Not Inadequate

Ok, so I just spent the morning getting all the blogs I read into a feed reader. I am on the cutting edge of technology over here. It was either that or balance the checkbook. Previously, I had a folder called “blogs” and I just put all my links in there. I have mixed feelings about the switch.

One one hand, I will be able to see everything in one place and I will be able to see when there are new posts without clicking on each individual link every day. I have been limiting the blogs I read just because it is very time consuming to click on every link, especially when some people don’t post very often. Now, I can stack my reading list sky-high if I want, because I will be notified when there is something new. I am in love with this concept.

On the other hand, I didn’t see that I could comment from Google Reader, so I will have to link over anyway. Will I take the trouble to do that? I love commenting and feeling like I am part of a conversation. Will I get too lazy to do it? Do people who read through feed readers comment less or does it not make a difference? Am I the last person around who does not use a reader? Plus, I wonder if I will miss seeing each blog. Each one is unique and represents an individual who probably put a lot of thought into their look. I know I did. I was mucking about in the code for weeks before I ever published anything. Will it seem too impersonal to read through a feed rather than going to the writer’s “home”? I often check out the blogrolls in the sidebars, and I will miss out on some of that, too…

Thoughts? Do you read using a feed reader? If you have a blog, do you think it impacts your comments one way or the other? Does it change the way you comment?

(normally, I find questions at the end of posts intrusive and manipulative, but in this case, I REALLY want to know. so spill)

Newsweek recently ran an interesting article titled The Creativity Crisis, which talked about how even though the intelligence of children in the United States is rising, their creativity is diminishing. This leads to difficulty with problem solving and thinking outside the box, and will eventually effect their/our ability to compete in a global marketplace.

Preschool children, on average, ask their parents about 100 questions a day. Why, why, why—sometimes parents just wish it’d stop. Tragically, it does stop. By middle school they’ve pretty much stopped asking. It’s no coincidence that this same time is when student motivation and engagement plummet. They didn’t stop asking questions because they lost interest: it’s the other way around. They lost interest because they stopped asking questions. 

Declining student motivation…Maybe if we look at the environment our kids are in for 8 hours a day, we can find the trouble. What is it like to be a student?

Every day you are told where to sit, when to sit, when you can get up, where you have to go, when you can talk, when you can use the bathroom, when you can eat, when you can drink, when you have to arrive, when you will be allowed to depart… 

what you can learn, in what grade and semester you must learn it, how much time you can spend studying it and at what specific times of the day; that you should learn to at least feign interest in any given subject, and develop the ability to switch your interest and attention to an entirely different subject every hour on the hour… 

that real interest in a topic must be carefully controlled – a limited amount of enthusiasm is praised, but straying too far from the designated material is not acceptable; that doing well on tests is somehow a measure of something valuable and therefore you must learn to regurgitate the previously-decided-as-important information on command; that you must subjugate your personal beliefs and values to please the person who stands in judgment of your work… 

and when you get home, your time is still not your own, because you have amounts of homework that a working adult would resent; and that maybe, after all this Deemed to be Important work is done, if you have time, you can read or play or daydream or cuddle with your daddy or have a job or do nothing… 

that the road to success is sitting down, shutting up, doing what you are told, memorizing the answers and not asking too many questions – all the while navigating a complicated social environment unlike any other you will likely experience again, even as an adult (unless you end up in prison)… 

Yeah. It’s a big freaking mystery.

School is about learning to wait your turn, however long it takes to come, if ever. And how to submit with a show of enthusiasm to the judgment of strangers, even if they are wrong, even if your enthusiasm is phony.

John Taylor Gatto

I am receiving a gratifying amount of positive response to my articles on Freezer Cooking over at Modern Alternative Mama (Part One, Part Two). I thought I’d go ahead and post a few more recipes and ideas here for those interested in this lifestyle. 

My husband loves to grill hamburgers. Since he works from home, sometimes he will even make a quick burger for lunch. I suffer from a bit of The Raw Meat Paranoia, so I’d just as soon have a few pre-made burgers in the freezer and avoid storing a pound of hamburger in the fridge at all times on the off chance someone will crave a burger. 

I buy hamburger in bulk. Jim likes a gourmet style burger, so I mix the meat with a little dose of whatever flavor of Lawry’s Marinade appeals and some shredded parmesan cheese (go easy if using cheddar or some other easy-melt cheese – it can burn and make a mess). Form into hamburgers. Grease a baking sheet and place the hamburgers on it in a single layer. Freeze until solid, and then wrap them individually in either freezer paper or plastic wrap and store in a gallon freezer baggie. These don’t even need to be defrosted before going onto the grill, just cooked on low. 

For boneless, skinless chicken breasts, I portion them into a quart baggie and cover them with store-bought marinade too. We like to grill chicken (thaw first by placing baggie in a bowl of warm water for 20 minutes or so), but you can also bake it in the oven. I have some recipes for home-made marinades here. 

I also wrote out a few recipes for Slow Cooker Sandwich Fillings.

If you try any of my recipes, let me know how they turn out. And if you have any questions about freezer cooking, or see any mistakes in the recipes, PLEASE let me know.

