From the ATP Kitchen

Linking up with Dwija at House Unseen, because when I saw her post on easy slow cooker recipes I knew this link-up was right up my alley. Sometimes I whip up an elaborate slow cooker recipe from America's Test Kitchen or The Italian Slow Cooker that involves lots of prep work browning, sauteeing, deglazing, and all kinds of fancy footwork. And sometimes, at two o'clock in the afternoon while a non-napping toddler is at my kneecaps and Queen Baby is on my hip being her queeniest, I realize I don't have it in me to make anything fancy for dinner, and I throw this together to avoid an SOS call for takeout later.

I realize now I should have typed "slow cooker" instead of "crockpot." Do I get a royalty payment from Rival now?

Or Newman's Own?

This is hardly even deserving of the title of a recipe, but here it is.  Put chicken pieces in slow cooker (here we have bone-in, skin-on thighs, but you could use any chicken pieces). Pour salad dressing on top. I've only ever used oil-based dressings like Italian, balsamic vinaigrette, Greek, etc. I have my doubts that it would come out all that well with, say, a blue cheese dressing, but you are certainly welcome to try it. 

Don't bother to center the photos.

If your slow cooker is less than 1/2 full like mine, put some foil on top.

I don't know why I took a picture of it. Or why I posted the picture. Sue me.

Depending on how much time you have before dinner, you can cook it for 6 hours on low or 3 hours on high. I would add a half hour to the cooking time if your pieces are frozen like mine.

Ta-da.

And there you have it! If you're feeling extra fancy, you can make a side salad, quarter some red potatoes and put them under the chicken, or use the broth you'll have at the end of the cooking time to make some rice, or crisp the skin in a pan with a little oil once it's cooked. Or not. This is supposed to be an easy recipe, after all.

A Sunday Outing

1:40 PM. Decide to go for an outing due to a)restlessness, b)weather that is gorgeous but too cool for our original plan of a beach trip, and c)to wear out the toddler who is rattling the bars of his crib after a notnap. Choose a new park that we've never been to together and don't know exactly where it is.

2:00 PM. Everyone who wears such things has diapers and shoes, the diaper bag has full water bottles and emergency Cheerios, and Lady Infant is buckled into her bucket. Persuade Mr. Husband to take both kids to the car so I can sneak a snack and not share it with Sir Toddler before I lock up.

2:10 PM. Comment on the odd route weaving through back roads that Siri has chosen.

2:40 PM. Comment that we could have taken more familiar main roads in the same amount of time, and how strange that this park is accessible by such small neighborhood roads. This is done over the background noise of Lady Infant fussing and Sir Toddler repeatedly requesting that we get out of the car and go for a walk.

2:43 PM. Siri is directing us to park on a neighborhood street and walk through someone's backyard to access a distant border of this park. WHAT. Reference Google Maps on Mr. Husband's phone, since the navigation has sucked my phone's battery dry.

2:50 PM. Finally pull up to the parking lot of the park and discover that the parking fee is per person, rather than per car. Well, we've come this far...at least the kids are free.

2:52 PM. Discover the source of Lady Infant's distress: a diaper bomb that has ruined her adorable outfit. An awkward diaper change in the front passenger seat ensues.* The spare outfit is a little skimpy for the weather, but at least it's the correct size. This time.

2:53 PM. Briefly debate the merits of the double stroller versus making the toddler walk. The notnap that preceded this trip makes the decision for us, even though it means stopping to pick up every stick and leaf we came across.

(I've been told that babies should be worn high and tight, but please show me a structured (buckles please!) baby carrier that can be worn so by a 5'2" mother whose six-month-old is in the 70th percentile for length. She didn't get it from me.)

Sir Toddler was rewarded by one of his favorite sights, "Giant fan!"

The view wasn't too bad.

Not pictured: the mystery dead fish thing Mr. Husband found on the shore and insisted on investigating and photographing while Sir Toddler poked it with a stick. Gross. Lady Infant and I stood upwind of it and averted our eyes.

