4.29.10:How a cook book changed my life

Once I put potatoes in the blender to make mashed potatoes.

Once I put granulated sugar in the blender to make powdered sugar.

Once my Italian roommate taught me how to boil noodles, because she was sick of me burning them.

I have people over for Sunday dinner once or twice a month.

I have never been asked for my recipe for anything.

My guests thank me for the food. And then stop.

I go grocery once a month.

Every day I dread 5 o'clock. Dinner prep time. It is a terrible time of day. It is the constant reminder that my culinary skills are, well, lacking. And to make it worse, I then have to eat what I cook. Gaging down food that is partially invented because I don't have all the real ingredients because I didn't go grocery shoppping because grocery shopping is another reminder of my ineptitudes (yes, I paid $100 for $100 worth of groceries), wears on you.

And then, one day, I found it. The perfect cookbook. And it has changed my life. I even kind of sort of look forward to making dinner now, and we even eat the left overs instead of letting them grow in the fridge.

How could one cookbook be so amazing you ask? Here's how:

This cookbook lays out menus for 30 weeks. That's right--it's not just a series of recipes but actual menus. So now, every night I open up my handy-dandy cookbook and turn to week 2 and look under Wednesday, and my book tells me to make French bread pizza from the left over French bread from the lasanga two days ago. I am also to make a tossed salad, which may sound like a simple thing to some of you, but for some of us it's not so it even gives me the recipe for that. And all the recipes are tasty. We have yet to come across one we don't like.

This also makes grocery shopping super easy. Next week, we will be eating week 3. So I look at the recipes for week 3 and write down all the stuff I don't have and then go shopping. And then I have all the ingredients and the recipes and the menus.

I am so much less stressed and feel a lot better about myself. Not that I ever was highly stressed, but I had to feed my family so there was stress involved in figuring out what to eat and when and whether or not we had the ingredients for something. I also feel more confident putting food on the table. No more excuses for why food doesn't taste good or whatever because I know it's going to be good because I followed the directions exactly. And I don't have to cook on Thursdays because we have enough left over food from the rest of the week to eat on Thursdays. And grocery shopping is a breeze. For a while I was spending about 2 hours every other week trying to figure out what to eat and find new recipes and figure out what I need buy and that was just to make the list. And then I still had to go shopping. Last week I made a list while Rex ate breakfast.

Oh, and the best part, the book also tells how to make a month's worth of food in 2-3 hours. I haven't tried that yet because our freezer isn't big enough, but it sounded interesting.

I am still not the best cook in the world, but at least I have the best cook book ever.

And, not that I'm trying to sell it to you, here's the info to order one for yourself, though if you're related to me, you'll probably be getting one for Christmas, so hold off for a while.

What's for Dinner?

www.whatsfordinner1.com

I recommend it.

4.25.11: Easter FHE

As previously mentioned, I have a problem with Easter. It's a great holiday, but it needs to be greater. Like a second Christmas. Maybe not that great, that would be pretty expensive.

So I was feeling this way last night when I read my friend Holly's blog about her Easter celebration and was inspired. Tonight for family night, I decided to continue our Easter celebration and make it a little more spiritual for us. We went on an Easter walk.

It was pretty cold so we only walked down to the end of the street and back, but we found all our the items for our Easter scavenger hunt.

Here's what we found and why: (this came from a book called Easter Walk: A Treasure Hunt for the Real Meaning of Easter)

1. Something pointed and sharp to represent the crown of thorns. (Mark 15:17)

2. Something wood to represent the cross. (John 19: 17-18)

3. Something dead to represent Christ's death. (Luke 23: 26)

4. Something dark to represent the impenitrable darkness after Christ's death. (3 Nephi 8:23)

5. Something hard and round to represent the tomb. (Mark 15: 46)

6. Something alive to represent the resurrection. (Matt 28: 5-6)

In the end, Rex was more interested in throwing our treasures in the gutter to watch them splash. But at least we tried. We'll have a repeat next year. Maybe Rex will get it then.

Warning

Dear Amber and Elizabeth,

Don't read the previous few posts because they are only about how cute my kid is. He is very cute, but I know how much you hate reading about other people's cute kids. I'm giving you fair warning.

Love,

Heather

4.24.11: Easter Sunday

I have a problem with Easter.

Not with the holiday. I love the Atonement and Resurrection. They bring me a lot of peace and happiness.

My problem is with the way we celebrate it.

I think being saved from our sins is a little more important than a mis-placed birthday and wish we did more to celebrate. But I don't really know how to do more. So I did my best with what I had and am now reading blogs and stealing other's ideas on how to make our Easter celebrations more sacred.

But for this year, this is what we did.

Rex decide to sleep in all the way until 7, but on his way to wake me up noticed his Easter basket, so he stopped there for some candy. I also hid a few eggs around the room. He didn't wake me up until 7:30. It was going to be a great day.

