My second grader had to read a cookbook this month. He gets quite a bit of flexibility in how he “proves” that he read the book, so he opted to make treats for his classmates.
I present to you, Chocolate Pudding Poke Cake. Made all on his own except taking the cake out of the oven. I obviously turned my back when it was time to decorate the cake!
Gung Hay Fat Choy! It’s the Year of the Dragon and the year 4709 on the lunar calendar. My friend texted me this morning to wish me a Happy New Year and asked if I had any dragon-like lunches planned for today.
I’ll the be the first to admit. I am a rare breed these days. I’m 100% Chinese. Yet, I am an abyssmal failure when it comes to passing any bits of culture on to my 50% Chinese children. I couldn’t tell you exactly why, but it is what it is. In fact, I have admittedly broken just about every rule in the book…most of these traditions that my parents tried to instill in me surround the idea of securing good luck, good fortune and long health. Breaking these customs reduces my chances of the aforementioned. For instance my mom taught me:
My house was not clean, my floor not swept. I could probably come up with other wrong-doings, but I don’t want you to give up on me completely 
Tonight my kids will eat their version of a Chinese New Year dinner. I’m not sure how we landed on this dinner as our “traditional” dinner as it is far, far from what I remember as a kid, but it’s what my kids have come to expect.
Fried Rice. We used to do plain white rice, but it turns out my most adventurous eater also doesn’t really like white rice. What kind of Chinese kid is he? So this year, I upgraded and made fried rice. Stepping even farther away from tradition. What can I say?
Jai. Jai is a traditional vegetarian dish (if memory serves me right, one should not eat meat on Chinese New Year, but we break that tradition too). My mom taught me to cheat on this dish – she and I start with canned jai and add in…she does much better than I, I am down to adding just tofu and a soybean based noodle. This was one of my favorite dishes growing up. The long noodles are added to symbolize longevity.
Potstickers. Years ago, I started adding potstickers for my husband. He’s not a huge fan of jai (it is sort of an acquired taste) and I always felt like he’d go hungry, so I made him potstickers. And now I can’t not. Some “traditions” just start like that, don’t you think?
So there you have it, that’s what my kids consider a traditional Chinese New Year Dinner. I don’t mean to knock cultural traditions at all. I could begin to tell you why I suspect I haven’t carried a lot of traditions forward, but none of you are being paid to be my pyschiatrist Instead of getting hung up on it, I have chosen to move forward and realize that our dinner is a blending of cultures and a creation of THEIR traditions. Yesterday we “closed” the ending year by having dinner with my parents and brother and my kids know that means they get ”da bin lo” which is extremely similar to fondue in broth. We have flank steak, chicken, tofu, prawns, and this year’s additon: calamari. Everyone cooks their own meat, and then there are lots of different Chinese dipping sauces. The meal ends with a bowl of noodles. In a couple of weeks, my mom will host another dinner and cook up a storm. The menu changes from year to year, but it’s always a delicous feast.
The Chinese believe that the Year of the Dragon is always a lucky year – those born in the Year of the Dragon are considered to be the strongest and most revered. Here’s to hoping that this symbolism is true – Gung Hay Fat Choy! May this be an incredible year for you!
I’m a little off this week. My kids haven’t been to school all week due to what we like to consider “extreme weather conditions.” Go ahead and get your laughs out now. No school means I’m not packing lunches, and instead, we’ve been cleaning up the leftovers. I was also planning a post about my baby’s birthday party, but that didn’t quite go as planned either. He got sick 30 minutes before his party was to start…so hopefully that post can happen next week after his re-scheduled party.
I’ve been tossing this idea around for awhile, just haven’t been real sure on how to present it. I’ve been asked to do this before, and the request came again this week: Meal Planning. It’s something I do fairly religiously. I do it because it’s the only way I can get reasonably healthy meals on the table with our busy after-school schedule. I do it because it keeps me on budget. I do it because people think I’m incredible for doing it. Just kidding. I do it because once you get into the habit of doing it, it’s not hard, but it is easy to slip and suddenly we’re eating out too much or not getting enough variety in our diets.
