MmMm Tasty!

Just so I don't get kicked off blogger

2009-01-10T16:17:00.000-05:00

Don't kick me off until I manage to save all this stuff or print it or something!

Archives of the Recipe of the Week

2008-07-10T19:06:00.002-04:00

Cinnamon Butter
This is a great way to include the little ones so they can contribute to the enjoyment of homemade bread: CINNAMON BUTTER 1/4 cup organic unsalted butter 2 tbsp organic sugar 1 tbsp organic brown sugar 1 tbsp ground cinnamon Soften unsalted butter to room temperature. Combine the softened butter and other ingredients together until they are completely blended. Place the compound butter in a container. Or, shape butter in logs and wrap in parchment paper, then cut into 1/4- to 1/2-inch discs. Chill for a at least 1 hour and preferably one day. NOTE: Compound butters can be store under refrigeration for up to 5 days or up to 6 months in the freezer

Strawberry Bread

Adapted from allrecipes.com (Ellen Rainey)

3 cups of fresh strawberries, smashed
3 cups all-purpose unbleached flour
1/8 cup wheat flour
2 cups white sugar
1/2 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon vanilla
1tsp salt
1tsp baking soda
1 1/4 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs, beaten

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour two 9x5 inch loaf pans
Sprinkle smashed berries with some of the sugar.
Combine flour, sugar, cinnamon, salt and baking soda in large bowl and mix.
Blend oil and eggs into strawberries.
Add strawberry mixture to flour mixture, until just moistened.
Divide batter in half into pans.
Bake 45 to 50 minutes. Let stand 10 minutes on wire rack. Turn loaves out and cool completely.

4/15/08 11:03 AM

Open a ziploc bag. Place several drops of food coloring inside the bag. Add one tablespoon of white vinegar to the bag. Place two cups of rice into the bag. Seal the bag and squish the rice around the bag until all the grains are colored. Pour the rice on a cookie sheetl, spreading it out into a single layer of grains. Bake on 200 degrees for 30 minutes.

I have moved - check out my new blog over at Typepad!

2008-03-24T14:02:00.003-04:00

When I first started blogging, I did some research and heard a lot of good things about Typepad but since I wasn't sure I would actually stick with the blogging, the practical part of me decided it would be best to start with a free host. Even though I have not been blogging as frequently in the last month because of work and sick kiddos, I have decided that blogging is for me. So come check out my new site! I am still trying to learn how to work Typepad so things will get better over time, children willing. :)

http://mmmtasty.typepad.com/

-n

Phew!

2008-03-18T09:38:00.002-04:00

So I bet you have been on the edge of your seats wondering why I haven't been blogging, huh?
(Or not - cuz you have your own life and are only mildly amused by mine.)

Anyhow, I got deployed to Las Vegas to help with the Hepatitis/syringe reuse thing that resulted in a notification of 40, 000 patients in southern Nevada.

Good times.

The last time I was deployed was during the SARS outbreak. After I had Sizzles, I cut my hours way back and now only work part-time. Going out to the field when I am used to working only a couple days of week was a big adjustment for me and my girls. But their super-fly daddy kept the home fires burning and even managed to avoid ordering pizza every night. (He did order "Shrimp with Lobster Sauce" but that was only after the children had burned through all the food I crammed into the fridge the day I left for Vegas).

In five days, my little foodies ate 8 bananas, 2 quarts of strawberries, a 2lb bag of grapes, an 8 snack cups of applesauce and half a box of Kidz cliff bars. Did I mention the chicken shish kabobs, loaf of pumpkin bread, box of Nature's Own Cheese crackers and 2.5 pounds of oranges? :)

These girls can EAT. (They clearly have their father's metabolism.)

I haven't had a spare second to run to Whole Foods, so the food supply is virtually non-existent. Thank God my parents arrived last night from Ft. Lauderdale! They swooped in and made a MASSIVE pot of spaghetti sauce studded with Italian sausage and meatballs.

Re-entry into regular life is harder than I remember but gobbling up spaghetti by the forkful is making it a little bit easier.

Mmm Tasty!

Making Food the Old Fashioned Way - Growing It

2008-03-08T19:46:00.006-05:00

On a blustery Saturday, during the last days of the month of February, we planted seeds.

Sizzles and I had gone to the Hastings earlier in the week and picked them out. She chose seed packets of tomatoes, corn, basil, thyme, and sunflowers. Here we are planting the seedlings of the herbs only.

We struggled a lot with the prepackaged pellets that came with the seedling contraption. In hindsight we should have just used regular old dirt but seeing that we were amateurs and didn't know any better we attempted to make our lives easier by spending a good 30 minutes trying to use the short-cut pellets. LOL.

Live and Learn!

One Word Wednesday

2008-03-05T20:29:00.003-05:00

So, Brian says to Sizzles: "Your sister is having some grapes, do you want some?

To which she responds: "BACON!"

Her daddy is SO proud. He wants to get her these. Actually, I suspect he wants them for himself.

How Dare I?

2008-02-29T18:21:00.008-05:00

I paced. I wrung my hands. I pleaded with God.
I considered pleading with the head of The Daring Baker's Blogroll herself, that this recipe was, well, too DARING.
Then I took a deep breath and flung myself off the cliff, accepting that I would attempt (with a 3.5 year old and 1 year old underfoot and only one successful attempt to make a loaf of bread ) to make a French Batard. All, so I could publicly parade myself about as a Daring Baker.

Come along on my journey: Mission 1:
1) First I decided I needed to attempt one more bread making excursion before embarking upon the Mount Everest of the bread-making world - a French Baguette. I decided to make Julia's Country Bread. Without closely reading the instructions, I presumed that since it was called Country Bread that it would be simple as surely people living on a farm (in the country) didn't have too much time to muck about with the necessary task of making bread. I never reread the instructions and simply began the process. During that process I learned (not until I came upon each broken bridge in my journey) that: a) this bread requires 3 different rises b) it required a baking stone of which I had none c) stabbing your bread with a large chef's knife is NOT the same as slashing your bread with a razor blade, d) spraying mists of water across the back of your gas oven could cause it to sputter and screw up its temperature gauging mechanism and e) pulling bread out early and then deciding it wasn't completely finished cooking and then putting it back in the oven while the cold oven climbed back to 400 degrees F does not produce edible bread.Status of mission: FAILURE

2) Next I thought I should read, re-read, and read again the instructions for making the French Batard (a short stubby version of the French Baguette) in hopes that I would be less likely to make a mistake. On about the third read through and 236th interruption by Sizzles and Sticky-Butt, I noticed that the recipe called for compressed yeast, also known as fresh yeast. I do not, nor have I ever, owned fresh yeast. I went to Whole Foods and found no fresh yeast. I went to the Dekalb Farmer's Market and found no fresh yeast. I called the Cooks Warehouse and found no fresh yeast. I called the critically acclaimed Alon's Bakery and was SHOCKED when I found no fresh yeast. Their head baker told me to call the head baker at Dekalb Farmer's Market (and tell her she told me to call her) and see if they might have some in the back. I still found no fresh yeast. She called her distributor and they don't sell fresh yeast anywhere in Atlanta.

