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Monday, September 30, 2013

Pizzaiola

Anybody up for some pizza?



From the front, we have arugula and sweet potato, pepper and salami, more arugula and sweet potato, and bacon and spinach.

I've been trying to branch out beyond my usuals (pepperoni, barbecue chicken, and mushroom and chevre).

Do you have any more ideas for me?

Friday, September 27, 2013

Poor Baby.

Well, we've had our first broken bone.

It took twenty-three boy-years, six of them Theo's.  (Word is, Thomas Aquinas is asking God to go back in time and include that in the Summa as the sixth argument for God's existence.)

And the broken bone wasn't even Theo's.  (Seventh argument.)

Amos fell off a jungle gym at Mom's Morning Out yesterday and broke his collarbone.

He was pretty uncomfortable all day . . .




. . . but a latte (I-un wattay, Mommy!) was enough to make everything better.  (I feel the same way, sometimes.)

He's a pretty happy boy.  When it only takes a little Tylenol and a latte to triumph over a broken bone, well, that's not too bad.


Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Was Your Head With You All Day?

"Theo, this note says that they had to give you a free lunch because you didn't have enough lunch money.  What happened?  I sent in two dollars."
"Gosh, I don't know."
"Theo, what happened to the two dollars I sent in with you?"
"I don't know."
"Did Daddy take it out of your bookbag?"
"No."
"Did the bus driver steal your lunch money?"
:giggle: "No."
"So the money made it to school?"
"Yes, I think so."
"Theo, did the money make it to school?"
"Maybe when I gave it to the lunch lady, she looked at the two dollars and only saw one dollar and thought that I didn't have enough."
"Theo, they tend not to employ lunch ladies that can't tell the difference between one and two."
"But maybe she made some kind of mistake."
"Theo, this says they had to give you a free lunch because you didn't have enough lunch money.  What happened?"
"I think the lady just didn't . . ."
"Theo, stop blaming the lunch lady.  Did you have money when you went to lunch?"
"Um . . . I don't remember."
"Theo, did your homeroom teacher steal your lunch money?"
"Maybe when I gave it to the breakfast lady, she forgot to put it on my account and so the lunch lady didn't know about it."
"I don't understand.  It was in an envelope.  It was marked 'Theo's Lunch Money.'"
"I went to school, and I gave the money to the breakfast lady.  Maybe she just forgot to tell the lunch lady about the money."
"Theo, wait, why did you give it to the breakfast lady?  Is that what you usually do?  And she's supposed to put it on your account?"
"Um . . . yes?"
"Theo, I'm really-- THEO!!!  DID YOU SPEND YOUR LUNCH MONEY ON BREAKFAST?!?!"
"Um . . . maybe when I gave it to the breakfast lady--FOR LUNCH!!!--she only thought I was giving it to her for breakfast, and so she only put one dollar on my lunch account."
"Theo, what did you eat for breakfast?"
"Pancakes and eggs and sausage."
"Theo, did you buy breakfast at school?"
"Um . . . well . . ."
"Theo, how much is breakfast at school?"
"One dollar."
"How much is lunch?"
"Two dollars."
"How much did I give you this morning?"
"Two dollars."
"How much did you have at lunch time?"
"One dollar."
"How much did you use to buy breakfast?"
"One dollar."
"Why did you buy breakfast, Theo, when you only had enough money for lunch?"
"My friend on the BUS INVITED ME!"
"Theo, you didn't have enough money for breakfast!"
"But she asked me to go with her, and I didn't want to be rude!"
:long pause:
"What's this girl's name, Theo?"
"I don't know.  She's just my friend.  And she likes when I go with her to breakfast."
"THEO.  HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU GONE TO BREAKFAST?!?!"
"Six?"
:headdesk:

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Scratch and Dent Food

This is a great idea, and I'm glad he's doing this:

Former Trader Joe's Exec Wants to Reclaim Expired Food, Reduce Waste

But, honestly, I'm a little sad to see how few grocery stores take the initiative to deal with this reality themselves.

I've seen many--although decidedly not all--that with throw a little $1-off sticker on expiring meat, or put their ultra-ripe bananas in a special bag on a discount.

That's, you know, nice.

But I think they could take a more comprehensive approach.

I've only ever seen it done in one store, but it really worked, and it didn't detract from the store's upscale vibe.

This store, a Harris Teeter in North Carolina, had a special section in the meat department and a special rack in the produce department.  All the expiring meat got a nice little discount--often about 30%--and was conveniently located all in one place.  Meat that was expiring that day often got a more substantial discount--maybe two-thirds or three-quarters off.

Scratch-and-dent and super-ripe produce was similarly repackaged and all placed together on that special rack.  It might contain damaged apples or pears (I often used them for pie or applesauce), cut melons (that had been, presumably, bruised on one side but were salvageable), old-ish mushrooms (wrinkled was fine, slimey was not), smooshy avocados (fine for guac), or plantains that had ripened black (which is the exact perfect time to use them!).

Here's the thing: even though Harris Teeter tended to be pricier and more upscale than Kroger or Food Lion, I always shopped at Harris Teeter, once they started doing this.  It really did help the budget, I really appreciated the convenience of having all the sale stuff in one place, and I really liked patronizing a store that was trying to eliminate waste.

In fact, I thought of those scratch-and-dent sections as a small way for the grocery store to redeem the manipulative practices that grocery stores routinely use to separate you from as much of your money as possible.

