Not Inadequate

Here on the Oregon coast, it’s windy and rainy. This kind of weather puts me in the mood for soup, stew, and hot noodle-y casseroles.

You know, comfort food.

Today it’s beef stew.

Step One: Get kids settled with a mountain of Legos.

Step Two: Crank up iPod.

Realize for the eleventy-hundredth time that you really should download the clean versions of Holla Back Girl and Hey Mama.

Step Three: Assemble the ingredients.

Onion, Butter, Flour, Tomato Paste, Beef Stock, Stew Meat, and half a bottle of Shiraz leftover from the last time I made beef stew.

Step Four: Chop an onion -

if you have an Onion Paranoid Husband whose mother scarred him by putting giant chunks of onion in everything she ever made and he developed an annoying onion-related gag reflex that has been vexing you for the last 18 years, then do your usual mental eye-roll at your mother-in-law, get out that choppy thing and chop the crap out of the onions. Actually, if I was in my old kitchen, I would have put them through the Magic Bullet. Mmmm….onion puree.

- and saute them in a half a stick of butter in your knockoff Le Creuset dutch oven that you got at Sam’s Club for $40, but which makes you feel fancy nonetheless.

While the onions are sauteing, mix a couple or three tablespoons of flour, the tomato paste, and the wine in a bowl.

Admire your daughter’s Alien Disco.

Admire Squidman especially.

Take a picture of your silly family being Squid People:

(yes, that’s a crib sheet doing duty as a tablecloth. It’s effective and classy. I am, in fact, known far and wide for my fine linens)

Step Five: When the onions are soft, or when you are sick of waiting around for onions to soften, add the meat (about 2 pounds) to the pot, season liberally with salt and pepper, and pour in the wine/flour/tomato paste mixture.

I realize that you could go a lot of different ways with this. For one thing, you could brown the meat before you cook your onions, and if I had felt like hassling with it, I might have done that. But I didn’t. Also, you could put lots of other veggies in it – carrots, celery, potatoes, parsnips, turnips, etc. I might have done that on a different day, but today I am craving meat, so I didn’t. You can do whatever floats your boat, people. Cooking is an art, so there’s no need to get all imprisoned by things like recipes.

Down with the tyranny of exact measurements!

Add beef stock, a little water, and toss in a bay leaf. I used one of those 20-ounce boxes of beef stock and a cup or so of water, reserving the other box of stock to use if the broth gets too thick.

Step Six: Cover and cook in a 350 degree oven for 3 or 4 or 5 hours, or until the meat is falling apart tender. Uncover for the last hour or two so the broth can thicken.

Serve over buttered egg noodles or mashed potatoes.

The color in that picture looks off. Huh. Oh well. It’s yummy, that’s the main thing.

Happy cooking!

Leftovers freeze well, if you are so inclined.

This post is linked to Mouthwatering Monday, Tempt My Tummy Tuesday, Tuesdays at the Table, Real Food Wednesdays, What’s Cooking Wednesday, Foodie Fridays, Food on Fridays, and anywhere else I can think of. 

So naturally, after all the bounty of Christmas, wherein Santa brought every Lego under the sun to our house, we had to have a big, tear-filled conversation about Sharing and Not Being Selfish and People are More Important Than Stuff, and so on and so forth ad nauseum.

We seem to have this conversation all the damn time around here, which makes me sigh internally and roll my eyes and think to myself “we covered this already! Quit being selfish, love your sister, and share your crap! Learn It, Love It and let me get back to Pinterest for crying out loud!”

Little, of course, has many typical little sister qualities – like when Big hates broccoli, Little can’t wait to declare her undying LOVE for broccoli; and when Big gets in trouble for not sharing, Little can’t WAIT to share and be a perfectly generous angel. I remember some of this behaviour from experiences with my own little sister, who would blink innocently while pinching me under the table. I was an idiot who would turn around and smack her in front of everybody and get in trouble. Subletly has never been my thing.

One time, my sister carved MY name into my mom’s sewing machine. My mother actually believed that I had done it, in spite of my protests that I surely would not be stupid enough to carve my own NAME if I was vandalizing something.

Anyway. That’s not relevant.

Character training makes my brain go all fuzzy. I’m never sure if I’m doing it right. I’ll figure it out, though. I want my kids to have a life-long closeness. To be best friends forever. To celebrate birthdays and holidays and be there for the births of each other’s children and all that stuff. I don’t have that with my own sister, and I wish I did.

Blurgh. I need another cookie…

• Last week, my son made some kind of Lego army. He was trying to get across to me that it was an ancient battle they were fighting. He said, “you know mom – it was back in olden-lego times.”

• On Saturday, my daughter perused the stack of presents under the tree and asked me gravely if perhaps I had made a mistake and weren’t some of the ones labeled “Big” really meant for “Little?”

