A Swing and a Miss

I did not starve my family this week, which is the most important take away of this post.

Menu for Oct. 12-Oct.17

Sunday: Waffles 

--This is what I planned but not what we actually had.  I don't remember what we actually had.


Monday: Cajun Meatloaf (Bon Appetit, p. 388), Roasted potatoes (mix of regular and sweet potatoes), veggies and hummus

--We did eat this, very tasty
       

Taco Tuesday: Chicken fajitas


Sandwich Wednesday: Fried Egg Sandwich with Pancetta and Arugula (maybe spinach instead of Arugula--easier to use up).  P. 158 Bon Appetit

--This didn't happen either.  I was in Phoenix all day Wednesday and got home late,  and Moses was running around dealing with a car in the shop so everybody sorted their own dinner.  I think the boy made himself a quesadilla, I had veggies and hummus with a side of toast, and I guess Moses ate something too.  On a side note, I had waffles and fried chicken  for the first time for lunch on Wednesday (thus my lack of interest in dinner).  I always thought waffles and chicken was some sort of fancy waffle and chicken conglomeration but it turns out it is just fried chicken sitting a plate next to a waffle.  I'm not sure how I feel about that because it seemed pretty random.

Thursday: Leftovers
--This didn't even happen.  G. had climbing club and we grabbed Chipolte afterwards.

Friday: Pizza

--Not even pizza is happening because G is headed to a friend's house after school I'm going to save pizza for tomorrow. I think I'll make the Fried Egg Sandwich with Pancetta for Moses and myself tonight, since we have all the stuff and because: menu plan fail.

Watch out for Falling Objects

This of course is not that actual meteor I saw, but it was about that size.

This morning I was about halfway through the suckiest, slowest, most miserable run I have had in quite some time when I happened to look up at the right moment, and....a METEOR FELL FROM THE SKY.  In a flash of light and ball of FIRE.  For reals (I checked with the women next to me, they saw it too).  It was big, or at least big compared with what you usually see if you are star-gazing at night.  I was tempted to say "only in Flagstaff" but of course there was that huge meteor in Russia a year or so ago.  So, Russia and Flagstaff.  Unfortunately, the ball of fire falling from the sky did not make my run hurt less--it wasn't one of those magical balls of fire--but it did give me something to thing about besides how much my feet hurt.

This week's dinners: 
Oct. 4-Oct. 10

Saturday: BLTs

Sunday: Crock Pot Turkey White Bean Chili.  I recommend at least doubling the spices for this recipe, otherwise it is good but bland.
               Dessert: Ice cream (lame compared with last week, but you can't go big every week, maybe I'll fry up an apple in butter and cinnamon to go with it)

Monday: Crock Pot Santa Fe Chicken with rice.

Taco Tuesday:  Tacos with leftover Santa Fe Chicken as the main filler. (I'm actually just hoping that this will work.  I have not made the Santa Fe Chicken before so don't really know if it'll make good taco filling, but it seems like it'll be okay).

Sandwich Wednesday: Mediteranean Chicken Wraps with veggies and hummus.

Thursday: Leftovers

Friday: Pizza

Middle School

G. came home today and, as per his usual habit, wandered up to my office to say hello.  And with him wafted in what I can only describe as the odoriferous fumes of Satan's grandmother.  "DEAR GOD, what is that smell?" I asked.  Except I omitted the "DEAR GOD" part because I thought it sounded kind of judge-y and I am really trying to back off that sort of thing as a mother.

G.: "Oh! Chocolate-mint hand sanitizer! Doesn't it smell so good?!"  Said while shoving his hands into my face--you'll be relieved to know I did not pass out.

I suppose chocolate-mint is preferable to this.

Me (in my head): "WTF is chocolate-mint hand sanitizer?"  This stuff smells like neither chocolate nor mint, but like....well, Satan's grandmother on Sunday morning. Satan's blue-haired grandmother who lost all sense of olfactory reasonableness 50 years ago and bathed in a vat of "eau de hideous-floral-chemical" before showing up at church with the intent of rendering unconscious every living creature in a five mile radius.

Me (out loud and non judge-ily): "Huh. Where did you get it?"

Boy (with a grin): "Girls."

I peg my chances of surviving my child's adolescence at about 50/50.



This week's dinner menu (Sept. 27-Oct. 3):

Saturday: Pizza (Holdover from the last week-G. had a school dance on Friday so Moses and I headed out for happy hour and tapas)

Sunday: Roasted Salmon with Orange Herb Sauce (Bon Appetit Every-Night Cooking), Roasted Potatoes and Salad
               Dessert: pound cake with vanilla ice cream and cider sauce (also Every-Night Cooking)

Monday: Chicken Verde Soup (Every-Night Cooking) and garlic bread.  This was meh--fancy title, but basically just chicken soup with all green vegetables.

Taco Tuesday: Citrusy Black-Bean Taquitos (Forks over Knives)  This was not great, and in retrospect I should have known.  The recipe required a fair amount of prep, had several steps, involved a food processor (a sure sign of fussiness), and did not involve frying the taquitos.  And it was vegan.  Not-fried, vegan taquitos are soul-crushingly disappointing.

Sandwich Wednesday: Grilled prosciutto and fontina cheese sandwiches with fresh basil (Every-Night Cooking)

Thursday: Leftovers

Friday: Pepperoni Pizza.
Movie: Good Will Hunting.  G. enjoys movies with people who effortlessly do genius things, like Tony Stark creating the Ironman suit out of scrap metal and delusional thinking, so I'm betting he'll like this movie.  And probably pick up some techniques for deploying swear words, hopefully not while I'm around.)

