New Kitchen Tools

My kitchen has two new additions. I got a beautiful red kitchen aid mixer because it was way on sale and I got a bunch more money off of it because the deals were so good at JC Penny's that day, it was literally half off which is unheard of for those things. The other new appliance is a pressure cooker that was on QVC as the today's special value the other day. I am super excited about both of them. First up, the kitchen aid mixer. We tried making the 25 calorie cookies from the back of the bag of sugar substitute but they were really gross, so don't bother. Next I'm making chocolate chip cookies. I have all the stuff, I'm just waiting until I have more time to do it. I don't feel like making cookies and cleaning up at 10:30 at night. I also can't wait for pierogi fest because it will make making the dough so much easier. I tried the pressure cooker out the other night too. This is not the pressure cooker you remember your mom using (I don't think my mom ever had one because they were so dangerous). This one is electric and has all sorts of safety features. I can brown my meat in it before turning it on the pressure setting. I can also steam things instead of pressure cooking them or even use it as a crock pot. The very best part is that I can do a whole pot roast in about an hour! It would take me at least 3 hours to bake it. That was the biggest reason I bought the pressure cooker. It wasn't very expensive and I could cut my cooking time way down by using it. I'm going to look for some recipes designed specifically for a pressure cooker. The first one I tried was one I found on sparkpeople.com and it was not designed for a pressure cooker so I just improvised. It turned out pretty well. The meat was so tender and I only cooked it for 20 minutes (it was cut into bite sized pieces instead of a whole roast). I'd never made it before so I don't know if the pressure cooker version turned out any differently than the stove top version. The kids, of course, refused to eat it but they refuse to eat pretty much anything that isn't a chicken nugget, hot dog, pizza or Kraft shells and cheese. Maybe when they're older they'll try new things again.

Really Yummy (and some downright gross stuff too)

My sister got the Cook Yourself Thin cookbook and brought it over to my moms so I could check it out. I thought it looked pretty promising so I bought it too. It was well worth the $13 I spent. Its full of healthy recipes that actually taste good and it has some nifty ways to get some veggies in your kids, like sneaking zucchini into cupcakes. So far I've made shrimp tacos with pineapple mango salsa and spicy black beans and sweet and sour pork with brown rice and both were awesome. The shrimp tacos were way out of my box but I'm trying to be a little more adventurous these days so I gave it a shot. I will definitely be making both of these meals again. Tomorrow night I'm making the stuffed shells. I'm betting they'll be awesome as well. My kids won't try any of this stuff but I'm hoping the cupcakes with zucchini will fool them into thinking they're getting total junk food when there's actually something good for you hidden inside. I've been trying to find time to make them for 3 days but I've been busy. Tomorrow, maybe, though because I think Tim is going to take the boys to the pool to try to sign Collin up for lessons. They start tomorrow and I've had all month to sign him up but we've been busy and it just hasn't happened yet. Here's hoping he gets a spot because the lessons are really great. He gets 15 minutes twice a week in the pool with an instructor. He made great strides last year so I'm hoping this year will be equally successfully. Next year I'm going to sign Nick up as well, he's too young this year. You have to be 3 and potty trained. We're working on the potty training thing and so far its going very well. Just about any time I prompt him to use the potty he goes no problem. Occasionally he even tells me he needs to go. He has never asked his sitter to use the potty so she is going to start asking him if he'd like to use it there as well. Its going so much easier than it did with Collin because he's doing it all by himself. I never pushed him, he just did it one day. All I ever do is ask if he needs to go and help him get his pants off and on. He's even managed to poop in the potty a couple of times. And speaking of poop, it's my boys absolute favorite word right now, they insert it into just about every sentence somewhere. As in "I want to play super Mario poop" or "old MacDonald had a poop". Nick walked by one day saying something about poop as I was working with Collin on sounding out different words. I had a moment where I regressed to their mentality and spelled poop on the etch-a-sketch thingy (it's not an etch-a-sketch but I can't think of what it is called). Anyway, I only wrote it the one time, that's it. I never mentioned it again and didn't really think a whole lot about it until a few days later when Collin informed me he could spell poop. Then he proceeded to correctly spell poop and proudly tell me that I had taught him how to spell it. Great! I've been working on stuff like cat for weeks and half the time he screws that up. I spell poop once and he memorizes it. It figures....

Yummy

Tonight I made French Onion Soup for dinner. It was an easy recipe I found on the Internet and it turned out really good. All it required was onions, beef broth, beef consume and Worcestershire sauce. Its all stuff that I usually have on hand so I'm glad I found this recipe. All I'll need to pick up at the store is french bread and cheese. I'll definitely make it again. Even Nick enjoyed it I made the boys Mac-N-Cheese for dinner because I had been promising Collin he could have it. After he finished his dinner, Nick climbed up in my lap and ate some of mine. He really seemed to enjoy it. I'm not sure he would eat a whole bowl, but he ate a fair amount of what was left in mine.

