Parenting

Salad Junkie

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

salad greens2 smLots of parents fret about their teenagers’ eating habits. Given the freedom and a little pocket money, most teens make bad food choices. I can’t judge—I was one of those teens once, splurging on chocolate and Coca-Cola every chance I got. My son is no different, though his vices tend toward the salty side—chips and cheesy breads.

But I don’t worry. He thinks I’ll reprimand him for the empty chip bag that comes home in his lunchbox (he didn’t get them from home…), but I know that his real weakness is salad.

Yep, salad. With a homemade vinaigrette, and plenty of dark, nutty lettuces and spinach. Maybe some nasturtium flowers for colour and a little zing…

He eyes the salad bowl after everyone has had seconds, waiting to see if his sister will fight him for what’s left. She often does, and I would, too, except that my parental instinct is to let them gorge on salad. Rarely is there anything left when the table is cleared.

How did it happen, this salad craving? I have no idea, except that our salads aren’t iceberg lettuce and an anaemic slice of greenhouse tomato. They have flavour and colour. The kids know the names of all the varieties of lettuce I plant, and they enjoy the range of “extras” we add, like nasturtium, salad burnet, and parsley.

“I like that drunk lady,” my son said one day after polishing off the salad greens, “It’s so…succulent.” He was referring to Drunken Woman Fringed Head—one of our reliable year-round lettuces (but that won’t stop me from using the quote as blackmail someday). How can a kid not like lettuce with a name like that?

So, let them have a few chips and some chocolate. I know that they’ll come home and stuff themselves with salad. That’s serious junk food!

Catching dinner when we can

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Tomorrow is Anzac Day, and the stores will be closed.

This caused us some confusion today, because we all get Monday off, as Anzac Day has been “Mondayised”, so we assumed that stores would be closed only on Monday. We had planned to pick up the remaining materials for our big shed project tomorrow morning, so we could work on it over the long weekend.

Thankfully, Ian picked up the rental trailer this afternoon, so when, at 5.15 pm he realised he couldn’t pick up building materials in the morning, he was able to make the trek to town with the trailer before the store closed.

Meanwhile, I was doing my usual Friday afternoon routine, running our daughter to clarinet lessons, then two different band rehearsals.

All of us missed dinner. My daughter and I ate cheese sandwiches and carrots in the back of the car, and Ian and our son grabbed some crackers, and made egg sandwiches when they got home just before 8 pm. They were still eating when my daughter and I got home.

I know for some families, that’s a normal day, but we do our best to eat a proper dinner, together as a family every day. It’s unusual to have such a crazy un-meal, and it always makes the day seem incomplete, not to have that time all together as a family.

It’s good to have these days, though. They remind me of how blessed we are to be able to sit down together almost every day to share a meal and each other’s company.

Nuts to you!

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

DSC_0011 copyWe regularly discuss the fact that we don’t eat enough nuts. We love nuts, and they’re good for us, but we just don’t always think to use them as often as we could.

When we were given a large quantity of walnuts in their shells, I wondered if we would manage to eat them all—our damp winters can cause walnuts in the shell to mould. I spread them out on a drying screen for a few days, to make sure they were fully dry before bagging them.

But when I went to bag them, I found there were far fewer there. Because they were sitting out, we were all snacking on them throughout the day. The kids enjoyed cracking them, enjoyed the challenge of trying to extract a nut meat whole.

So instead of putting them all in the cupboard, I left a small bowl of them sitting on the table with a nut cracker. I’m finding I have to refill the bowl every couple of days.

Who would have thought it would be so easy to get us to eat more nuts? I didn’t have to work out a new nut burger recipe, or remember to throw a handful of cashews into my stir fries. All I had to do was make it easy and fun to snack on them.

Helpful kids

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still life with nails sm*Sigh*

Dropped a wall on my hand today, so this will be short…typing skills aren’t really up to snuff at the moment.

It’s been a busy week of DIY at our house. Everyone in the family has been involved in one way or another. The days have been long and exhausting, but it’s been great to watch the kids help out, confidently and competently, in so many ways. Not just hammering nails and measuring things. In spite of the demands of the project (in fact, because of it, most days) we still need to eat. Fortunately, the kids are old enough now, they can take care of food, letting the adults spend every possible minute building.

At lunch time, kids get out the bread, cheese, pickles and other lunch items, and call us when it’s ready.

They can also cook dinner, if we’re at a stage where we can’t stop to cook. All those frustrating times teaching them how to chop, sauté, and bake (when having them “help” meant it took twice as long to make dinner), have begun to pay off!

(Especially handy when you’ve dropped a wall on your hand.)

Mommy’s Magical Crackers

/ Robinne Weiss / 6 Comments

DSC_0007 copyNamed by my kids years ago, these are so magical, they start disappearing almost before they leave the oven. It’s a good thing they’re easy to make—easy enough for every day, good enough to include on a fancy cheese and cracker tray at a party.

1 c. all-purpose flour

1 c. wholemeal flour

¼ c. sesame seeds

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

1/3 c. vegetable oil

2/3 c. warm water

Mix flours, sesame seeds, soda and salt. Stir in water and oil, stirring just until the dough comes together in a mass. Divide dough into halves. Roll out each half very thin (1-2 mm) on a lightly greased baking sheet. Cut into cracker shapes, and bake at 190°C (375°F) for about 15 minutes, until they are brown and crispy. Check regularly toward the end of baking and remove any crackers that have browned before they burn.

Eat quickly before they vanish!

* Replace the wholemeal flour with rye meal (or a coarse ground rye flour) for a lovely variation.

Seasonally Adjusted Holidays

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

100_2185When life gives you pumpkins, make Jack-o-lanterns!

