Stir Cry

Well, I've already fallen behind on the menu challenge. I decided to take my kids on an overnight with skiing when my sister sprung the opportunity on me suddenly. I did manage to make dinner on Wednesday. We had the dinner known fondly as Stir Cry. It's a favorite of mine and my husband, but I bet you can guess how it got the name.

I start with a mix of fresh veggies. In this case it was cauliflower, broccoli, carrots and snow peas. Once it got cooking I added red pepper because it was looking boring. First, I heat up my stir fry pan and add some oil. I cut up some boneless chicken breasts and sautee until cooked through. Then I add about 1/8 cup of water and the veggies. I cover that and let them steam for about 15 minutes.


While that's going I mix up my stir fry sauce. I use:
* 1 cup broth (chicken or veggie, what ever I have on hand - boullion works in a pinch)
* 3 Tbsp white vinegar
* 3 Tbsp corn starch
* 2 Tbsp soy sauce
* 2 Tbps sugar


Blend those together and add to the pan. Stir that around until the sauce thickens up, with the heat on med-high. My kids think it's cool to watch the liquid change.






Serve with some rice of your choosing. We like Jasmine rice. Enjoy. Cover your ears to block the crying if you must. Actually, for the first time ever, this dinner did not cause any crying. Not even one little wimper! The key here for me was that my oldest ate early and was not present at this meal. Dastardly, I know, but without his negative vibe at the table, the littles actually tried the dinner and declared it not at all bad. In fact, Owen declared it yummy!

Oh, and lest you think my jaunt to the slopes was all fun and games... Here's a cute photo of Leah with her ski-school skis.

Here's how I spend my time from lunch on when she decided she "just don't like skiing". Sigh. I wish I'd brought my knitting!
Oh, and after that I got to drive home in a snowstorm. It took more than 5 hours to get to my sister's house. It should have taken two. So we spent the night there since my nerves were shot. I've never been so happy to see bare pavement in my life!

Menu Challenge #1

Tonight's menu challenge dinner was potatoes, onions and chickpeas (this dinner needs a title!). It's a recipe that I got from Mars, and DH and I really like it. Two of my kids will eat it and one won't. Sigh.

Anyway, I started with 1 1/2 onions, chopped, and three yukon gold potatoes. I sauteed the onions in olive oil until they were very soft. Then I added the potatoes. I cook them together for quite a bit, and I like the crispy bits too so maybe a bit hotter than I should.




Finally, I add turmeric and curry powder and stir them up until coated. Then I add 1 can of chick peas and heat them through. As you can see, I'm still learning my new not non-stick pan here. I know the heat-it-up-before-adding-oil-then-food trick, but I still get quite a bit of sticking. I'll get there eventually though.




Looks pretty on my white plate, don't you think? Yes, it's a spare meal but we don't eat much. I couldn't think of anything to serve with it other than steamed broccoli, which is one of the few veggies all three kids will eat. I would love to hear some suggestions for vegetable side dishes!

I wonder what I'll feel like making tomorrow night?

Menu Challenge

A friend of mine challenged me to come up with, stick to, and blog about a menu plan. A group of us are meeting the challenge and supporting each other along the way. My goals for this challenge are simple. Have a plan so I don't face that 4pm "oh crud, I have no dinner plan" moment. I am famous for that revelation. My second goal is to remind myself that I do know how to cook, and that there are meals that my kids will eat, even if I find them boring. I just need to find ways to make them more interesting for the grown-ups.

So, I let my kids know that I am planning our meals for the next week, and gave them each a chance to put something they want on the menu. Hopefully this will help quell the inevitable complaints, knowing that something they want is coming up. Following are the ideas I have so far. I'm not sure if I will put them into a calendar or see what I feel like making each day. I have a feeling I'm going to have to be very structured, but of course I am resisting it ;)

Dinners:
* Tacos (O's choice)
* Black Bean Soup (L's choice)
* Hamburgers and fries (C's choice)
* Curried potatoes and chickpeas
* Pork tenderloin with herbed potatoes and southwestern corn
* Stir fry (fondly known as stir cry here)

Lunch:
* Tuna melts (R's choice)
* Mini pizzas
* Tofu nuggets (trying a recipe)
* Quesadillas
* Sandwiches
* Leftovers (how thrilling!)

Breakfast is generally a free-for-all of oatmeal, cream of wheat, cereal, or eggs. Since we are on vacation this week, I'm going to do a few mornings of a real, sit down breakfast including:
* Pancakes (with sweetpotato, shhhhh)
* Scrambled egg burritos
* French toast
* Crockpot oatmeal

If you know me, you know that this is an ambitious plan. I'm a wing-it person by nature, but it's not doing my family a whole lot of good. When I go shopping later, I'm going to try and squeeze in as many organics and healthy options as I can in my basic menu.

Since I can't post without a picture, here's what my kids are up to as I type.

Dinner Wars

I have three children with very different eating habits and tastes. One thing is pretty universal with them though, dinner is a battle. So much so that I often am very unhappy at the table, wishing I could run away. That's no way to approach dinner, with dread. I've tried various things... the one bite rule, the no complaining or you leave the table rule, the leave it on your plate rule... no true improvements to be had.