I never make applesauce anymore.  I don't have time, first of all, and it's been over four years since I moved away from that Harris Teeter.  (The idea of making applesauce from full-price apples makes me grumpy.)

And I've never--never--seen a grocery store with the same concerted effort to do what that Harris Teeter did.  (I don't think my current grocery store even puts little $1-off stickers on its expiring meat.)

I shop at Publix now.  Maybe it's time for a little letter to the manager.

Monday, September 16, 2013

Index Cards For Life

I have written elsewhere about my new chore card system, which has been so successful (at least, according to my rather modest standards) that I have looked for ways to incorporate more index cards into my life.

Well, okay, not really.

The chore card system is working fairly well, and in a random pragmatic convergence, index cards have made themselves part of my new meal planning system, too.

My old meal planning system was working just fine.

I had roughly two weeks' worth of general approaches to meals (meat and sides, fried rice with protein, pasta with tomato sauce, pasta with non-tomato sauce, Tex-Mex, etc.).  I plugged in whatever was on sale or whatever I had in the pantry to those basic approaches, and I had two weeks' worth of meals.

It got the job done, and if you need to get the job done, that's the simplest approach.  Ten to twelve flexible, customizable meals, over and over and over.

But I wanted to generate a little more variety and a little more buy-in from the rest of the fam, without sacrificing my control over the dietary and budgetary considerations.

So, I turned to index cards.





I got a 100-card rainbow pack.  That seemed like more than enough variety to me.

I figured that there were special dinners that we'd only have very occasionally because of either the cost or the time involved.  I wanted the guys to feel free to choose them, but I wanted there to be some limitations.

So I put meals like sushi, ribs, cioppino, cassoulet, and boeuf bourguignon on the purple cards.  Mostly, they just sit in the card box and don't even get looked at.  Birthdays, holidays, Grandmom's-coming-to-town, then we pull them out and say, "Let's pick a special dinner!"

I had eighty cards left, in four colors.

So I thought about what sorts of categories would force our diet and our budget in helpful directions.  The categories I came up with are specific to our needs and choices as a family, but they might give you a helpful idea of how to do the same with your own family's needs and choices.

I put all meat-and-sides meals on the pink cards.  (Pink, medium rare meat, it worked for me.)

I put all soups on the blue cards.  (Super-meat-heavy stews, I kept with the pink.  Soups with some meat in them, blue.)

I put all wheat-based vegetarian or very-low-meat meals on the green cards.  (Pasta, couscous, sandwiches, savory pies, etc.)

And I put wheat-free vegetarian meals on the yellow cards.

It really wasn't that hard to fill up all twenty cards in each category, although sometimes it was a matter of varying the details in the same basic plan for two or three cards.  (Veggie chili with cornbread, veggie chili with potatoes, you know the drill.)

Every Sunday night, I have us each pick a meal from one of the four "everyday" categories (Amos doesn't get to yet), and then I fill up the rest of the week's menu with what I need to make it work with our budget and diet.  (I try to use at least three yellow cards per week.)

Once a card has been picked, I pull it from the stack so it won't get chosen again in the near future.

When any one color runs out (usually yellow first, since I'm trying to pull from it most often), I put all the cards back in the stack, even if some colors still have many unchosen meals in them.

Each cycle lasts about a month and a half this way.  I suppose if you weren't pulling heavily from any one color, you could make the cycle last over two months.  But I didn't need that much variety in my life, and I really did want to keep either meat-and-sides or pasta-and-sauce meals from dominating.  (The one tends to take over when you're short on time or mental energy, the other when you're short on cash.)

I won't say the kids have all of a sudden developed a heretofore undiscovered passion for vegetarian chili.  But it has increased buy-in for the non-meat, non-pasta meals, and I've learned some things about my kids' preferences that I didn't really know when I was doing all the picking.  (Isaac loves polenta and really dislikes chicken.  Theo loves rice and prefers black beans to chickpeas.  Stephen . . . always goes along with his wife's crazy ideas, bless his heart.)

You could do this with a fifty-pack instead of a hundred-pack.  (That's still over a month of meals.)  You could do it with fewer colors or more colors.  You could have a much more elaborate version of this than I am capable of even thinking of, and you could probably glitz it up and make it Pinterest-worthy. 

I put the week's menu on a piece of notebook paper, and I put it on the fridge.  Nobody pins that on Pinterest.

But this is working for us.

Monday, September 2, 2013

Facebook is for Old Folks

Actual conversation in one of my classes Friday:

Me [trying to sound hip while making a point]: So, different genres, different kinds of texts, have different expectations of the reader.  You know this already.  You read your financial aid award letter differently than you read your Facebook feed, I'm sure.  Uh, wait.  Are you guys even on Facebook, or is that just for the old folks now?

Them: Old folks, man.  That's definitely old folks.

Me: So, what are you guys on?

Them: Twitter!

Me: Oh.  Okay.  Twitter.  Yeah, okay.

Them: And, yo, Instagram.

Me: Wait, what?  I thought Instagram was old folksville!  Like, people sharing baby pictures for the grandparents and, you know, pictures of their food at restaurants.

Them: Naw, we all on Instagram.

Me: So, what do you . . . like . . .
[massive giggling ensues]

Me: Uh, never mind.  Don't tell me.