Halloween used to be one of my favourite holidays, and not because of the candy. Costumes, pumpkins, and the excuse to scare one another outdoors at night—what more could you ask?

Halloween here is a sad farce, and we do not observe it. It is fundamentally an autumnal celebration, and coming, as it does here, at the very beginning of summer is simply wrong. There are no pumpkins, there are no crisp brown leaves, and the sun doesn’t even set until after 8 pm.

Though we skip Halloween, when autumn does come around (long about Easter), we celebrate the lengthening night and cooler days with Jack-o-lanterns.

Naked seed pumpkins are great for carving—the flesh isn’t particularly good for eating, so I don’t feel so bad about throwing the pumpkins shells to the kids to carve after I’ve removed the seeds. (Uncarved pumpkin shells go to the goats, who don’t seem to mind the gritty, tasteless flesh.)

The finished Jack-o-lanterns sit on the picnic table outside the dining room window, where we can enjoy them during our increasingly dark evening meals.

Easter Egg Engineering

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment
First, they dyed the eggs.

First, they dyed the eggs.

The annual glut of hard-boiled eggs is about to begin. The children dyed eggs this afternoon. This year I challenged them to create Lego machines that would allow them to paint designs on their eggs. They took on the challenge with enthusiasm! One created a remote-controlled machine to rotate the egg. The other created a machine that rotated the egg, and moved it up and down, and held a cotton swab soaked in food colouring, all at the same time. The results were pretty impressive.

The remote controlled model.

The remote controlled model.

The deluxe model, complete with cotton swab holder.

The deluxe model, complete with cotton swab holder.

Peanut Butter Eggs

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment
With older kids, now, I didn't even need to do anything--they did it all (except the dishes).

With older kids, now, I didn’t even need to do anything–they did it all (except the dishes).

I don’t go in much for Easter candy. Waxy chocolate rabbits and creepy marshmallow chicks? Ick! I do, however, have in inordinate fondness for homemade peanut butter and coconut eggs, made with good dark chocolate. Years ago, one of the secretaries where I worked made them and sold them every Easter, and I had no resistance whatsoever. They were a daily treat for me until her supply was gone.

Thankfully, I don’t have that temptation any more, but last week my son asked me to pick up smooth peanut butter and chocolate for peanut butter eggs. What could I do, but comply?DSC_0008 copy

 

The Daily Bread

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment
My bread can't compare to these beauties of Ian's.

My bread can’t compare to these beauties of Ian’s.

Last night when I put another four quarts of peaches in the freezer (still working through those 40 kg!), I noticed we were nearly out of bread.

Ian is under a crunch of deadlines at work and is unlikely to take the Easter weekend off, and if he does, he has a huge DIY project underway at home, so there is no way he will be making bread this weekend. That leaves it up to me to fill the gap.

I’m always a bit nervous baking bread. I make a fine loaf, but I don’t have the practiced skill Ian has at bread. Imagine drawing a picture for Picasso—that’s a bit what it’s like to bake bread for Ian.

He is kind, and says nice things about my bread, gives me advice. We both know that putting up with my bread occasionally is part of what it means to live in our family. Just as sometimes he does the milking for me, we both take responsibility for just doing what needs to be done. We’ve tried to teach this to our children—the skill of walking into a situation, seeing what needs doing, and doing it without being asked. It is one of those skills that makes a person stand out as an employee, a roommate, a co-worker, and a friend. People who have this skill are the ones who walk into the kitchen at a party, see the pile of dishes in the sink, and wash them. They are the co-workers who empty the staff room dishwasher, the children who clear their plates from the dinner table, the students who tidy the classroom bookshelves as they look for something to read. We love these people. They make everyone’s lives better.

So I know it is okay that my loaves are not as beautiful or well-made as Ian’s. Part of being on this family team is sharing responsibilities, accepting help, and recognizing that we all need to pitch in and do what we can to keep the whole family operation running smoothly.

The Desolation of Smaug

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment
The desolation of Smaug

The desolation of Smaug

When my son requested this year’s birthday cake, he envisioned an architectural marvel—the city of Dale (yes, another Hobbit themed cake), with its neat, tile-roofed houses and soaring stone towers. I agreed to his request, thinking I would use the rolled fondant icing I intended to try this year. The one using agar…the one that tasted like sugared seaweed (read about it at this post). No problem, plan B was to use a poured fondant (no agar in that) and ice the buildings like petit fours. I tested the fondant last week on the dwarf heads, and was confident it would work.

But this batch of fondant was too thick; it ended up lumpy, and didn’t stick properly to the cake. Fixing it would require remaking it (and allowing it to cure for another 24 hours). OK, on to plan C. I had some marzipan left over from last week’s cakes, so I tried rolling it and covering the cake with it—too soft, it didn’t hold together. Plan D was to try the same with almond paste. It almost worked, but only on small pieces, and I didn’t have enough of it, anyway. I resorted to plan E, buttercream icing, which I knew wasn’t going to created the look I wanted. Before the first building was iced, I decided it wasn’t good enough. Tired, frustrated, and struggling under the oppression of a bad head cold, I surveyed the results with dismay. Nothing short of another day’s work was going to improve the cake. It was 9.30 pm the night before Lochlan’s birthday. I had, maybe, another hour before I would collapse from exhaustion.

I did the only logical thing I could—I skipped to plan S. He’d asked for the city of Dale, and he would get it, but not before Smaug did.

It felt wrong to purposely rip and tear at the half finished buildings, but the resulting confection was deemed “awesome” in the morning. I wouldn’t go so far, but it will do. Sometimes, that’s the best you can hope for.