What's For Supper? part disappointing {link-up}

Again, I shall join in Simcha Fisher's link-up, even though our meal plan for the past week turned out very unexciting. When I proofread this post, I found an overuse of the words "easy" and "tasty," so I guess those were the themes of the week.

Saturday
Mr. Husband was working a 4-12 shift, so I took the night off. Sir Toddler and I ate hot dogs with frozen peas (as in, not defrosted), and Lady Infant feasted on steamed broccoli. If I give Sir Toddler cooked peas, he just mashes them, so "ice cold peas" work just fine for me. We had watermelon slices for dessert with a side of shame.

Sunday
I didn't actually cook. Mr. Husband's parents were given 12 lobsters from a family fisherman. FOR FREE. Sir Toddler ate a hamburger and veggie sticks dipped in hummus, and his parents and baby sister had lobster with baked potato wedges and corn on the cob. I offered Sir Toddler a bite, but he was too busy playing with his uncle's "car shoes," a.k.a. roller skates.

Monday
I didn't really cook this meal either, as I was frazzled from trying to purchase and install the bed rail. Mr. Husband grilled some chicken brushed with Sticky Fingers barbecue sauce and served it with pasta e olio and mixed veggies. Our grill is rusting and the frame is falling apart, so it might be the last grilled chicken we make for a while.

Tuesday
Chicken enchiladas, baby. I make these at least once every two weeks because they are just so easy to throw together and the ingredients are cheap. Again, I used the America's Test Kitchen recipe, except I always forget to buy the chiles and I never have fresh cilantro so I just leave them out. This time, however, I remembered to take a picture. I also cooked the chicken in the crockpot, instead of my usual boil-at-the-last-minute, because 95º weather makes for a miserable cooking environment. Even with central air conditioning.

Wednesday
Chicken and "dirty" rice with broccoli. This is a family recipe that is one of my favorites and a snap to throw together. Just sprinkle paprika, garlic powder, dried thyme, and salt on bone-in, skin-on chicken pieces (we usually make drumsticks and thighs), and put them in a broiler pan. Or in a rimmed baking pan if you don't have a broiler pan. Cook at 350º until the meat is just about done, then broil the skin.

My skin always gets burned because our oven has one of those crappy amazing broiler drawers. Not being able to see it cook + two small, mobile children underfoot = oopsie.

While you're cooking the chicken, make some rice. I usually sautée some chopped onion, then add 1 part rice and two parts chicken broth. When rice and chicken are done, plate your chicken and throw the rice in the chicken pan. Scrape up all that yummy fond and drippings and mix it into the rice. The more chicken you make, the "dirtier" and tastier your rice will be.

Thursday
Homemade pizza. Again, we tend to have pizza at least once every two weeks because it is easy and inexpensive. It can also make use of any little leftover bits of meat and vegetables for toppings.

Friday (today)
Mr. Husband is working another late shift at his per diem job after his salaried job. He has the car and the fridge is mostly stocked with condiments. I'm not sure what we're having for dinner, but this blueberry cake (muffin recipe in a 9"x13"x2" pan) I made for our playdate this morning may play a starring role.

Happy weekending.

Catching Up

As just about everybody who reads this blog already knows, we've been keeping pretty busy lately, with both big and small things. I took lots of pictures "for the blog," so in order to not waste all those photos here is a nice looooong catch-up post.

Big: We went on vacation.

This "cottage" is the roughly same square footage as our apartment, except with no shared walls.

This was our first-ever trip as a family of four. (I supposed you could count our trip to Florida last December as a family trip--I was almost-too-pregnant-to-fly with Lady Infant--but since we were staying with family it was a much different experience than the process of renting our living space.) We got an end-of-summer rate on a cottage "90 yards from a private beach!" in the town where my husband grew up.

90 yards and about 90 steps. I actually couldn't fit all of the stairs in the picture, so I took this after descending the first set.

In any case, the beach was worth it.

I love New England beaches. Call me a weirdo who likes cold water.

Nursing on the beach? Check.

Invite your cousins and their trucks.

I love this picture.

We did a day trip to the beach earlier in July with the kids, but it was so much easier to manage them in shorter spurts. We had agreeably hot, sunny weather while we were there, so we could take the kids down for a swim, go home for lunch and naps, and come back, hitting low tide both times. We stayed four days and three nights, the kids slept great, and despite bringing two diaper-clad minions, we got our security deposit back!

Big: We're moving Sir Toddler to a bed.

Despite previous declarations that never would I ever 1) purchase a toddler bed, 2) purchase a toddler bed from IKEA, or 3) purchase a mattress from IKEA, we wound up doing just that after a fruitless trip to Jordan's and countless hours wasted scouring Craigslist. (When you drive a small sedan that only fits disassembled furniture in flat packs and Jordan's only has overpriced twin beds that are four feet off the ground and made entirely of MDF, assembling Swedish furniture with the aid of smirking stick figures is the easiest option). We purchased the TROGEN adjustable bed and the corresponding mattress that comes in three pieces, and I'm actually glad we did since the soon-to-be shared kids' room is not huge.

The adjustment period to the bed is going...okay.