• I love all the planning and whispering and gift buying and secret keeping, and cookie making eating that comes with Christmas, but I’m pretty much over the big dinner. For one thing, the kitchen where we are staying is minuscule; and for another, I’m tired of being the person who frets over gravy while everyone else is playing with new toys or napping surreptitiously on the couch. I decided food requiring a large oven or gravy-making skills was out, but was paralyzed with indecision about what was in. PARALYZED. I didn’t get any cooperation from my family in talking about it, either.

Finally, I screeched told them that if no one wanted to talk about Christmas dinner, I would be dipping Cheetos in a can of frosting and they would be on their own.

We eventually went to the grocery store on Christmas Eve, where I bought fixings for about three different kinds of hot sandwiches, fruit, and marshmallow fluff to make fruit dip, which has to be the most delicious food abomination ever. Jim bought stuff to make pie.

It was fine. And frankly, no one around here cares about the big dinner. They might when they are older, but for now, setting food on the table where they can dash over and stuff a bite or two in their mouths before racing back to the action works for us.

I did have Jim make some mashed potatoes, because scrounging leftovers at 9 o’clock in the darkened kitchen by the light of the refrigerator is my favorite part of the day. Last night for Second Dinner, I piled my potatoes high with meatballs, sliced tri-tip and jus, and was content.

• Happy It’s-Over-Let’s-Relax-Finally Week, internet! I love you guys!

This is what I got my sister for Christmas.

Yep.

It’s a chicken hat.

You’re jealous.

Admit it.

(probably you’re also jealous of my mad photography skilz, too. I mean come on – a chicken hat posed artfully on a partially used roll of paper towels? You don’t see that every day.)

Lookit people. I just discovered this Handmade Ryan Gosling site. If you have ever done anything even remotely crafty, you’ve GOT to check it out. It’s hot. And hysterical. And hot.

I mean, come ON. This stuff is hilarious! Add it to your reader forthwith.

PS – he’s also on Twitter.

PPS – my husband doesn’t get it. I don’t get why he doesn’t get it. It’s bothering me.

It was Big’s birthday last week and we went to the beach when Jim got off work. We happened to get there during a very low tide, and felt SO lucky to see all kinds of creatures -

Ochre Sea Stars

More Sea Stars

This guy (we think it’s a sea anemone – this kind maybe?

I love it here

• This is worth reading and thinking about. The slippery slope of moral and cultural relativism. A Teacher’s Surprising Discovery.

My question is this: How can we combat this increasingly pervasive attitude when we have no common ground of ethics and morals from which to begin? It would be more pleasant to stab oneself repeatedly in the ear with a shrimp fork than to reason with someone who doesn’t think hacking a woman’s nose and ears of is WRONG.

• We recently discovered Phineas & Ferb, which is actually a very cool show. I usually am pretty strict with the kids and teevee (in a completely hypocritical way, because I LOVE television), and have limited them to PBS Kids thus far. Watching Phineas & Ferb has the amusing side effect  of Big making all sort of Lego -inators like Dr. Dooffenshmirtz (which has to be the best name of a villain EVER). Today he announced he had made a disobeyinator which would make everyone naughty. I told him in that case, I might need to make a spankinator.

• Little has started back up with referring to herself in the third person, which I find absolutely hysterical. I asked her what she wanted for lunch last week, and she remarked rather coolly that “Little prefers cake for lunch.”

• Yesterday, Little and I were in the car waiting for her dad and brother to buy some Raid -

apparently ants are quite prevalent here and the owners sent over some all-natural, tree hugging ant whisperer to persuade the ants to exit the house. The ants laughed, then ran inside and set up a tiny carnival in the bathroom sink.

- and she announced that she had 100 babies in her tummy, and she was going to name them all after herself. Tomorrow, when she is finally a grown-up, she will be hatching them.

• Just so you know, I realize that this is not the most riveting blog content. I write a lot of this stuff down as a note to myself, because I want to remember it forever. I mean, I could have 100 grandbabies hatching tomorrow! Who wouldn’t want to remember that?

• Have a good week, peeps!

Updated to Add: This morning I received an email from a reader who told me about her brother, who is trapped in a Filipino hospital until he can pay his bill. He is a former Marine who has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and his family desperately wants to get him home to a hospital better equipped to treat him. After talking it over with my husband, I am going to donate. I don’t think it’s a scam, although I suppose the possibility exists. I’d rather lose a few bucks than risk ignoring a real need. I have a soft spot for Marines, so…  Here is a link to the donation page if you want to check it out – http://www.gofundme.com/b6w3k .

• The ocean! It’s big!

You are just going to have to get used to lots of ocean pictures. I’m enthralled.

• My daughter turned five last week. Five!

She was quite into it this year, informing us that she was going to be The Boss of Everything for the whole day! Every time I said anything to her, she was all “I knew that already, because I’m FIVE now.”

