Foodmomiac

She's a Tomboy, NOT a Girly Girl

pretty girl
Originally uploaded by Foodmomiac

Dylan has always been a girly girl. She likes to wear her hair down and insists on keeping it long. She loves wearing nail polish and makeup. She somehow manages to find the highest heels available in a size 13 anytime we go to Target. She likes girl stuff.

However, her best friend doesn't. Her best friend loves the colors green and blue. She doesn't like skirts. She mostly wears sneakers. And now Dylan is insisting on doing the same thing. And it is driving me batty.

It's not that I need Dylan to be girly. I truly don't. I just want her to be herself. And it scares me that she is altering her personal style (which has always been a huge deal to her) to suit someone else. But, short of forbidding her to wear sweatpants (which seems silly), i don't know what to do.

We tell her that she can wear whatever she likes. That she doesn't have to dress to please someone else. That she doesn't have to respond to the teasing that she looks "girly girl."

It falls on deaf ears. And we end up with tantrums. As I told Julie earlier in an email, we actually had to go out and buy Dylan some new shorts and capris last night because she was choosing to raid her dirty clothes hamper in lieu of wearing the perfectly clean and lovely (girly girl) clothes in her closet. She actually came downstairs yesterday morning wearing a pair of turquoise sweat pants that were covered in stains.

Help!

Just add butter

I was thinking the other day about butter. I am a big fan of butter. I realize that it is high in fat and calories, but, truly, you don't need much for some impact. I have a whole slew of food items that I make that taste better with a small pat of butter:

- canned green beans (we always do French cut) - oatmeal (steel cut with fig jam and a small pat of butter yields an utterly luxurious breakfast) - white rice - tomato sauce - steak - eggs (my sister-in-law always tries to make me use olive oil, but eggs with butter are SO much better)

Do you guys use butter as a secret ingredient? Or do you have any other little cooking tricks like that? Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Best Laid Plans...

As I mentioned last weekend, my dad, stepmom and aunt were set to arrive in Chicago this past Thursday morning. On Wednesday evening as we were eating our dinner, I received a phone call from my dad. He and Marcia (my stepmom) were on their way to the ER. Marcia had been suffering a splitting headache since 3am, and as the day wore on, she began vomiting and her blood pressure spiked.

Long story short, she has been on Coumadin every since a heart surgery a couple of years ago, and it caused a blood clot in her brain. When they gave her medication to flush the Coumadin (to prep for emergency surgery), it caused a heart attack. SHE IS OK NOW. After a very scary day (the clot caused some brain swelling that created a lot of confusion - she thought is was 2002 and didn't remember why she wasn't in Chicago), she is now stable. They inserted a drain to help with the brain swelling, and her heart does not appear to have much damage. Right now we are watching her blood pressure, and looking at 3x/daily CAT scans to track the clot.

When all of this happened, Michael was in Seattle on a business trip and not scheduled to return to Chicago until Tuesday. I had a lot of wonderful friends and co-workers offering to help with the kids, but I just couldn't conceive of leaving without Michael coming home first. It was just too overwhelming for me. Thank goodness, our company always puts family first. I left yesterday morning at 4:30am. Michael was home yesterday by dinner.

If things continue to stabilize, I'm aiming to get home before another work week begins, but right now I'm just trying to keep my dad company. My brother is here from Miami as well. The weekend family reunion is now in a hospital waiting room, but we are together.

Weekend Update with Foodmomiac (sorry, no Tina Fey on the premises)

I'm actually feeling quite good about all that was accomplished this weekend:

- Just a minute after I published my post, Michael walked in the door, allowing me to run outside. Yesterday was a gorgeous day in Chicago. It felt so good to run in a t-shirt.
- We then drove around the city trying to determine our plan of attack for the house. We went to a fabulous garden center, but realized we had no idea what to get. We went to Menard's and looked at power washers (great prices) and paving stones (overwhelming selection, yet nothing we loved). We then went to Costco to see if the power washers were cheaper there (they weren't). Net, net: We are going to do the landscaping ourselves, but we are hiring someone to create a plan for us. We bought a power washer (at Menard's) and will do the deck on our own.
- Christmas lights are still on the house with no prospects of coming down before my dad's arrival on Thursday. I'm bracing myself for the teasing.
- All of the laundry is done, but none of it is folded (including the loads from last weekend). However, per the suggestion in my comments (thanks Mary!) it is all piled on my bed, so I can't go to sleep unless I get it all taken care of. My plan is to fold it after the kids go to bed. I'll just catch up on In Treatment while I do it.
- I've also planned out the week's menu. Michael left today for an insanely long business trip, so it's just me and the kids (and Franzi, our au pair). Tonight we're having roast chicken with mashed potatoes and salad. Other meals include meatloaf, spaghetti and chicken with dumplings (using the leftover roast chicken).