Anyhow, I haven’t decided how I should share menu plans…for the upcoming week, the week prior, or some combination. For now, I’ll tell you how I come up with a plan. I shop once a week. Usually I end up at the store mid-week for some forgotten item, but 98% of my shopping gets done on Sunday. I figure out which nights everyone is going to be home for dinner, and which nights I’ll be home to cook, versus which nights I need to have a ready-made dinner. Some weeks, I have several nights that I won’t be home to cook, so I look to see if any of those days are paired with days where I could prep a meal during the day and just throw it in the oven at some point. Most weeks, I find that I need one crockpot meal (ready-made), a meal that results in a second night of leftovers (a second ready-made) and then 3-4 other meals based on what we have going on.
My other dirty little secret…I have a reasonable freezer stash. It includes chicken in various forms (cooked and shredded, sliced for stir fry, plain breasts, marinated breasts, thighs); ground meat in various forms (turkey, taco meat, browned ready for sauces and soups, frozen chubs, sliders, meatballs, meatloaf); pre-homemade meals (chili, enchiladas); and a very few frozen/processed meals. It does take some time to have all this ready, but it has been a huge time saver. If you have Zaycon deliveries in your area, consider giving it a try. It’s a lot to deal with, but it also forces you to get a significant portion of food prepped.
I also look at the food ads – most weeks I will only buy up to two other meat type dishes since I have so much in my freezer. I usually choose a cut of meat that is on sale. And I am try to be good about choosing a vegetarian type meal too.
Here’s an example of what we have eaten this week. I know you’ll all be asking for recipes, and that is something I’m trying to figure out how to add in, cleanly. So please, if there is something you want, please just ask!
Sunday – Italian Beef Sandwiches, pulled from the freezer – otherwise a crockpot meal if “fresh”
Monday – Birthday Boy’s Choice – mac ‘n cheese from a box, Baked Shells with Winter Squash for the grown ups (ironically, everyone but the birthday boy likes this better than mac ‘n cheese from a box, but we all ate our obligatory serving of the birthday boy’s request)
Tuesday – Cheesy Cauliflower and Potato Soup with fresh french bread. Best soup ever. All my kids devoured it. I thought it was a huge pot, but there was barely enough left for lunch today. Based off my friend’s recipe, with my own modifications based on what I thought my family would like:
Cut up 1 head of cauliflower, 3 small red potatoes (peeled), 3 carrots and an onion. Put in a pot and cover with water and 3 chicken bouillon cubes. Simmer til veggies are very tender. Melt 3 T butter in a stock pot. Add 1/3 c of flour to make a roux. Add 2.5 c of milk and stir until thickened. Add about 6 ounces of shredded cheddar cheese and stir until melted. Season with salt, pepper and Italian herbs. Add veggies and broth by the ladleful, mashing veggies and stirring into milk base. Continue until all veggies and liquid is added.
I didn’t mash the veggies all the way, and if you family wants it totally smooth, I’d just throw it in the blender. My family likes thick soups with a bit of texture.
Wednesday - Pork tenderloin and Crash Hot Potatoes. Pork was pre-marinated from the store and not very good. Won’t be trying that one again. But the potatoes were super yummy. I’d highly recommend them.
What’s up for the rest of the week? Well, see what happens when I don’t meal plan? I have a few ideas up my sleeve. Tomorrow will call for me resurrecting the rest of the icky pork tenderloin. I’ll fill you in when I figure it out
Hope you are all staying warm!
Every once in a while (oh, who am I kidding…EVERY DAY), I worry that I have screwed up atleast one of my kids. Take this, for example:
On Friday, my almost-six-year-old came home from kindergarten, giddy with excitement. For those of you who know him in real life, you can picture this, and it’s quite a scene to behold. For those of you who don’t know him, people often tell me that he is like a cartoon character. He’s very animated and dramatic in both his facial expressions and his body movements. So when he is giddy, his whole body oozes with energy. Anyhow, he runs up to me and says, “Mom! Guess what Jack told me?!? He had this in his lunch and it sounds so good!”