Status of mission: FAILURE

3) Regardless, I soldiered on and knew I had to figure out how to substitute dried yeast for fresh yeast. Luckily, there are plenty of resources on the Internet that pointed out that one package of dried yeast is equivalent to a .6 oz cake of fresh yeast.

4) Make the bread. I was moving along nicely for about 15 minutes. Then I realized the appearance of my dough was not in step with Julia Child's description of the her dough. It was because I essentially added an extra cup of water and a tablespoon of sugar into the original recipe when I proofed the dried yeast, according to rough attempt at translating the package's instructions. So I figure I would wing it and toss in an extra 3/4 cup of flour.

Note to reader: Winging it while baking is NOT recommended.

5) I commenced with making the bread and had a heck of a time understanding the instructions, while keeping my children entertained. The small bowls of food I was putting on the floor for Sticky Butt, as if she were the cat, only bought me about five minutes at a time. Eventually, I started grabbing off hunks of dough and adding those to the piles of purple, blue and yellow bowls all across the kitchen floor. I even got desperate enough to let the girls play with a bowl of flour and measuring spoons. (My kitchen will never recover, somehow even the coffee maker ended up caked with flour). At some point during all this, I decided that I am a visual learner and googled away to find out if PBS had archival footage of this particular episode of Baking with Julia. AND THEY DID! Once I saw that, I got a clue as to the kneading and seam work required to make the batard.

6) Bake the bread. The first loaf was a bust. It turns out something is wrong with my oven (not a surprise as my 2 year old snazzy Kitchenaid has been nothing but a pain in my booty). I switched to the gas convection option and baked the remaining two to perfection.

Mission Status: THEY WERE GREAT!

So, I am officially a daring baker!

Barf Brain

2008-02-23T08:01:00.004-05:00

We have had a challenging week around here. On Sunday, Sticky-Butt sat up in her crib and barfed all over herself, on Tuesday we had a parent/teacher conference and learned that Sizzles is being contrary at school. On Wednesday, in the morning rush to get to preschool and work, somehow Sticky-Butt locked herself in the bathroom and proceeded to rummage through the medicine drawer while we tried to jimmy the lock. On Thursday, Sizzles sat up in her bed and barfed all over herself.

It has been a long, long week but now it is the weekend and we are glad. :)

On the agenda for the weekend:

Find a small rocking chair for the girls' bedroom

Find some compressed yeast and rye flour

Bake country bread

Go to the farmer's market and buy organic beef, red carrots and fresh beets

Restock our muffin liner supply

Make beef stew with our farmer's market finds

Have a date with Brian

Read some more of Barbara Kingslover's book

Make pancakes and sausage for breakfast

Go to church on Sunday night

Rest

The Simple Life

2008-02-17T19:10:00.006-05:00

I have been on a simple life binge. I realize this is probably an oxymoron but it is my reality. I'm gobbling up books, blogs, recipes, pictures, songs, ANYTHING that I can paw to hear about simplicity. All the while, life barrels on.

I have found some good limbs to grab hold of as life rushes me down its rapids. Some of those limbs belong to authors like Alice Waters, Barbara Kingslover, and Katrina Kennison. Their works hold me down. They could hold you too.

During the busy seasons of life, simple recipes become restful places to repeat the practice of centering your priorities back to God, your family and friends. Over my life the recipe that rises over and over as simple and soulful is my Grandmother's Chicken and Dumplings. It has been ages since my arms have pushed dough across a wooden table until it failed to bounce back to its glutenous knot; taking a butter knife and cutting long strips down and across; scooping and plopping limp rectangles into a bubbling broth of chicken parts and potato stumps.

Although the years have pulled the details of this recipe away from my mind, it has not been pulled away from the memory of my hands and fingers. Those hands and fingers were creating that food as far back as my ability to stand underneath my Momom's housecoat as she moved from the sink, to the stove, to the table.

I rest on those memories, making muffins with Sizzles week after week. We fill those muffins with blueberries, spotted brown bannanas, pumpkin puree, applesauce and strawberry jam. It is our refuge together when our days have been long with struggle, stress or disappointment. Together we find our way back to the kitchen, back to where we belong, back to the beginning of that muffin recipe. And we are home.

If you asked me for the muffin recipe that we use every week of our lives, I would have to look it up. If you asked my hands, they could tell you in one long movement.

One day, my daughter's fingers will tell it too.

Ho Hum

2008-02-12T19:48:00.001-05:00

Hmm. I don't have anything pithy to say but I feel the nagging presence of a week old post. So, I figured I would hit the keyboard for a while and see if I became inspired.

Nope. Nothin.

Oh wait!
One exciting bit of news is that I became an Aunt for the first time Sunday night! My nephew's name is Brody Elisha. Cute name, huh?

Unfortunately, I haven't seen a picture of the kiddo yet because my brother took a picture with his phone and then text(ed?) it to everyone. My blackberry didn't get the message. So, I am waiting for my kin to leave the hospital, then have the time to send an email picture via the computer.

Apparently for Lent, God intended for me to practice patience.

Patience isn't my thing. Cooking is my thing. Oh, that reminds me!
I have a new goal coming down the pipe for all you fancy readers!

I am going to start tossing out some turn of the century recipes. (Not the recent turn of the century, the one before that). These recipes come from an old handwritten cookbook my grandmother gave me before she passed away. I have to take it out and look again, but I seem to recall that it was my grandfather's mother's. That sounds about right (well, maybe not grammatically). Anyway, some of the recipes have dates on them and the oldest one is from 1895! The trick though is that hardly any of the recipes have tempature or time notations. Some just give ingredients list and lack the narrative instructions. So, I will need your help to test them out!