The first day, Sir Toddler was eager to nap in his new "big boy bed!" and I put him right in, assuming that the little wooden side pieces would keep him from rolling out. He fell asleep, amazingly, and roooolled onto the floor with a thump. We found him sobbing with a bitten tongue, and ran out to Babies R Us to buy a side rail. To add insult to injury, it took 20 minutes to get through the line and then the rail didn't work with a slatted bed base. Sir Toddler spend that night in his crib, and the next morning I put two rolled-up towels under the fitted sheet, and an unused mattress section on the floor next to his bed.

The second and third days, Sir Toddler spend his naptime hanging out in his bed, but not actually sleeping. It didn't occur to him to get out of bed on his own. Each night, we have enticed him with a "special light" (a nightlight, which we didn't use with him in the crib) to get him to sleep in his bed. Both nights, he has woken up confused and scared in the middle of the night, but stayed in bed.

Today, the jig was up. Sir Toddler realized that he could get out of bed during naptime and started roaming around his room. I hope he sleeps well tonight, because three days without naps made for a whiny, weepy evening. For both of us.

Big: Lady Infant is pulling up on furniture.

Life as we know it is over.

I keep snapping pictures that make it look like my children are playing together peacefully....

...when in reality Lady Infant, in her quest to be involved in whatever her brother is doing, is just learning how to annoy her brother.

Little: Baby teeth!

Little: Pigtails!

Lady Infant has long hair on top that hangs in her eyes like so...

(photo credit)

So I spent 45 minutes trying to wrangle her into pigtails. She did not like it, Sam I Am.

Big: Our backyard is no longer a minefield of feces.

Our neighbors of notpickingupaftertheirdog fame finally moved out and we've finally cleared up the last of the messes (although not before tracking some onto the kitchen floor, blergh). This is a game-changer. Today, with a slow start to the morning, the threat of rain, a napping baby, and and antsy two-year-old, I could just let. him. play. outside. Of course, since our yard isn't fully fenced in and still shared, I was out making sure he didn't bolt or get into our other neighbors' stuff, but it was nice to just let him be a little boy and explore nature.

He spent his playtime picking wild "yucky berries" that had fallen from a tree and mashing them in his fingers. Good times.

I have visions of maybe getting a sandbox. Or even a Cozy Coupe.

Disclaimer: I'll be political for the first time on this blog.

It's time for me to sign off, because I have a team/quarterback to cheer on...

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...no thanks to Roger Goodell.

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What's for Supper? {link-up}

Linking up with Simcha Fisher.

Now that Lady Infant has started eating solids, we are burning through produce faster than a Salad Shooter, and our grocery expenditures are starting to go through the roof. Part of Mr. Husband's and my plan to address this issue is to go back to planning our meals for the week. This is something that I did very consistently when I was in grad school and was gone two nights a week, but haven't done consistently at all since Sir Toddler was born. This is what we've been eating this past week.

Saturday:  We had dinner guests that night with a planned Amerimexican theme (my second oldest brother-in-law makes amazing margaritas) so we had loaded nachos with pulled pork, refried beans, olives and cheese (duh) on top, and guacamole and salsa on the side. Since the meat sales weren't particularly promising that week, we actually purchased premade pulled pork in barbecue sauce. It was much better than I thought it would be. I don't know if throwing a bunch of ingredients on chips and tossing it in the oven until the cheese melts really qualifies as cooking, but the margaritas were made from scratch.

Sunday: Mr. Husband was out that night. Usually that's my cue to make breakfast for dinner, but I had some tomato sauce already made from earlier in the week, plus some zucchini to use up. You may be thinking that I did some fancy veggie spiralizing, but that is blasphemy to my half-Italian heritage so we had Market Basket brand tortellini with the sauce and baked zucchini (slice into half-coins, add olive oil, salt, and pepper, bake at 400 º until browned) on the side.

Monday: I planned on meatballs, but I realized rather late in the day that we were not only out of breadcrumbs, but we had also just used up all of the sandwich bread. So bolognese sauce it was, plus green beans and rigatoni.

Tuesday: Chicken enchiladas (with grocery store guacamole) from America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. The great thing about this type of recipe is that we use fewer pieces of chicken when it's shredded and mixed into something rather than serving a chicken dish with sides.

Wednesday: Pasta with chicken and pesto. It was really the last hurrah of my basil plants; they look dreadful now. I used the pesto recipe from The Joy of Pasta minus the pine nuts because I never have those on hand. Again, I shredded chicken into the pasta to stretch our chicken supply a bit.

Thursday: Pizza. I never make more than three pizzas (we had a dinner guest) so I make the crusts from scratch in my stand mixer, but I discovered six months ago that it made no difference in cost to buy the little cans of sauce, pre-sliced pepperoni, and pre-grated mozzarella. I usually sautée some peppers and mushrooms for toppings and assemble.

Friday:  My meal plan was originally a rice and beans dish (an attempt to cut down on our meat expenditures by eating less of it) that involved cooking the beans all day in the slow cooker. I forgot to get the beans cooking in my rush to fit in a morning run/playground romp so we had Two-Ingredient Crockpot Chicken with lemon spaghetti and (previously frozen) peas.

I'll post the lemon spaghetti recipe later, as Lady Infant is currently using my legs and torso as a pull-up bar.