More on Cooking Light

I was in the grocery store a couple of days ago buying Greek yogurt, Hoisin sauce, chives, basil, and Kalamata olives. The woman at the cash register asked me what I was making with all these ingredients. Caught off guard, I fumbled around for a second and then explained my new kick. I honestly didn't know what I was making until I got to the recipe and then I was sure to have the ingredients.

What is really great about Cooking Light is that if you are cooking on a regular basis, from a menu that doesn't consist of a lot of convenience foods, you will have a good majority of the ingredients that the recipes call for. I have had to stock some things, like the ones I mentioned, but I figure if I keep cooking like this, I'll have everything I need on hand.

One mistake I have made in the past is trying to substitute ingredients in order to save a trip to the grocery store. That has blown up in my face on more than one occasion. This time I decided I would pay for whatever I needed in exchange for re-establishing my reputation as a good cook.

It helps that my kids are adventurous eaters. I think they've learned that they would rather try it than starve. Last night I made these tostadas and they were awesome. The litmus on my cooking is always Dale, so I was very pleased when he said with a mouthful of food, "This is delicious!" It's worth the little bit of extra effort to win that affirmation.

I want to help if I can because I know a lot of my friends struggle with this very thing. It makes cooking a chore when you know it's not really appreciated. What I do is rip the page straight out of the magazine if I think the picture looks good or that it's something Dale would like. I make a menu and shopping list straight from the pages and then tape each page in order to the inside of the cabinet door above my ingredient pantry. It a little primitive, but it really works for me. Having the pictures and knowing the ingredients are ready and waiting to be used inspires me. After I prepare the meal, I mark on the page whether we liked it or not, and how it needs to be tweaked for the next time. Like I said, if you can't get the magazine, you can get all the recipes from cookinglight.com. I ordered the magazine from a kid working a fundraiser and got two years for $12 or something like that, so you may want to watch for travelling salesmen.

Another thing the women at the grocery store were saying was that they had purchased other books and magazines and the recipes were difficult to prepare or the food turned out badly. So far I have not had a single recipe that I wouldn't make again. If you need a push, email me and I'll send you a list of recipes to try. Now go and have a happy Friday, and be nice to your kids!!!

Date Night

Marriage is a funny thing. I have always been an optimist, not just your average run-of-the-mill optimist, but a polar optimist. As in, if pessimism is the south pole I'm on the flag pole of the north pole right at the top. You would think life and it's hard-knock blessings would force me to be cynical and thus lower my expectations, but I'm a die-hard. Don't get me wrong, I can be very cynical, but if you could look past the superficial feelings, you'd find the shining light of optimism brewing underneath.

This made our first year of marriage sort of a battle zone; Dale with his *hard dose of reality* hat and me fighting tooth and nail to hang on to my own belief that our marriage could be what I thought our marriage should look like was an explosive combination. Mad-dog tenacity doesn't give up easily, either. I've had to let go of a lot of my expectations over the years, but learning that lesson was one of the saving graces of my life. With that said, I still have not fully accepted it.

So last night, when Dale picked me up for our date, I was a little let down that he didn't comment on the way that I walked down the sidewalk to the car, or my new lipstick, or the dress that I fussed over for fifteen minutes before he arrived. I was moderately disappointed that when I asked him what he was thinking about, he said, "The car," and not "How amazing you are." But when I called the kids to make sure they found the brownies that I had stashed away and forgotten about, he took over the crisis on the other end of the phone while I ran in to get us a table at the restaurant. Before the waitress came we were looking over the menu and he asked if I wanted to split. A few times during our dinner, he started conversation out of the silence because we really enjoy talking to each other. Then when we were finished with dinner rather than toodle around town just to stay out, he said, "Let's go home and play cards." It's what we do every night.

What is striking to me about all of these things that mean so much to me about my husband is that my expectations are desperately shallow and vain in comparison to the riches of true companionship. I couldn't have dreamed up a better match for myself, I'm so glad God did!!!