As you know, my kids are good eaters. We try hard to expose them to different foods. Jack’s parents are pretty healthy, well rounded eaters, so I am quite intriged by what might be so fascinating.
“It’s a sandwich! And it’s on white bread and it has jam…or jelly, I can’t remember which is which. And that white stuff that is on our counter on the white plate with a cover!”
“Um, you mean butter?”
“Yeah! That’s it!”
Oh lordy. The most exciting part of my kid’s day is that he learned about bread and butter and jelly sandwiches? And how has he gotten to days shy of his sxith birthday and not heard of this? What have I done to this poor kid? Have I really denied him this comfort food? <<Insert…poor third child!>>
In the spirit of rectifying this appalling situation, here is Monday’s lunch:
The Contents – carrots, blueberries, Asian Pear slices, a cooky and of course, a jelly and butter sandwich on white bread.
The Details – I bet you are all rolling your eyes by now. Of course you all know about jelly and butter sandwiches on white bread.
For those of you wondering about Asian Pears. If you haven’t had one, go get one. Or two or three. Maybe more. They’re that good. Some say they are a cross between an apple and pear. They’re crunchy and juicy at the same time. They’re sweet but not overly so. They are covered in a tough yellowish skin that is best removed. I usually slice them, but I suppose you could eat them whole, like an apple. I’ll warn you, they are expensive. They are more readily available right now as some Asian countries celebrate their new year the same calendar as the US, and they are often given to visitors.
The Verdict - Here’s where the story gets a little sad. My little guy got sick yesterday and didn’t get to enjoy his special lunch 
My older two said it was the best lunch ever. I did make my little one a small butter and jelly sandwich today and he gobbled it right up (and kept it down, even better yet).
Sheesh. What have I done. There really is nothing better than white bread and butter…sometimes with a little jam!
I take care of a little baby a few days a week. Usually he arrives around 6:30, but sleeps until about 8:00 so I’m actually really on top of things since I’m FORCED to be up so early. But on Friday, he decided to come awake so my morning was a little more chaotic that usual. Making a “hot lunch” was actually easier so here is what the kids got:
The Contents - wheat thins, carrots, green beans, apple slices, asian pear slices, and fruit snacks. The thermos contained mini ravioli.
The Details – Obviously I did not make the ravioli from scratch…these were the little freeze dried (?) version from Trader Joes. I personally think they’re quite disgusting, but my kids really like them and it’s one of those packages that are handy to have in the pantry for days like today.
See what happens when I decide to clean up? Today, when cleaning old pictures off my phone, I realized I had taken pictures of a few lunches in December. Here you go:
This lunch was for College Day at school (I think, it’s been a month). We are huge UW Husky Fans in this house, so it is no surprise that my kids opted to support the Purple and Gold that day. Lunch consisted of some sort of sandwich (two quarters, stacked), purple and gold goldfish and a fruit salad made of purple grapes, pineapple and pear chunks.
Here is another lunch. A hunk of crusty bread, salami and cheese, apples and pears. My favorite part of this lunch is represented by the dessert: an oreo truffle. My friend normally makes these with her husband, but we decided it’d be fun to make them together on our “date” day*. Spending the afternoon surrounded by chocolate, candy and one of my best friends. It was definitely one of my favorite days of December.
*Yes, my friend and I have a date day. We set aside a minimum of one Monday afternoon a month to go do something together. It’s too easy to let the month get away without seeing each other, and I love it! Sometimes we do lunch, sometimes we run errands together, we have grand plans to go to the movies in the middle of the day! In December we made truffles
Here’s one more December lunch. Meatballs skewered on holiday picks, marinara sauce, apples, oranges and a sugar cookie. I haven’t done cookie exchanges in a long time, but this year, I got to go to three. So fun and I loved having the huge variety of yumminess.
