Monday, July 17, 2017

Scratch and Sniff

We all do it. The internet and cooking shows and cookbooks and Pinterest have made it so easy to find recipes that look amazing, so we bookmark or print or pin or save them somehow and then never. look. at. them. again. I've got dozens and dozens of recipes like that, most of them that call for ingredients I tend to keep on hand. And then we make the same things over and over because it's easy and we know the recipe by heart and our kids will actually eat it.

I do bulk cooking to save a bit of money and hassle and usually have a freezer full of the same meals that we can just pull and heat and eat. I'm tired of those. I'm tired of our usual recipes. But I'm also stupid picky so trying new stuff almost always involves some kind of recipe editing.

So, in an effort to shake things up a little, save some money by using what we already have and only have to buy a few things to finish off, and to eat maybe a little healthier (ok, so not too much but at least without lots of unpronounceable ingredients) I've been cooking dinner from "scratch" at least once a week for the past month or so using some of the many recipes I've got stashed all over.

We've had mixed results.

Asher is even pickier than I am. He eats zero vegetables willingly. I eat like 6 so I can't fault him too much. He hasn't liked much of what we've had that's new, so I make sure to throw in an old standby periodically so we know he's eating at least once a week.

I've messed up a couple things. I've underseasoned (I weirdly HATE tasting what I'm cooking. I can't explain it, I just don't want to do it. If Austin's around, he's my taster.). I've over cooked. I've had to cut meat in half to get the middle done in time to serve it with the rest of the meal because the rest was cooked to the point that it was almost mush.

We're all surviving. And we're saving a lot on food.

We buy gift cards through the church for restaurants then we end up eating at other restaurants and buying tons of groceries and snacks and wondering why we have spent $1000 on food this month. Now, when we want to eat out, we try to use those cards. It's pre-paid for food, and we pre-paid so long ago it feels like free food.

I quit buying lots of snack foods and chips so now the kids are actually hungry at dinner and typically eat an actual meal instead of 20 packages of fruit snacks or 15 cheese sticks or half a bag of chips. I do still buy cheese sticks because that's an easy quick snack for me while breastfeeding, but since none of them can open the packages by themselves, I can control how many they get. This backfires because I get snacky late at night and toast gets real old, as do cereal bars, granola bars, and cheese sticks. Sometimes I just want a handful of chips or Oreos or something.

Tonight we had tacos and met with mixed reactions. Asher didn't like them at all. Eden wanted to eat the meat out of the shell with her fork, then when we tried to dump the meat on the plate for easier access, flung the shell around so now there's meat chunks on the floor. Elijah ate 2. Austin had 4 1/2 and I had 3 1/2. Most of it we had on hand. $1 for some shells and a couple bucks for sour cream (which I'll use the rest of for something later next week) and some veggies from the farmer's market and we had a nice meal.

For dessert, we're making a cinnamon roll cake that I had all the ingredients to on hand and have been wanting to make for a while. I just hadn't gotten to it because buying a cake or some cupcakes or whatever is so much easier, but it usually doesn't taste as good. We'll see how this tastes. We did edit the recipe a bit: it called for plain icing and we made cream cheese frosting, because cream cheese frosting makes pretty much anything better.

A benefit of this method of feeding my family, besides the whole saving money thing, is that Elijah wants to help. He wants to learn how to make things, specifically cake. He wants to pour the eggs in and watch it mix up. He wants to watch me spread frosting on cake. He wants to know how to make his favorite things. He's slowly getting interested in making dinner, too. I'd love to raise kids who know how to cook and cook well and cook more than one dish well. Or at the very least, kids who know how to follow a recipe and adapt it as needed.

The cinnamon roll cake is now out of the oven and the house smells amazing: cinnamon and cream cheese and sugar. We're going to let it cool a little before digging in and it'll be another thing that brings us all back together around a table, enjoying each other and our food.

At the end of the day, that's the best part. We sit together and eat. It doesn't matter if I made it from scratch or if Austin picked up a $6 hot and ready from Little Caesar's on the way home. Eating together with my family is my favorite part of any meal. Except when food goes flying and wails of anguish rise up because I'm making someone eat something they don't like. Life is hard, y'all. Especially when you're 6.