Cooking Light

While all of us are unique, our personalities, our styles of running a household and raising kids, our neurosis, there are some universal issues that plague us all. One of those things is mealtime. In the hours I've spent whining about this issue, I've discovered that we are all in the same boat.

I love to cook, I really do! The problem is that I the food that I make to be the best of whatever my eaters have eaten. This poses a problem after I cycle through my short list of "big hits". That's when I revert to some old standards that they will eat, and are good for them, but no one really enjoys. I really dread that part of the cycle and it discourages meal planning.

I've been getting Cooking Light Magazine for months now and I always look through them for ideas, but until this week have never made anything from them. After a few sobering complaints about the menu, I sat down, ripped out enough recipes for a week, made a grocery list and stocked the fridge and cabinets.

This is less of a commitment than it used to be because I can buy produce for pennies on the dollar, which means if a recipe doesn't turn out, I haven't spent a fortune on ingredients.

I'm happy to announce that all of the recipes I've attempted have turned out. Finally I feel like I have turned a corner, for now at least. *Remember that part on Dirty Dancing when Baby is dancing with Johnny on stage and she forgets what she's supposed to do so she reverts back to the thumb thing? That happens to me occasionally after a big epiphany like this. Don't be judging me if I fall off.* I just want to share my enthusiasm. It inspires me.

The Middle Ones

Jasmine and Tre are in a combo class together at school. For the first day they were supposed to bring a picture of themselves so that they could do a self-portrait. Rather than scroll through the scads of photos on the computer, we just snapped a couple right there in the yard.


The thing about these two is that they are so drastically different from each other, but in some ways they are very alike. If I had to give my children degrees of difficulty as far as behaviors go, I say Tre ranks in the top and Jas ranks in the bottom. They are polar opposites. But if they are each others' only option for a play date, you can bet they will have a grand ol' time together. They are just like that. Both of them have incredible personalities and super dramatic temperaments. They're mine and I love them just the way they are.

Hey, Happy Labor Day everyone!!! Celebrate your labor with a hot dog and a smile!

The Little Girls

I have some work I should be doing right now, but I don't really want to get up and do them. I'm stalling. When I came across these pictures, I thought it necessary to post them because I have these kids that rob you of all capability to reason. Thought you could use a dose of LollylollylollyPOP!

She's funny, and wild, and manic, and has crazy hair, and despises washing her face. She only wears dresses if you want her to wear pants. She can light up a room in a minute. She's four and she's mine.

When God gave us Deisha, I was shocked. I was in shock for most of my pregnancy as well as a good bit of her first year. You can imagine my surprise when I snapped out of it and realized I had a 15-month-old.

She is busy all the time. If there is even a minuscule elevation anywhere in her sights, she will attempt to climb it.

She gets up at the crack of dawn. It used to be like a bad dream; she woke up and screamed a blood-curdling scream to announce the arrival of the sun. Now she will stand up in her bed and say, "Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Mom. Mom. Mom. Hi. Hi. Mom. Hi." It's precious but if I don't hurry to get her up, the screams follow pretty quickly.

She can destroy a room in fifteen seconds flat. Her new thing is to pull all of the clothes out of her drawers. This sweater has become a travelling security blanket. She wants to wear it day and night. If she can find it, she will follow me around holding it up to me until I put it on her. When we took this photo, she was wearing her day clothes underneath the sweater and the dress. I figured out shortly after I added the dress at her bidding that she was dressing herself to go outside. When I wouldn't open the front door for her, she went on a hunt for a shoe and went right back to the door. Someone needs to tell her mother that she is desperate for more sunlight in her life!

PS I love all my kids this much, I just have more pictures of these two because they are at my side all day every day. Why are you always judging me??? (Note: thick Spanish accent, hokhay???)

On a darker note...

Political correctness in America plunges to a new low.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article6822127.ece

First Day of School

In case you haven't heard, we decided to join a charter school that is just opening this year for the first time. A charter school is basically a school that is funded by the state and caters to children's needs in ways that a public school doesn't. This charter is a hybrid program that incorporates classroom learning using the classical method with home schooling. They attend school two days a week and study at home three days a week. It's the perfect compromise. I couldn't have written the program to more perfectly suit my own individual needs.

