Author: simchajfisher

What’s for supper? Vol. 3: so much pork

whats for supper

Yay, it’s Friday! Time for the What’s For Supper? round up, where you can share your inspired, inspiring, dull, or humiliating weekly menu, or pass along recipes, or find recipes, or just complain about food and feeding people and eating in general. Most of us think about food a lot, so why not talk about it here?

At the end of this post, you’ll find an InLinkz button, so you can add your post. Feel free to join in in the comments, too.

Here’s the inaugural What’s for Supper? post,
and here is vol. 2.

A few questions:

Is Friday the best day to post these? I leave the link-up open all week, so people can add to it whenever they like.

What about a question of the week? Something like, “What’s your favorite potluck dish?” or “What’s the best thing about cold-weather cooking?” or “Where are all these moths coming from, and should I just kill myself now, or what?” Or should I just keep it free-form?

And here we go.

Saturday
Domino’s terrible yet salty pizzas, Swiss Rolls, my brother-in-law’s homemade beer.

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Sunday
Kingston Pizza on the way home from the beach.

I’m linking to this restaurant not because the food was so outstanding (the fries were yummy, though), but because I feel bad that we drank bottled water from the van instead of ordering drinks, and I feel like we owe them. I had a cheesesteak. In Kansas, I met the inimitable Catharine Bitting, and I asked her why Philadelphians would let an empire rise and set on whether or not a candidate properly understands a cheesesteak. It’s just a sandwich, after all, yaas? She explained it’s because Philadelphians’ lives are so empty and miserable, they have nothing else to live for, so they focus all their energies on cheesesteaks.

Some of us spend a lot of time thinking about food, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Some of us spend kind of a lot of time thinking about food, and there is nothing wrong with that.

We had gotten about five hours of sleep all weekend, and so on Monday, I went shopping without a list. I just grabbed the panstless baby and lurched through the aisles grabbing anything that looked familiar. So the rest of the week looked like this:

Monday: Brats, potato chips, salad (a real one, not a “let’s say we had salad” salad), and five avocados that were right on the brink.

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Tuesday: Pulled pork sandwiches on onion rolls with red onions, spinach salad, and oven roasted potatoes.

We are close to being tired of pulled pork sandwiches, but we are not there yet! Aldi has these wonderful boneless half loins for $2.29 a pound, so I get a 4- to 5-pound hunk, put it in a shallow pan, pour a can of beer over it, salt and pepper it generously, cover it loosely with tinfoil, and chunk it in a 275 oven for a few hours. When it’s done all the way through, I slice or shred it with fork, knife, standing mixer, or whatever, and toss the fat to the dog so that he will continue to worship me as a god. The meat comes apart more easily if you work on it while it’s still hot. Then I throw the shredded meat right back into the beery juices

The beery, porky steam the fills the kitchen doesn't hurt, either.

The beery, porky steam the fills the kitchen all afternoon doesn’t hurt, either.

cover it with foil again, until it’s time to reheat it for dinner. It just gets better as leftovers, IF ANY. And I just use bottled BBQ sauce, because my homemade kind never thickens up enough. Go ahead, tell me what an inauthentic heretical pulled pork poseur I am. I can take it. I’m fortified with pork.

Re the potatoes, I was thinking, “Oh no, I just did oven roasted potatoes last week! Everyone will be bored reading about it again!” But then I remembered my kids really like oven roasted potatoes, so that settled that. I found a few envelopes of onion soup mix, so I used that for a quickie seasoning. It turned out not to be any faster or tastier than whatever seasonings I usually grab off the spice shelf.

***

Wednesday
Sliced chicken breast served over salad and various raw veggies with bacon ranch dressing, and naan (from a mix that was on sale at Aldi).

For the chicken, Benny and I made a quick marinade of olive oil and lemon juice, with the Faithful Four: salt, pepper, oregano, and crushed garlic. She pronounced it “gross nemmonade,” and warned me that I would die if I ate it.

You will die.

You will die.

Duly noted. You let the chicken sit in the marinade for a few hours, then put it in a broiling pan under a high broiler for 15-20 minutes, turning once, until it’s golden brown. Let it sit for a few minutes (this lets the juice redistribute along the meat fibers or something) and then slice it. This meal makes me feel SO VIRTUOUS, I can hardly live with myself.

This is the first time I’ve made naan. I’ve never even eaten it before, so I have no idea if I did it right. Except I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to burn it.

They look okay, but some of it was naan-edible, ho ho ho.

They look okay, but some of it was naan-edible, ho ho ho.

