Tag Archives: what’s for dinner

Quite Possibly, I Am the Best Wife Ever.

Posted in Blogging, Faith, family, Fathers, Food, Friday Funny, Kids speak crazy, Latent Nuttiness, Marriage, Mothers, Uncategorized by

First of all, the day started with me trying to give two of the three cats in our household medication.

The third one is meds free. Probably not for long, though. That’s how we roll.

And, just bear with me, this does actually pertain to the wife thing.

Anyhow, one cat in the household (Steve) is a darling fluffy fat furball of deliciousness, and he just sits on me as I put the pill in his pink mouth. Like, he sits STILL, and then he just swallows it. And purrs. Because, did I mention, Steve is JUST THE MOST ADORABLE LUMP OF FURRY GOODNESS?

Seriously. He swallows the pill. No problems. We get in; we get out. Over and done in seconds. Then, he gets up and offers to help with the laundry. (Not really, but I know, I KNOW, if he had opposable thumbs, he would.)

Perhaps all this lead-up would give you a bit of foreshadowing for how the second cat deals with medication?

Second cat: Hi! I’m all furry and purring and rubbing up against you! Cuteness is here!

Me: It’s time for your pill, Second Cat.

Second Cat: I SHALL SMITE THEE WITH A THOUSAND CLAWS.

Me: I’m ready for that. This time I have a towel.

Second Cat: THAT’S NO PROBLEM JUST LET ME GO GET MY CHAINSAW. AND SOME DYNAMITE. MAYBE ALSO A NUCLEAR DEVICE. THIS IS SO ON.

Me: I think perhaps you are over-dramatizing the whole situation, Second Cat. You could, you know, just take the pill and we’d be over this in seconds. Like, oh I don’t know… your buddy-

Second Cat: Don’t do it.

Me: Like your buddy, STEVE? The preshus?

Steve: Dude. Every time you compare me to one of the other animals, or children, in this house, you break their spirit. You know I’ve set some impossible standards here.

Ok, I promise I’m going to get to the wife thing. The issue here is that I have now been treated poorly by a cat, and my feelings are hurt. THEN, when the husband came downstairs, this happened:

Husband: Hi honey! What’s with the bandaids?

Me: DON’T SPEAK TO ME EVER AGAIN.

It’s possible I too was over-dramatizing. Forty million tiny slices from a tiny ninja cat will do that to you.

A lot of times, when you are Mom-ming, you should be able to shake it off. Like, all of it. Shake off the furry disasters, the endless laundry, the fact that no matter what I cook for dinner it always ends up being one color.

My friends, I am not much of a shake it off kinda girl.

So, perhaps, just maybe …  as I was preparing the mashed potatoes for dinner, I overheard Blonde’s commentary on his dislike of such a dish:

“Ugh,” Blonde said,  “I don’t LIKE mashted potatoes. They’re kinda tasteless. And squishy.”

And then, maybe… just maybe I said:

“Huh. That’s exactly how I feel about your father. Kinda tasteless. And squishy.”

I know. Tbe ninja snark is strong with this one.

After copious apologies and kisses on the husband, I then decided to add this to the menu for dinner:IMG_7185.jpg

Note the strategic coffee cup placement. Foreshadowing.

We had BLT’s with fresh tomatoes from my mom’s garden:

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Along with squishy and tasteless mashed potatoes. And at the table was seated a husband who forgives me on a daily basis. Also present were two kids who ate a lot of bacon, after delicately removing any trace of the T or the L, and bread. And the heavens smiled.

Because carbs and bacon will solve all the world’s problems.

Problems like:

  1. Snarkitude
  2. Mashed potatoes (Also, add cheese. Oh my goodness.)
  3. North Korea
  4. Mullet haircuts
  5. Reality television
  6. The deep sucking void that is, basically, 2017

So we end this little tale happily.

My cats are medicated.

We’ve had our fill of pork products.

And I am, most surely:IMG_7185.png

 

 

 

 

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F is for Food. Stop Freaking Out.