And finally, just to keep on top of things, here is TODAY’s lunch. More clean up:
Chicken nuggets, wheat thins, apples, carrots, celery and green beans. A cake pop for dessert. My friend made the cake pops, I haven’t been able to master these. Mine turned out a royal mess, but that’s okay, because I have good friends who share.
What I did want to say about this lunch though, is that I have a lot of people comment that my kids eat a good variety of fruits and vegetables. This lunch is actually my daughter’s…the boys have a slightly different version that only included one celery stick and the equivalent of 2 green beans. I have found these lunch boxes a good way to offer less desired foods (in this case, the celery and I wasn’t sure about the green beans). I can offer a very small portion and since they are often hungry by lunch, they’ll just eat it because there are no other choices. And, as you can see in this picture, I will sometimes “hide” the favored foods (ie, the carrots) under the greens just to make them dig a bit in hopes that if they touch it, they’ll eat it.
Both boys ate all the greens. Only one complained about the celery. Appearently, I need to send green beans again.
And yes, I know I am lucky that they will eat versus starve. I know there are plenty of kids out there who would rather starve I count my non-picky eaters among my greatest blessings!
Here is another lunch that was made from leftovers:
The Contents: Deli chicken slices and cream cheese wrapped in a tortilla, orange and apple slices, cheese booty, something from the hodge podge of leftover Christmas cookies.
The Details: In my almost-6 year old’s case, his cookie included the belly and one leg of his massive gingerbread cookie. He calls these his “man cookies.”
And as part of my 2011 wrap up, I wanted to show you a project that my husband and daughter worked on over the holiday break. It’s another one of those projects that I find online and sign him up for, but he didn’t mind this one too much. My daughter likes to work with him in the “shop” and it wasn’t so hard that they didn’t kill each other. He built the table for her and then printed the directions and wrapped them up for Christmas. Together, they built the benches and painted it in the color of her choice.
Here are the directions if you’d like to build your own. He built it to spec, except for lengthening the benches a bit…I guess so her dolls could have a bit more space. It was a very inexpensive project…about $5 for the wood, $6 for specific nail gun nails plus paint. (of which he has most of the package left). He had wood glue on hand.
And speaking of wrapping, here is the wrapping that intrigued my kids to no end:
I made each of them a pillowcase using this pattern. Looks complicated with the three different fabrics, but it was really so easy. As in each pillowcase probably took less than 30 minutes. I think I’ll be making a few more as a fun gift wrap for upcoming birthdays. They were great for wrapping the odd shaped present, like the table. Or the really heavy present, like the ream of paper and paper airplane folding book for my almost-6 six year old. And the best one was the one in the middle that was stuffed with 24 unwrapped socks (courtesy of our puppy, who got into the original nicely wrapped package) for my eight year old who feels the need to rip holes in atleast two socks a week.
In addition towatching my kids get giddy with anticipation, this made me smile too:
Loved seeing my almost-6 year old stuff almost his entire body into his pillow case! Oh, and notice his jammie pants. Wish I had a better picture to show you, but those were a result of my Christmas-moment-of-insanity when I decided that my kids needed matching jammie pants. Their daddy loves the Rudolph movie, so when I found fleece with all of the characters from the movie, I just had to add that to my list of things to do too
Well, 2011 is over…which means RACK’ing is also over. What an experience that turned out to be. Like most experiences, there were good things, bad things, things learned, things that were dismal failures.
Here’s what I learned:
Not surprisingly, RACKing didn’t go perfectly. Nothing ever does with kids We didn’t get to hand out all of our homeless kits because I didn’t realize how aggressive the city is about hiding homelessness during the holiday season. How sad is that? So we have one more in our car that we just keep there for the next time we see someone who needs it. My kids loved taking cards down to the local firestation. They got a tour of the station and they loved that they could see their card hanging on the bulletin board from the front window. They really enjoyed packing meals for the needy through our church, and they were surprised at how close to home some of those bags stayed when we delivered them later that afternoon. They had fun leaving candy canes on cars and buying bags of popcorn for their friends at school. I loved hearing how my littlest one just kept finding little things to do to make someone smile.