How I spent my day off...

We are so slow at work right now that I was able to take today off. I got up at 6:45 when Collin woke up (way better than the 5:10 I usually wake up), got the boys dressed and sent them to daycare with Daddy and the promise of a surprise when I picked them up if they were good. After that I let the dog out, grabbed a shower, put Collin's books back in his book case (they'd been in a laundry basket all week because he dumped them all out of his book case and I took them away), made the beds, sat down and had a yogurt for breakfast, then I went back upstairs and gathered up every piece of laundry I could find. I have been really good about doing laundry but, as usual, the clean laundry has piled up on me and I had 4 huge laundry baskets to fold and put away, not to mention the 2 loads of towels, the load of lights, the load of darks, the load of jeans, the load of reds and the bathroom rugs that I had just dragged down to the laundry room. I tossed the first load in and grabbed a basket to sort and put away. A couple hours later the clean laundry was completely put away and I was even done with the first load of today's pile. I grabbed a quick peanut butter sandwich for lunch and went back to work. I cleaned up the living room and the dining room and vacuumed the whole downstairs. Then I went upstairs and vacuumed the bedrooms and the steps. Then I cleaned my bathroom top to bottom and ran back downstairs to clean the half bath as well. Since I had the Windex out, I cleaned the sliding glass door and the glass in the front door as well. In between chores I ran up and down the stairs grabbing another load of clean laundry as it finished drying and putting it away. At 3:45 I called the cops on the jackass that's been riding his motorcycle down my sidewalk for the last 2 days and ran to pick up the boys. On the way I stopped at 7-11 and picked up slurpees for the boys Good thing I did it too because all Collin talked about all day long was that he was going to get a surprise when he got home. Of course I walked in and Collin said "where's Dad?" Huh? I thought he'd be happy to see me but he wanted his Daddy, apparently when he wasn't talking about his surprise he was talking about how Daddy was picking him up. The slurpees in the car made him forget how disappointed he was that I picked him up instead of Daddy. By the time Tim got home I was in no mood to cook so we went to Macaroni Grill for dinner. The boys were so well behaved. It was just so nice to go out as a family and make it through an entire dinner without having to correct either one of them for bad behavior. When we got home I pulled the very last load out of the dryer and put it away. As of right now the only dirty laundry in the entire house is the stuff we wore today. I will wash that along with the sheets tomorrow. It feels so good to come home to a clean house. It also feels good to accomplish something rather than just chilling out and relaxing all day, not that there's anything wrong with that, it's exactly what I plan to do tomorrow.

Chef Collin

I was fortunate enough to have a lovely afternoon with my husband (without the kids) and we went out to a late lunch so the kids were thrilled to hear they could have mac-n-cheese for dinner. Collin grabbed his apron and chef hat and helped fix dinner. For a change, he was willing to let me take his picture, even smiling multiple times because for some reason the pictures kept coming out blurry. This is one of the better ones I got.

Tim Rocks

I spend most of my time blogging about my kids and while I mention my husband sometimes it's usually just as it relates to whatever situation my kids have gotten themselves into so I thought I'd take a minute and mention that he absolutely rocks and I really do appreciate everything he does. Today, for instance, he switched his work schedule around so that he could be home with the kids since their sitter is off. Then he changed Nick's doctor's appointment from tomorrow to today since I told him Nick really isn't feeling well and I think he has an ear infection and I would have to take off tomorrow to get him to the appointment. He does, by the way, have another ear infection. This makes 4 in 3 and a half months! After he took the kids to the doctor, he picked up Nick's prescription and did a little grocery shopping since I didn't have time to go this weekend and he made dinner. It was a dinner that I wouldn't have put together but I really enjoyed it. He made salmon (which I generally don't like but Tim marinates it in something that makes it taste good) with vegetables (in a teriyaki sauce I think) and quinoa. I LOVE quinoa. According to Wikipedia:

Quinoa was of great nutritional importance in pre-Columbian Andean civilizations, being secondary only to the potato, and followed in third place by maize. In contemporary times this crop has come to be highly appreciated for its nutritional value, as its protein content is very high (12%–18%). Unlike wheat or rice (which are low in lysine), quinoa contains a balanced set of essential amino acids for humans, making it an unusually complete food. It is a good source of dietary fiber and phosphorus and is high in magnesium and iron. Quinoa is gluten free and considered easy to digest. Because of all these characteristics, quinoa is being considered as a possible crop in NASA's Controlled Ecological Life Support System for long-duration manned spaceflights.