Posted in ABC's of Life, Blogging, Faith, family, Fathers, Food, Kids speak crazy, Latent Nuttiness, Marriage, Mothers, Uncategorized, Writing by

Here’s a Throwback Thursday for you. Written some FOUR years ago… and you know what, friends?

NOTHING MUCH HAS CHANGED.

My life is on circular rotation, because Parenting. I still make the Pan-O-Love, by the way. It is well received. Not much else is.

So, here goes:

 

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The other day a friend of mine was perusing my blog, and she stopped for a minute.  I know she stopped because I was obsessively watching her eyes actually move across the page and hoping that she would, you know, chortle a bit (she was eerily silent).  There was not one smidgeon of chortling, but she’s, well, she’s just that way.

Anyhow, I digress.

At one point she stopped and, kind of muttered, “No…”

I tried to be all casual: “Whatttt??  WHAT is it? DID YOU LIKE IT? SOMETHING FUNNY?  Or wait, bad?? Something bad?  PLEASSSE JUST TELL MEEEE.”

Yep.  Cool as a mint julip, my friends.

She simply nodded at the screen and said, “It’s wrong.  You said you’re a lousy cook.  That’s wrong.  You are a great cook.  You need to go back and change that.”

My friend is simply divine.  She is, well, she’s the butter on my bread.

My homemade bread, ya’ll.  I KNOW.  I make bread, bout twice a week.   Hot and crusty with just a hint of sweet, real butter all oozy and sliding around…  I would go on but this is not Showtime and I don’t want to upset my pastor’s wife, who reads this once in a while.

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Here are some of my greatest hits in the kitchen (cue Slow Jam music):

1.  Chicken and dumplings.  Oh yeeaah.  Whole chicken is a must.   (I scoff at you, you skinless chicken breasts! We have no place for naked breasts at our home!)

(Wow. That was kinda pushing it.)

2.  Pulled pork and gravy with mashed potatoes.  A subtle hint of cayenne is the secret.  It does, however,  resemble Alpo.  Close your eyes and hoover it.

3.  Double chocolate brownie/sheet cake thing.  Haven’t made this in ages but really, it’s a pan ‘o love, I tell you.  Snuggle up with it and a good book at night and, well, it completes you.

4.  Shepherd’s Pie.  You know, Jesus was called the Good Shepherd.  This meal would be right up his alley, I believe.

5.  Biscuits and gravy with LARD ya’ll.  BOOM. I AIN’T PLAYIN’.

6.  Stromboli.  It’s the yummoli.

7.  Sour cream and raisin pie.  Frozen pie crust, you ask?  Pfft.  As if.  This recipe is as old school as an episode of Andy Griffith, and my dad loves it.  He’s waaaaay old school.  In fact, there was no school for him; they hadn’t invented it yet.

8.  Some weird version of chicken soup with lemon and ginger and hot peppers and cilantro.  I feed it to the hubs whenever he starts sniffling, and I swear some times he fakes the snot so he can get some.

9.  The best BLT this side of anywhere they sell bacon.  I MEAN lo, it is just a BLT but mine stands for Baby, Leave me Ta heck alone while I eat it…

10.  I need a round number so, I’ll just say it.  My peanut butter balls, ya’ll.  They might not be pretty, but they are chocolatey balls of goodness.  I make ’em for the hubs birthdays and anniversaries and any other sort of celebration.  Because, you know.  You can never have too many balls.

Ok.  I am a good cook.

And now, see exhibit BLONDE here on the left? IMG_0004 See this sweet little cherub of goodness right der?  Well, he is a dirty little rat that turns up his twitchy little rat nose at everything I present to him.  (I KNOW…  rats aren’t really known for being picky, but you get what I mean.)

Oh, the Redhead eats everything not nailed down.  It’s wonderful.  However, he better get a trade fast because he is creating a budget deficit in our house  that is rather epic.  (See previous post on Economics.)