Success: Sir Toddler is tuckered out!

 3:55 PM. Buckle everyone back into the chariot, drive home, and send Mr. Husband around the corner on an urgent errand while I make dinner.

Post-hiking relaxation in a glass.

*Although it is always awful trying to do diaper changes in the front passenger seat (our compact sedan has few options now that the backseat is taken up entirely by car seats), at least it wasn't as bad as an ill-fated grocery trip wherein Lady Infant's diaper and outfit were changed into a completely outgrown long-sleeve onesie (on an 80 degree day) while Sir Toddler cried a river in the back seat about wanting to ride in the police car grocery cart. Naturally, once he was loaded into said grocery cart and Lady Infant strapped to my torso, he spotted the taxi grocery cart. There is nothing quite so glorious as an unaccompanied trip to the grocery store.

7 QT...because why not?

Lady Infant is napping, and Sir Toddler is enclosed in his crib for his lately inconsistent "nap" time, so here we are with my first ever link-up with This Ain't the Lyceum. Here are a few thoughts  kicking around here these days.

1. I made fancy shmancy oatmeal.

There's a (boring) story behind this: I've been trying to shake up breakfast a little bit since I've gotten really sick of cold cereal and the sugar crash that comes with it. Although my recipe of choice lately has been just salt+pepper+butter+oatmeal (bulletproof?), I did really fancy it up after I tried a recipe that called for 8 oz. of ricotta. Naturally, the grocery store only had 32 oz. containers, so I had to use up quite a bit of extra in the four seconds it takes for ricotta to go bad after it's opened. I made a (not pictured because we gobbled it up) ricotta cheesecake from The Italian Slow Cooker, and still had a bit left, so I decided to add it with some leftover lemon juice and sugar to fancy up some steel-cut oats. It was like having ricotta cheesecake with oatmeal, which was much tastier than it sounds. Try it!

2. It's August? How is that possible? Maybe because we had such a long wait for nice weather in New England, this summer has flown by, and I feel like my inability to get out the door before lunchtime with both kids has meant that we've barely taken the time to enjoy it. I'm trying to get over my disgust with our shared backyard-with-no-enclosure-full-of-weeds-and-anthills and the pointlessness of trying to improve rental land that is also a minefield of dog feces.

The rope is my attempt at a barrier to keep him out of several stinky messes. Seriously, what is wrong with people?

3. Lately, if I leave the two littles alone for a few minutes, I've been walking into scenes like this:

It warms my heart to see their relationship as siblings budding.

4. When do toddlers drop their naps? I'm hoping we have a few more months of napping, but my inability to get us out in the morning plus some probing for potty readiness means that Sir Toddler doesn't always get out the wiggles. We've been trying to get out in the morning here and there to help him along. 

He's learning how to walk with me instead of riding in the stroller, which helps wear him out even faster.

5. Lady Infant is finally starting some solids. She continues to earn her nickname of Queen Baby, as her Majesty won't sit in the high chair for very long without fussing, and showed very little interest in solid food at all until I whipped this out and stuffed it with chunks of cooked sweet potato:

She does have eyes. We're just not ready to plaster the internet with public pictures of our kids' faces.

I know there are easier-to-clean feeders out there, but someone gave us this one for Sir Toddler as a baby, and since he cried every time I tried to give it to him, it was just laying around unused.

6. Does anybody else hate the word "chunks"? And all other related words (chunk, chunky, etc.)? I'm stretching this, I know. #1 is so long, though!

7. If I've heard it once, I've heard it many times that it's pointless to force potty training on a kid who isn't ready. The thought of the whole process gives me nightmares because I haven't done it before and I'm not eager to spend so much time scrubbing poop and pee out of all of the upholstered purchases in the house. However, we spent two mornings now where Sir Toddler played peacefully sans pants and diaper for an hour, asked to put his diaper on, and then promptly soiled it. So I'd say we're halfway there.

Unrelated, I know. But how lucky are we to be walking distance from a construction site?