Oh boy. Sizzles, is circling so I will grab a short one so that I can jump off the computer before she starts acting crazy. Sizzles does a fine rendition of crazy. Believe you me, no one wants any of that stuff coming their way, especially not this worn out mama.

Let's start with Snow Flake Cake:

1 cup of sugar
1/2 cup of butter
1/2 cup of sweet milk (not sure what that would mean other than NOT buttermilk or sour milk?)
Whites of three eggs
2 cups of flour
2 tsp baking powder
Then it says: flavor and frost.

This recipe is on the same page as a cake entitled, Mrs. Phinneys Sunshine Cake.

Doesn't that name just make you smile?

So, get to it! Make some Snow Flake Cake!

Wordless Wednesday

2008-02-05T18:35:00.001-05:00

Wait!
This just in - apparently today is TUESDAY.

Hmm. So I guess some words will do.
We had lots of drama this weekend:

Friday night my car would not start after numerous attempts by my collegues and as a result was stranded a top a six story parking deck on the CDC campus.
Saturday morning - I return to campus to get the tow truck through security only to discover that a tow truck can't get up the parking deck because the overhead clearance is too low. The nice man hand carried his equipment up to my car to jump it and we drove away.
Saturday night - We had an awesome date night. Brian helped me pick out some new clothes, we saw a movie and ate some late night guacamole. Then we returned home to find Sizzles with a raging fever. :(
Sunday - We spent all day caring for Sizzles and Sticky Butt. They were both very sick.
Sunday night about two hours before the Superbowl - the plumbing went nuts and the toilets began to overflow.

Plumbers were called, Hell was raised and we thanked God for TIVO.

Today was the second day in a row of attempting to take care of sick children and get some paid work done.

Somewhere along the way today, I decided to bake bread from scratch. At some point, I remember thinking this would be easier than loading up children into the car to go to the store to get some bread.

Did I mention that I have NEVER baked bread before?

Did I mention that the kids were sick AND that I was trying to work from home?

And I wonder why I struggle with balance. :)

At the end of the day (which is now), the day was GOOD and for that I am truly GRATEFUL.

(Later tonight, I will post the recipe for the white bread I made which was a simple recipe that required little of me except my full attention and even without that, the bread turned out great!)

Jesus loves the pancakes?

2008-01-30T20:13:00.001-05:00

According to the folks over at www.allrecipes.com, today begins Pancake Week.

Pancake Week is grounded in ancient tradition. During the Middle Ages, it was common practice to prepare for the austerity of Lent by purging the pantry of luxurious foods such as eggs, butter and milk. These ingredients often became big batches of pancakes. To this day, many communities around the world feast on pancakes all the way through Shrove Tuesday--also known as Fat Tuesday or Mardi Gras--before the season of moderation begins on Ash Wednesday. In fact, another name for Fat Tuesday is Pancake Day.

Who knew?

Not me, that's who!

In the future when I am asked why I believe in God, I will just point to the flapjack stack and give a sticky toothed grin.

Everyone in this domicile loves a pancake stack. We eat it for breakfast and then we eat them for a snack. Sizzles even likes to read about pancakes, when she isn't munching on them. One of her all time favorite books is Hey Pancakes! She also loves Curious George Makes Pancakes.

At least once every six days, we make a plasteful of pancakes around here.

And let me tell you, there is no cardboard box involved.

We make pancakes from scratch! Sadly, I have a couple of friends who said they didn't even know that was possible.

Lord have mercy, the masses must be converted!

Over in the sidebar is our all time favorite Best Quick Pancakes recipe. I tore it out of a Martha Stewart Living Magazine a million years ago. She did a whole pancake extravaganza. It featured this recipe, Crepe Batter, Best Buttermilk Pancakes, Cranberry Syrup, Silver-Dollar Pancakes, Dutch Baby, and Yeast-Raised Pancakes.

MmTasty!

The Crook Commune

2008-01-27T09:33:00.000-05:00

From time to time we drive over to Birmingham and merge families with my good friend Jen for the weekend. Together, we have five kiddos all under the age of six. It's like the orphanage in the movie Annie, without the bald rich guy.

The weekend ritual is a bit like this: Jen and I cook like maniacs and the men allow themselves to be viewed as human circus rides. The husbands willingly partake in games entitled "Bouncy Booty, the Monkey Game, and the Weeeee Game."

Just to clarify, the men invented those games so really they hvae no one to blame but themselves.

So to recap: For Jen and I it is all about the food. For the kids it is all about the fun.

The husbands get to obsess about the presidential race at nausea while they chase children around the backyard. They are also in charge of ensuring that no one is peeing off the front porch.

Back to the food:

During that weekend visit, I brought over some organic stone ground grits which I snagged from the Morningside Farmer's Market. They were purchased directly from my friends at Stoneview Farms.

Jen and I love a grit. Grits are mmm.tasty! Grits are also perfect for feeding a slathering of children. So we made shrimp and grits. I think the whole meal cost about $16 and it ROCKED.

Wait a second. Come to think of it, we didn't share any with the children. We fed them fish fingers. Hmm.

For the best shrimp grits we all have ever had, head over to the sidebar.

The picture above shows most of the children drinking Mexican hot chocolate that Jen made from scratch. Can you guess which half-pint is the kid clan ring leader?

(His name is Mr. Lucas, a four year old who waltzes into his Montessori school and is immediately greeted by kids twice his age. Even four years old can give off the cool vibe. )

Thrifty Thursday: Shopping at Whole Foods on a Budget

2008-01-23T20:46:00.001-05:00

Whole Foods is expensive. Actually, Whole Foods is crazy expensive and I hope that this small blog can help other moms figure out a way to shop at this place and stay on a budget. I won't go into all the reasons I am trying to eat mostly organic, or why I can muster up the energy to enter this store even when I am without sleep and with two children in tow. I will simply assert that Whole Foods (WF) is the closest thing I can find nearby, that captures the kind of grocery store I am looking for in this world, and plays out the kind of food politics I want my dollars invested in. SO, every Thursday I will post a couple of money-saving tips that I have discovered during my quest to cram a grocery budget into a Whole Foods shopping excursion. If I have the time, I will even provide the week's menu and I will let you in on what I am spending.

