I know this blog is about what I would eat, but I felt inspired this morning to list the things my kids won't eat. Mainly, I want to commiserate with the mothers (and fathers) of other, erm... selective children. And let me state that I know that being a bit choosy about food is actually an extension of a natural, biological, evolutionarily-protective instinct. And I've had the joy of watching my daughter "grow out of it" a bit. So I have faith that my son will as well. But it can still be grating when a foodie like me wants to make a feast and has to think up something for the kids to eat.

Things My Son Thinks Are Poison:

Salad
Meat with sauce (recently had some awesome brisket, but it was slow cooked in sauce...) this includes chili, but somehow does not include taco meat
Citrus of any kind
Mashed potatoes
Chicken nuggets
Hot cereal
Muffins
Fish
Soup
Food with "dots" (I kid you not... if yogurt has the fruit's abominable seeds in it, no go)
Pretty much all candy except tootsie rolls, Snickers, and gum

Things My Son Will Eat His Own Body Weight In:

Meat: sausage, beef, chicken, pork
Green beans off my plate
Rice pasta, especially leftover, cold, from the fridge
Mac & cheese (from a box, ugh!)
Rice
Bananas
Cheese
Chocolate milk
Raw beef
Bologna
Carrots and celery dipped in mayonnaise
Nut crackers
Toast with almond butter
Whipped cream
Chips with guacamole
Pistachios

Things My Daughter Won't Touch:

Cold meat
Mashed potatoes
Chicken nuggets
Hot cereal
Fish
Any chicken except Buffalo wings
Pork
Soda
Most French fries
Soup

Things My Daughter Will Eat Her Own Body Weight In:

Double cheeseburgers the size of her head
Pasta
Rice
Salad
Berries
Mac & cheese
Grilled cheese sandwiches
Buffalo wings
Sliced & fried polska kielbasa
Very well-done steak (shudder, it's cruel to do that to a steak!)
Biscuits/rolls/breadsticks
Yogurt
Dill pickles
Shredded cheese (why? what makes shredded taste better?)
Cold cereal (ugh)
Whipped cream
Candy
Pistachios

No coupons?

I get all ready to make my bloggy comeback, and there are no coupons? What is wrong with this world? C'mon... kill ten thousand trees to print up toxicly-inked incitements that convince me I am an inferior mother because I don't gas my kids with Lysol when they come in from playing in dirt. (Dirt... ew... it's so... dirty.) Is this a Christmas reprieve for my ego? Will they recommence the assault on my sanity on the 27th? Or wait until the new year? Let us not forget that we will need to be bombarded with reminders that it's time to make our New Year's Resolutions. If we somehow weren't reminded, we might not only forget that it was a new year, but also forget that it's time for our annual self-loathing to begin and self-punishment to ensue. So, I certainly hope they don't leave us hanging for long. If the coupons don't return on the 27th, we'll be 3 whole days into the new year before we have our bright, colorful, low-fat instructions.

I do think they need to figure out just exactly what they want us to do. They seem to give mixed messages. On the one hand, we've all learned from commercials and coupons and print ads that fresh baked cookies = love. If I don't have a plateful of sugar for my children on a regular basis, they will grow up believing their mother didn't love them. They make it perfectly clear. And holidays will be remembered with tears in therapy if I don't include lots of rolls from a tubular can. But then they also want us to all lose weight. You can't have it both ways! I can either love my family or have them be thin. And I absolutely cannot love them at all unless I've been pampering myself properly. That requires layers of body products that mostly smell like all the food I'm not allowed to eat. Vanilla volumizing shampoo, chocolate mint intensive conditioner, berries-and-cream anti-wrinkle moisturizer, probably some sort of grape-extract eye-lifter or whatever other goop a dutifully-young-looking mother ought to use.

But if I did all that, there's always the risk that my poor starved children would eat me.

I'd better start baking some cookies.

Commercial Rant

It's like my good ol' Coupon Rant, but... minus the coupons. Just a different marketing angle. Let me start by pointing out the obvious... if your "food" requires marketing, it's probably not really food. If you have to be talked into eating something, because your natural instincts would not lead you to recognize it as sustenance... it's probably not real food. And if marketing gurus are buying their third Lexus from the money they earned to convince you (and thousands of others) to eat said... thing... I can guaran-damn-tee it isn't food.