I think I didn’t make them flat enough. They turned out more like pancakes, and didn’t have the bubbles I see in pictures.

***

Thursday
Teriyaki pork chops, flavored rice, frozen peas.

I just glugged a bottle of sauce over the chops and let them sit a couple of hours, then put them under the broiler for a short time until they edges were crisp. The kids begged for flavored rice, so threw some bouillon cubes into the water (one cube per cup of water) before adding the rice. I did manage to cook the peas until they were hot, so that was a win.

Before I discovered the bottle of teriyaki sauce, I asked Facebook for simple pork chop recipes made with non-exotic ingredients, which Facebook was happy to provide! It’s a long list, so I will make it a separate post, which you can see here. 

 

 

***

Friday
I have no idea.

Did I mention I never actually made a meal plan this week — just kept putting meat in the cart until it looked like I had enough meat? I’ll have to buy something on the way home from school this afternoon. Probably spaghetti, le sigh.

Don’t forget to check out the separate pork chop post! There are dozens and dozens of simple ideas there.

Gender Reveal Parties and the Discernment of Amoral Issues

Baby_boy,_one_month_old

A reader writes:

I cannot understand why some practicing Catholics that I know do not agree that referring to a child by his/her gender and name before birth (as soon as it can be known) is MORE life-affirming than not doing so, and is clearly a moral issue because of the inherent dignity of the unborn.

Read my response at the Register.

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No, It’s Not Okay to Flip Off Your Sleeping Baby

In Slate, Education Columnist Rebecca Schuman shares a gallery of photos of herself flipping off her sleeping seven-month-old baby. Schuman explains why, so far, she hasn’t found a compelling reason to stop taking and sharing these photos.

She loves her baby, but the kid is a bad sleeper, and is making her very tired and frustrated.

Schuman says:

The reasons I take and post these pictures are varied. I crave emotional release after hours of increasingly desperate nursing, jiggling, rocking, walking, and, my personal favorite, walk-nursing (all wriggling, self-torpedoing 22 pounds of her). I’m also trying to amuse my husband, to diffuse what could otherwise be even more strain on two adults pushed to the boundaries of civility. And, of course, there’s the defiant gesture of Parenting Realness, an offshoot of the Go the Fuck to Sleep genre—that urge to fly in the face of decades of parenting decorum and admit that while we adore our children to smithereens, we’re not going to pretend to love the bare Sisyphean relentlessness that our days and nights have become.

She argues, I guess with tongue in cheek, that Kant and Artistotle would frown on her behavior. Kant, she says, would say that “what I’m doing isn’t necessarily bad for the baby per se, but it might be hardening my heart toward humanity in general”; and Aristotle would condemn her for “habituating” herself to “the wrong kind of actions.”

But, she argues, her actions don’t actually harm the baby in any way:

[I]s my current use of the one-digit salute warping my offspring’s fragile little mind? She’s a baby, so she doesn’t understand what the bird means yet. Also, she’s asleep, so she doesn’t know I’m doing it. And also, she’s a baby.

Let me be clear. I, like the author, despise the “lovin’ every minute of it” culture that is strangling American parenthood like so much sentimental kudzu. We’re expected to cherish every second we spend with our children, and we’re expected to be awash in joy and wonder at all times.

This is bullshit, and I’ve said so more times than I can count. It makes us into worse parents when we expect to be joyful and grateful all the time. Raising babies is hard, and there are lots of times when it just plain sucks. I recall telling my pediatrician, in a moment of sleep-deprived candor, that I wasn’t actually going to throw my always-screaming baby out the window, but I sure felt like I wanted to.

Speaking the truth about how we feel can be a great release. I have mountains of sympathy — oceans of sympathy, galaxies within galaxies of sympathy — for strung out parents who are exhausted beyond belief by the insane demands of babyhood. My own baby is six months old and is currently all angry all the time, because she thinks she can run, and her ridiculous doughy legs won’t cooperate. I’m hardly getting any sleep, and things are kind of awful right now. I’m having a hard time writing this post, because the baby won’t stop shouting at me.

But listen to what I said: the demands of babyhood are awful. That does not make your baby awful. One of the first things you need to learn, if you want to be a good parent, is to make sure you know the difference between “fuck this situation” and “fuck this baby.” The former is a universal experience. The latter is grotesque.

But why? The baby doesn’t know the difference, and I believe this mom who says she loves her baby. Isn’t this just some harmless, if tasteless, venting? Does it really matter what goes on around the head of someone who doesn’t and can’t understand what’s happening, which is really just a joke anyway?

