Tag: food

Falling into Fall

The oven is on, the cookie sheet is out, so as far as I’m concerned, fall has fallen.  Truthfully, the temperatures are starting to dip, albeit very slightly, but fall is right around the corner.  I absolutely love fall.

I love the leaves starting to blush into shimmering crimsons and startling ochres. I love the slight bite in the air that makes you dig your hands into your pockets on the walk to school.  Soccer games, football games, hearing the ODU marching band practice as the sun dips below the neighboring houses.  Loving it! Crunching fallen leaves underfoot, smelling that woodsy, smoky sky — for many, this signifies the end of things.  No more summer. No more long, languid days under the sun.  The pool has closed, the beach is just a fond memory. For me, though, I’m just getting started.

Even though the days are shorter and the mornings are darker, I love opening the door for an early morning run and stepping fully into the crispness of a cool, calm daybreak. I don’t consider myself a nature girl, or outdoorsy by any stretch, but I really crave being outside.  I’m a New Englander by birth, so I guess it’s in my blood.

This time last fall found me dutifully studying body systems and the like.  I remember taking study breaks at the kitchen table while the girls napped.  The sun was starting to fade, the colors of outdoors were sharp with slight softness around the edges.  The neighborhood kids would be coming down the sidewalk, hooting and calling to each other as school closed up for another day.  I had the windows open, but the slight chill was more like familiar fingers skipping across my arms and back of my neck.  The shadows played tag across the walls, stretched lazily over the floor before disappearing altogether.  I gave myself 20 minutes for throwing myself back into my work, but for those 20 minutes, I lost myself in the Norman Rockwell-esque feeling of it all. 

 I  look forward to packing up the strappy sandals, floaty maxi dresses and piles of shorts.  Opening the closet to pull out stacks of sweaters, unrolling corduroys, and polishing off boots can be a chore.  Still, finding that forgotten about sweater, is like opening that last present tucked way back behind the the tree, the one just peeking out from under the Christmas skirt.  “What’s this? Awww, yeah– cowl neck sweater!



The past few years, the turn of the season has found me in the kitchen, baking and using kitchen tools that I keep forgetting I have (hello, crockpot).  I have a long standing love affair with
pumpkin — bread, cookies, pie — which I plan to rekindle.  I got the ingredients for Rice Krispie Treats and presented those bricks of ooey, gooey goodness to the girls for snack yesterday afternoon. Sidenote: for a long time, I was under the impression that these were really hard to make. I mean, why else would my mom only reserve them for bi-annual bake sales? Surprisingly easily, as delicious as I remember, I will definitely be making these again.

I have been pulling recipes for chili, one-pot suppers, and things that involve butter, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg.  I culled pages out of my recipe stuffed filo-fax and actually went to the grocery store with concrete dinner ideas in mind. We eat a lot of beef, probably more than we should, but I’m finicky and it tastes good.   Real Simple magazine (LOVE IT) has been running a series of recipes called “10 Recipes Ideas for (insert pantry/refrigerator staple)”, which I have dutifully ripped out month after month.  Seriously –who can’t use a new take on chicken cutlets, ground beef, or Italian sausage?

So yesterday, I tackled a major (overdue) grocery shopping, got my supplies and whipped up this:

 (photo credit: www.realsimple.com, but maybe one day, I’ll be a food photog).

Mmmm, spinach stuffed steak roulades.  The recipe is here.  I subbed pesto instead of olive tapenade, but really? I think it was more flavorful.  It was considerably easy and super tasty. I felt very Top Chef as I filled, rolled and tied off my flank steak pinwheels. I was so determined to make this dinner, I did all my prep in the morning, fired them off on the grill before taking the girls to swimming lessons and then finished them with a quick blast in the oven when we got home.  Added a nice salad of mixed field greens and some rice? Delish!  I almost licked the plate.

I will definitely be going back to the well of “10 Recipe Ideas”.  Next up, ravioli with grape tomatoes and wine.

 (photo credit: www.realsimple.com).

Mmmm. . .wine. . . .

Anyway, the Rice Krispie treats weren’t the dessert that I had initially planned to serve up with this meal, but I was pressed for time and these pies-in-a-jar that I read about over at another awesome blogger, Gibson King, required ingredients that (for some reason) my grocer was completely lacking. Who doesn’t have pie filling? But I digress.  How flippin’ cute are these things?

These definitely going into the rotation. I may invest in a special pie-in-a-jar spoon to just eat them with.

So, I am officially declaring the season of fall open to enjoy for all the goodness that it brings.  We’re kicking things off with Morgan’s very first soccer game tomorrow morning — Go Larchmont Mermaids! It may be too soon to break out my Danskos  and my vest– they’re talking temps in the upper 70s after all.  Still, you can bet that when I lace up my sneakers for my miles through the neighborhood, I’ll take a deep breath to absorb the autumn breeze and let it fuel me in the days ahead.









