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7days: Day 4 – We have a situation.
Ring! Ring! It’s SAJ calling in for Tuesday! Here’s my 7days photo where I’m not doing much. I’m supposed to be doing dishes but I am instead taking flattering (ie: shot from above where all signs of any double chin do not exist) pictures of myself not doing dishes. This is why I suck at domesticity. Playing with cameras and thinking up possible blog posts is way more interesting than cooking or household clean-up tasks.
But I actually didn’t think up any brilliant posts while I was procrastinating. Just the regular stuff. Today was a typical day in the life of a stay-at-home mom who lives near the beach.
My dad called me this morning while I was on a walk with my friend Sarah.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Oh, just walking to the beach,” I answer nonchalantly because it is true.
“Nice life you have,” he adds, chuckling.Then I feel like a crumb because it’s true! I’m walking to the beach with a friend and I’m not even appreciating it fully! I could be driving a truck on the freeway in traffic! Or working with spreadsheets in a cubicle or getting my teeth drilled! I have so much to be thankful for.
Today was a BEEEE-YOOOOOO-TI-FULLLLL day at the beach too. It was more pretty than usual. Not too hot, not too cold. The water was warm, the sky was clear. It was perfect. I wanted to take tons and tons of photos but my waterproof camera is in the shop (three cheers for warranties!) and I won’t get it back for four to six weeks. (Not fourty-six weeks but four to six… ha ha Madagascar joke, oh I am such a mom of a preschooler)
So I very very very carefully pulled out my regular camera and took this photo of Bug and Wito. It’s very dangerous to shoot with my regular camera at the beach because one teeny tiny little grain of sand could send it to the repair shop for the SIXTH time. Hoo Boy it’s going to be a long four to six weeks.
It was terribly painful for me to be at the beach on such a pretty day and not have a camera to shoot. Especially because I have a sea shell alpha mom post coming up and the beach was screaming with photogenic shells begging me to make them models. Well, maybe not like the shells you find on exotic islands but still very pretty. Groan! I’m going to have to go back with a borrowed waterproof camera (anyone have one you’d be willing to lend me?) and recreate the whole day. It was just that fantastic.
But anyway… life is not all idyllic walks on the beach of course. There was plenty of temper tantrums from Bug thrown in to keep me humble. We went to see Ice Age today (I know, tough life) and she was a regular pill. Squirming and talking and climbing all over me. Up and down in her chair, all over the place doing everything but sitting quietly and watching the super-charged-high-action movie that should have had her sitting like a statue with her eyeballs popping out of her head.
Why does she do this? I’ve been trying to keep a close watch on her food intake and sleep patterns so that I can avoid the child from hell but she seems to always be one step ahead of me. She had lunch, she had a decent nap, why is she acting like she has low blood sugar?
And then? At the end of the movie when I refused to let her climb the stairs to the top of the theatre, she had a good old fashioned cry fit that lasted our entire drive home and then some. By the end of it I was wishing I had let her climb the stupid steps. But I can’t let her win these battles. It’s already quite questionable who is really boss in this relationship.
Alas, this is three. Three is kicking my butt around the block and back. Good thing three is so cute.
I forgot to show you this photo I took yesterday. This is Bug “pushing her daughter.” And this is why I don’t drop her off at the fire station and run for the hills every time she gets my blood pressure rising. Because the moments when she is not being bad are the most precious moments I have ever experienced in my whole life.
You know what she said tonight after I had nagged her about forty-seven times to get out of the tub? She lowered her voice to a deep monotone, looked me in the eye and then said officially, “Get out of the tub! Get out of the tub! We have a situation, Mr. President.”
That kid. She wears me down and then she cracks me up.
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Meal Planning Day Five!
I’m back. I’m sorry to leave you in the middle of the meal planning but life got in the way—that pesky life. So where was I? Meal Planning Day Four was leftovers. Technically, I was in Pasadena having fancy pizza with Bethany and friends but Toby was at home having leftovers for me.
Meal Planning Day Five was Roman-Style Chicken (ala Giada) with oven-baked potatoes and onions. I love Everyday Italian with Giada. I watched her show once and thought, I could do that. So I did. It’s never happened again. But then, I don’t get much time to watch television anymore.
Below is my trailer-park version of her fabulous recipes.
I make the potatoes first because they take longer to cook. This time I decided to make sweet potatoes with my potatoes. Are they yams or sweet potatoes? I always get them mixed up. They call them one thing in the store, another on the internet. I think we should just call them “swams.” You know which ones I mean. They are reddish purple on the outside and orange on the inside. They cook up to be nice and sweet and not dry or mealy like the white ones.
Ingredients:
- 2-3 big swams and/or potatoes (whatever is equivalent to 2 lbs. red potatoes)
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1 tsp pepper
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 package of cippolini onions blanched and peeled
Directions:
- Blanch your little cippolini onions in boiling water for one minute. Let them cool under cold running water, then peel and cut the ends off.
- Peel and chop up the swams and potatoes into bite size pieces. Sometimes I cut them up to look like french fries, sometimes I don’t. You just want them thin enough to cook evenly. I probably loaded up my pan too much in the photo above.
- Toss swams and potatoes and onions in a bowl with olive oil, salt and pepper so that all pieces are coated with oil.
- Spread evenly on a tinfoil-lined cookie sheet. I spray the tinfoil with cooking spray because even though these puppies are dripping with olive oil, they still stick sometimes! What is up with that?!!
- Bake at 400 F for 45 minutes or until cooked through.
- Empty into a serving dish and you’re done!
I like cooking cippolini onions because it gives me an excuse to use this neato strainer when I blanch them. I got it cheap from the Chinese market. Sometimes I can’t find little cippolini onions. I’ve tried regular boiled onions and they were a pain. It’s really not that big of a deal if you leave them out.
Onward with the Roman-Style Chicken!
Ingredients:
- 1 package of chicken (I use boneless skinless thighs)
- 1/2 package (or 1/2 lb) bacon (this is supposed to be prosciutto)
- salt and pepper
- olive oil
- 1 orange bell pepper, 1 yellow bell pepper, chopped into bite-size pieces
- 1 15-oz. can diced tomatoes
- 1/2 cup white wine (doh! I only had red)
- 1/2 cup chicken stock
- 1/4 tsp minced garlic (paste for the lazy)
- a dash of oregano
- a few snips of fresh thyme leaves (if you happen to have it)
- (I skipped the capers because Toby doesn’t like them)
Directions:
- Season chicken with pepper and salt.
- Brown chicken lightly on both sides in olive oil in a pan. Remove and set aside.
- In the same pan add peppers and bacon. Cook until bacon is crispy (ish) and peppers are browned.
- Add garlic and cook for 1 minute.
- Add tomatoes (with juice), wine and herbs.
- Return chicken to pan. Add stock and bring mixture to a boil.
- Reduce heat and simmer until chicken is done. About 20-30 minutes.
Her recipe says to scrape the brown bits off the bottom of the pan but I’ve never had that… I may be missing something in this part of the recipe but it still tastes good.
Serve with potatoes and a green salad and enjoy!
Upcoming: Day six is leftovers again and day seven is lasagna but I’m taking a rain check on the lasagna because I made a quick trip out to the sticks instead. Next week perhaps!