Well, how would you feel if this were a gallery of photos of a fed up policeman flipping off people he’s put in handcuffs? Or a gallery of photo of an overworked heart surgeon flipping off a series of unconscious patients? Or a gallery of frustrated judges flipping off prisoners headed to jail? Or a gallery of exhausted nurses flipping off dementia patients? Or a gallery of under-appreciated ESL teachers flipping off a roomful of baffled foreign students who didn’t know what the middle finger signifies?

Not cool, right? Even if they are only venting, even if the people being flipped off had no idea it was happening. We expect more of people who do know what it means, because of their position of authority. Along with the authority and strength of their position comes the responsibility not to abuse the weaker person, even if the weaker person has made a lot of trouble for the stronger person, even if the weaker person doesn’t know it’s happening, even if the stronger person is very tired. If these policemen and judges and surgeons and teachers felt free to behave grotesquely and offensively toward the people under their authority — if they wrote jocularly about it in Slate magazine, and proudly provided a link to more photos — we’d freak the hell out, and rightly so.

We would demand that they treat the weaker person with the dignity they deserve because they are human beings. This is what we expect from people who are simply doing the jobs they are paid to do. Why should we expect less of a mother?

Just because someone can’t fight back, that doesn’t mean we can use them. Just because someone can’t fight back, that means we can’t use them.

Recall the infamous Army Private Lynndie England photos from Abu Ghraib. There were many photos showing prisoners being tortured and humiliated, but Americans were especially repulsed by the jaunty, thumbs-up “lookit me!” ones. The ones where the prisoners had bags on their heads, the ones that showed that the torturers thought the whole thing was kind of funny.

Recall: Schuman’s frivolous joke here; England’s hilarious prank here. 

 

No, the Slate writer’s baby isn’t be tortured. But there is something chillingly familiar about “HA, you can’t fight back!” attitude. You don’t need to look up your Aristotle to know that some things just aren’t funny. Even if it makes you feel better.

The very worst thing that you can do to another human being is to use him. I used to think this was just some abstract theological formulation meant to neaten up the codification of sins. But now I see that objectification of human beings lies at the heart of every sin. That’s what it always comes down to.

We don’t use people, even if they don’t know they’re being used. Especially if they don’t know they’re being used. And for God’s sake, especially not when it’s our own child.

 

Should I let my kid dress like a weirdo?

punk girl

There is a huge difference between sporting a blue mohawk because you think it looks cool, and sporting a blue mohawk because you want to horrify and offend everyone you meet.  Trying to set yourself apart from your peers is morally neutral and should be tolerated, even if it makes adults cringe a bit. But trying to give the world or your family a big “F you” is a problem.

It’s behavior that matters, and so it’s the behavior that parents should focus on.  This is just as true for kids who wear exactly what their parents want them to wear. Just as there’s nothing especially virtuous about dressing in a modest and conventional way while being a snippy, catty, arrogant little twerp, there’s nothing especially vicious about dressing like a weirdo if you’re reasonably courteous and responsible.

Read the rest at the Register. 

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What’s for supper? Vol. 2, now with link up!

whats for supper

What’s for supper? So glad you asked!

Last week, I said:

While I’m no cooking jainyus, I do manage to feed twelve people, seven days a week, without spending a million dollars and without anyone getting rickets.

I’ll list our dinners and include any recipes that might be interesting, and I hope readers will share their menus and recipes, too, so we can all get some good ideas from each other. If there’s enough interest, I may start a weekly blog link-up.

There was interest! And tons of variety — and, best of all, absolutely zero meal shaming. So this week, I’ve added an Inlinkz feature, so you can link up to your own blog. If you don’t have a blog, just join in by leaving a comment.

If you link to your blog, don’t forget to link back to this post, please! Feel free to download and use the “What’s for supper?” image, above, in your post. (It’s pretty chimpy, but it will do for now.)

And now . . .  what’s for supper?

SATURDAY: BBQ at my sister-in-law’s house. I ate too much. It was good. I didn’t have a camera on me, so here is a picture of bacon that I took yesterday:

bacon

Too bad today is Friday, innit?

SUNDAY: Enchiladas, beans and rice. 

I like Pioneer Woman’s Chicken enchildadas (I made one tray with green enchilada sauce and one with red). I don’t bother browning the tortillas, though. These are excellent as leftovers. Ex. Cel. Lent.

I usually use the standing mixer to shred meat, but I couldn’t find the attachment; so I tried my lovely mezzaluna knife, and it worked great.

mezzaluna

Love that tool. It’s about as close to being a ninja as I will ever get.