Playing Catch Up

Since I was out of town last weekend, my wonderful husband came up with this week's menu:

Sunday:  Chicken fajitas

Monday: Pasta Salad with Ham

Tuesday: Beef Kabobs with Rosemary and Lemon (Science of Good Cooking p. 127)

Wednesday: Chicken with Lemon and Parsley (Science of Good Cooking p. 131)

Thursday: leftovers

Friday: Pizza (probably Hawaiian since we have both ham and pineapple).

As an added bonus, he is cooking too!  I find it hilarious that he gravitates toward the Science of Good Cooking book,which I think is interesting in a general sense, but unnecessarily fussy and not super-helpful when trying to get dinner on the table, where I prefer anything with "easy" in the title. Getting back into town on Sunday was probably not a great plan on my part as I feel like I've been trying to remember where I left my brain for the past couple of days.  Probably I should check the fridge.

12 Miles

I'm training for this year's Tucson's Marathon and this Saturday's long run is 12 miles.  Not my

Out of pavement.

longest run ever, but enough to require some planning and dash of courage.  Probably I should stop thinking about it and all of the other runs on my training schedule.  Also, believe it or not, it is hard to find 12 miles worth of pavement when you live in a small town.  Five miles will get you get you from one side of town to the other other, six kind of leaves you out in the woods or onto the highway. Probably I will just run in circles.

Anyway, we're hitting Pickin' in the Pines this weekend, after I'm done suffering on Saturday morning, so I'm using my flex day tomorrow for house cleaning and grocery shopping.  Which leaves us with next week's dinner menu.

Sept. 13-20

Saturday: chili (in the crock pot)

Sunday: Crunchy Wasabi Salmon with Lime (Bon Appetit p. 308)

Monday: pasta salad

Tuesday: black bean tacos 

Wednesday: hamburgers, veggies and hummus

Thursday: nachos

Friday: Hawaiian pizza

I feel the need to explain that I will be out of town starting Wednesday and the latter part of the menu was the invention of the guys in my house.  Absence of redeeming nutritional value is totally not my fault.

This Week in Dinners

I think the blog was originally invented as a place to communicate your deep and meaningful thoughts to the world, and probably not somewhere to store random things that your ever-aging brain no longer has room for, but it seems the things I want to talk about most these days are not so much deep and meaningful but more along the lines of "this all speeding by so fast, if I don't write down somewhere I will forget all of it, and why did I put the cereal away in the fridge?".  In that vein, I'm going start posting my weekly dinner menu.  I've been making weekly menus for quite some time now (seems like the week goes better if I make all of the dinner decision all at once) but I typically write it down on a dry erase board.  And then I erase it. And then I a few months later I notice we are in a rut and remember that one really great week when I tried a bunch of new things that everybody like to eat but can't for the life of me remember what they are.  So, thank you Internet for being a permanent record of everything I type into you.

This week's dinner menu:

Sept. 7-12

Sunday: Cornbread Casserole and salad

Monday: "Pizza" Salad (this is really just antipasto salad but the boy likes it better if you call it pizza salad) and garlic toast

Tuesday: Tacos (with ground turkey)

Wednesday: Cheesy stuffed baked potatoes and roasted vegetables

Thursday: leftovers (such a great night, it's like someone else cooked).

Friday: pepperoni and black olive pizza

Friday nights we usually watch a movie while we eat pizza.  This week we've got "Non-Stop" with Liam Neesom and Lady Mary.  Pretty sure Lady Mary will kick terrorist booty with snide remarks and a withering gaze.  It would be awesome if the Dowager Countess was also on the plane, but alas, you cannot have all of the things all of the time.

Book Review: 25 Shades of Grey

That book? The one that's getting all the buzz? Yeah, I read it.  Well, I read half of it, thus confirming that I will read half any piece of crap if it gets sufficient buzz.  And I have to say, it was awful.  I know you are thinking, "but Kerry, you have an incredibly high tolerance for all sorts of crap, how bad could this book have been?"  Well, writing-wise, not worse than much of the other literary swill I have chugged in my life: for sure the writing in this book is toward the bottom end of the swill spectrum, but, to be fair, not in the dregs.  Maybe dregs-adjacent. The thing with this book is...it was...it was ugh.. it was just.... ARRGHH.  No, not the sex parts.  If you have ever read Primitive Sex One, Two, and Three, or, you know, are an adult, there is nothing in 50 Shades that is really that shocking (at least in the first half of Book One).  I just hated the main character, Anastasia Whatsherface, and hated even more that a female author would create such a weak, wishy-washy, powerless, mostly spineless female character who is so....ARGGHH.  The basic premise of this book is that the male lead character is a super rich dude into BDSM who offers the "heroine" a deal where she will be the submissive to his dominant for 3 months or so, and during which time she will do everything he requires of her, no questions asked, in every aspect of her life down to what she will wear and what she can eat.  And the main character CONSIDERS this.  At which point I started screaming "what? WHAT?!! IDIOT GIRL WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT."  And then. AND THEN. Mr. Billionaire presents her with a "contract" to sign that outlines--in fake legalize--the terms of the deal, and my inner lawyer has a stroke from the stupidity, and that is how far I got in that book.  I have no idea what happens in the rest of Book One or in the rest of the series because I suspect neither Anastasia or the dude fall off cliffs, are accidentally impaled by icicles, or slip on the tile and drown in the infinity pool, which are I believe the only palatable resolutions to that story.  So. Yeah.  I wouldn't really recommend this book.