So let us get started:

Top 5 tips for shopping at Whole Foods on a budget:

Bring your own bags from home or reuse last week's paper bags. To be honest, I am not automatically inclined to bring cloth bags to the grocery store. But at WF you are given 10 cents off for every bag you reuse. The cool thing is that this even applies to reusing the WF paper bags that the store supplies for free. For me ,this is a weekly saving of about 70 cents to $1. It is also a great way to avoid having mountains and mountains of brown paper bags erupting from the space between my dryer and the wall where I store my bags. I know this isn't much but over one year that amounts to $52 which is an extra $52 into the kiddo college fund. (Assuming it makes it there of course). I recommend just emptying the groceries and then putting the flattened stack of bags in the back of the car, so you don't have to worry about remembering them.

Skip the pre-made food altogether. I know it is beautiful but that nearly one-third of most WF is the devil if you are on a budget. Just close your eyes and walk away really really fast.

Shop in season. This is a universal grocery tip. Produce tastes better and is cheaper when it is season.

Buy the house brand and know that 365 is typically less expensive than the Whole Foods label. But the 365 brand isn't always organic so pay close attention if that is important to you. Also, Whole Kitchen (the Whole Foods brand name for many items) tends to be a smaller amount of food in a similar sized package so you may want to compare beyond just the price.

Sometimes it pays to shell out an extra 40 cents. There are some house brand items that in my humble opinion are not worth the saved pennies. If an item ends up in the trash can because no one in the house will touch it, it doesn't really matter if it was 40 cents less than the tasty competition. A few examples of rejected Whole Food knock-offs include: Knock-offs of Stacy's Pita Chips (WAY WAY WAY to much salt on those suckers and let it be known that Sizzles licks salt straight out of her hand), Whole Foods fig bars (okay if you haven't had Fig Newman's recently then these beige little stinkers will suffice. If your kids eat Fig Newton's or Fig Newman's on a regular basis I doubt the Whole Food fig bars will cut it), Whole Foods knock-off cheetos (I don't eat this kind of thing often but I will say, dude, these are just gross and just try not to purchase them. Ever.)

So there you go, a couple of tips to start you on your way. Go forth and pinch those pennies for the greater good!

Winnie the Pooh Pumpkin Muffins

2008-01-17T11:46:00.001-05:00

Did you know yesterday was the birthday of Winnie the Pooh author, A.A. Milne?
Yeah, me either, until I stumbled upon the information while trolling the blogsphere and getting my daily fix of Sun and Candlelight.

Winnie the Pooh books were some of my favorite chapter books as a child. I remember being the lone kid in the first grade who spent the entire library hour on my knees trying decide which Winnie the Pooh book I was going to rescue from the dark bottom shelf. I liked Pooh books so much that I bought one of first chapter book in the series as soon as I got pregnant with Sizzles.

I think I even tried to read it to her the first week of her life but alas, she was more interested in hearing Brian's voice narrating the first of the Harry Potter books. Sizzles laid her stake as a daddy's girls right from the get-go.

But last night, she was at my shoulder when I checked out Sun and Candlelight so I read to her the entry and she got VERY excited about the idea of having birthday candles for Winnie the Pooh. So, although I was pretty tired from a crazy day at the CDC, I went to the bookshelf and found our copy of Winnie the Pooh. Sizzles brought it to the computer screen, declared it a "match" and demanded to know where the candles were.

Of course we needed something to put in the candles and after rummaging around the pantry, it was determined that he had all the ingredients for homemade pumpkin muffins. We whipped up the muffins and read the first chapter while they baked. After they were done, we shoved in the candle and song our homage just in time for bed.

This morning while we watched last night's snow melt away we ate Winnie the Pooh pumpkin muffins and then headed off to school.

The Sound of a Simple Snack

2008-01-11T18:00:00.001-05:00

Listen.

Are you Listening?

Shh!

Its coming. . .
Listen, its almost there.

PING!
POP! Ping! Pop! Pop!
Pop!, Pop!, Pop!, Pop! PING!,

"I hear it! Mommy, I hear the popcorn!"
"Mommy, I Looooove popcorn!"

PING!
POP! Ping! Pop! Pop!
Pop!, Pop!, Pop!, Pop! PING!,

"Can I shake it? No, I don't want to get to close to the fire. The fire is HOT."
"You shake it."

"Is it ready?"
"Can I have some salt? I Loooove salt."
"Can I taste? Can I have some?"

"Mmm. I love popcorn! It is so TASTY!"

As mentioned at Boys Rule My Life, today was simple Friday. The challenge was to think about all the noises we let into our lives and to attempt to lock out noises that disrupt or dampen our day.

The loud HUM of a running microwave and the piercing BEEEEEEP BEEEEEEP BEEEEEEP that repeats until the food is removed reminds me of the fact that in our house we abandoned microwave popcorn years ago. In our home, we practice the simple tradition of making popcorn on the stove top. Making your own popcorn is an inexpensive snack. Bags of corn kernels cost only a dollar or two and you only use about 1/3 cup of corn at a time.

Sizzles loves to sit on the counter, and listen to the popcorn as it explodes inside my heavy-bottomed stainless steel Dutch oven. During the pictured endeavor, we even sprinkled some freshly ground Parmesan cheese onto the popcorn. There are all kinds of heirloom popcorn kernels that can be explored with the kiddos.

Enjoy!

And don't forget to Listen.

Here is information I found on the web, about some of the popcorn varieties available.

YELLOW is a butterfly popcorn variety with an exceptional yellow corn taste. It has a high expansion rate, popping big and fluffy.

WHITE is a smaller kernel popcorn than the yellow, still with a relatively high expansion rate, popping up large and fluffy. It has a very mild corn flavor.

MIDNIGHT BLUE is a large kernel blue popcorn with an exceptional expansion rate. After it's popped, the kernel is white with blue hull speckles; it has a unique flavor.

MIXED BABY RICE is an heirloom variety which is HULL-LESS. The kernels are shaped something like rice and are white, red, and striped red in color. When popped, it has less volume than other varieties, the kernel is white and the flavor is light and delicate.