• So I guess Mel Gibson’s off his rocker. Dude. What is UP with that guy?

• Last night’s Real Housewives of New Jersey = BEST EPISODE EVER. They called the cops on each other! How awesome is that?

• I find this article both interesting and unsettling. It’s about a world-class violinist, Joshua Bell, performing beautiful classical music on a subway platform and being ignored. How many beautiful things am I walking past, oblivious? How many am I pulling my children away from?

I just got an email from Amazon telling me that as someone who has purchased books on education, I might be interested to know that the Unauthorized Guide to Pokémon in 999 Words – What Every Contemporary Parent Should Know is now available. For some reason I find this hilarious.

I guess Amazon sees my previous purchases of The Well Trained Mind, Charlotte Mason, John Taylor Gatto,  and John Holt and thinks that a Pokémon manual is just what I need to round out my library.

ALSO! Today I am continuing my series on Freezer Cooking at Modern Alternative Mama. I will be talking about my thought process and how I plan the meals I will actually be cooking. Next Monday, I will be journaling my current cooking session – mistakes and all. Check it out.

As near as I could tell, my mother never spent any time thinking about what we ate. I don’t think I had a piece of fruit in my house until I was grown and married – and only then because my husband requested it. There was never any fish, unless it was canned tuna; and the only veggies were either green beans or peas boiled to death and topped with bacon grease. My dad had a huge sweet tooth, so there were cookies and cakes and ice cream on a daily basis. My mother was always on some ridiculous 600 calorie-a-day diet and generally skipped dinner, staring off into space while the rest of ate. The only good thing I could say about the eating habits of my family growing up is there was never any soda in the house. I think that was a factor of cost rather than health, though. It’s really no wonder I was clueless about a healthy diet when I got married.  

After we got married we tried to improve our eating habits. We had moderate success, but I really wanted to take it to a new level after Big was born. That is what led me to The Super Baby Food Book. It has lots of information in it, from what first foods are safe to what ages you should introduce new foods to even making your own baby-safe cleaning products. The chapters that held my interest the most were the ones about making your own baby food, and feeding your baby the best foods you can from the beginning so they develop life-long healthy habits. I was quite enamored with this idea. 

The main premise is that instead of giving your baby powdered and jarred cereals, you can make your own out of whole grains and legumes that you grind and cook yourself. She calls this mixture Super Porridge. The nutritional content of whole grains is staggering. I immediately set out trying to figure out how to implement this plan. 

Fortunately, when I went to the health food store to check out the grains, I found Rob’s Red Mill Organic 6 Grain Cereal. So! Happy! All the grains were already ground up and ready to go! All I had to do was cook it and pour it down his little beak!  

Or not. Turns out, my son might be the pickiest eater on the face of the earth. He doesn’t have any sensitivities or allergies; he just has a massive supply of Stubborn. Even as a baby, he was like that. Luckily, I noticed a recipe for muffins on the back of the 6 Grain Cereal package and he loved them. 

Fast forward five years, and I have had just about enough of muffin making. When he was 7 or 8 months old, half a muffin filled him right up. A dozen muffins lasted almost a month. Now, I have to stop him and his sister at two muffins each. I’ll be happy if the 13 dozen muffins I made yesterday last two months. Combine that with their diabolical scheme to never like the same kind of muffin and their refusal to eat store-bought cereal, and I am kind of wishing I would have chosen the happy meal and kool-aid path instead of the stupid healthier food path. 

He is not a fan of veggies (and by not a fan, I mean Can Puke at Will to Signify Displeasure), unless it’s canned pumpkin in a muffin. (gah! muffins!) A few weeks ago I told him that he has to find ONE vegetable that he likes. Imagine my complete shock when he jumped right on board with this plan and is voluntarily trying new vegetables. Seriously. I couldn’t have thought of this three years ago? So far he has tried oven roasted cauliflower and oven roasted sweet potato fries. He claimed to dislike them both, but still – he ate more bites than I thought he would and I did kind of screw up the sweet potatoes, which were proclaimed to be “too gooshy”. Whatever that is. I wasn’t even asking which one he liked, just which one he hated the least. That’s what I have been reduced to over here. 

And while we are on the subject (I’m looking at you, Chipper Child-Free Food Network Person), these claims that all you have to do to get your kids to eat new foods is to involve them in cooking are just irresponsible. I have endured many disappointments from following that advice. Big loves to cook and is only too happy to make things he won’t eat. Maybe it works with theoretical children. Not real life ones who have unfortunately been raised to have opinions and freely express them. Oy, I’m just making tons of mistakes with these people. Is it too late to start in with the children-should-be-seen-not-heard plan? Would they present themselves for inspection each morning, all clean and shiny and hair-combed? And call me Mummy Darling?

We will be spending the summer perusing the farmer’s markets in search of the perfect vegetable. As annoyed as I get that Big is a picky eater; it is NOTHING compared to how annoyed his daddy gets. Which is funny because who did Big inherit his pickiness from? Why, from his DADDY, of course! His daddy, who made noises about calling an attorney to see what his rights were when he saw me bring an onion into the house.