Ok, so what got my knickers in a twist today? Dominos Pizza. What a shock. I hold a big grudge against pizza in general, but only because I can't have any. It is not inherently evil... but even if I made my own gluten-free crust, I'd have to sub the cheese with something, and well... after you've made so many changes to something, you can't really call it "pizza" anymore. It'd be bruschetta with sausage, perhaps, but not pizza. Anyway, the commercial I saw today, while sitting on my butt, being a proper American couch potato watching football, had my mouth literally hanging open. Once I resumed breathing, the rant began.

The commercial in question showed a busy Dominos location, phones ringing constantly, with a manager-type explaining that with the price so low for such a delicious lunch, the only bad thing they had to say was... they were imposing a limit of 256 per household per day. Then they showed the customers hauling away stacked boxes of pizza in every way imaginable, including an irate mom who had brought a semi and was mad about the daily limit.

Yeah.

And not one of them was fat.

While I hate to go along with media hype in any way... (even so much as to keep my mouth shut about my bout with H1N1 because I don't like feeding the hysteria), we are in the midst of a huge problem with our huge butts. Worst of all, our kids are getting fat. And no, I am not prejudiced against fatness. I *am* however concerned about the illnesses that go with it, or more likely cause it, and all of it stems from eating absolute CRAP like Dominos pizza. The government even recommends that we all make sure to get plenty of grains and carbohydrates every day, despite the fact that it has been PROVEN that more than 150 grams of carbs per day cause illness. And there are a lot of carbs in pizza, especially in the ridiculous quantity most people serve themselves.

Oh, I know, Dominos still needs to make their profit... I wouldn't want the poor dears to have a bad fiscal year and then fire all those poor delivery boys. We *need* people to gorge on pizza, for the sake of the economy. Or some shit like that. Just think how many jobs we can create when we get sick!! Diabetes employs so many... lab techs to take your blood, machinists in the factories that make glucometers, pharmacists, doctors, nurses, eventually surgeons... and then of course all the marketing gurus to design and sell you sugar-free, fat-free phood.

Maybe Dominos will come out with a fat-free pizza. Wonder what that would be made out of?

I bow to The Big Easy

A good friend of mine tried her best to talk me into driving to New Orleans for Mardi Gras revelry this last weekend. I nobly resisted. I always cook my own Fat Tuesday feast, thank you very much... while listening to a mish mash of Zydeco and Cajun-inspired music. Sure, it's not as festive, and some year I hope to cross "Mardi Gras in New Orleans" off my Life List. But for now, I'll enjoy the fresh air and lack of half-naked crowds at home.

Well tonight's recipe was a flop. A failure. An epic fail. I recently stumbled across a new recipe website, I think on the recommendation of the magazine that sponsors it being one that encourages real food, not necessarily fast or easy food. I fell in love the moment I learned that a recent edition focused on either butter or bacon (I forget which). I've been visiting daily and printing off reams of delicious-sounding recipes. One of those recipes was for Grillades and Cremini Grits. I originally did not plan to serve this recipe for Mardi Gras. While not generally a creature of habit, I have spent the last 5 or 6 Mardi Gras making jambalaya or gumbo, either way involving a lot of sausage, shrimp, and/or chicken. Not grillades. And I know that grillades are generally a breakfast/brunch dish. Not dinner. As life happened, though, I didn't get to make them on their appointed night, so thought "well, hey, it'll work just fine for Mardi Gras."

No.

Do not listen to those sorts of voices. Do not break from tradition. The gods of Mardi Gras were not pleased.

My first clue (other than trying to plan something not based on shrimp) should have been how different this recipe is from every other stinking recipe for grillades.

No one else uses an entire bottle of wine.

And now I know why. That's a lot of wine. And I like wine. But when it concentrates down that much... if it is not a very fine bottle, if you somehow follow the rule to only cook with wines you would drink, but apparently aren't selective enough about drinking wines... you end up with a final dish that tastes like tart wine. With onions. No beef flavor to speak of. Just bite after bite of wine. Blech.

The grits part didn't work out, either. Apparently the milk in the recipe serves a higher function than liquid and flavor. Maybe it's a custard-type thing. I subbed half chicken broth and half fancy-shmancy mushroom broth ("oooh, ahhh...") and ended up with runny grits. Harrumph. I'm hoping the leftovers will be good.

One good thing did come out of the grillades recipe.

I used half sorghum and half generic-gluten-free-white-flour-blend to coat the round steak, and it worked really well. It browned nicely and thickened the sauce very well.

So next year you can bet your sweet bippy I will be making jambalaya or gumbo. With sausage, shrimp, and/or chicken. Branching out isn't worth the risk. And next time I make grillades (yeah, there might be a next time, I'll try anything twice) I will stick to a recipe from Nawlins itself. Fancy-shmancy gourmet magazines don't know what they're talking about!