Rex took me to his basket and showed me what he got.

eggs full of candy (can-kee)

sand toys and a plastic wagon

Elmo heads full of candy
Then we got ready for church. Rex looked extra handsome in the suit Grandma Pattie made him, but he didn't want to take pictures.

Grandma Pattie also made Mommy a matching skirt. Rex still didn't want to take pictures.
After church and a nap, we had dinner. Hannah, Noah, Andrea and Mike all came and we had lots of lovely food. After much push back and insistance that Easters is somehow a Jewish holiday and as such we couldn't eat pig, Greg bought and prepared a ham. He's amazing with meat.

We did the dishes (ish), and then headed over to the park to fire off some rockets. This is completely unrelated to Easter, but it was raining yesterday.
We came home and dyed eggs. Rex really enjoyed it. His hands will be green (or boo as he insists) for the next few weeks.

Wait are they dating?

Then we got ready for bed and read the story of the Resurrection from the Children's New Testament Reader and Rex threw several temper tantrums before finally falling asleep around 10.

While we had a fun time with the family, see what I mean about Easter not getting the same level of spirituality and sacredness as Christmas? I'll have to work on it for next year.

I would welcome suggestions though.

4.23.11.: Saturday

Saturday was a fun day. We planned to spend the day doing yard work and hanging out with just our little family. We haven't done either in a while so I was excited. I love our little family dates.

And we did spend the whole day together, minus a short Relief Society meeting I had to go to in the morning.

I met Rex and Greg at our friends' house to go on a little egg hunt. We went to this same friends' house last year, but Rex wasn't too interested--once he figured out his one egg had candy in it, that was all he needed. But this year, he actually participated. I think he found at least 6 eggs.

He even found a shinny egg, which meant he got a special prize.
After the egg hunt, we went to the Provo City egg hunt. We purposly missed the mad-house that is that egg hunt but were there in time to pet some baby animals (those poor sheep were soo scared. Greg and I debated over the cruelty to animals that is petting zoos). Rex was very soft and told me all about the tiny animals.
After about an hour of playing there, Rex started to scream so nap time it was (he's been waking up at 5:30 lately--joy) so he takes his naps a little earlier now. During nap time Greg mowed and edged the lawn while I weeded. Our lawn now is keeping up with the Jones--which is important in this neighborhood because if you don't the neighbors turn you into the city.

I had planned to make dinner, but Greg said that it was family date night and we should go out. I didn't protest. We got pizza, or pees as Rex calls it. As we drove to the restaurant, we listened to Rex's favorite, hip hop. I tried to get a video of him dancing; Rex just wanted to look at pictures of himself so this is what we got. He's saying Rex, by the way.

After dinner we went to Kangaro Zoo, which is a warehouse full of inflatables. Rex loved it, especially because Daddy is way nicer than Mommy and carried him to the top of all the big slides. He loves jumping.

After about 2 hours, the boys got a little tired.

We got home around 7:30 pm, and Rex and I watched Cars, not my favorite, while Greg ran a few errands. Rex went down with only a slight peep around 9.

He even slept in until 7 this morning. I think we need a trampoline.

It was a wonderful family date. I love date nights.

4.22.11: Friday

It's been a while since Greg and I have been on a date, what with my family and Greg's family and then Greg being out of town, so I was really excited for this weekend.

At 6, I dropped Rex off at the sitter's and then ran home to meet Greg. But he wasn't there. And he wasn't there. And he still wasn't there. So I called him. And then I called him again. And then again and he answered. He had left work at 5 to be home on time for our date, but was only in Pleasant Grove--the combination of ridulous construction traffic and parents in town for graduation meant that Greg took an hour-and-a-half to get home. I ended up meeting him at a very quiet little restuarant we know where we could just talk.

But then it was time to pick Rex up. Lame.

Oh, wait, I have family in Provo. I called Noah and had him pick Rex up so Greg and I had another 2 hours before Noah's activities for the evening started (oh to be young). Greg and I decided to go to the BYU MOA, where all the workers strongly encouraged us to go to the Karl Bloch exhibit. But we didn't. We went to the one on war posters in the basement and it was amazing. I like my art to be challenging and while Bloch's work is beautiful, it's not challenging. We then quickly ran through a photo essay of Dorothea Lange's, which was also beautiful, but we didn't have time to fully take it in. We ended our evening with frozen yogurt.

And then we came home, put Rex to bed and spent the rest of the evening cuddling on the couch and watching TV. Gross I know, but we really haven't had a chance to spend time together like that in a long time and I really enjoyed it so I thought I'd blog about it.

4.7.11: Adorable

I came home from running some errands the other day to find this:

If you can't tell, it's Greg and Rex playing Rock Band together. Rex was totally into it. Greg said Rex even got the drums out and asked to play. My kid is seriously so adorable. And isn't Greg such a good little daddy?