I never call it to his attention, though. Because I am a good wife that way.

I know, it’s all cooking all the time over here. It’s getting a little tedious. I feel like that too, but I have to get some stuff in the freezer because Big Brother is starting up. I can’t waste a bunch of time feeding people when I could be delighting in the angst of moronic twenty-somethings. You know what’s funny? I always describe myself as someone who hates reality television.

I made a triple batch of banana muffins today. My Amazing Bosch handled it without even a whimper. I love this machine. Actually my recipe is for Best Banana Bread Ever,  but I find muffins easier to give to little people, so that’s what I made. I did not have enough bananas to quite stretch, so I made up the difference with applesauce. I used freshly ground wheat flour and some flax meal. Big does not like chunks of nuts in his bread, so I ground up the walnuts nice and fine before I added them. Unfortunately, he saw me do this and now I am destined to watch him inspect his muffins with a magnifying glass, on the lookout for some walnut chunk of an Unacceptable Size.

* I should have titled this post In Which I Am A ROCK STAR, because after making all THOSE muffins, I went on to make a triple batch of Oatmeal Muffins and FIVE DOZEN 6 Grain Muffins. 

That’s right, I have made thirteen DOZEN muffins today. And now, I shall commence doing nothing. At least for another 30 minutes, then it will be time to start dinner. Dang it.

(being Averse to Direction Following, I do make adjustments to the recipes. In fact, I didn’t even recognize the 10 Grain Cereal muffin recipe on Bob’s Red Mill when I was looking for the link. I use freshly ground whole wheat flour, regular sugar, and the Organic 6 Grain Cereal)

Ok, so the other day we were getting ready to go buy fireworks and I ran into my office to shove my feet into Birkenstocks so we could go. A split second later I thought, Good Grief. Is nothing safe? How did the kids manage to get a pile of dirt in my shoe? I flipped the shoe over to knock the sand out of it AND A GREAT BIG WRITHING PILE OF DIGUSTING ANTS FELL OUT ALL OVER THE FLOOR. 

PEOPLE. 

WHAT I THOUGHT WAS A PILE OF SAND IN MY SHOE WAS A PILE OF ANTS IN MY SHOE. AND I PUT MY FOOT RIGHT ON IT.

MY BARE FOOT TOUCHED ANTS. 

Even all caps is not enough to communicate the horror. THE HORROR. I can still feel it. I have some kind of post-traumatic-foot-skin-memory thing now. 

Apparently Someone, who may or may not have been myself, spilled some potato chips on the floor and did not get every single one picked up. Apparently, one landed in my shoe. Apparently, the ants HEARD the chips hit the floor, intuited somehow that Someone is a less than thorough chip-picker-upper, and sent a PHALANX of warriors in to devour it. 

Naturally, I screamed bloody murder and ran out into the garage where Jim was getting the kids buckled into the car, blithering like an idiot, “….RAID!  ANTS!  SHOE!  ANTS!  FOOT!  RAID!…” I see the Raid, but can’t reach it because OBVIOUSLY we keep things like poison out of the reach of children and people not much taller than children. 

The kids, strapped into their car seats like little Indy drivers, observe that mama is upset, and immediately do that Ack! Someone is upset! Now I am upset tooooooooooooo! thing and join me in the crying and snotting and arm-flailing. 

Jim comes into the house to see what all the ruckus is (moving entirely too slow, in my opinion), and I make him get the vacuum cleaner and spray poison everywhere. I follow him around, continuing the story with incoherent half sentences and wild gestures toward my feet and my shoes and the big pile of (now dead) ants. At some point, I said, “I can’t believe you didn’t hear me yell and come in to save me!” and he goes, “Oh. Was that you? I thought I heard something.” 

So NOW, not only am I completely traumatized by this whole ant-foot situation, I ALSO realize that in the event of an emergency, my knight-in-shining-armor will pause, then shrug dismissively.

Last year was the first year we did any fireworks with the kids. When Jim was telling me he wanted to get some stuff for the kids to set off in the driveway, he had obviously given it so much thought that I accused him of having a Five-Year Plan that would begin with pop-its and culminate in the launch of an actual missile. He did not deny it.

I was concerned the noise would scare them, but apparently the explosions can’t BE big enough to satisfy. Last year, Big had all sorts of elaborate ideas to dig a hole, put all the fireworks in it, cover it back up with dirt and then light the fuse to make a big dirt explosion. This year, his plan involved taking peaches from our tree, poking holes in them, filling them with fireworks, and blowing those up. All the neighbors take turns going out into the middle of the cul-de-sac and setting crap on fire. The teenage boys across the street are particularly inventive. 

I got invited to write a series on Freezer Cooking at Modern Alternative Mama!

I am beyond thrilled that someone has an interest in what I have to say on this subject, since I am always looking for more converts to help other moms. It’s going to be an in-depth look at how I fill my freezer with three months’ worth of dinners at a time. So if anyone has an interest in reading more about how I wrangled 20 pounds of hamburger and won, link over.

The series will run every Monday in July and will include book recommendations, planning advice, and links to tried-and-true recipes.

Show me the love, ladies!