Hello, I must be going

Okay, so last night I wasn't feeling too great and DH made pancakes.

Tonight I'm still not feeling so great, but I made fajitas anyway.

For the next week-ish I will be out of town and without an internet connection.

See y'all in about a week. I tend to miss my own cooking (because I am all self-absorbed like that) when I travel, so I should be cooking up a STORM when I get back!

Welcome wagon

So hey, everyone! Did you know that my humble blog here was mentioned in the New York Times? I'll bet a good thousand or so of you did!
A snapshot of my stats this morning.

Incidentally, I'm pretty sure that writer Lisa Belkin's mention of "straight talk" with regard to the blog was her way of gently warning you that I cuss a lot. Which I do. So, forewarned is forearmed, etc.

I'm not a professional chef nor even a particularly well-educated foodie, as will become readily apparent if you spend more than five seconds around here. I'm just a mom who cooks dinner for her family, sometimes from scratch, and sometimes by opening a can or box (or two or three).

The blog actually started as an effort to record the results of an experiment I was conducting in our household (because if you can't experiment on your own family, why even HAVE one?). At the conclusion of this experiment it morphed into a general cooking blog when EIGHT WHOLE PEOPLE, which was a clear majority at the time, asked me to keep it going. So I did, and the result is what you see today -- a (mostly) daily record of what I cook for dinner, with the occasional recipe or rant. Make yourself at home, stay a spell, and do try my favorite summer salad recipe if you feel so inclined.

Oh, one thing you should know if you landed here via the NYT article: Austin? Where I live? Not so much in West Texas.


It's okay, though. Technically, if you're east of the Mississippi, ALL of Texas is west. And hell, all most of us down here know about New York is that y'all talk funny and are fiercely loyal to your sports teams, even when they really kind of suck. Look how much we have in common already!

Who loves you, pretty baby?

As some of you may have noticed, I finally managed to go back and add labels to ALL the posts in this blog. Even the old ones, back before I was sharing much in the way of recipes/techniques. I went ahead and added a list of labels to the sidebar, in alphabetical order. So you should be able to click on a label over there and pull up all the posts that have that label affixed. (You can also click on a label at the end of a post and bring them up that way.)

I hope this will make it easier for you AND me to find recipes and meal ideas over here. It's almost campechana season, after all, and I don't want to have to page through my archives to remember how to make it!

(In other news, do you think we eat enough BEEF? Holy cow! Er, no pun intended!)

Fishy!

Tonight's Menu

• baked salmon
• pan-sauteed rainbow trout
  
• leftover quinoa
• steamed broccoli
  

I have successfully gotten the boy hooked upon my salmon, which I just brush with EVOO and then sprinkle with garlic pepper and Jane's Crazy Salt before popping it in the oven at 450 degrees F for 10 minutes per inch of thickness.

The trout was for DH the salmon hater. As usual, sprinkle with salt and pepper, then give it a once-over in a hot pan with EVOO.

As you may have noticed, I have switched (or more accurately, I've BEEN switched, against my will) to the new Blogger, which means I can do labels and stuff. I'll be going back through old posts and adding them, so eventually you'll be able to, say, click on the "salmon" label and pull up all my posts about salmon. I haven't decided whether I'm going to do the REALLY old posts, or just the ones since I switched the blog over to general cooking (as opposed to Get My Kids To Eat Normal Food cooking). I figure you're probably looking for recipes and meal ideas, so I may just stick with that.

Anyhoo.

While we're waiting for inspiration to strike...

Hey everyone! Since I seem to have trouble remembering to write in this damn thing, and since I seem to be making the same old crappe over and over again anyway (steak! tacos! burgers! lather! rinse! repeat!), howsabout an update on the reason I started this blog in the first place?

Originally the purpose of this blog was to record the results of an experiment of sorts. (More info on that over in the sidebar.) See, I had always been the kind of mom who made two different meals for dinner every night -- one for the adults, and one for the kids. It was wearing me down and making me crabby, so on the first day of summer vacation last year, when my kids were 10 and 8 years old, I decided to start making ONE MEAL ONLY at dinner. I would make the adult meal, cooking enough for four instead of two. If my kids didn't want what I was offering for dinner, they were free to Make [Their] Own Damn Dinner! They had to have (at least) a protein and a veggie, approved by me, but they had to make it themselves.