MAUVE is an heirloom variety which is a favorite. It has a moderate pop, and is tender and tasty! The meat is white to creamy in color.

MUSHROOM FLAKE pops up round; it's used mostly by people who want to caramelize their corn. Once popped, it holds its shape during shipping better than other types. It has a lighter corn taste than traditional yellow popcorn.

When Dinner Bombs

2008-01-08T18:08:00.001-05:00

Tonight's dinner was a mess. I have been trying to find some quick fix meals that meet my persnickety standards and the standards of my little clan and it was actually going quite well until tonight.

I acknowledge that I am hard to please. I have never really been into processed foods, I love to cook and once upon a time I even reviewed restaurants (only about 10 and then I got pregnant and started barfing and that was the end of that). But three nights a week I need to get in the door and get food on the table that is homemade and fast. Did I mention I also try to eat organic and local? Biting off more than you can chew will be the title of my next blog. :)

Part of the problem has been revealed to me over and over again. God has repeatedly made it clear to me that I have no business trying to cook a rice noodle. I overcook them and they turn to mush or I use to much sauce and they turn to mush or I over zealously toss them and they turn to mush. Have I learned? Um, NO. I am the ram your head into the wall a million times before accepting the truth kind of girl. And tonight, I rose to the rice noodle wall occasion. I am shamed to say I thought I could whip up a Pad Thai without bean sprouts, limes, and fresh roasted peanuts. I am ashamed to admit, I took some bottled peanut sauce and tossed it with some frozen shrimp and sauteed veggies and called it a day. If Bill (my super awesome friend who now is a snazzy food writer and nominated for a James Beard Award) is reading this post - I am so very very sorry. To all the hard-working cooks in Thai restaurants across this land - I am so very very sorry. To all who are about to take a look at this picture of my nasty, nasty concoction -

let my treachery be a lesson to you all and let it be known that cooking should be done with your full heart and full attention and if you don't have time to do it the right way, then just serve fried eggs, salami and toast for dinner.

Um. Did I mention that Sticky-Butt has a habit of placing her fried eggs on top of her head to get a laugh?

I'm proud. So very proud.

Has this happened to you?

2008-01-05T12:35:00.001-05:00

Ugh. My post just got zapped when I hit "save as draft." Does this happen to other people using blogspot/blogger?

Down with Frazzled Fridays, Up with Slow Fridays

2008-01-04T21:23:00.001-05:00

Sometimes getting dinner on the table in my house can look like a Friday night pit stop at Talladega. We are all so tired by Friday. Brian has typically driven to Alabama and back and I have juggled working part time and being at home part time. Friday is a day that I work, so by the time I walk in the door I am eager to get my hands back into homemaking and often that equates to lofty schemes of elaborate meals.

On many Fridays, in the attempt to hit the kitchen chopping, I don't slow down to connect with the very thing that is driving me to cook - my family. Sizzles and Sticky-butt are also tired from the week's escapades but they are also eager to pick up on our Thursday adventures. This frantic energy creates frazzled Fridays and they are no fun.

Over the holidays, in addition to gorging on cookies, chocolates and a disturbing variety of meats, I also gorged on books. Several books I have been consuming are about slowing down and prioritizing family life. One of the books, entitled, Mitten Strings from God - for mom's in a hurry, was recommended at a blog I have been visiting, titled Happy at Home. Although this mom and I seem different in many ways, we both long for a simpler approach to our lives. Even better, today there was a challenge posted about Slow Fridays. This challenge was issued at Boys Rule My Life and it was perfectly timed with this Friday when our home successfully slowed down. Here is how we did it.

I picked up a pizza, clementines, and cookies from Whole Foods on my way home. I walked in the door, gobbled up my hugs and we sat down for pizza. While we all ate, Sizzles told me about her day with daddy, and Sticky-butt signed "more" over and over while shoving pizza hunks into her plump little cheeks. We were covered with pepperoni grease and smiles. Then Brian opened his anniversary gift one day early (a Star Wars t-shirt), and slipped off to take a nap (the girls were up a lot last night for some reason). I then piled the girls into the bathtub and we sang while I washed hair and pizza off most of their bodies. Then we read books and put Sticky-butt to bed.

The best part was that Sizzles picked up the playroom and then asked if we could do art! ( I have been introducing art time to her for a couple of weeks in an attempt to escape the lure of the television). We painted Popsicle sticks with paint and glitter glue and then traced our hands on the back of wrapping paper while listening to Nora Jones. By this time, Brian was back up and just in time to read her a book and take her off to bed. A successful (although a bit unusual) slow Friday. FINALLY.

The perfect poem for New Year's Day

2008-01-01T20:11:00.001-05:00

If you have never read the poetry of Billy Collins, stop what you are doing and google his work. To quote Sizzles, "He is my everything, and my best!"

Happy New Year and Enjoy!

Aristotle
by Billy Collins from Picnic, Lightening (the first stanza)

This is the beginning.
Almost anything can happen.
This is where you can find
the creation of light, a fish wriggling onto land,
the first word of Paradise Lost on an empty page.
Think of an egg, the letter A,
a woman ironing on a bare stage
as the heavy curtain rises.
This is the very beginning.
The first-person narrator introduces himself,
tells us about his lineage.
The mezzo-soprano stands in the wings.
Here the climbers are studying a map
or pulling on their long woolen socks.
This is early on, years before the Ark, dawn.
The profile of an animal is being smeared
on the wall of a cave,
and you have not yet learned to crawl.
This is the opening, the gambit,
a pawn moving forward an inch.
This is your first night with her,
your first night without her.
This is the first part
where the wheels begin to turn,
where the elevator begins its acent,
before the doors lurch apart.

The wrong day to kill the TV

2007-12-31T10:37:00.001-05:00

It doesn't take much prodding for me to rally behind movements to kill the family television. I am extremely sensitive to loud noises and general cacophony. I refuse to let a television enter my bedroom and I HATE commercials. I have even managed to keep the home television count to one.

Now, before you sit back in awe at these amazing feats, you should know that the ONE television happens to be a 47 inch HD flat screen with an XBox 360 attached to it and an array of cable channels and On Demand options at the viewers fingertips.

I still have to fight the good fight. SO, while reading Mitten Strings from God and being reminded of all the good things that can surface when your family is forced to find a different mode of entertainment, I went to bed last night vowing to keep the TV off today.

