Hi, all: I’m taking up a new home.
Same crazy family, new place to read about us: http://fromdiaperstodriversed.blogspot.com
Blessings, Holly
Bound to happen, really. After all, he is 41 and I, 42. By any standard other than deluded, that is solidly middle-aged. We were due for our crisis. The vows preclude bimbos and beefcake and the five kids preclude the red convertible.
Maybe it was the ads. Who wants to be stodgy when the alternative is young, hip, friendly, cool?
Maybe it was the free classes our kids took and then extolled the virtues of the amazing tricks, the ease of use, the wow! factor.
Maybe it was the slowness, the lack of memory, the general dementia of our old machine. Who knows, exactly?
Hi, we’re Jack and Holly and we’re a Mac.
Blessings, Holly
If you’ve been reading my sister’s blog http://vickykaseorg.blogspot.com/, then you know it’s a little suspect to be serving ham on Easter. And if you just so happen to have two very small, very cute little handmade bunnies that you made years ago at a Mothers of Preschoolers meeting at your church and if you thought that incorporating them into the table decoration with fresh daffodils would be cute, you may very well be a Philistine. I don’t like ham much anyway, so will side with my sis on that one, but the cute little bunnies stayed. The Princess loved them.
To counter the spiritually numbing effect of the bunnies, we made Resurrection cookies. Most of the symbolism–crushing the pecans, adding the vinegar, sealing the cookies in the oven overnight, the hollow empty middle of the meringue cookies–was lost on the four year old, despite our best efforts. She does like eating the cookies.
Mr. Wonderful made us prime rib instead of ham. So delicious! If you don’t have a Mr. Wonderful, I highly suggest you get one. I will be teaching my daughter to love the Lord God with all her heart, mind and soul and to marry an Eagle Scout. It’s a little variation on my Granny Rose’s admonition that it’s just as easy to marry a rich man.
The prime rib looked easy to do. Buy a bone in ribeye roast (on sale at $4.99/lb. if you have a Dominick’s grocery store near you). The grocer had good seasonings that come with it. Sprinkle liberally and tie the roast in two places. This will keep the fat layer adhered to the meat. Otherwise it tends to curl during roasting and that would dry out the meat. Throw it in the oven for 15 minutes on 500 degrees, then lower to 325 for the remainder of the time (20 min. per pound for a nice medium rare). My honey improvised an au jus by making a packet of onion soup, adding a cup of red wine and boiling/reducing then finishing off with some meat drippings and a little more of the grocer’s seasonings.
To complete our meal, we added roasted asparagus, applesauce, yeast rolls and corn casserole. I love this corn casserole! So easy–mix a can of creamed corn, a can of whole kernel corn, a dry box of Jiffy corn muffin mix, 1/2 stick butter, 8 oz. sour cream. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes. Delicious. We enjoyed pineapple whip angel food cake for dessert. Combine a carton of Cool Whip with a box of instant vanilla pudding and an undrained can of crushed pineapple. Mix. Layer it with ripped up angel food cake. I do three layers of each in a glass bowl a la trifle.
You may find it a bit off-putting for so much of an Easter musing to be consumed with what we ate. What is Easter if not all about the miraculous? If you knew how hard it is for this family to even get to the grocery store, let alone produce a meal, you will know that our dinner was a minor miracle. Overlook the fact that it took us until 7pm to actually get it on the table. Two other feasts happened in our house this Easter. One occurred at 1:30am when I happened upon the eight year old, room light on, reading a comic book and eating his Easter candy from the basket he absconded with from the kitchen. The second was baby’s first meal of cereal. Video forthcoming.
Blessings, Holly
Without doubt, yesterday’s post erased any remaining charity you may have been willing to extend concerning my own competence. I love to read competent folks though and two bloggermamas I particularly enjoy include Emily at EverydayMOM (http://everydaymomlife.blogspot.com/) and Pam at This Mom’s Journey (http://pmmolnar.wordpress.com/).
From Pam, you can learn how to save about a million dollars by shopping for groceries in the right way. This involves coupons, blogs, Your Bucks and a secret decoder ring along with about two hours of pre-shopping prep time to really do it right. More about my own particular shopping strategy later, but even this harried housewife had the gumption to sign up for the Your Bucks deals on the off-chance that I may once again figure out how to get to the grocery store.
From Emily, you can learn food stretching techniques that rank just a little below Jesus with that whole loaves and fishes thing. Emily can make 5 lbs of ground beef last for eight meals. This is in sharp contrast to how I treat five pounds of beef, which is to stick it in the freezer for weeks or months. I curse it every day when 5pm rolls around and I have nothing prepared for dinner but the Giordano’s pizza number. Finally, in desperation one day, I will throw the whole hunk of cow in a pan and continue to curse as I use my spatula to shave off millimeter thick layers. Two hours later the thing is cooked, but I have no idea what to do with it other than add it to spaghetti sauce.