Beans and rice: I was really rushing, so I just cooked up a bunch of rice, chunked in a few cans of chili beans and a few cans of diced tomatoes, and mixed it up with chili powder. I also made some plain white rice for boring people. (This is one of the compromises I am okay with making: If it’s almost no extra work, I will make a mild version and a spicy version of the same dish.)

MONDAY: Eat My Poo French Toast Casserole, oven roasted potatoes, watermelon.

Normally, everyone loves French Toast Casserole, it’s easy, and it’s a great way to use up stale bread. After Monday’s meal, all I can say is that this dish comes out better when you don’t spend most of the day ankle-deep in stinky basement water, ripping the skin off your hands on rusty old hose connections, wondering how long it would take the kids to notice you’re dead if you get electrocuted while you sort out the power cords for your collection of three sump pumps that work well enough to be scary, but not well enough to, I don’t know, get water out of the basement.

I also recommend not breaking lightbulbs all over the kitchen floor while you’re writing about dying babies; not having forgotten to buy sausages, and not having promised the kids you’d go to the beach when there’s mega thunderstorms predicted all day. I recommend that your laptop not choose this particular day to break, and that your blog platform not choose this particular day to refuse to upload images.

For a final touch, I recommend having something on hand other than rye bread, moldy wheat bread, and rancid eggs, or at least I recommend discovering before evening that this is what you have on hand. And — hold onto your butt, because this is top chef level stuff — I recommend that you not only turn the oven on, but also put the food into the oven at some point.

Garnish this dish with a heartfelt scream, such as, “THIS DAY CAN EAT MY POO!”

And that’s my recipe.

For oven-roasted potatoes, you scrub the potatoes (no need to peel them), cut them into wedges, drizzle with oil, and season with salt, pepper, garlic powder, paprika, and red pepper flakes, or whatever else sounds good. You can bake these in a medium oven, but they turn out best if you roast them under the broiler. Takes about half an hour if the pan is actually in the oven; considerably longer if not. You can also add chopped onions, yum.

Oh, and you can use the apple corer to cut the potatoes faster, as long as you don’t mind coming up with the occasional inapwo-pwo spud:

inapwopwo potato

 

TUESDAY: Chicken burgers and chips, possibly salad. Sure, let’s say we had salad.

WEDNESDAY: Picnic! All summer, I’ve been promising the kids we’d have a picnic at the beach. They started school on Thursday, so Wednesday was the day. We had turkey and salami sandwiches, pepper jack cheese, dill pickles, chips, root beer, and so much candy they couldn’t eat it all. 

THURSDAY: Bacon and spinach pasta, garlic knots, salad. 
The six- and 11-year-olds were in charge of cooking bacon, and the 8-year-old was in charge of pressing garlic.

lucy garlic

The three-year-old was in charge of cutting up an eraser. This picture looks fairly lovely, but within five minutes, they were trying to kill each other for hogging the garlic press.

The store was out of spinach (perils of Aldi shopping), so I got kale, instead. I cooked it up and it smelled like a dead squirrel, so I threw it out and served the pasta without it.

Garlic knots: Cut a ball (18 oz.) of store-bought pizza dough into 12 pieces. Roll each piece into a snake, tie it in a knot, and pinch the ends together. Put on a greased, floured pan. Top each knot with a dab of butter or brush with olive oil, then sprinkle with garlic powder, parmesan cheese, and a little salt. Bake at 350 until they’re toasty. (I made 24 knots, which wasn’t really enough for 12 people.)

FRIDAY:  Pizza! Two black olive, two plain. Salad. I use frozen dough, because I can make pizza dough in the standing mixer or in the bread machine, but making enough for 12 just isn’t worth it to me.

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To link up, click the blue “add your link” button below. Don’t forget to link back to this post! Happy eating!

 

Dear Teacher

How I spent my summer vacation

How I spent my summer vacation

Alas. We spent our summer swimming, watching X Files, sucking down gallons and gallons of ramen, eviscerating countless watermelons, making a meticulous survey of the entire lifework of the master cinematographer Chow Yun Fat, and creating various kinds of heartache for your long-suffering soul sister, the public librarian.

Read the rest at the Register.

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Pro-life Even at the End of Life: What the Catholic Church Teaches about Care for the Dying

End_of_life_(2967585466)

The Catholic Church has a consistent, compassionate approach to end-of-life issues, but many Catholics don’t know what the Church actually teaches. As a result, doctors, hospice care workers, and the guardians of patients in distress are branded “murderers” even when they’re doing their best to care for the sick and dying in a loving, responsible, and ethical way. 