At the same time, I stopped buying chicken nuggets, fish sticks and fruit snacks, which together were making up a huge portion of my kids' diets. I haven't forbidden them from ever HAVING those things -- they still eat them at school and when we go out for dinner -- I'm just not buying them to have at home anymore. If they want chicken, they can have one of the lovely chicken dishes I make (Thomas Keller's roast chicken and Nigella Lawson's chicken with lemon and garlic being two favorites). If they want fish, I am happy to cook up some salmon or tilapia or trout. If they want fruit, they can have some actual FRUIT. No more fake food around here, yo!

The primary goal, of course, was for me to stop being such a short-order cook at suppertime. In this, the experiment succeeded wonderfully. I now make ONE meal, and whoever doesn't want it makes his or her (say it with me now) own damn dinner!

The secondary goal was to get my kids to expand their palates a little bit. I thought for sure they would get tired of making themselves peanut butter sandwiches every night and start trying some of the food I made. In this, the experiment was only PARTIALLY successful.

The boy has amazed me. He now eats what I make a good 75-80% of the time. He has happily gobbled down steaks, salmon, ropa vecchia, spaghetti squash, tortilla soup and a bunch of other stuff that I thought he'd never consent to try in a million years. He's nearly always willing to at least TRY whatever I make for dinner. Sometimes he likes it, sometimes he doesn't and ends up eating peanut butter, but I am so proud of him for being adventurous!

And even better, he has expressed a strong interest in learning how to cook. He now helps me prepare dinner almost every night. I started him out slow but now he's wielding my Wusthof knives and sauteing stuff on our gas rangetop like a pro! He really enjoys learning about the science behind cooking -- how fats melt and sugars caramelize and cell walls burst to release liquids and stuff. I have taught him little tricks, like how to make sure things cook evenly and how to know when to turn things and stuff like that. We are having so much fun, and he is quite the little sous chef!

The girl, on the other hand, remains as finicky and stubborn as ever! She never makes a fuss at mealtime, but I can't get this kid to try anything new! Even when she, too, helps with the cooking, half the time she has no interest in eating whatever it is we've made (with the exception of dessert, sigh). Her standard dinner now is a cheese sandwich (whole wheat bread and American cheese, no condiments) and some raw baby carrots. She eats that at least four nights a week. That's also her standard lunch on school days because she's very rarely interested in the school's hot lunch (whereas I literally can't remember the last time the boy brought his lunch from home). Thank goodness for chewable gummy vitamins, is all I can say.

She has started eating a FEW new things, though. She'll happily eat a homemade hamburger. She'll eat steak but only if DH makes it. She'll usually eat a pork chop if it's just grilled or broiled with no sauce or anything on it. Other than that, she sticks to the old standbys she was eating before the experiment started. Sigh.

ANYWAY. I know the focus of the blog has changed a bit since then, but I thought some of you old-timers might enjoy an update on how the original experiment was going. It's going!

Wait, I have a FOOD BLOG?

So hey! Hi there! I am a little bit gone right now, as you may have noticed. We were out of town for a couple of weeks and I've had a hard time getting my mojo back, food-wise.

But I'll be back January 1st! For reals! With a culturally significant New Year's Day meal, even!

So yeah. See you then!

P.S. Tonight we had this again, but this time I put the damn meat in the crockpot at the outset so all was well.

Let's review: the end!

Okay, so this whole thing started as a summer experiment. Up until this past May, I was the kind of mom who made separate food for the adults and kids for dinner every night. Then it occurred to me that at eight and ten years of age, my kids were old enough to make their own damn dinner if they didn't like what the adults were having. And so, starting on the first day of summer vacation this year, I stopped making separate food for them. No more substituting frozen chicken nuggets or fish sticks for whatever meat DH and I were having, yo!

The primary goal was, of course, for me to only make one "menu" at dinner every night. In that respect, the experiment has been a success. While frequently I do make an effort to prepare foods that I know the kids like, no longer do I make separate food JUST for them. I make what I make, and they can take it or leave it. They know that they have to include a protein and a veggie or fruit in their meal in order for me to "approve" it, but apart from that, they're on their own. And I'm finding mealtime MUCH less of a chore these days.