Did you all have a good weekend?

Immobilized by my "to do" list

Sad front yard
Originally uploaded by Foodmomiac

Today is one of those days where I have so much I want to do that I'm tempted to just do nothing, because there is no way I could accomplish everything. Here's what's on my list:

1. Go running outside. I'm up to 1.5 miles now, which is great for me, but not a lot of mileage, so it's not time consuming. I'm shocked by how much I'm enjoying my runs (even those on the treadmill). We'll see if that continues when my mileage increases. My trick for running outside is great music on the iPod. I typically switch between the Jay-Z MTV Unplugged album and Girl Talk, Feed the Animals. Both make me dance around as I run, and put me in an awesome mood.

2. Do a ton of laundry. When we got rid of our house boy (a.k.a. our dog walker who we paid to also help with laundry and house straightening), Michael swore to me that he'd contribute to the laundry duties. This lasted about two weeks (though he DOES wash his exercise clothes). I hate laundry. (This item is almost certainly moving to tomorrow.)

3. Remove the Christmas lights from the front of my house. These have been there since December of 2007 (that is not a typo). When my dad, step mom and aunt visited last June, they laughed that I might as well leave them up, since we were already half way to Christmas. I'm wondering if that same joke will still apply 10 months later (they are arriving on Thursday). In all fairness to me, these lights were installed by a handyman with a tall ladder. We don't have a tall enough ladder to take them down, but it just hasn't been worth the cost to hire a handyman for this one small task.

4. Power wash our back deck. This has been a necessary job for almost two years, but we can't decide if we should handle it ourself (power washers are available at Costco and aren't terribly expensive) or outsource it. I'm confident that we could handle the power washing piece of things, but then I believe there is some staining and sealing involved??

5. Get started on our disaster of a front yard. This is the sad area pictured above. We want to remove the far sidewalk that you see on the top left area of the photo. Then, we want to till all that grass up, remove the brick, add in some good dirt, make a pretty paver path leading toward the back gate (middle top of the photo - it leads to our backyard), and plant a bunch of perennials. This is something that we are confident we could do ourselves, but this is our last weekend home together without guests before we start our Michigan house rental. Michael has contemplated using a vacation day to get some of it done, so that's an option. I think at the very least, we'll take a drive to the garden center this morning for some reconnaissance.

What are you guys doing (or just thinking about doing) this weekend?

Why I've been MIA and some thoughts on eliminating a week of food shopping

Posing
Originally uploaded by Foodmomiac

Ok, this picture has ZERO to do with this blog post, but I hate blog posts with no photo, and I like this photo, so there!

Anyway, yes, I do realize that I have been gone for over two weeks (OMG), and there is a very good reason for that. We were in Mexico!! You can see all of our photos on my Flickr set, but for  details on our entire trip you are going to have to be patient. I can't write about it on my site due to my BlogHer Ad Network contract, but I am working on a new, tandem site (without ads) that is not yet live. So, patience, patience. (Note: the trip ROCKED.)

Anyway, let's chat about what's on my mind lately. I've written about pantry cooking in the past, but there is a GIANT thread on eGullet that takes this to an even higher level. There are a bunch of people on there who are skipping a week of shopping and making do with just what they have in the house. I haven't gone that route yet, but it has made me way more conscious of all of the food I have in my kitchen.

As I've mentioned previously, my freezer is overloaded, and my food cabinets are piled high. It's been interesting to create meals each night with this perspective. Last night, I made a salad that used up some pecans from my freezer, and old apple that was languishing in my fridge, and some bleu cheese that I bought three weeks ago. I also emptied my container of homemade BBQ sauce and pulled a rack of ribs from the freezer. Tonight, I was able to salvage some old Kalamata olives from the way way back of the refrigerator.

One day soon, I'm going to take the leap and skip the full week of food shopping. Would any of you be game to do it along with me??