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IN: ON: September 17, 2010 TAGS: , , , BY: Hilary
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Lunch Special #7

This story was related to me by my mother, but oh how I wish I could have been there.

So the girls are having lunch with my parents, Yia-Yia and Pop-Pop the other afternoon. Usually lunch with the grands involves Chinese food, since the girls are big fans and so is Pop-Pop. The girls are die-hard fans of chicken with broccoli and fried rice.

More often than not, they do a bang up job scarfing it down, occasionally saving me the trouble of doing the dishes by licking their plates clean. Of course, like with everything else, there are days when they have to go against the grain and just get buck like their mom (They come by it honestly).

Evidently, Coever ate all of the chicken off of her plate, most of the rest and kind of shuttled the broocli from one side of the plate to the other. Yia-Yia, with her slick eyes, got hip to the game and reminded Coever that she needed to eat her lunch, post haste, and stop fooling around.

“I don’t wanna!” came the terse reply.

“Coever,” chimes in Morgan, “you can eat your lunch or you can have some air pie!”

My parents look at Morgan while Coever adamantly refuses that offer. Says Pop-Pop, “Morgan, what’s air pie?”

“A big slice of nothin'”, she says, and proceeds to lick her the last of her fried rice off of her plate.

Check please!


P.S. – Thanks, Ginny, for encouraging me to keep it short and sweet!

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IN: ON: April 20, 2010 TAGS: , , BY: Hilary
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You’re Killin’ Me, Smalls. . .

You’d think by now I’d have learned my lesson by now. You’d think that because I’m the adult, I’m making the decisions. And yet once again, here we are, and all I can do is shake my head.
Foolishly, I sometimes ask the girls what they’d like for lunch, often giving them a choice between different sandwich choices or chicken nuggets vs. hot dogs. Today, though, I just couldn’t even wrap my mind around all the choice left overs in the fridge and asked them flat out, “What do you want for lunch?”

Morgan, just as sweet as you please, asked for tuna fish and chips. Done and done. Coever asked for grilled cheese. What? Whose child is this? Certainly not mine. We don’t eat grilled cheese in this house. Let me re-phrase, I don’t eat grilled cheese, and if the numero uno, executive chef ain’t eatin’ it, it ain’t gettin’ made. But of course, Coever looked at me with those Bambi eyes and saw this. . .

I got busy making grilled cheese.
For someone who doesn’t eat it, I sure put a lot of thought and love into this thing. I toasted the Oat Nut bread, which, by the by, if you haven’t had the Oat Nut bread, do yourself a favor and get it. It’s beyond good. It’s like a hug in your mouth. But I digress.
I toasted the bread, I spread it with butter — I think I read that’s what you do when you make grilled cheese. I shaved — yes, you read correctly, I shaved off several layers of cheddar cheese from this hunk o’ cheddar we had in the fridge. I laid the thinly sliced cheese over the buttery- oat-nutty-bready goodness and threw another layer of bread on top. I wrapped that mamma jamma up in some foil, fired up the iron and commenced to press it to death.
Coever wove in between and around my legs, chanting, “Is that my grilled cheese, Mom? Is that my grilled cheese?” I half expected her to break out in song and dance like Bill Cosby’s kids when they had chocolate cake for breakfast.
I unwrapped the sandwich, placing it on her plate with some orange slices, and some chips. By now, the girls were in the living room, looking at library books, so I called them to the table. They seated themselves just as I placed their plates in front of them.
“Thanks, Mommy,” said Morgan, taking a monstrous bite of her tuna fish. Mmmm, oat nut bread.
I go back to the kitchen to fetch (yes, I’m from the Mo-tea-suh tribe) the girls’ drinks, when I hear Coever ask, “What dis, Mom?” She’s picking up her sandwich between two fingers, “Is dis my grilled cheese?”

“Yes, Coever,” I begin, seeing that she’s somehow managed to shove the orange slices and the chips down her throat. “That’s the sandwich you asked for.” In my head, I’m thinking, “Oh no. She better not even think about it.”

“I don’t like grilled cheese,” she wrinkles up her nose and lets the sandwich fall back onto the plate.
Of course. . .
Hi, my name is Hilary with one “l” and I’ve been duped by my two year old.
Again.