To the utmost delight of these children, the official school year has begun. They have backpacks, pencil boxes, lunch boxes and a truckload of enthusiasm! I thought it would be a scramble to get out the door on time, but everyone was awake by seven. Everyone was dressed and packed up to go out the door by seven-thirty. We didn't have to leave for another hour. It was a long and torturous wait.

Deisha shared in the enthusiasm because she is up before seven every morning with only me to keep her company; I am usually dozing off on the couch until the other kids start getting out of the bed.

They ended up having a fantastic first day of school. They did their first chemistry experiment, making bread dough, they did portraits of their classmates, they had a Spanish lesson, and they made friends. Every one of them made a handful of friends that they can't wait to get back to.

I feel this incredible indebtedness to the director, a mom with a mission. More than that, I feel like God has given my family this bountiful gift that will impact them for years to come. Thank you, God, for tending to the little things.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, (yesterday) MOM!!!

Hey, Pretty Lady, it's your birthday! Three cheers for one fantastic gal! Hip Hip Hooray! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray! I hope you had a fantastic day. We love and miss you so, so much. May all your birthday wishes come true! xoxoxo

Happy Birthday (yesterday) LEILA!!!

My little bitty Lolly is four. It's the strangest thing. This year she not only recognized the significance of her birthday, she demanded that each of us tell her happy birthday at regular intervals throughout the day, which we did gladly because we love birthdays just about as much as we love anything.

She didn't expect much for her birthday because it's just not about all the bells and whistles, it's about being the center of attention for one day of the year. So we invited every member of our household to the party.

Of course, there were presents which she opened with in a whirlwind. **Thank you to all of our loving family members that sent boxes full of wonderful treasures for Leila and the rest of us. I'm getting soft in my thirties; I let her open the boxes the minute they came through the door. If you have an aversion to that, just write it on the box, and I will be happy to oblige. xoxo

We baked a cake and decorated it together. Most of the members of my family request a chocolate cake for their birthdays, but not Leila. She wanted a white cake with yellow and pink frosting. I loved decorating this cake, except that it was especially hot in my house and the frosting was not as stiff as I would have liked it to be. Because I am a little bit ghetto and don't like to clean out my pastry bag, I used sandwich bags instead and close to the end of my decorating, the tip on each color burst out of the hole in the corner of the bag along with a big blob of frosting. It was a good thing because when I set the cake in the fridge, the sriracha bottle fell and messed up another side of the cake. Because of the former disaster, I didn't cry over the later. Nor did I fuss when Leila put Eeyore on backwards or when Pooh bear rolled of the side three times. It was still yummy. I wish I would have cut myself half a piece though, after I figured up the calorie content of a piece of white cake with frosting. Then it wouldn't have mattered that I ate half of Leila's too.

We also had ice cream. Dale thought this was a detail important enough to chronicle with a photograph.

And we had Great Value Flavored Marshmallows too. I always thought that you spelled marshmallow with an e; M-A-R-S-H-M-E-L-L-O-W. Guess not. See? I never would have known if not for Dale's keen eye for the important things in life.

She loved every minute of this day, except for the hours following what would normally have been her bedtime when she was flying from hysteria to hysteria; laughing to crying. What can I say, she's my kid.

Happy Belated Birthday, to DEISHA!

For a few months I lost my momentum, so forgive me for playing a little bit of catch up. Deisha's first birthday was a smashing success!!!

There were Cheetos...

...and presents, and siblings...

...and very cool toys and sippy cups...

...and of course a Pooh Bear chocolate cake!

This wasn't your average Joe chocolate cake, this was a Hostess Cupcake. It's like a torte, four layers of cake and three layers of fluffy, white, delicious filling. It's the perfect celebratory dessert. Next time you come, I'll make you one. You'll love it.