All in all a good experience, even though I was about ready to throw in the towel about half way through.
It’s been awhile, but here is a lunch. I don’t know that I took any pictures of lunches in December. Mostly because my kids haven’t getting much variety and I wasn’t in the mood to pack any creative or fun holiday lunches. Today’s lunch was all about cleaning up the random leftovers:
The Contents - Pita wedges, apple bits, carrot and celery sticks, summer sausage and spritz cookies. Not shown, a small container of hummus.
Finally, a very heartfelt word of thanks to all of you who stop by to read my blog. Whether you are a subscriber or someone who just stops by on occassion (or even once), I do very much appreciate your readership! I hope your 2012 is off to a good start!
I’ll be the first to admit, part of the goal of participating in RACK’ing is that I want being kind to become a way of life for my kids.
Our “planned” activity was to assemble bags to deliver to the homeless, and we did do that, but what is really share-worth today are my kids’ reports of things that they did on their own, without my prompting:
*My kindergartener helped a classmate open his carton of milk. I love that he was so excited to come home and tell me all about it!
*He also made a card for a schoolmate battling leukemia.
*My daughter helped a teammate on her jump rope team who is working hard to accomplish several new tricks. This is a big deal for my daughter because she has a hard time in a “teaching role.” It was made more special because we got an email from the girl’s mom thanking my daughter!
*My daughter also set the table without being asked. Hey, it’s the small things that count!
*My middle son asked if we could decorate the entrance of our division as an RACK…hoping we can get to this before someone beats us to it!
A reader asked what we were going to put into our homeless kits, and it took me a bit to figure this one out. Here’s what we ended up compiling:
*Hygiene kits, including a toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, shampoo/conditioner, hand sanitizer, Kleenex, a razor, bars of soap – all packed into a ziplock bag
*Food, including a couple apples, tuna, green beans, granola bars, apple sauce, peanut butter, crackers, Christmas candy, ramen noodles, a couple packets of cocoa
*Survival supplies, including a large plastic bag and a stocking cap
*We also have a special bag of dog food/treats if we run into someone that has a dog
Most everything from the hygiene kits came from my linen closet. Most of these are sample sized items or overstock (like the toothbrushes and floss that we seem to get in bulk from the dentist…or maybe we just don’t have good dental hygiene J). I did buy food, but I bought things that could be divided. And the dog stuff we just had from a dog “party” that we went to and got a ton of samples that we are sharing. Trying to figure out how we could pack a warm meal too, but I’m not sure if our schedule will allow it…
Day 5 has been my personal favorite day of RACK’ing so far. It was really my day to RACK based on the chosen act, but it was the kids’ idea, and on a less busy day, they could have been much more involved. Our family opted to deliver a meal to a family who could use a helping hand…and by this, they meant they wanted to help someone who is just plain ‘ol busy! We chose a family together: this family is of course, insanely busy. Three active kids, two working parents. Mom teaches piano, which means the busiest part of her day is after school and through dinner time. They are also good friends of ours and so it made them an easy choice. It happened that another friend and I were baking that morning, so dessert was a slam dunk. And making a dinner for them? Wow, it actually made MY life easier because I just doubled a recipe that meant I had dinner ready to go too, on our busiest night of the week! Gotta love that!
Day 6 ended up being, well, random. The kids wrapped gifts for the girl we adopted through our school. They made cards for the same girl and a school-mate battling cancer. My daughter reports that she cleared away her friends’ lunch garbage too J
Which brings us to Day 7. We were supposed to clear drains but ended up with playdates that ended up to be dinner-dates. Sometimes it’s just good to hang out and have a good laugh (or in this case, wrestle match) with your buddies!
What have you been up to?