• Big’s birthday is this week, and he will be seven. Seven! When did those tiny babies grow up this much? Their birthdays are exactly one week apart. I know a lot of people think December birthdays suck, but I’ve always liked it because it turns the whole month into a big party. I also love that their birthdays are so close together, it’s something they can celebrate together forever.

• On Sunday we noticed that Big has a tooth coming in – behind his baby tooth.

The baby tooth is not loose at all.

And we are 2000 miles from our dentist.

The dentist that told us a month ago everything was fine in there.

So that’s awesome.

We found a local dentist who is going to take a look at it, and probably extract the baby tooth.

Even more awesome.

I wasn’t afraid of the dentist when I was a kid. But when I turned 30, the warranty ran out on my teeth and I have since endured three root canals. Three! Two of them were in the same tooth because I mistakenly thought I could put off getting a crown for a while. The thought of the dentist makes me a nervous wreck. I don’t want my poor baby to fear the dentist because he had to get a tooth yanked out on his very second visit.

Gah. My stomach hurts just thinking about that giant needle. I’ve seen smaller caulking guns.

• On Saturday we went for a long walk to the beach. We wanted to go in part because it was a very special low tide – apparently the tide is only that low once a month.

We saw clam-y things!

And starfish!

STARFISH, people!

Amazing!

• Have a good week, peeps!

Update: The local dentist discovered that the baby teeth are, in fact, loose, and will probably fall out on their own. She warned us that the new tooth will look worse before it looks better; and I’m just reading between the lines here, but “better” seems likely to happen sometime in the future when we begin paying a fortune for elaborate orthodontia. So that’s something to look forward to.

So we are here, on the Oregon coast, about which we have been dreaming for over a year.

It’s pretty swell, mostly.

I’ve been so worried about how the kids will adapt and how Jim will manage to work and making sure everyone had enough books and Legos and room, that I kind of forgot that all this is a big adjustment for me, too.

In fact, it’s probably been a bigger adjustment for me than the rest of them. Which in the spirit of being totally neurotic, makes me feel guilty. After all, this whole crazypants idea was mine. I should be totally unshakable in my conviction that this is the best thing for us. Right? Instead I have Vague Uncertainty mixed with occasional Panic Attacks.

Here are a few of the things that make my stomach crawl -

• Will we ever be able to buy a house again? The first time we bought a house, we got a VA loan and sailed through closing by handing over a measly $700. Easy! Then we sold that house when I got pregnant with Little and Jim’s company started making noises about relocating us. We rented a townhouse while we waited to see what was going to happen. After renting for seven months, we bought our second house. We had to turn over every scrap of financial information we possessed even though we had a large down payment and had been homeowners before. It was a giant hassle. Who knows what the requirements are now? I can’t imagine that being essentially homeless for a yet-to-be-determined amount of time will look good to lenders.

• Because we sold in the worst real estate market since the Great Depression, we are broke. Broke-broke-broke-ity-broke. I don’t like it. The cushion we had saved was all but demolished by the sale of the house. Since all this was my idea, our broke state is my fault. Obviously.

• What if we spend so much time on the beach and traveling and doing nothing that I continue to suck at school? I mean, let’s face it – school has been on the back burner for a while now, what with the selling and packing and traveling and all that. Actually, it’s not even on a burner. It’s more like in an old whipped cream container in the back of the fridge. I HAVE to get back on track. What if life is so different and so constantly changing that Little suffers? Big is off to the races with his reading, but Little needs some one-on-one time with mom and our phonics books. The cost of The Adventure can’t be that she starts out behind in reading. Reading is a big deal. Not optional.

Those are the biggies. There are plenty of little things too, though. Like I miss my kitchen. I miss my king-sized bed. I miss my shower, as crappy as it was, because at least I could move around in it without rubbing up against a mildew-y shower curtain (note: buy new shower curtain). I miss being the person in charge of where the couch goes, or how the kitchen is arranged. All my nesting instincts are being foiled and I feel slightly restless. I miss making bread – none of the kitchens have been suitable (as in they haven’t had an oven). The kids are, um, irregular without homemade bread, so if they are backed up – you guessed it! – my fault.

What if everyone loves doing this and I’m the killjoy who needs a place to call home?

What if everyone gets mad at me for being such a whiner? This was, after all, a choice we made freely. No one made us do this. Are you allowed to complain about problems you created by deliberately choosing to turn your life upside down?

What if they really have discontinued the one style of jeans that fits me?

AND THEN after fretting about all this stuff for a while, it finally occurred to me that all these things are….well, I don’t want to say silly, but the fact that I’m a worrier and the degree to which I worry is a shortcoming. Of mine. Something I really need to work on – for my own sake. Everyone is fine. My family is fine. They are healthy and fed and bathed and having fun. They have mom and dad and each other and a giant pile of Legos. Instead of giving in to hours of worry that is not accomplishing anything but wearing away my stomach lining, I need to find a way to roll my eyes at Neurotic Deb and tell her to shut the eff up.

Dang it.

Self-awareness: So. Unpleasant.