So, I heard about the books Sneaky Chef and Deceptively Delicious. The concept sounded great to me. Hide some veggies in your main meal and then you don't have to deal with the battle. Well, that's all fine and dandy but I wasn't convinced. Deceptively Delicious was the first to come off the hold list at the library, so that's what I tried first.

The first step with these recipes is to make some vegetable purees. I first tried sweet potato since I had it on hand. I froze it in freezer bags, squeezing out the air and using my finger to score the bag into 1/2 and 1/4 cup sizes.



Some of the recipes we have tried so far have been successful. One son particularly liked the pancakes (no this isn't dinner, but still) though thought they had too much cinnamon.



The recipe for mini "donuts" with sweet potato and pumpkin was also popular. But, my kids already like pumpkin bread so this wasn't a stretch.



No one, including me, liked the hamburgers we tried. These had carrots hidden in them, among other things. They were more like meatballs than burgers, which was totally not what they were expecting. I think that's the key, that the recipe has to be fairly close to what they expect.



I have yet to try the recipes with other hidden veggies, like cauliflower and spinach. So the verdict is still out on this book for me, but I'm going to keep trying. I think the sly meal that has been the most successful is my own evolving chili, which has pureed sauteed carrots and onions. I also use ground turkey, adding flax meal, and puree the tomatoes for my chunk averse child. 2 out of 3 kids love it, so it's a keeper!



I love reading blogs about food, so feel free to send links my way!

Repair accomplished!

A couple of days ago I sat down to fix the cable problem on my Mr. Greenjeans sweater. I had inadvertently forgotten to cross one of the cables for several rows. Oops! Following a tutorial on Yarn Harlot, I opted to drop stitches for this fix, rather than frogging back several tedious rows. Gulp. Want to see the magic?

Here you see I've dropped several rows down. I had trouble counting rows, so I had to drop all the way down to where I knew there was a correct cable. I've put those stitches on 2 DPNs, crossed them the correct way, and then slipped them to one needle. Then, I use the strand of yarn from the next row up to knit the stitches. No purling, just slide the DPN over and work the next row again.
Slow going, but making progress!
Finally, all cables crossed correctly and back on the main needles. Whew! It was a bit nerve racking, but I have to say, knowing that I can go in and fix my mistakes like this certainly makes me a more confident knitter.
Now that I'm working the sleeves, hopefully I'll make quick progress. I really want to have this finished in time to go out to Seattle to visit my friends!

Also...

I've been trying some recipes from the book Deceptively Delicious. Some are hits, some are misses. I'd like to record which ones we liked and why, so I hope to do that shortly!

Death by Hat

I joined the Hat Attack! on Ravelry. It's a fun game with assassins and targets, modeled after Sock Wars. Your objective is to knit a hat faster than your assassin, and kill off your target. The pattern is a binary cable hat that was released Saturday morning. I had mine done by dinner, despite an error that caused me to start over. However I missed the last mail run so my weapon will not be in the mail until Monday.

Sadly, my assassin has also finished her weapon so my death is imminent. Ah well, it was fun while it lasted and hey, I'll get a neat hat for my efforts! Hopefully there will be another game soon.

Rip-ity Do Da

One of the things I like to do in my spare (ha, ha) time is knit. I'm in a big sewing slump, and knitting affords me a creative outlet that's portable, relatively small and contained, and I can do it where the kids are.

So, I've been working on my first sweater for myself. It's Mr. Greenjeans from knitty.com using yummy malabrigo worsted wool and so far it's been going well. I had to rip back to fix a mis-crossed cable and that was a pain, but I did it.


Well, I'm getting ready to bind off the bottom row and, oops! What's that? (pardon the flash)
That's right, I completely stopped crossing one of the cables! Not sure how I managed that feat of brilliance. Needless to say I was less than thrilled at the idea of frogging back three cable repeats to fix it (that's 12 long rows). After hunting around a bit, I found this tute on Yarn Harlot about fixing cables gone wrong. As you can see above, I have inserted a spare needle and taken the live stitches off the needle. *Gulp* Wish me luck!

Reclaiming My Happiness

For a long time, perhaps most of my life, I've been a "Woe is me" person. You know, "woe is me, my house is a mess, my kids don't help, my husband is a packrat, I'm out of shape, I'll be 40 in a few years, I'm bad at maintaining friendships..." On and on it goes.

You know what? I'm lazy. There, I put it out there for the world. I am lazy, fairly selfish, but I don't want to be that way anymore.

No one is going to organize my home if I don't do it myself. My kids won't learn to clean up after themselves and be self-motivated if I don't teach them and show them how. My husband is not going to stop being a clutter bug. I'm going to have to live with it/work around it.

I spend a lot of time thinking about organizing and cleaning and making my home nicer. The little bit I've done lately helps, but it's not enough. So, taking some inspiration from the Reclaiming the Home group on Ravelry and from blogs like Little Turtle Knits, I'm starting today. February 1st.

Time to stop surfing and get to work!