Like a total moron, I picked the day I need to work from home and a day that Sizzle's school is closed. But did I change the plan when the full realization of the challenge before me became clear? NO.
Did I abort the plan after I got Sticky Butt dressed and fed and loaded into the car, only to realize that her school was also closed today? NO.
Did I realize that this whole idea was ludicrous when my washing machine starting spewing suds from every orifice of its metal body? NO.
Did I try to go through a week's worth of email and read through an NIH press release on some new study about the DNA of MRSA while coaching Sizzles through her first attempt to make muffins solo? Possibly.
Did I mentally bitch-slap myself at 10:30am for invoking additional chaos into an already impossible day and race to return Little Bear to the proper center of our family universe? Um, pretty much.

"C" is for Christmas and Camping

2007-12-29T12:55:00.000-05:00

Well, my parents headed out yesterday and the girls are sad to see them go. They had a walloping good time at the coach making smores and bringing a little chaos to their grandparent's lives.

Twas the day before Christmas

2007-12-24T15:44:00.001-05:00

Thankfully, the freaky warm weather around here has finally subsided and we are back in our wool coats. My parents arrived on Friday in their flashy coach (also known as an RV, camper or giant roving single wide trailer to the rest of us).
I believe the term "coach" is used so that the public may know that their camper is a fancy thing, with Corian counter tops and a queen size bed. Simply put, "It ain't your grandpa's Winnebago."

The coach provides them the opportunity to come visit without having to cram themselves into our itty bitty house. The other bonus is that they have been taking Sizzles (oh did I mention this is going to be Lilly's new code name on this blog? Can you tell that Brian picked it out?) in the evenings so she can camp with them. They have decided to give Sticky-butt (Claire's new blog code name - also chosen by my husband) a couple more days to get used to them before they venture into camping with two children under the age of three. They are stocking up on the Merlot to prepare for the whirlwind. (I highly recommend self-medicating when living with two little girls in a 300 square foot automobile).

As usual, Brian has waited until the handful of days before Christmas to choose and purchase his gifts. This is an improvement. Typically he waits until the night before Christmas to do his shopping. Mind you, this is the same man who rants about the proletariat and having to hob nob with the masses. THIS man chooses to shop on Christmas Eve. Truly, it blows my mind.

I on the other hand, have been rummaging around the house trying to find all the gifts that I have stashed in our limited closet space from my early bird shopping at the end of November. Perhaps both of us could find a better way to work this whole shopping thing out. My plan for next year is to take the handmade challenge and to usurp the consumerism of the holidays by making everyone's gifts.

Stop laughing. I am going to do it. I swear. Okay, maybe swearing is a bad idea. I am going to try really, really hard to get my act together and attempt a 100% authentic Christmas spirit Christmas.

Perhaps the praying should commence NOW.

In the meantime, here is a recipe for our Christmas Eve breakfast - homemade Irish oatmeal. MmTasty!

Christmas Bundles

2007-12-20T20:08:00.001-05:00

Okay, I am feeling guilty that I haven't blogged since Saturday. What is this blogging-addiction thing creeping in? I am not even completely sure if anyone even reads this thing. But then, what if there is someone out there in cyberspace, that was trying to find some kind of whacko porn site, and typed in MmTasty, and then read my blog by mistake, and then became totally impressed by what a great mom (or faker mom) that I appear to be, and then told everyone they knew to read my blog? And then no one ever wanted to watch porn again? What if by blogging I could crush one of the largest industries in this country?

Mothers everywhere are depending on me!

Hmm. This is why they say not to post your blog entry immediately after you write it. This is why they suggest that you wait a day to see if you really want your thoughts out there for the world to see.

Just in case your inner voice is a freak show. OKAY, enough of crazy girl.
Onto baking and advent and the celebration of all things wholesome and bright!

So, I have been trolling the blog world and running into a lot of people preaching about taking the handmade pledge or embracing the simplicity of life or hissing the consumerism in our culture and let me tell you this stuff has seeped into my skull.

As a result, I decided to make cookies for half of my office (about 25 people) AND stuff them into little cellophane bags AND tie them with some pretty holiday ribbon AND make the gift tags AND hand-punch the little circle for the tags to be thread onto the said ribbon AND hand write every person's name on each little package.

Clearly, I had not thought out what it means to take a handmade pledge. Apparently making a handmade pledge, means pledging to make something by hand. As those of you who know me can guess, I did not think through the magnitude of this project.

I can at least say that I was wise enough to put the kids to bed BEFORE I got hot and heavy into this hand making business. I can also say that I saw the writing on the wall two hours into the project and recruited Brian to assist with the ribbon tying and the gift tag threading. :)

In the end, they looked really cute and it seemed that most people were glad to get their cookie bundle. Perhaps next year, I will take the hand made pledge prior to seven days before Christmas.

Perhaps.

The Christmas Humbling

2007-12-15T19:18:00.002-05:00

Occasionally I get cocky. Specifically, I have been known to tell people flat out that I am a great cook. To be fair, sometimes I truly am a great cook. But then every ten entrees or so I will fall flat on my face and serve up a totally crap meal. When it comes to baking (as long as you discount my constant muffin making) I tend to wipe out much more frequently than when I cook. Let's just say I have been kissing the hardwood floor this week.

I decided in all my Christmas shimmer that I was ready to try making gingerbread. Even better, I would go whole hog and make the COVER of the Martha Stewart cookie magazine I have been hitting like a stay at home mom hits the Merlot by 4pm on a Tuesday.

So, anyway, I thought I could hang with Martha.
Need I say more? (Yes, Yes, or this wouldn't be a very interesting blog would it?)

So I whipped up the gingerbread dough right before I had to go pick up Lilly from school. I was moving fast (I huge no, no in the baking world) and somehow managed to fly right by the molasses. As a testament to how uppity I had gotten in my Christmas cookie ways, I had gone to the supermarket JUST to get molasses two hours before this dough-making fiasco!

What is even more pathetic (and a reminder that I must humble myself before God and Martha Stewart) is that I didn't even figure this omission out until after I had split the dough, wrapped the dough, put it in my tinsle colored fridge and noticed the unopened bottle of molasses while grabbing my keys.

I won't repeat what came out of my mouth. It was very un-Christian like. It definitely wasn't in the Christmas spirit and I can only thank God (while apologizing profusely) that a certain three year old wasn't within earshot.