My secondary goal was to get the kids to expand their palates a little and try some new foods. I feel like we managed to do pretty well with this goal, too. Both kids have tried and liked some new foods (meat in particular -- sorry, vegetarians!)(okay no, I'm not really sorry) and they've managed to surprise me and themselves with that, I think!

In my heart of hearts, I kind of hoped that by the end of the summer we'd all be eating the same foods at dinnertime. I thought the kids would likely get tired of peanut butter sandwiches and shredded cheese and raw carrots and whatnot and just start eating what I made. That, sadly, has NOT happened. Oh well.

SO. The thing is, school starts tomorrow! Summer vacation is only 81 days long -- who knew? And so the experiment is technically over, which leaves me with a bit of a dilemma. I'm not really keen on continuing to record what the kids do and do not eat every night, because I'm getting a little bored with that. However, I really have enjoyed the menu/cooking aspect of the ol' blog here, and I'd kind of like to keep that going.

So what do y'all say? Are you still interested in reading what I make for dinner (almost) every night? If so, do you want more recipes and how-to? Let me know!

Let's review: one month in (more or less)

I've been feeling really uninspired the past couple of weeks. I haven't been feeling all that great and haven't really felt much like cooking. There have been way too many pizza nights lately, and way too many Lunchables for lunch (I know I don't post lunches here, but they are a continuous thorn in my side).

And while I'm still not having to cook separate dinners for kids and adults, the kids don't seem to be trying as many new foods lately. Shredded cheese has become a staple, and while technically I approve whatever they make themselves for dinner, I'm not always thrilled with their choices.

I guess I had visions of them making themselves peanut butter sandwiches nearly every night, getting sick of them, and slowly beginning to eat what the adults eat so that we'd eventually all be eating the same thing for dinner. But that's really not happening.

Oh well.

Check back later for tonight's dinner, at which the kids are guaranteed to turn up their noses but I DON'T CARE.

Let's review: two weeks in

I am really pleased with how Operation Make Your Own Damn Dinner is going so far. Both kids have tried and liked some new foods, and better yet, when they don't like what we're having they MAKE THEIR OWN DAMN DINNER! Dinnertime has become much less of a chore for me without having to juggle kid food and adult food, which is all to the good.

When we started this experiment, I banned three foods from our house: chicken nuggets, breaded fish sticks, and fruit snacks. I'm not saying my kids can never have these foods again, I'm just saying I won't be keeping them in the house. They had started eating way too much of this stuff and I was totally enabling it by buying and cooking it. No more! If they want something fruity, they can have some actual FRUIT. If they want chicken, they can have actual CHICKEN. Same with fish. No more food that isn't really food around here, yo.

Just cutting out fruit snacks, to which my kids were completely addicted, has cut way down on the amount of sugar they're getting. I don't know if it's the diet or the relaxed pace of summer or some combination thereof, but I've noticed both kids are on a much more even keel these past several days. (For those who don't know, the boy child has Asperger Syndrome and the girl was recently diagnosed bipolar.) They aren't fighting nearly as much as usual and the girl child has had far fewer mood swings lately. Again, I don't know if it's the new diet, but it certainly isn't HURTING anything!

Anyway, so far so good.

Introduction

I have no one but myself to blame for the fact that my children would not touch with a ten foot pole approximately 99.5% of the delicious food items many other children happily consume on a daily basis. Yes, internets, it is all my fault. I am one of THOSE MOMS. The ones who cook separate food for the children and adults in the household.

You see, as an idealistic new mom (you can go barf now, I'll wait) I was determined that mealtime would not be a struggle. No food battles in my house, yo! And so if one of my adorable little tots tried something once and hated it, I never served it to them again. Likewise, if they tried and liked something, it became a staple in their diets. This is why I have two children who regard things like homemade soup and fish in non-breaded-stick form as poison that will cause their guts to EXPLODE RIGHT THERE IN THE DINING ROOM.

But that's all about to change. Since my kids are older now (10 and 8 years of age, respectively), I've decided that if they don't like what the adults are having for dinner, they can make their own. It has to include protein and a veggie, but apart from that they're on their own. This plan goes into effect on the first day of summer vacation.

Which was today.