You cook quinoa basically the same way you cook rice and we use it in place of rice with a lot of dishes, my favorite being Rachel Ray's Curry in a Hurry (I'll post the recipe soon). If you buy it in an organic food store like MOM's you can get it really inexpensively. Anyway, Tim made the entire dinner and when he served it, it looked and tasted like something you'd get in a restaurant. I was quite impressed with his healthy and tasty meal. He then cleaned up the meal while I spent some time playing with the kids. He watched the kids, cooked and cleaned and now he's busy studying. What a guy! Honey, you really are Super Dad!

Mmmm.. Yummy!

I love mashed potatoes. I grew up eating them almost every night and they were always homemade, never from a box. I've tried instant mashed potatoes and they're just gross. That being said, I was in Costco with the boys the other day and they had free samples of Paradise Valley Creamy Mash Potatoes. Nick was mad because Collin was eating something I couldn't share with him when we passed them so I picked up a cup knowing that Nick loves mashed potatoes and it was sure to quiet him down. I was right. He LOVED them and boy was he mad when they were gone. I went back and got a second cup so I could try them too. They are really good! I bought a box, I think I paid $8 and change for 16 bags that serve 8 each. OK, in my house no one eats just a half cup of mashed potatoes but it does easily serve the four of us with some left over. They are the closest thing I've ever had to homemade from a box. At less than a dollar for each bag, they're cheaper than buying a bag of potatoes and the best part is they take less than 5 minutes to make! If you make them the low fat way (without all the yummy butter and milk) its 80 calories per serving and only half a gram of fat. With all the butter and milk its 140 calories. I don't eat mashed potatoes very often any more but this is a quick and yummy option to keep on hand.

The Food Mill

When Collin was a baby his pediatrician told us that we shouldn't really bother with baby food, instead buy a food mill and grind up whatever we were eating for him. The first meal I tried it with was Thanksgiving and although he loved the mashed potatoes, everything else was immediately rejected. I found this discouraging and didn't really bother with it much after that. Now that Nick is old enough to eat table foods the doctor once again gave us the same advice and I decided to give it another try. I am so glad I did. He doesn't like meats any better than his brother but I discovered that if you mix it in with applesauce, he loves it! I can grind anything up and mix it with water, gravy, whatever other liquid we have on hand and he's been eating it pretty well. Baby food is still nice for those nights when we have something really spicy or just totally inappropriate and for when we go out to eat, but its nice to not be tied to it this time around. When I bought it for Collin 2 years ago it was $2 cheaper but it didn't come with the carrying case. Back then I would have told you it was a total waste of money but now I'm glad I spent it. Baby food is expensive!

Mmmmm.... Good!

Last night I made meatloaf and mashed potatoes for dinner. I knew Collin would eat the mashed potatoes but what surprised me was that he ate his peas first and then asked for more! Since Nick is just beginning to eat cereal and apple sauce he sits in his high chair at the table with us while we eat. It's really important to me that we eat as a family whenever possible. Anyway, I gave him a little scoop of mashed potatoes to keep him occupied while we ate. I figured it was soft and wouldn't hurt him to try it. At first he just played with it, spreading it all over his tray. Then, because he's a big thumb sucker, he got some in his mouth and realized it was really good!
He couldn't get enough mashed potatoes! I think I ended up giving him 4 little scoops of them. He had more on him and his high chair than in his mouth but he thoroughly enjoyed every mouthful.
I can't wait for Thanksgiving dinner! He'll have mashed potatoes and a little bit of stuffing (I'll have to feed that to him so I can make sure the pieces are small enough) and maybe even some jellied cranberry sauce. He's an excellent eater!

Just Me and My Boys

Tim is working an evening shift tonight so I had the kids all to myself. They were such angels! Collin asked for a peanut butter banana with strawberries and pretzels for dinner so that's what he got since I didn't have anything else planned and that's pretty healthy. Nick got his apple sauce which he eats like it is going out of style! I have to watch Collin very closely now that Nick is eating "real" foods because he asked for apple sauce too and while my back was turned he began feeding it to Nick. He also shared his sippy cup of watered down grape juice with his little brother. When I saw how he was sharing with his brother I was very proud and helped him hold the sippy cup for Nick. It took a few moments, but Nick did figure out how to suck on it so he got the juice and he REALLY liked it. He cried when I took it away but I don't want him to have a lot of juice. I fixed him a bottle instead which he tried very hard to hold himself. He's becoming very interested in what we are eating. Last night I had a popsicle while hold him and he literally threw himself at the popsicle trying to get it in his mouth. He really liked that too and I think, in addition to tasting good, it probably feels good on his little gums. He was really mad when it got down to the stick and I wouldn't let him have any more because I didn't want to choke him trying to get it in his mouth. At 7:15, I took the boys upstairs to get ready for bed. Nick played in his bouncy seat while I gave Collin a bath and got him into his jammies. Then we all read some stories and sang night night songs and tucked Collin into bed. Then it was time for Nick to take his bath. He really seems to enjoy those, he never fusses about it. I got him into his jammies, fed him again, sang more night night songs and put him to bed. Collin was still not asleep and asked very nicely if I would come back into his room. He actually asked "Mommy, please come back to my room". How could I say no to that? I went in, sang him one more round of night night songs, tucked him under the covers and said good night. That was it. There was no fussing, no crying, just "Night Night Mommy". By 8:15 both of my boys were sound asleep and I could not have been more proud of myself because bedtime doesn't normally go this well.