Sad. So very sad.

The good news is apparently you can totally take a kick in the pants while making this particular dough and still manage to throw down some spicy, chewy, gingerbread. So despite my fall down, I can still say I am great baker. Well, at least today. :)

Christmas Heathens

2007-12-10T14:56:00.001-05:00

The children were absolute heathens this weekend.

Actually, Claire was sick and stricken with green ooze coming out of her bright blue eyes so she had an excuse. Lilly was just a heathen.

On Friday night, we attempted to take the girls to Mellow Mushroom for pepperoni pizza. Heathens.

On Saturday morning, we attempted to take the girls to Dancing Goats (the newly opened coffee bar in Decatur from the Washington-based Batdorf & Bronson Coffee Roasters). Heathens.

On Sunday morning, we attempted to take the girls to Oak Grove Methodist Church to listen to the Callonwalde Christmas Band. Heathens.

After a weekend full of stewing, steaming and screaming, Brian fell asleep on the couch at 7pm and I rolled up my sleeves in an attempt to teach some Christmas forgiveness. I explained to Lilly the word of the day (forgiveness) and told her that even though she was naughty (and boy was she naughty) that I was going to forgive her and still bake Christmas cookies with her. She smiled (I think she was also exhausted from her weekend of hullabaloo), hugged me and said, "Thank you Mommy."

We made Magic Muffins and she was an absolute angel.

Christmas Crafting

2007-12-08T19:49:00.000-05:00

At the Ott house, we have been Christmas crafting every night. Lilly is really into creating a Christmas Wish Box and cutting out snowflakes from my leftover bleached (that I stopped using) coffee filters. She has come a long way on the snowflake project. She began cutting things that looked more like Elizabethan collars. Then she saw one of my snowflakes and wanted a lesson on how to make my kind of snowflake. (Probably so she could smack down her show-off Mommy. Which I proudly announce, she did.)

Thanks to her montessori education (all 4 months of it), she is willing to sit down and have me demonstrate how to do a project, and then attempt it on her own. It is possible of course that she was in medical school in a former life and innately practices the technique, 'see it, do it, teach it.'
Anyhow, the point is, she is rocking-out in the snowflake category. Now, nearly all of our windows facing the street have paper snowflakes drifting down the pane.

I am hoping to have the energy to give a go at Christmas cookies tomorrow. In my evening prayers I will attempt a channeling of Martha Stewart so we can have a dazzling snowflake festival . I am petitioning God for the post-prison Martha who seems a little more low key than the previously hard-core, ass-kicker Martha. THAT Martha freaked me out a little when I saw a cooking with children recipe she wrote that required 45 minutes of prep time BEFORE the kid got involved. Obviously this is a woman who only reproduced once and then had the sense to surround herself with mulitple servants. Clearly, I do not have Martha's smarts.

I will add some pictures of Lilly's bitchin' snowflakes in the morning. Stay tuned! I know you are beside yourself with anticipation.

For now, I have to deal with Lilly's hallway hissy fit because we have told her she needs to go to bed early. She is blissed out with exhaustion.

Why Morningside has got me by the peanut butter balls

2007-12-01T12:15:00.001-05:00

I'm considering sacrificing my children's free education at the 'oh so worshipped' Oak Grove Elementary in favoring of relocating to a 100 year old house within walking distance to Alon's Bakery and the Morningside Organic Farmer's Market. This is without even considering the new Swiss chocolatier shop that opened a couple of weeks ago!

I nearly stroked out with euphoria this morning when within ten or fifteen minutes I had gathered in my arms: a this-morning-made loaf of Ciabatta bread (all rough on the exterior and all spongy soft on the inside), a taunt chunk of Grayson cheese from Meadow Creek Dairy, two long slivers of smoked salmon spotted with peppercorn pieces and wisps of dill, a crispy croissant gushing with chocolate and a Saturday morning' doughnut plump with dulce de leche innards.

And this was BEFORE I went across the street to the farmer's market!

There I bought a fistful of peppers, a freshly plucked clump of purple lettuce and a doll's head-sized bundle of cabbage.

Did I mention that I also bought a pound of breakfast sausage from a female farmer's red igloo cooler? Oh, this sausage. This soft aromatic sage infused sausage that I fried up at home with gluts of scrambled eggs and crunchy Ciabatta slices.

I MUST MOVE TO MORNINGSIDE.

I mean can't my children learn everything they need to know about this world from a weekly read through of The Economist?

I mean seriously.

Can't they?

Swiss Chard and the OTT girls

2007-11-27T20:20:00.002-05:00

Many would have you believe that if you cook new foods with your kids, then your kids are more likely to try new foods. Tonight I tested that theory using some Swiss Chard I picked up from the local organic farmer's market.

Lilly was drawn to the red and yellow stems of the Swiss Chard and was thrilled to be in charge of pulling all the leaves off so that we could make a recipe for sweet and sour swiss chard from the cookbook Simply In Season.

I was hoping that since it had some raisins and sugar in the preparation that it would be a big hit. Hmm. I should have known better. Lord knows, proclaiming it to be "rainbow spinach" simply served to make Lilly suspicious. To her credit, she was willing to try the swiss chard after I plucked out a piece of the red stem from her plate to prove that this green clump was actually the pretty plant she had handled a few minutes before dinner.

She tasted it.

Then explained to me that Swiss Chard is "very, very YUCKY."

Claire communicated the same message in her own special way - she threw it on the floor.

The truth is hard. And very very messy.

Baby steps toward a tasty life

2007-11-23T11:18:00.001-05:00

Alice Waters came to my office last week. Well, not my individual office but to the CDC campus to give a talk on food and health. Alice Waters is the famed chef/owner of Chez Panisse and founder of the Edible Schoolyard Project and huge figure in the movement to support local, organic and sustainable agriculture. Brian and I went to her restaurant many years ago as part of our San Francisco vacation. We both still remember that meal. It was beautiful, simple and soul nourishing.

Alice talked about food as spiritual nourishment and how America's obsession with speed has left our children at once malnourished and obese. She said so many wise things during her talk but this concept of the connection between eating good food and having a good life really struck a cord with me. Most of my best memories in life bloom around my grandmother's kitchen table and making slow foods like chicken and dumplings at her side.