I heart raw fish!

Tonight's dinner seems like an episode of Connections. We start with my weekly delivery of fresh, locally-grown produce (and meat, dairy, gluten-free bread products) from Greenling. Oh, how I love the adventure of cooking whatever Mother Nature has seen fit to provide! This week included yet another massive bunch of cilantro. I know cilantro can be a very hot topic. But I am in the "love it" camp for this particular herb, so I like getting these big bunches. What I don't like is the guilt I feel when most of a bunch goes wilty (or worse yet, gooey) due to me not getting around to using it. I hate it when that happens with any of the lovely produce the farmers worked so hard to grow. Cilantro is very moody and can be hard to keep fresh for more than a few days. So, I resolved to make salsa. I googled around, but wasn't inspired, so I reached for my trusty Mexican Everyday cookbook, by Rick Bayless (if you're going to cook Mexican, get a Rick Bayless book!) I love this cookbook... for it's simplicity, ease of use, friendly voice, and especially for the amazingly sound advice for life in general that he gives in the introduction. Truly awesome. So, I was going to use his Chunky Fresh Salsa recipe, but I failed to pay attention and make a good list before going to the grocery store. I had no green onions. Would a regular onion work? And would it be too spicy for me? The older I get, the more of a gringa I become. That's when I remembered my Gringo's Guide cookbook... with handy flame ratings for each recipe. So, I flipped through and none of the recipes were quite right. I liked the sound of one that included cucumber, which I just happened to have (I know, I know, not seasonal at all!) But the book said it was best with seafood... and I was planning Grillades and Grits for dinner. Although my foot has been hurting from a freak soccer-with-4-year-old accident, so I really wasn't in the mood for an involved dinner. Last night I made a double batch of very-involved ragu, which fed us and the freezer quite nicely, but... left me rather TIRED. And casting evil glances at my kitchen in general. I've had enough chopping, stirring, and endless cleaning-up for a few days. And I love cooking, so that's saying something.

Ok. What can I thaw quickly (not using the microwave) that would maybe somehow go well with the salsa that I felt forced into making?

Fish. Specifically, halibut pieces from Vital Choice. Tasty for fish tacos, but my kids don't like fish... and I have a LOT of citrus on hand right now, thanks to Greenling... how about ceviche? I can make rice (with chicken broth to boost the nutrition) and we can either put our fishy goodness (plus some extra salsa) over rice, or maybe scoop it up with nacho chips (it's not as crazy as it might sound... the very popular Elise recommends it here.) And we can munch on chips and my fresh, homemade salsa while the ceviche... ceviches.

So, yeah... tonight's lovely and delicious dinner was brought to me by the letter C, for cilantro, and the number... bunch. Oh, come on, bunch is a number! And we'll be having those grillades and grits for Mardi Gras... hope to post about it!

Brats!

No, I'm not talking about the children, I would never call them that.* I'm talking about dinner! Delicious, humongous bratwursts from U.S. Wellness Meats, to be exact.
I was really tired tonight, after a long afternoon at our weekly homeschool park day, so I made the Grill Geek ply his trade for dinner. I chopped up some veggies for Sidedish (this time it was red potatoes, a small sweet potato, a lot of mushrooms, and half a red onion) and he did all the rest. A large scoop of real sauerkraut (with all it's lovely probiotics intact) and a dollop of coarse mustard were all that was needed to complete the meal.

Now, those brats probably look pretty big to you... and you're probably sitting there thinking "how on earth could she eat TWO of those things? She must be a pig!" Well, first of all, Smarty Pants, pigs don't eat pig, and these were pork brats. So. There you go. And secondly... I was really darn hungry after a light pre-park lunch and no snacks. And third... well... see for yourself.



I didn't eat all of it. Almost. But not quite.

* I prefer to refer to them as pirates, or perhaps "scallywags" on a bad day.

Superfood

Since everyone does it, I did too.
Way too much food, all of which can be eaten with one's fingers, lots of grease, and plenty of spice.

Superbowl food.

First Half:
Steak Bites (I deglazed my pan with a glug of beer)
Guacamole and chips
Bacon-wrapped grilled leeks
Garlic-bacon potato skins

Second Half:
Italian Drumettes (I used the Ro-Tel tomatoes with chiles, to add a kick)
Veggies and dip

It was a little bit tricky timing it all so that I could actually watch the game (strange, football-loving woman that I am,) but it worked out pretty well. And with food for both halves, we were able to munch without stuffing ourselves.