Best Easy Summer Dinner Ever

Okay, so I had to complement the previous post with this recipe from tonight's dinner, since this is much more representative of what we've been eating for dinner.

The genesis for this recipe:

1.  I had "cooking onions" that I bought at the farmer's market last weekend.

2.  Jellybean Mama made a great looking hobo supper for the big campout last weekend.

3.  I didn't want to heat up the house by cooking inside so I was looking for something to make on the grill.  Other than meat (for that, see the previous recipe).

So while at the grocery last night, I picked up little red potatoes, baby carrots, and chocolate milk.  The latter item is not essential for this recipe, but is essential for the well-being of my household :)

Tonight I made a little foil packet of the chopped farmer's market onions, red potatoes, and baby carrots.  I added a bit of olive oil and butter, then trimmed some herbs from the garden (marjoram and oregano, but I think marjoram and thyme would have been better.  No thyme in my garden.  Le sigh.)  I didn't feel like getting the leaves off the stems and chopping them, so they went in whole (just push them to the side when you open up the packet).  Salt and pepper.  Grill for 30 minutes.

I thought I might want something to make it a bit more hearty.  While grilling, I found some awesome cheese in the fridge that I got at Whole Foods last week (Havarti with Dill, how freaking awesome is that?).  So in the last few minutes of cooking, I put a thin slice of that on top.

It doesn't heat the house up, but DOES make your house smell like you've cooked  a gourmet meal when you open that packet up and dish up some steaming veggies.

Mmmmm...

The big space is the huge spoonful that became my dinner.

NOT a Project Veg recipe - Cheddar Wurst

 So, it's summer.  I haven't bought meat in over 6 months.

It was time.

The one thing I couldn't give up was my summertime craving for cheddarwurst and sauerkraut with spicy mustard on a bun.

Sorry, my wee one was trying to wrestle the camera from my grasp.

Why, yes, this is a photo of my garbage.  I was trying to show what kind of brats I was using.

Put in a large pot.  Add beer.  Boil.

What, you need more instruction than that?  What kind of beer?  Something nutty and brown, or belgian.  Or cheap, whatever.

Boil about 30 minutes (longer if you start with frozen meat, about 45 min then) then grill for about 5 minutes to make them all crispy on the outside.  They're really yummy that way.

Mmmmm ... summer.

With spicy brown mustard and kraut on a bun.

Other Than Pink

So, my mom bought my kid the Pinkalicious book, took us to see Pinkalicious the musical, and then bought my kid a Pinkalicious sticker book.

From all of this pinkaliciousness, my kid seems to have internalized the message that she "should" want pink, or that everything "should" be pink.  She has started getting upset if we use the yellow bath towel in the evenings after bathtime (we have three yellow towels and one pink towel.  Odds are, the pink one is in the wash.)  She even gets mad if she doesn't get a pink plate to eat off of - and there are no pink plates at my house.  I asked her why she didn't want the purple Dora plate that had been her favorite and she said "pinkalicious".

I told her "pinkalicious" would forgive her if she didn't eat off a pink plate, then I distracted her with the very coveted blue "Pooh" plate that she gets to use occasionally.

So I'm combing Amazon for other books about girls and colors OTHER THAN PINK.  I found Ann Likes Red and ... yea.

Anybody got a book on the shelf that says "sure, pinkalicious is great and all, but you can use a yellow bath towel without throwing a damn fit"?

A Nightly Ritual

Some time back I started a blog about books.  It was really a way for me to reflect in essay format on how certain books were impacting me personally.  Unfortunately, I didn't save the posts or the blog, I don't remember its title, the email I used to create it, or much of anything else about it.  It only had two or three posts.  I think blogger probably trashed it.  I thought it was called Book Gurl or something like that.  I have been unsuccessful in finding it.

But one of the posts that I did write and post was related to some insight I gleaned from Nathaniel Branden's How to Raise Your Self Esteem.  In it he discussed how people with high self-esteem are mentally in the present, while people with low self-esteem tend to relive the past in their minds or spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about the future.  And usually, it's both.  I believe there were some exercises for helping yourself to remain focused on the present.