This is how the darling Blonde responds to:

1.  Homemade chicken and noodles:

Blonde one covers his mouth as if I have just placed a bowl of buzzard guts in front of him.  Even just a whiff of the chickeney goodness, I guess, sends him gagging.  He then proceeds to lay his forehead on the table in abject despair.  All is lost.  Chicken. And. Noodles.  MY GOD WOMAN!  HOW COULD YOU?   CHICKEN AND NOODLES?  I CAN’T GO ON.  REALLY.  DIS IS DA END.

2.  Stromboli:

“I don’t care for dis.  It tastes… dusty.”

I’ll show you dusty, my little blonde friend.  The hubs had to intervene on that one because blonde one was about to get an education on dust (da FLOOR.)

3.  Shepherd’s Pie

Blonde one:  “It tastes like… butter.”  His mouth is screwed on because evidently butter is the devil’s condiment.  Blonde one and Jesus are good friends, I promise you, but we have a ways to go.

4.  The balls.  No problem.  Gone.  When he’s done he looks like he has a chocolate goatee.  It’s whimsical.

What he will eat, with abandon:  hot dogs.  Of course.

So… if he had his way he would eat just hot dogs and my peanut butter balls forever, and life would be dandy.  And you can just go right ahead and insert your OWN joke here because I AM NOT GOING THERE.  I am far too mature for that kinda cheekiness, my friends.

<< chortle >>

*  My lawyers tell me I need to insert a disclaimer here, so read this really really fast:

It’s just a teensy weensy bit possible an itsy bitsy bit of creative license was taken here.  I’m not sure, but maybe.

Has anybody out there had a picky eater???  And what DOES “dusty” food taste like?

Walk Away from the Quinoa

Posted in Blogging, Faith, family, Fathers, Food, Friday Funny, Kids speak crazy, Latent Nuttiness, Marriage, Mothers, Uncategorized, Writing by

Guess what day it is????

It’s FRIIIIIIIIIDAY! And you know what that means, don’t you???

Linking up with my Five Minute Friday with the lovely Kate Motaung today. There’s no place I would rather be.

Today’s theme?

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There’s some options with this one.

I could go all grim and literary and “ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE” ish. It would be literary, I guess. But heck, I don’t really feel like going for Dante’s Inferno today. Life is hot enough.

Or, I could go all biblical and talk about living life with Jesus with abandon, and then providing seventeen thousand memes from Pinterest on what that means. Some of those memes will have a smiling woman with perfect hair smelling daisies in a field, because this is what you do when you start living your life fully. You smell daisies in a field. And you get good hair.  Or, there will be at least one with a kitten trying to do something heroic, like facing down a rottweiler, “with abandon.” The cuteness will touch our hearts and almost all of you would NOT envision the kitten becoming kibble in the next frame.

But I would.

So, we’re going to skip these ideas and go for the best option:

Abandon the quinoa.

Ok, bear with me here. Let me explain.

Last night’s dinner involved me opening a package of bean burritos. This caused me some guilt. I felt bad as I ripped the bag open and all those frozen bricks of poor nutrition spilled out on the cooking sheet. And, as I stared down at them, the dejected lumps of beans and carb overload, I thought,

“I must make this right.”

I know. In the spectrum of bad choices frozen burritos might be perceived wearing white after Labor Day bad. Which, to be honest, I am not even sure is a thing anymore. But, still. Dinner was highly uninspired. So, I thought…

QUINOA! QUINOA WILL FIX THIS! IT FIXES EVERYTHING!

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I was under the supposition that it’s super healthy. It’s the kale of grains. It will, with one healthy spoonful, make my meal so off the charts good for you that my family will start glowing with vim and vigor, and recruiters will show up at the door to enter them into Olympic events.*

Alas, it was not to be.

Quinoa, as my son put it, “Tastes like cat litter.”

I have to say I agree. Quinoa is little balls of despair. If virtue had a taste, it would not be quinoa.

If sand had a healthy big brother? Quinoa.

Sand and litter aside, I tried to make the quinoa better. I added so many ingredients to it that by the end of my manhandling of the quinoa it was whimpering, “Just leave me alone… ” and I was considering adding beef jerky to it. Or bacon. Because, as we all know:

BACON! BACON WILL FIX EVERYTHING!