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IN: ON: March 9, 2010 TAGS: , BY: Hilary
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Breakfast of Champions

Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Yeah, I’m manifesting that definition every day.
Every morning, I get up while it’s still dark to savor a few moments by myself. I usually throw on my gym clothes and head downstairs. My routine is pretty much the same: check email, check my buddies’ blogs, toss in a load of wash and empty the dishwasher. I’ve even started making lunches and prepping dinner (yeah, I’m kind of Type A). At about quarter to seven, I set out making breakfast for the girls. Once they get up, I’ve got a pretty tight routine that carries us right up to pre-school drop off.
Take yesterday morning:
6:45 – get breakfast ready
7:00 – get the girls up
7:40 – wrap up breakfast and get dressed for school
8:15 – playtime for Mo and Co/tidying up for me
8:30 – out the door, into the car, off to school
And despite all of my micromanaging, the one thing I haven’t figured out is why is it that by the time I get the girls settled down for breakfast, I realize I haven’t gotten anything for myself? I mean, they’re happily munching away and I haven’t got anything on my plate. I haven’t even got a plate!
Part of this stems from my relentless devotion to Weight Watchers. In the not too distant past, I wouldn’t let anything cross my lips that hadn’t been weighed, measured and calculated for it’s caloric impact on my body. Just grab some toast and slather on some jelly?! Not unless it’s Nature’s Own White Wheat Bread with 7 squirts of I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Butter and 1/2 tbs of Welch’s Sugar Free Jelly per slice (points=2). Bacon and eggs? Only if it’s two slices Jennie-O turkey bacon and a quarter cup of EggBeaters cooked in a non-stick pan that has been lightly sprayed with olive oil cooking spray (points=2). Weight Watchers can make the even the most sane turn into Sally Albright.
Another part of the problem comes from the fact that I am a notoriouly finicky eater. I eat pizza and baked ziti, but I don’t like cheese. No grilled cheese, cheese and crackers or cheeseburgers. I like shrimp, but not when it’s cooked. I like tomatoes, but on my sandwiches and salads, not in chunks in my spaghetti sauce. I drink fat-free milk, which is the equivalent of water that a cow has walked past, but only with cereal. Milk and cookies? Why desecrate the goodness of the cookie with a sub-par beverage? I like my Cream of Wheat with about a tablespoon of water in it so it’s the consistency of paste rather than soup. I can eat yogurt and bananas, but when I get down to the last bite, I start to gag (I know, I’m starting to make Sally Albright look normal).
Anywhoodle, when it dawns on me that all I have is air-pie while the girls chew on Cheerios, I get up to remedy the situation. The minute my buns break contact with the chair I’m peppered with requests:
Mommy, can I have milk?
Mommy, can I have apple juice?
Mommy, can I have more milk?
Mommy can I have more apple juice?
Mommy, can I have toast without jelly?
Mommy, can I have toast without butter?
Mommy can I have toast with jelly and with butter?
Mommy can I have waffles with bacon and side of French Fries?
I spin and whirl between the fridge and the toaster, each trip pushing my own breakfast that much farther from my grasp. No wonder my stomach to think my throat has been cut. Truth be told, I should know better than to indulge Mo and Co with every breakfast request. On the one hand, I don’t want them to be hungry at school and unable to concentrate. On the other hand, let’s face it: they’re in school from 8:50 to 11:50. 3 hours without nourishment does not a famine make.
I’m only re-inforcing bad behavior with my up and down, up and down antics. I only have myself to blame when my reminders that “I’m not a short-order cook!” bring up snorts and snickers. For Christmas, they’ll probably get me a plastic name badge and a matching hairnet.
By the time I’ve gotten them sufficiently satiated and pull together some kind of semblance of breakfast for myself, they’re done and trying to pull out puzzles, crayons, finger paints, dress-up clothes, and bicycles.
So, I’ve begun a new regime after running through a couple of options. I was tempted to just put the milk, the cereal, the bread, the butter and all les accoutrements on the table during breakfast, but who wants to schlepp it out only to schlepp it back? Besides, I’ve got this thing about milk being left out (gross!), even if it is only for a 20 minute breakfast. I thought about prepping breakfast the night before, but I kept forgetting until I was already in the bed for the night. So I’ve come up with three suggestions rules to keep our morning routine machine well oiled.
1. Breakfast is what is. There are no exceptions, no substitutions, and definitely no returns.
2. Eat what’s on your plate, not what’s on my plate, your sister’s plate, or anyone else’s plate. Quelle surprise! We all have the same thing.

3. Eat what you’ve been given before you ask for more.

4. Half a spoonful of yogurt cannot possibly constitute fullness, so don’t even try it.

5. A courtesy taste is required of all foods. This includes a small portion of the food on the tines of the fork/in the bowl of the spoon going into your mouth, being chewed and swallowed. Touching the tip of your tongue to something for 0.007 seconds and declaring, “I don’t like it” isn’t the same thing.
3. When Mommy sits down, she ain’t gettin‘ up until her plate is clean. In other words, chew slowly and take small sips on that apple juice, ya dig?