Then in another book, I also read about ways to boost your self-esteem, by reviewing your actions and activities at the end of the day.  It connects with what this book discusses about self-esteem and growing being related.

So fast forward several (!) years and we have me still trying to shore up my sometimes shaky self-esteem, but now with a daughter in tow.

So every night, after reading books and before saying prayers, we review our day.  We (okay, I) talk about the things we did that day, they way they made "us" feel, the things that were good, and the things "we" could have done better.  Now that she is understanding that process more, I can ask her what her favorite part of today was.  If there were discipline issues, I mention them very briefly and then just as briefly mention how "we" can do better tomorrow.

Usually this review segues nicely into our prayers, since our prayers start with "Thank You God, for Today" and then Thank You for the things that were wonderful about our day.  Then Blessings, and then Please Help Us with ... unless the kid starts yawning and needing to get into her bed.  So some nights we just say a bunch of "Thank You"s and a bunch of "Please Bless"s and I have to think that God likes to hear those kinds of prayers.

So between the daily review and the prayers, I am hoping that I'm teaching her the skill of looking back over your day.  What worked, what didn't, and what to work on for tomorrow.  Not in a guilt-inducing way, just in "being present" and "growing" kind of way.  Which, according to all the books, is one of the basic skills of self-esteem.

Won't it be wonderful if it works?

Great American Backyard Campout

(Um, that's what it's called, Jellybean Mama! he he)

So I wasn't sure how into this we were going to get.  I still hadn't actually, you know, FOUND the tent in all the crap in the basement.  I still hadn't actually, you know ORDERED the anti-mosquito stuff I saw in an expensive catalog.  I wasn't planning to, you know SLEEP OUTSIDE WITH A TWO YEAR OLD.  Right?

Or was I?  Because you know, I was actually looking forward to this.

I used to camp all the time.  With a dog.  We camped in the cold (okay, so one night we slept in the car with the heater on), in storms (okay one night we slept in the car since I thought the rubber tires would protect us from lightning).

But a toddler?

MY toddler?

My toddler whose favorite things are (1) yelling "no", (2) yelling "mine", (3) throwing herself to the floor in a fit, and (4) NOT SLEEPING? 

Well, hell, what's the difference between not sleeping inside and not sleeping outside?

So the day of, I located the tent, dragged it out, and waited until she was napping to put it up.

And I will admit taking a very LONG moment to soak up the atmosphere from this spot right here.  Breeze, sun, tent.  It really does make everything right with the world.

With the tent hidden from view by the back door blinds, we ran to the grocery for cookout stuff, and then back at home I unveiled The Tent.

Which, if you come by, has to be called a "tunnel", just so you know.

She loved it.  She laughed when she saw it.  Out loud.  Then she called it a tunnel.  I tried talking about "the tent" but got "TUNNEL" yelled in my face, so we didn't call it anything after that.

Tent Self-Portrait!

Oh, I so regret showing her how to zip/unzip the door

Grandparents and family friends came so she got to show them.

We ate meat, a rare occurence around here.

Mmmm, cheddarwurst boiled in Honey Nut Brown Ale then grilled.

Despite Deep Woods OFF, we still got mosquito bites.  By then she was ready to call it a night - inside.

But not before posing/mugging on the sleeping bag.

So we got all the fun and benefits of a campout - good friends, good food, adult beverages - but then we got to sleep in comfy beds indoors.

Hey, we're doing this in stages, leave me alone :)

I'm a Freaking HERO Mom

I don't like bugs.  (There are certain people who know me well who are rolling around on the floor laughing their asses off at the sheer understatement of that sentence.)

I have been known to shower in a different (much smaller) bathroom because a bug is slowly dying in my main shower because I don't want to kill/touch/deal with it.

I have been known to scream bloody murder at the sight of a harmless little spider.

I have been known to try to bang a bug with something heavy, miss, crawl up in a ball on the floor and cry until someone else kills it and removes the carcass.