Instead, I made everyone eat one bite and I acted like I did too. And then I threw the little granules of edible Quikrete into the trash. Wanna know why? Because in this case…

TRASH CAN! TRASH CAN WILL FIX EVERYTHING!

walk away from you, quinoa. You are not worth all my dreams of healthy meals and phytonutriants (whatever those are) and glowy children who are the next superstrain of humanity. I will no longer feel guilt that my dinners, sometimes, are out of a frozen bag. The next time I reach into the freezer for inspiration I’ll just start humming “Let it go…”

The cold never bothered me, anyway.

And now Frozen’s in your head, isn’t it? You’re welcome.

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*Possible Olympic Events that My Family Could Do:

  1. Nonexistent washing when washing hands.
  2. Sudden-paralysis walking when cleaning floor.
  3. Power-smashing the brother.
  4. Interpretive Dance with those ribbon thingies (that’s the husband. He ROCKS the interpretive dance, I tell you. Ask him about it! He’ll be thrilled to show you!)
  5. Snark.

 

 

Tired. Both the person and the writing.

Posted in Blogging, Faith, family, Kids speak crazy, Latent Nuttiness, Mothers, Uncategorized, Writing by

ExhaustedMomQuoteThe old “but it’s a good tired,” is here.

This is like telling someone in Hell that it’s a dry heat.

I am so tired I am typing this through sheer will and a last spurt of final dying breath to get the word out to you, my readers, that I love you, and it’s been good and all, but holy hot sauce, this Momsie is no more. I have ceased to be. I’m expired, late, stiff… bereft of life. THIS IS an EX-Momsie.

If this were a Disney movie, we are all at the last twenty minutes of Old Yeller.

Or. I’m the mom in Bambi. Or Cinderella. Or that fish movie where the mom bites it right at the beginning and my children freak out and never let me watch any more of it, even though I try to talk them into it with, “It’s a Disney movie, y’all. It’s gonna end happily, I promise!” because I think it’s funny. And they’re all looking up phone numbers for local therapists because the MOM DIED in the movie, how in the world does a happy ending blossom out of that?

Yep. I’m that mom.

Well, wait, that’s confusing. Am I the dead fish mom, or the one who wants my kids to watch the dead fish mom, you know, because it’s funny?  Well, both, of course.

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I’m so tired the thought of making dinner tonight made me sob a little. I considered microwaving some hot dogs but oh good gravy that means ketchup and I just can’t. I can’t.

Please don’t make me get the ketchup out of the fridge. It will be the end of me, and I mean it.

And also, I have to now look up the spelling: ketchup. Or catsup?

Oh, I can’t even go on.

I’m so tired. My son just spent twenty minutes in the bathroom, came out, all nonchalant with his underpants in his hand, and then proceeded to plonk his tiny white Hazmat-situation bum all over my oriental rug in the living room, and all I did was flutter a hand at him and then I looked away. “The horror…” I whispered. But, did I get up, grab my Lysol, and start squeegeeing him? No.

I’m just so tired.

I’m so tired I don’t even think I can write this. I have to put two boys to bed and I am not. I am so not. They’re on their own.

“Kids,” I say weakly, “Go on up. Put on jammies. Get in bed. Go to sleep. We’ll meet again, soon. Until then,” I flutter my finger at them and croak, “I’ll be right here.” I aim for my heart but there’s still some ice cream on my shirt as I look down, so I instead swipe it off and lick, which makes Blonde suspicious:

“You’ll be where? On your shirt? And… And what’s that? What IS that?” he starts to approach, his nose all quivering like an ice cream detecting drug dog. Red, always able to hone in on dairy, also starts my way. Steve the cat, a pathetic follower, well, follows.

This is it. This is the end. My children and the cat are now slowly approaching me because I smell like butter pecan and some chocolate jimmies, and they’re gonna eat me. It’s the Walking Dead. With sprinkles.

I am just so very, very tired.

Too tired to write this.

Definitely.

cat-tired

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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