I wrote this article for Catholic Digest in 2013.  I’m reprinting it today in light of recent conversationg surrounding Baby Jake and the court’s decisions about his future medical care.

Pro-Life Even at the End of Life

“Technology runs amok without ethics,” says Tammy Ruiz, a Catholic nurse who provides end-of-life care for newborns. “Making sure ethics keeps up with technology is one of the major focuses of my world.”

How do Catholics like Ruiz honor the life and dignity of patients, without playing God—either by giving too much care, or not enough?

Cathy Adamkiewicz had to find that balance when she signed the papers to remove her four-month-old daughter from life support. The child’s bodily systems were failing, and she would not have survived the heart transplant she needed. She had been sedated and on a respirator for most of her life. Off the machines, Adamkiewicz says, “She died peacefully in my husband’s arms. It was a joyful day.”

“To be pro-life,” Adamkiewicz explains, “does not mean you have to extend life forever, push it, or give every type of treatment.”

Many believe that the Church teaches we must prolong human life by any means available, but this is not so. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “Discontinuing medical procedures that are burdensome, dangerous, extraordinary, or disproportionate to the expected outcome can be legitimate; it is the refusal of “over-zealous” treatment” (CCC, 2278).

Does this mean that the Church accepts euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide—that we may end a life to relieve suffering or because we think someone’s “quality of life” is too poor? No. The Catechism continues: “One does not will to cause death; one’s inability to impede it is merely accepted” (CCC, 2278).

Richard Doerflinger, associate director of Pro-Life Activities at the USCCB, explains that caregivers must ask, “What good can this treatment do for this person I love? What harm can it do to him or her? This is what Catholic theology calls ‘weighing the benefits and burdens of a treatment.’ If the benefit outweighs the burden, in your judgment, you should request the treatment; otherwise, it would be seen as morally optional.”

Palliative care is also legitimate, even if it may hasten death—as long as the goal is to alleviate suffering.

But how are we to judge when the burdens outweigh the benefits?

Some decisions are black and white: We must not do anything, or fail to do anything, with the goal of bringing about or hastening death. “An act or omission which, of itself or by intention, causes death in order to eliminate suffering constitutes a murder gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator (CCC, 2277).

The dehydration death of Terry Schiavo in 2005 was murder, because Schiavo was not dying. Withdrawing food and water had the direct goal of killing her.

But if a man is dying of inoperable cancer and no longer wishes to eat or drink, or his body can no longer process nutrition, withdrawing food and water from him might be ethical and merciful. He is already moving toward death, and there is no reason to prolong his suffering.

Moral Obligations

Our moral obligations are not always obvious. Laura Malnight struggled with doubt and fear as she contemplated the future of her tiny newborn quadruplets. Two of them had pneumonia.

“It was horrible to watch them go through what they had to go through to live, being resuscitated over and over again,” Malnight says.

One baby was especially sick and had suffered brain damage. The doctors who had pushed her to do “selective reduction” while she was pregnant now urged her to stop trying to keep her son alive. “They said we were making a horrible mistake, and they painted a terrible picture of what his life would be like in an institution,” Malnight says.

Exhausted and overwhelmed, Malnight was not able to get a clear answer about the most ethical choice for her children.

Everyone told her, “The baby will declare himself,” signaling whether he’s meant to live or die. “But,” says Malnight, “my only experience with motherhood was with these babies, in their isolettes. The thing was, we would put our hands over our son and he would open his eyes, his breathing would calm.”

“We just kind of muddled through,” she says. Her quadruplets are now 13 years old, and her son, while blind and brain-damaged, is a delightful and irreplaceable child.

Doerflinger acknowledges Malnight’s struggle: “Often there is no one right or wrong answer, but just an answer you think is best for your loved one in this particular situation, taking into account that patient’s own perspective and his or her ability to tolerate the burdens of treatment.”

The key, says Cathy Adamkiewicz, is “not to put our human parameters on the purpose of a human life.”

When she got her infant daughter’s prognosis from the neurologist, she told him, “You look at her as a dying system. I see a human being. Her life has value, not because of how much she can offer, but there is value in her life.”

“Our value,” Cathy says, “is not in our doing, but in our being.” Doerflinger agrees, and emphasizes that “every life is a gift. Particular treatments may be a burden; no one’s life should be dismissed as a burden.”