Mmmmm....Green Beans (Just Kidding Mom)

I was so excited tonight, Collin actually asked for a vegetable! I couldn't believe my ears but sure enough he said "I want GREEN BEANS!" I must have repeated it about 4 times just to be sure I heard right. So I made my darling angel his green beans along with the crab alfredo. I should have just handed him the grean beans by themselves, he might have actually eaten them then. He finished the alfredo, minus the immitation crab and put all of his green beans on my plate. I came so close.... maybe next time.

In other news, I have decided that we need to change his reward for using the potty. He has proven to me that he has no real interest in actually using the potty. What he is interested in is lollipops and fruit snacks. When I tell him he can't have these things he waits just a little while and asks to use the potty. I've decided that since he has a really cool dinosaur bank that he likes to "feed" I'm going to offer him pennies instead of candy. It's certainly healthier! Who knows, if he learns to save early, maybe he end up the next Warren Buffet and I won't have to worry about my retirement fund.

Lessons From The Dinner Table

Last night we made pasta Alfredo because I know its something Collin will eat. What's not to like about Alfredo sauce? In an attempt to get him to eat some vegetables, I asked Tim to toss some peas in the sauce too. It did eventually work. Collin ate all his pasta first and then, after a bit of coaxing, almost all of his peas. The lesson I learned was that I have to watch Collin like a hawk. He didn't sit at the table the entire time. When he finished his pasta, he got up and wandered around a bit. Nick was sitting in his bouncy seat on the floor right next to us so we could eat as a family. I should have been paying more attention to Collin because the next thing I knew Collin was standing by Nick telling me that Nick likes peas! I have no idea whether or not Collin actually managed to feed Nick a pea but he (Nick) was none the worse the wear for the experience. Collin and I had a long talk about how Nick is too little to eat what Collin eats and that the only thing Nick can eat is Mommy's milk or formula in a bottle. I don't think he really gets it. I did promise him that as soon as Nick is old enough to start eating real foods, Collin could help me feed him. I'll probably regret that statement latter because I can guarantee Collin won't forget I said it. As I was doing the dishes, I looked over and realized that Nick had a pea stuck to his face right next to his nose! I'm not sure if Collin tried to feed him another pea or if Collin dropped peas on Sadie and she shook them off and one landed on Nick. Whatever happened, Nick smiled through the whole thing. From now on, I will not take my eyes off Collin at dinner time.

Soup-er Yummy Dinner

Collin made dinner tonight! OK, so he had a whole lot of help but he still made dinner. Since we had so many crabs left over (even after we shared some with my Dad and Bella), we picked them last night and got about a pound of crab meat for our trouble. Today I went to the store and got the stuff we'd need for Maryland Crab Soup. It was ridiculously easy to make (it had to be if Collin could do it) and it tastes fantastic! Click the link for the recipe. It turns out that Giant carries soup vegetables. Its so much easier to pick up a bag or two of those than bags or cans of all the different vegetables you want in your soup. It also meant I had to try okra, which isn't nearly as heinous as I thought it would be. Other than that, all I really needed was beef broth, a can of tomatoes and some seafood seasoning (we used the stuff we got with the crabs, but Old Bay would be awesome too). Really, its all stuff that is usually in my pantry anyway. I put the pot on the stove and got Collin a chair so he could put the soup together. I measured each ingredient and handed it to him to put in the pot. He would dump it in and stir it really well. Once everything was in, I turned the stove on so the soup could cook. Collin made sure that we went in and checked on it every few minutes so he could stir the soup again. The kid loves to cook! He tasted it every so often and pronounced "mmm... this is good!" When we sat down to eat, he didn't eat a whole bowl, but he did eat a good bit of the broth and I even saw him chow down on some crab and some veggies! Collin is going to be cooking dinner more often.