I’m thinking this little list can be modified for lunch and dinner, too. What with Thanksgiving dinner all but here, I’m about to xerox this and affix it to everyone’s water glass. Then, when I sit down to eat, I’ll sit down and stay down. And we all know thankful I’ll be for that.

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IN: ON: November 11, 2009 TAGS: , , , , BY: Hilary
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recipes

Fall Has Fallen

Fall has fallen and with it so too has my resolve to eat more healthily. I have been steadfast in drinking my 8 glasses of water a day and incorporating my 6 servings of fruit and veggies, too. I am about to turn into a stalk of broccoli. However, when the leaves turn and then leap off of the trees, all of that goes out the window. Seriously, the weather turns a little cooler, I turn into Betty Crocker.

Oh, I can’t wait to start baking.

I was cleaning out the pantry, looking for cans of forgotten veggies and fruits to donate to the local food bank when I found a 16oz can of pureed pumpkin. Awwww, yeah! I can’t believe I had forgotten about this! And once October rolls around, you can’t turn a corner without tripping over an orange gourd! I love pumpkin – pumpkin bread, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin flavored coffee-drinks, pumpkin scented candles, pumpkin and bacon sandwiches (kidding, kidding).

I decided Mo, Co, and I were going to make some pumpkin walnut glazed cookies. Mo had no school on Friday, so I took her for some quality mommy-and-me time at our local Starbucks/Target combo to pass our morning. Miss Mo was easily placated with a kiddie cocoa and a vanilla scone. She’s very much into Fancy Nancy, so when I told her a scone is a fancy breakfast treat, she all but Hooverized it. For me, I kicked off the fall season with a pumpkin frappuccino. I have to say though, I was left wanting. It was as if they just took some pumpkin essence and waved it over the top of the coffee. I think I could have gotten more pumpkin flavor dropping in a handful of mellow-cream pumpkins!

After we picked up C0, we headed home to fire up the oven. I was so excited to bake with the girls, the night before, I got all Martha Stewart-y and pre-measured the dry ingredients, set aside the wet ingredients so that all we had to do was pour, stir, roll and bake. So much easier, so much more fun. The girls were excited and 3 dozen cookies later, we were in pumpkin bliss.

My neighbors have come to realize they are going to be lucky guinea pigs recipients of this baking bounty and were only too glad to give me requests for more baked goodies. Last year, I made some rum balls that gave my one neighbor a two-day hangover (I am totally making those again!). That 16oz can of pumpkin puree enabled me to make 3 dozen cookies on Friday, make an additional pound of cookie dough for freezing, AND allowed me to make some pumpkin walnut pancakes for breakfast this morning. Incidentally, pumpkin walnut pancakes also make for an excellent brinner! For someone who is a notoriously finicky eater, once I get a hold of a recipe, I am ready to challenge Tom Colicchio to an Iron Chef match.

And let’s not even talk about Halloween – okay, well for just a minute.

Every year I tell myself to buy the candy that I don’t like – Almond Joy, Skittles, Starbursts that kind of stuff. Every year, I buy Snickers, Reese’s Cups, and Kit Kats. Last year, I bought Reese’s Fast Breaks and holy mother of pearl, I was eating those things like Tic Tacs. This year, DH had gotten some World’s Finest chocolate bars to give out, but, as I gently reminded him, we live in a kid heavy area and Halloween is K.O.B.D – kind of a big deal. So, off to the Rite Aid I went, with every intention of coming back with Sweet Tarts, Dum Dums, and Tootsie Pops. Well, we all know what happened. I think if I sneeze, a Reese’s cup will fly out of my nose,

I got my Thanksgiving issue of Real Simple in the mail the other day and had paryoxms of glee at all the recipes I can try. I made this one recipe of ravioli, spinach and bacon (cue “My Favorite Things”) and by the time I was done, the recipe page was smudged, splattered, dog-eared, and greasy – telltale marks of a cook hard at work. For as much as I enjoy cooking, though, I doubt I will ever tackle a Thanksgiving turkey. I prefer my turkey from the deli, thank you very much. Besides, I much prefer the side dishes (green bean casserole, anyone?) to the main event. My family eats Chinese food for Christmas dinner; it’s highly unlikely a turkey is going to get introduced to our oven any time soon.

Even with all of the impending holiday eating that is bound to occur between now and New Year’s Eve, I am still mindful that while my pants hang low on my hips now, they can easily succumb to the crazy phenomenon that shrinks my clothes every time I leave them unattended in the closet. Seriously, one size goes on the hanger and a smaller size comes off the hanger. I think it has something to do with the my carbon footprint or something, but that’s another topic for another day.

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IN: recipes ON: November 1, 2009 TAGS: , , , , , BY: Hilary
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