(Yes, I am a Biologist.  I'd rather deal with people's body parts and microscopic organisms than a bug any day of the week.  Thanks.)


However ...

I now have a daughter.  And a house with a basement.  I can no longer scream bloody murder when I spy a bug.  In fact, I have been trying to calmly hide all fear of things-with-more-legs-than-me-that-can-move-faster-than-me-and-chase-me-in-my-nightmares from my daughter.  I don't want to teach her to be afraid - if she's going to be squeamish about bugs, she can find that out on her own.

But then, I went a step further.

I bought a Bug Kit.  A plastic box with a magnifying glass in the lid, a net for catching flying insects and little plastic tweezers.

I had put it away with some post-birthday stuff and she found it one day.

I took her outside and helped her look for bugs.

I even picked up a worm and a bug with the tweezers and put them in the bug box.

See, magnifyer.

The bug kept flipping over on its back.  I put the leaf in there to help it stay upright.

The worm was stretching out and showing off for the camera.

Then when she lost interest in the bugs, I put them back in the garden.

Then I scrubbed my freaking hands until they were red.

And had a nightmare about a tarantula.

Pinkalicious

So, do you know the story? (Totally not sure why I can only find the Spanish edition on Amazon.)

Well, a local playhouse was putting on the show.  My mom bought us tickets, so last Saturday morning we loaded up and headed out to see the show.

A certain Wee One had her pink on:

It was rainy, and had been storming the night before.  As we pulled up to the front of the theater, a woman told us the power was out and they were asking guests to wait in the car.  We got a decent parking spot and kept our eye on the front door.

Meanwhile, this Wee One was playing in the car.

People were walking up to the door, and were being turned away, back to their cars.

Still playing.

Finally, some people were leaving.  We assumed they were upset at the long wait.  It had been almost 40 minutes, by that point.  There were two people from the theater walking around in the parking lot with umbrellas, stopping to answer questions when people flagged them down.  We were told they would try to start the show at 10:00.

Still playing.

Still working.

"I get OUT!"

Finally we overheard a conversation in the parking lot that informed us that they would not be serving the breakfast included with our tickets, that we were encouraged to go get our own breakfast and they would try to start the show at 10:00.

I was pretty peeved.  Here there are representatives from the theater wandering aimlessly around the parking lot, but not going car-to-car to inform the guests of what the plan is.  Apparently someone found out something because there was a mass exodus of cars/vans/SUVs a little while earlier (we found all those people at McDonalds when we went to get our own breakfast).  The woman who answered our questions did manage to bitch that her pant legs were all wet from walking around the parking lot, but didn't mention to us to go get our own breakfast?  Thanks.

So we pulled out of the parking lot to head to McDonalds.  Can you imagine the tears and screaming from my kid?  Who has been talking about Pinkalicious all morning long and has had to sit in the car for 45 minutes in the rain?  I finally calmed her down by explaining that we just had to go get some food, and we would come back for the show.

After our McDonald's run, we come back to a much lousier parking space.  Another conversation in the parking lot told us that the show was being cancelled, and rescheduled for Monday.  (One of the few days of the week that I can actually get my shit-ton of work on online classes and faculty hiring done.)  So, again, we pull out of the parking lot.  With a disappointed kid.

Monday morning we repeat getting ready.  We repeat talking about Pinkalicious.  We repeat putting on the pink.  I called daycare to tell them she would be arriving at lunchtime, and again we headed to the theater.

This time we got out of the car.

Went inside to stand in line to get our table.

Met up with Nan.

Had breakfast.

Cheesed.

Took our token picture on the edge of the stage (similar to last time).

And finally we got to see Pinkalicious.

So now my Wee One's favorite color is pink.  If you ask her what she wants to drink, she says "pink".  If you ask her what she wants to eat, she says "pink".  I'm so freaking sick of reading that damn Pinkalicious book I could throw it out the window.  Then tonight she wanted to sleep with it.  But it was worth it, and I bet it will be something she remembers!