He says that human life is “a great good, worthy of respect. At the same time, it is not our ultimate good, which lies in our union with God and each other in eternity. We owe to all our loved ones the kind of care that fully respects their dignity as persons, without insisting on every possible means for prolonging life even if it may impose serious risks and burdens on a dying patient. Within these basic guidelines, there is a great deal of room for making personal decisions we think are best for those we love.”

Because of this latitude, a living will is not recommended for Catholics. Legal documents of this kind cannot take into account specific, unpredictable circumstances that may occur. Instead, Catholic ethicists recommend drawing up an advance directive with a durable power of attorney or healthcare proxy. A trusted spokesman is appointed to make medical decisions that adhere to Church teaching.

Caregivers should do their best to get as much information as possible from doctors and consult any priests, ethicists, or theologians available—and then to give over care to the doctors, praying that God will guide their hearts and hands.

Terri Duhon found relief in submitting to the guidance of the Church when a sudden stroke caused her mother to choke. Several delays left her on a ventilator, with no brain activity. “My husband and I couldn’t stand the thought of taking her off those machines. We wanted there to be a chance,” she says. But as the night wore on, she says, “We reached a point where it was an affront to her dignity to keep her on the machines.”

Duhon’s words can resonate with caregivers who make the choice either to extend life or to allow it to go: “I felt thankful that even though all of my emotion was against it, I had solid footing from the Church’s moral teaching. At least I wasn’t making the decision on my own.”

Adamkiewicz agrees. “It’s so terrifying and frustrating in a hospital,” she remembers. “I can’t imagine going through it without having our faith as our touchstone during those moments of fear.”

 *********

End of life resources

 

Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Healthcare Services (from the USCCB)

Evangelium Vitae

Pope John Paul II, To the Congress on Life-Sustaining Treatments and Vegetative State, 20 March 2004 

NCBCenter.org provides samples of an advance directive with durable power of attorney or healthcare proxy.

This article was originally published in Catholic Digest in 2013.

How to organize lots of shoes and water bottles, plus a love letter

The main reason we home schooled for six years was because home schoolers don’t have to know where their shoes are. Ditto for water bottles. Need to go outside? Lie down with a manga until the feeling passes. Thirsty? Just drink directly out of the faucet like my son — or, like my son when he’s being fancy, drink out of a plate.

I have failed.

Anyway, now we have to be shod and watered every morning. Behold, I have some solutions for you, especially if you have a lot of kids and not much space.

For shoes, you want to buy a bunch of stacking bins, like these:

stacking bin 2

They’re meant for office supplies, but they work fine for shoes, especially for kids. One bin for each kid, and you can configure them however you want, AND you can empty them out and hose them down as required.

For water bottles, an over-the-door shoe organizer like this is poifect.

shoe organizer

We had a million water bottles clattering around the counter, and the tops were, of course, nowhere to be found. I want to make sure the bottles air out, so we keep all the lids in 2-3 pockets, and the bottles in the rest.

The thing I like about these systems is that they’re cheap, and you don’t have to actually install anything — so if it’s not working for you, you can just scrap them, no big deal.

And of course, like an organizational system, they only work if you actually use them!  My kids are genetically predisposed to be slobs, and most of them will only put their stuff away if I remind them every single time. So these systems don’t automatically make our house tidy and clutter-free; but they do make it possible to clean. There  is somewhere to put stuff if the urge strikes you. When someone (me) suddenly can’t take it anymore, someone (me) can go into an angry, white-hot cleaning frenzy fueled by self-loathing and dust allergies, and can turn a ghastly heap back into a living space again without having to think about it too hard. Success!

Now I’m going to share pictures of what our shoes and water bottles look like right now, a week before school starts. I haven’t done any organizing or cleaning yet, and I’m in the middle of a huge painting job, so these areas are both at peak disgustingness, everything is out of place, and I haven’t been making anyone put anything away because it’s just not my top priority at the moment. I’m painting cabinets, too, so everything that was in those cabinets is now cleverly being stored in the middle of the dining room. But they’re still better than what we had before!

The water bottles:

water bottles now

Why, yes, that is a tattered copy of “The Walrus and the Carpenter” hanging up on the door, from the last time I was panicking about my kids not having a good foundation in poetry; and yes, that door is on the For the Love of All That Is Holy, Please Paint Me list. I call this picture “Palimpsest of Things I Was Worrying About.”

The shoe area:

shoe bins now

To the casual observer, this would appear to be the shameful evidence of a slovenly and chaotic household; but to me, it’s a picture called “Simcha Loves You and Wants You to Feel Better about Your Own Life.” Extra points if you can spot the kid who doesn’t appreciate air conditioning.