When my grandmother was dying a couple of years ago she repeatedly told me how blessed she was and how GOOD her life had been. Her conviction about this gave me a lot to think about during her long journey toward death. She didn't graduate from high school (she finished 11th grade and then married my grandfather), nor did she have a prestigious job (she was a secretary for a life insurance agent).

She did have a basic kitchen and cooked with basic tools (no Cuisnart or Viking stove). Despite these factors, that our consumerist society would look upon mostly with disappointment, she was confident that she had been given the BEST life. She KNEW it.

Her life was Simple, Slow and Satisfying and SO much of it was about Food.

My mind wandered back and forth between Alice Water's talk and my grandmother's kitchen that day as I weighed the lessons that both women preached. Rushing around to catch the prizes of our world (a flashy home, a fancy job and expensive foods) leaves Brian and I pretty empty handed most of the time but when I take the time to cook good food our circumstances always seem a little bit brighter and our struggles with two small children, demanding careers and a lack of space seem a little less extreme when the meal is done.

So in homage to these two important figures in my journey for a tasty life I went to the morningside farmer's market and met some farmers, and bought their vegetables and carted it home to make some food that was spiritually nourishing.

Here are some pictures of the vegetables I bought and the girls checking them out. The recipes I used to cook the vegetables will be posted soon. :) Enjoy!

"Roasted Butternut Squash? I don't like Roasted Butternut Squash."

2007-11-16T21:00:00.000-05:00

Well, it has been another long week of crazy CDC escapades but somewhere in the mix I decided I needed to roast a butternut squash. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do with it but I figured I would roast it first and figure out dinner next. It turned out to be a perfect little strategy and I discovered that Claire is pretty much willing to shove anything in her mouth and she may outpace Lilly for adventurous eater of the year. Perhaps in a related twist of fate she has all of a sudden sprouted a huge Santa Clause belly just in time for the Holiday season. But I digress (as usual).

So I roasted up this hefty squash and then rummaged the freezer looking for some of the goodies I had picked up that morning from an adventure to Trader Joe's. On that adventure Lilly, Claire and I purchased a frozen bag of gnocchi with gorgonzola. The super exciting thing is that the ingredients list was all real food and contained no bizarro chemicals. EXCELLENT.

But get this - dinner was whipped (or should I say sauteed) in a flash. I coaxed the gnocchi out of it frozen state with a skillet and olive oil and then tossed in the roasted butternut squash and SHAZAM! A speedy dinner that was organic, clean and TASTY.

You will see from the pics that Claire had chipmunk cheeks full of squash and Lilly saw her plate and said "Roasted butternut squash? I don't LIKE roasted butternut squash!!"

(Of course I forced her to take one bite and before she was allowed to gourge herself on slice after slice of sourdough bread and butter).

After tasting said one bite she said, "Hmm. Not bad, huh?"

And now she LIKES butternut squash.

Hooray for mommy!!

Mommy, can we make a star pie?

2007-11-11T20:22:00.001-05:00

Lilly and I have been cooking like crazy this weekend. It began on Thursday night, when Brian was driving back from back and forth across the state of Alabama for work (Atlanta to Birmingham to Tuscaloosa to Huntsville back to Birmingham and returning home to Atlanta all in the same day). I was checking out various mommy blogs aimed at cooking with kiddos and saw a pie decorated with stars. Right about that moment Lilly's ability to leave me in peace for no more than 3 minutes kicked in and she was pearing over my shoulder to see if what I was doing was of more interest than what she was doing. She saw the pie. "Can we make a star pie?," she said. Um. Sure.

Her and I both know I am a sucker for a "let's cook together" type of request. Despite it being 8pm on a school night, we made a pie using outdated pie crust I found crammed in the back of the fridge and a can of Oregon cherries I had in the pantry. Of course I couldn't just dump the can of cherries into the pie crust and be done with it, I had to make a real pie filling with corn starch and sugar and then we had to find a tiny cookie cutter shaped like a star to do the pie crust top. As you can see from the picture, the pie looked pretty tasty and Lilly was pleased as - well, pie. :)

We cooked the rest of the weekend together: bannana muffins on Saturday and home-made granola on Sunday. (More later on why I should leave granola to the professionals at Bare Naked).

And You Thought Disney's Tinkerbell had Attitude

2007-11-10T09:03:00.000-05:00

Sharing a room

2007-11-06T20:10:00.001-05:00

Who ever is out there pimping the idea that kids sharing a room is a fabulous thing needs to be forced to live in my house (note very little house) for a week.

Kids sharing a room blows. It sucks for them and it sucks for me. The only thing getting me through right now is the delusion that the children are bonding because they are forced to share sleeping space. But that seems as believable as the science claiming breast-feeding doesn't give you saggy breasts. Um. Yeah. I just happened to teleport back from a weekend in Uganda doing a National Geographic photo shoot and accidentally came back with floppy boobs and a habit of leaving my left breast out for a snacking one year old.

But I digress.

So my 1 year old (Claire) goes to bed at 7pm and everything runs perfectly until the 3.5 year old (Lilly) is ready to go to bed at 8:30pm. For two weeks running, Lilly marches into her room, lies in wait until my husband and I have just calmed ourselves from the cacophany of the day and BOOM she walks over to her sleeping sister's crib and yanks out her pacifier, or pulls off her slippers or does God only knows what else that results in her sweet slumbering sister to start screaming her head off.

Now before you inhale to gather the air to make the words that informs my husband and I that we just have to get Lilly to stop waking up Claire let me just say to you - No shit sherlock!

We know this and it isn't going so well. We have attempted a variety of strategies and we have wittled our options down to beating the kid or making her sleep on the deck. She is not deterred by time-out, my harsh whispers within an inch of her nose, the loss of television priviledges and dearly loved items.

Simply put she doesn't give a damn what we do because she LIKES to harass her sister and she likes to create a commotion and she especially likes to make it impossible for her to fall asleep.

I am humiliated to admit that the clever little clam is having her way with us but it is the noisy, smirky truth.

I am at a loss.

Well not exactly - I am advocating that we hang her out the window by her toes and force her to hear us sing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (a song she detests) but my husband is plainly ignoring me as he disagrees that this is ethical or will work.

His answer is yanking her out of their bedroom and putting her in bed with us.

Lord have mercy.