Wednesday, July 5, 2017

A circle's round

Asher had some testing last week to evaluate for sensory issues. It was a long day, starting a 9am and going until nearly 5pm. We had an hour of phone calls with the insurance company, then an hour of discussion between me and the doctor and a half hour of paperwork (because the packet that was literally 10 pages long they mailed home beforehand wasn't enough...). Rebekah and I just hung out at the office since I had to take Asher at lunch time for an hour. She did ok, I managed to get some reading and a bit of cross-stitching done. She did get a bit fussy because the office was very bright and she needs it a little darker to sleep. Asher did well, taking a couple of breaks to run around and work on a cross-word puzzle.

One of the questions on one of the forms I filled out asked if I worried about Asher's relationships with other kids his age (or something along those lines) and it got me thinking.

Austin pointed out that he's not really in touch with many of his high school friends, and even fewer than before. Really, the childhood people he's in touch with are all from boy scouts. The friends that we have kept up with more are the college friends and people we met after we moved to Abilene. And even then, we're extremely homebody people so we don't have lots of friends (loads of acquaintances, but that's different). He didn't see the fact that Asher doesn't have any friends as an issue because he's not still friends with anyone he was friends with at 6. He doesn't even keep in touch with them on facebook. It concerns me because I AM still friends and keep up with people I was friends with at that age.

Kristen and I met when we were about 5. I assume. That's when we were in kindergarten and when I started piano lessons. I don't really remember NOT knowing her. We went to church together, school together from Kindergarten through high school, we had plans to live together and be in each others weddings, raising our children side by side.

We definitely have had our ups and downs as any 27 year relationship will. We've argued, we've disagreed, we've hurt each other's feelings, we've been distant for years at a time, but we've always managed to come back to each other after a while. I wrote a post about it a few years ago, lamenting the fact that it had been so long wince we'd been back that maybe it was over. Kristen saw it and we had a lot of talks and are back, though being in our 30's with families we'll never be back to where we were as teens or even 20 somethings. Kids and families can really get in the way...lol

In spite of the years apart, we, I feel, easily slip back into the comfort of our relationship. We know what we did before that hurt the other, so we try to avoid those mistakes. We cook for each other, we are an ear for each other when our families are driving us nuts or when something exciting is happening, we're a shoulder when something terrible is happening. We get together with our mess of kids and husbands and eat big meals then shoo the kids away to play card games.

Things can still be rough. Scheduling is a nightmare, since we both have lots of extended family in town and there are other obligations we have to church and work. When we do get together, there's the whole trial of "oh lord, what do we cook to feed this mob of people we're in charge of that everyone will eat and isn't too hard to make?"

Relationships change as we age, we both get that, and we do grieve the relationship we had as teens. We'd get together and cook or bake something, then sit on the roof of the carriage house and eat and talk for hours. Our biggest worries were tests and classmates and siblings. Our worries and locations have changed, but our main activities haven't. I have to make myself leave sometimes because I could sit and talk for hours. The funny part is I'll wonder what we'll talk about before we get together and then we're standing at the door for 20 minutes talking 5 hours later as one of us is trying to leave. Everything and nothing, that's what we talk about.

I'm looking forward to raising our children together. So far, they're all still young, so we're in the trenches together. Coming soon is school aged kids together, then teens together (lord help us), then empty nesting together. Maybe someday a vacation together (with or without kids, I'm flexible).

That's what I want for my children: relationships to last their whole lives. Relationships with ups and downs, sure, but with love at the heart of them. Relationships where it doesn't matter what you might disagree on or where you might end up, you still gravitate back towards each other. I want my kids to have friends who they can raise their babies with, friends who will pick up the wrapping paper at their kids birthday party while they dish up dessert in the kitchen, friends they can call on when they're moving or need help for whatever, friends who will come to their house and not judge them for the grease spatters on the stove, the dirty dishes in the sink, or the dirty floors and children. Friends who will just show up to eat good food and play games and ignore the kids in the other room screaming (mostly happily) and playing. Friends for a lifetime.

It doesn't hurt to have a lifelong friend with a pool who's happy for you to invite yourself over once in a while. Or who's a fabulous baker and willing to "share" the extra/messed up cupcakes with you. Or who gets the silly thrill of saying Streusel Berry Apple Bars. ;-)