As soon as my new camera gets here, I’ll take some “after” pictures, and you can laugh at me all over again, because it will still suck.

In a couple of months, I’ll show you how I came up with a brilliant system which doesn’t keep our mittens paired up and readily accessible, but it could. 

How about you? Do you have any smart systems to share? Or maybe you’d like to pay someone to clean my house?

What’s for supper?

food irene

One of two things is happening here today. Either

(a) I’m launching a recurring feature sharing my family’s weekly dinner menu. While I’m no cooking jainyus, I do manage to feed twelve people, seven days a week, without spending a million dollars and without anyone getting rickets.

I’ll list our dinners and include any recipes that might be interesting, and I hope readers will share their menus and recipes, too, so we can all get some good ideas from each other. If there’s enough interest, I may start a weekly blog link-up;

or

(b) I’m launching a dumb, useless thing that everyone hates, and in a few weeks I’ll sheepishly kick some dead leaves over it and hope everyone forgets it ever happened.

Come onnn, (a)!

***

 

Our deal:

We’re busy people. I work from home, I have two pre-schoolers and eight other kids in three different schools, my husband works late most nights and has a long commute, the kids all have clubs and activities and jobs, and I spend two hours in the van on a good day.  I don’t expect myself to cook like someone who’s home all afternoon, or someone who has leisure in the evening, or someone who cares deeply and intensely about optimal diets. We can’t afford the farmer’s market, and our garden stinks.

I stay within a certain budget, but I no longer have to shop as cheaply as possible. It’s worth it to me to pay a little more for convenience or variety. We now have an Aldi nearby, which means that foods that used to be luxuries are now staples.

I don’t have a crock pot or a microwave, because I’m stubborn and I enjoy suffering.

I started making a weekly menu several years ago, planning and listing and buying only exactly what we needed to eat, because we were super broke and I had to make, say, $30 stretch for seven days. The menu habit stuck after our situation improved, and I’m glad it did. I hate hate hate grinding out the menu on Saturday morning, but I love always knowing what’s for dinner each night, and always having all the ingredients on hand.

General goals:

  • I try not to make any main dish more than twice a month.
  • I try not to serve chips more than twice a week.
  • I try to serve a vegetable with each meal. I am for produce in season, but frozen veggies are still veggies.
  • I try to serve three things at dinner, but two happens a lot.
  • I try to provide a balanced diet over the course of the week, rather than over the course of a day.
  • I try to make sure there’s always yogurt, cheese, pretzels, and fresh fruit in the house, so the kids can get themselves healthy snacks. This is especially important for kids who are picky about dinner, because I refuse to stress out about everybody eating dinner. 
  • I try to serve meals that at least half the family enjoys eating.
  • I try to get the kids involved with cooking when possible, even if it’s just peeling carrots or measuring out water for rice.
  • I let them have straight-up dessert, plus candy and maybe soda, on weekends, but loosely limit sugar during the week.
  • I try to make at least a few actual homemade-from-scratch meals each week, but don’t beat myself up for filling in the rest with semi-homemade or box-and-bag food.
  • I fail in each of these things repeatedly, but I try again next week, or next next week. It’s a constant slide and correction, slide and correction.
  • I try to remember that it’s just food.

 

How I make my weekly menu:

On Saturday morning, I write the days of the week on a piece of paper, and I make note of any upcoming events that will affect what food I buy (a birthday, which means the kid picks dinner; or lots of dentist appointments, which means I’ll be out of the house during the day; or an evening concert, which means we’ll need to eat early and clean up quickly; or a radio spot right at dinner time, so the kids need to be able to just heat and eat; etc.).

I write in easy meals for whichever days seem like they will be trickiest.

Then I look up online supermarket flyers and add a few meals based on what’s on sale.

At this point, kids start swirling around me, and, seeing food on my computer screen, they start shouting out meal names. I yell at them to leave me alone and let me drink my coffee, and then guiltily fill in at least one meal that they shouted for the loudest.

Then, if I can’t think of anything else easily to fill in the rest of the days, I go to Budget Bytes, AllRecipes, the NYT food pages, Epicurious, Good Eats, and Pioneer Womanfor inspiration, if not for actual recipes. (Sometimes I’ll be like, “Oh yeah, chicken! I forgot about chicken.”) Most of my staple recipes are from the Fannie Farmer cookbook, which I recommend highly as a comprehensive, clear, and encouraging resource.

Then I make a list.

Well, you guys know how to make a list.

***

Suddenly I’m nervous that you’re going to think, “Why is she telling about these dumb, boring, obvious, yucky foods?” Well, maybe I’m just trying to make you feel better, you fancy person.