There’s probably not much hope for my cooking. Those wonderful friends mentioned in yesterday’s blog brought me a little gift this visit. It’s a sign saying, "I kiss better than I cook." Not that they would know, mind you, but it’s a safe assumption. I probably couldn’t do anything *worse* than I cook (see previous blog post "Dishwasher Salmon" for details).
I do have a system for shopping that may interest you. If you’re still after competence, my advice may not be your thing. I use The Four S’s: Serendipity, Sympathy, Stealth and Sweetie.
Serendipity: Whatever grocery store I am near when I have three or fewer kids with me and when it is at least an hour until the baby needs to eat is where I shop. This goes a long way toward explaining why I rarely shop. But when I do, I buy whatever is on sale and figure I can decide what to do with it later. Afterall, it works so well with the ground beef, it makes total sense to expand this to all my food choices, right? A few weeks back, this meant short ribs on sale at Meijer. That only two of the seven of us really like short ribs was immaterial. They were 99 cents a pound. Anyone can learn to like anything at 99 cents a pound. In line in front of me was a woman who must buy her meat in less than 10 pound hunks and she was unable to use her $2.50 off $10 or more in meat coupon. She graciously gave it to me. Voila, short ribs at 75 cents a pound. Serendipity.
Sympathy: This is easy. I seem to evoke sympathy just by showing up. Costco met the grocery store rule last week. I was waiting in line with, among other things, 1800 baby wipes, 216 diapers, 36 rolls of toilet paper and a baby in a car seat buried under it all. This left no room for any other kid in the cart, so I had the four year old and the eight year old hold hands while we waited in line. You might imagine how idyllic (not) that was. The baby, tired of shopping by this point, let his opinion be loudly known. Praise the Lord, the lady in front of me who had at least as much stuff, but no kids urged me to go in front of her. Sympathy, or possibly Survival from her perspective.
Stealth: Like the bomber. Do not mess with me when I am in the grocery store. Outside the store, I may play the nice Christian woman. Inside it, I am demon possessed and yes, I will mow you down. Pray that Jesus does not return while I am shopping! Step aside and no one gets hurt. The only thing on my mind are the five items I need to purchase so that my family will not starve the next day. I do not understand your slow-paced stroll as you examine each canned item and marvel over the plethora of cleaning products. Stealth.
Sweetie: You may know him as Mr. Wonderful, but he is also Mr. "Sure, I can stop and pick up three gallons of milk" and Mr. "Yeah, I’ll get butter and eggs on the way home." These requests most often take the form of "Hey, hon…" calls, but I wasn’t clever enough to come up with four H’s. I’m pretty certain the Bible speaks to me being his helpmeet, but I don’t know how I’d get through this life without my Mr. Wonderful. I’m not quite sure why he’s put up with me for the past two decades, but I’m hoping it has something to do with that little sign our friends gave me.
What works in your house?
Blessings, Holly
Friends from our old stompin’ grounds came to visit this week. Determined to shower them with hospitality, we had them:
Grill burgers for our meal one night.
Clean up the kitchen after every meal.
Buy us pizza.
Hold the baby. The baby that drooled, barfed and pooped on them. That baby.
Listen to us discuss that baby’s poop way more than anyone should have to hear about poop.
Move our laundry from dryer to couch.
Stare at our laundry on the couch for a day and a half.
Launder their own sheets. Collect their towels and place them at the ready to be laundered.
Fold up their futon beds, deflate their air mattresses.
Tutor our kid in math.
Haul clothes for folks back in the old stompin’ grounds back to the old stompin’ grounds. For their trouble, we tithed them two sweatshirts from the three enormous bags of clothes they brought to us from folks in the old stompin’ grounds.
That’s an incomplete list of the things I know they did for us. The list of little helps they provided that I didn’t even have the wherewithal to notice must be much longer.
Reflecting on the visit, I am left wondering when I turned into the ‘friend’ as in "with friends like these…"? I used to know how to be competent. I used to be able to get to the grocery store. I used to be able to get meals on the table. Not good meals, but still. I used to be able stay ahead of the laundry game. Heck, I used to be able to update my blog regularly. Now, as our visiting friends will attest, I cannot even find my car keys immediately after using them to unlock the car.
Our friends probably feel that they can cancel any summer missions trips, having already fulfilled their service duties over and beyond any reasonable expectation. The first day of our friends’ visit, our pastor preached about ‘washing feet’ and how true love serves. Can you say foreshadowing? These friends must truly adore us!
And yet–from my perspective at least–it was a great visit.
We live in a society filled with ‘fake it til you make it’ and one in which appearance and polish often trumps content and character. My friends could accept me in all my incompetence and and realize my desire to be hospitable does not match my ability to carry it out right now. New babies and many children have a way of knocking us off kilter in that way.
But man o man, I know how to pick great friends.
Blessings, Holly
ohiohol