steak fries (like tonight) I line the pan with aluminum foil before broiling the potatoes.  This gives me a quick clean-up at the end of cooking:  just roll it up and toss it away.  This also works for breaded chicken.
• I prefer to use fresh garlic in my recipes.  I think that there is a difference in flavor.  I love my Pampered Chef garlic press.  A day doesn't go by that it isn't in the dish drain :).  I think that having stronger flavors in my food helps me to eat a bit less ... more flavor means less need to eat a lot because my mouth gets done from tasting!
• I have another Pampered Chef tool that I love.  I use my little brown scraper all the time:  scraping pans, counter tops and the left-over dough from the bowl after making bread.  Saves me from gunking up the kitchen sponge.
• I love to use coarse salt in my recipes.  It adds an extra little "pow" to any dish.  I love when toasting french bread to sprinkle a little salt after the butter.  Yum!
• A pair of kitchen scissors are essential when using herbs.  It's a lot easier to use the shears to cut up the chives or basil right into the bowl in place of chopping them on a board.
• To make super light and fluffy scrambled eggs, add a teaspoon of water after whisking them.  The added moisture keeps the eggs from drying out.
• Peruse the day-old bread cart at the grocery store for yummy breads that are perfect for french toast.  It doesn't matter that it's a tad bit stale as the bread will be that much more thirsty for the egg batter.  That is where I find really good raisin bread that I would never buy at full price, but at half-price, it's a meal! :)
• Before measuring out sticky ingredients, spray the measuring cup or spoon with just a little oil.  The peanut butter or honey will slide right out.  (I also us my Pampered Chef measure-all for sticky stuff, but sometimes this is still an easier clean-up.)
• After cooking meat, I pour the grease into an old aluminum can that I keep in the freezer.  That is an easy way to dispose of the fat ... one solid mass.  I confess that I have trouble remembering each week that it's in there and I currently have 3 different cans ... but it is easy! :)
• I like to use a squirt of fresh lime juice when making Mexican food.  A little splash makes the meal taste so very fresh!
• Make your own home-made croutons.  First get some day-old bread (see above) in a yummy flavor (sourdough, foccacia, garlic, etc.) and then cut it into cubes. Toss it in a bowl with some olive oil, salt and a little dried italian seasoning.  Then spread the cubes out on a cookie sheet and put it in the oven at 225 degrees until they are dried out (20-minutes or so).  Turn them a few times to brown all the sides.  They taste so much better than store-bought!
• I have a pepper grinder that I use ... there is wonderful flavor in fresh cracked pepper.  Little things like fresh pepper can change an entire recipe!
• When you are cooking veggies, to stop them for over-cooking and losing their color, drain them in a colander and then dump them in a bowl of water and ice cubes.  This arrests the heat while keeping your green beans bright green.  Then you can use them at room temperature or re-heat them a bit for a hot dish.  They look so pretty when they are the right color!
• This is a tip from my mom:  when serving a hot drink, fill the mugs with hot tap water before filling them with your drink of choice.  This will keep your coffee/cocoa/tea hot longer ... and it's great to hold on these cool, fall mornings.

Well ... that's all that's coming to mind today :)  I'm sure I will add some other tricks of the trade - you can look for additions from me and other readers by checking the extra page, "Tricks 'n' Tips", found to the left of this post.  Let me know tricks what you have in your apron ... 

Happy cooking!