Okay, here goes. This past week we had . . .

 

Saturday: Corn dogs and frozen french fries. We had an insane-o busy day and it’s a miracle I managed this much. Anyway, I like corn dogs. We had rice krispie treats for dessert because I was afraid someone might mistake us for people of good breeding.

Sunday:  Sesame chicken* (quadruple recipe) and white rice (5 cups uncooked rice).  I usually make sesame chicken with steamed broccoli, but I forgot to buy broccoli. This recipe is much easier than it looks, but don’t crowd the chicken! Also, put on the air conditioner, or else you will get hot and frazzled and will accidentally just throw the chicken in the garbage when you meant to transfer it onto a tray.  P.S. the most expensive part of this recipe is the sesame seeds. I’m going to look into growing my own sesame tree. I’ve made this recipe with inauthentic white vinegar, vegetable oil, and powdered ginger, and it still tastes fine.  Dessert: fancy Aldi cookies and orange sherbet, much to my husband’s dismay. (Whoever’s shopping turn it is gets to choose dessert.)

Monday:  Hamburgers, fried red onions, potato chips, and raw sweet peppers and baby carrots with hummus. (This is a “kids heat and eat” dish, because I was on the radio.) We use about 3 lbs. of 70/30 ground beef for the 11 of us. I’ve found that the easiest way to make hamburgers is to make the patties really flat, season them, and lay them on a two-piece broiler pan, so the fat runs off. Put the broiler on “high” and flip the burgers once.

Tuesday: slow-cooked pork tenderloin* (about 5 lbs), two loaves of beer bread, and an enormous basin of salad. I don’t have a slow cooker, so I just put the pork in the oven at 250 and covered it with tin foil. I also ran out of baking soda, so I used this baking powder+cream of tartar substitution, and it turned out great. The pork sauce is savory and fantastic, if you like salt, which we do. When it gets colder, I’ll make this dish with mashed potatoes.

Wednesday: Giant Pancake with chocolate chips, and scrambled eggs. The chocolate chips are because it’s still summer vacation, hoop de doo.  I had plans to cut up a pineapple, but I got mad and tired, and went to bed with a handful of eggs, instead.  The pineapple went bad, too bad. Giant Pancake is just pancake mix, you add water, you throw it in a shallow pan and chuck it in a 350 oven until it puffs up. Everyone gets a giant wedge and they tell Daddy “DUESS WHAT? WE HAD TATE FOR SUPPER.”

Thursday: Nachos!!! Three giant trays of tortilla chips, layered with ground pork and beef cooked with a few envelopes of taco spice, refried beans, corn, shredded cheese, shredded lettuce, salsa, sour cream, and guacamole*. (Our guacamole is: avocados, fresh garlic and tomatoes, onion, jalapenos, cilantro, lime juice, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes.)

Friday: Tuna noodle casserole and salad. This is the guilt dish that some kids were begging for, although I will admit, I like tuna noodle. I got a frozen pizza for Damien, who never did become reconciled to this dish.  Our tuna noodle is: cooked egg noodles mixed with six cans of drained tuna and a three cans of condensed cream of mushroom soup. Put the mixture in a buttered casserole dish, and top with crushed potato chips and corn flakes. Bake at 350 until the topping is toasted. Serve with dressing made from ketchup, mayo, and vingar. Tell people online that this is what you eat. Take a bow, you prince among chefs.

*I recently discovered that you can crush garlic without peeling the individual cloves. I can’t believe I didn’t know this. You have to pick the peels out in between crushing cloves, but it’s SO much faster than peeling first.

***

Now you know! And I’d love to hear what you’re eating at your house this week. Remember, everyone has different priorities and situations, so don’t feel like you need to be fancy or fascinating. Whatcha got?

St. Bernard, pray for . . . wha?

bee-649952_1280

 

 

Speaking of distraction from prayer, that narthex is where parents of small children often find themselves when they’re fulfilling their Sunday obligation in the most basic way: by being bodily inside the walls, even if we can’t catch more than a second or two of actual prayer time. Our parish is pretty kid-friendly, but it’s only courteous to take a truly bonkers kid out of earshot until he calms down, so the narthex is the place to be; and that is where St. Bernard stands, too.

One mother I know keeps her kid happy by carrying him up to the feet of the statue, finding the bee, making contact, and going, “BZZT!” Kid laughs, forgets to wreak havoc, everyone’s happy. Honey sweet, indeed.

We can draw a few things from this…

Read the rest at the Register.