Keeping It Simple

I am a mostly grateful mother when it comes to mealtime. My daughter eats pretty much constantly. And she enjoys things like raw peppers, sushi, shellfish, Indian food, hummus, and edamame.

That being said, she does exactly what I did as a child. She eats one thing at a time, and will save the strangest things for last; like eggs. She doesn’t like things touching. My dad used to say about me, “When she gets married, we’re going to register her for Chinet.” 

My daughter has recently reverted to her 2-year-old self. She is constantly asking me “Why” this and “Why” that. “What does that mean?” “Who was the first person to hold me?” “Where was the first restaurant I ever ate?” “What was the first song I ever heard?” We’re taking it back to the basics here, this summer. So, after receiving a zucchini from my cousin’s wife’s garden, I thought we would make a very basic dinner. And, wouldn’t you know it? My daughter dumped her roasted butternut squash into her zucchini noodles. (She is always surprising me.)

I wish I had better photos, but that’s what usually comes of nighttime and dinnertime.

I was happy I had zucchini left after all the raw zucchini she stole off the cutting board. Reminds me of me and my poor mother peeling and chopping potatoes. One for the pot, three for me. 

I peeled the zucchini in long strips with a vegetable peeler. I heated 1T of butter and 1T of oil in a skillet with nearly a whole clove of garlic (you could use more, of course). Then I added the zucchini strips, salt, and pepper. I cooked it for about a minute. It was out. of. this. world. My kid begged for more, and was disappointed when I told her we were out.

I also roasted the butternut squash, after peeling and chopping, tossing in oil, with salt and pepper. I have to say, I think butternut squash has become my favorite vegetable. I melts in your mouth, and has such an amazing flavor, which is such a great reward considering all the work you have to get into the darn thing and on to the baking sheet.

This is going to be a recurring theme for the rest of the summer.
Back to basics. Yep.
And I’m loving it.

What’s Cooking

There have been a few times lately where I’ve royally screwed up in the kitchen. My friends and I have decided that I need to write a cookbook called, “When You Eff Up the Original Recipe, Here’s How You Can Fix It,”…or something of that nature. 

Just a few weeks ago, I forgot to add the flour to the pumpkin muffins. Cooked pretty much a pumpkin pie in paper muffin cups. Took out the steaming hot pumpkin, added it to the flour, put it back in the oven. Mixed together the topping and saw that I was supposed to put the topping on the muffins before baking. Added topping. Baked muffins AGAIN. Somehow they were “a 10,” as my friend informed me. I made them a couple days later the correct way, alone in my kitchen. Nothing to distract me. 

Tonight, I was assembling the ingredients for bean soup and noticed that I had purchased a can of spicy chili beans that the recipe did not call for. This is why I hate groceries. I can never reach the top shelf, and as I’ve mentioned before I refuse to wear stilettos to Kroger. I usually luck out and some tall man (or woman) will come down the aisle and I can get them to reach the things I cannot. When my daughter was a baby, I would put her on my shoulders to reach the high shelves. She’s way too big for that now. 

Nevertheless, the soup turned out to be quite delicious. I started with a mirepoix (and garlic). 

Then added the ham, beans, broth, thyme, and salt and pepper. I even got to use my immersion blender I haven’t used in years. I actually forgot how to attach it to the base. 

 

I made a salad with romaine and homemade dressing (olive oil, mustard, OJ, garlic powder, salt and pepper, and red wine vinegar), and homemade gluten free croutons. YUM. I’m going to start putting those suckers on everything! 

My child and her friend requested mashed potatoes, chicken, and edamame. No complaints there. And for dessert, caramel apples with peanuts. OMG Thrilling. Followed by 45 minutes of dishwashing. 

Totally worth it. 

 

 

Nice spatula indentions, yes?

And the quote of the day came from my dear daughter, who on the way to the grocery said, “I’m wearing my pearls, mom; just like Julia [Child].” 

I’ve done good work here. 

Mama Always Said….

So, I have been having horrible headaches for a while now and have been pretty much waiting to die of an aneurysm whilst driving or (even worse) at work. Irrational, I know (though my biological father did die of an aneurysm at 40 years old…so there’s that). 

I was having a particularly headachey day last week at work and took off my glasses and cried. And, wouldn’t you know it, twenty minutes later…headache gone. Glasses back on later, headache back. I decided to go to the office where I got my eye exam done and ask them to check my prescription on my glasses (that I got from http://www.ZenniOptical.com) to see if they were accurate. They were, except I measured my pupillary distance (What the hell is this, you ask? I didn’t know either until I printed the measuring tape from the website to measure it myself, and I’ve been wearing glasses since I was 7 years old) incorrectly and was off by 6 mm. Eye Guy told me this could be the issue. (I mean, I NEVER get headaches. I didn’t even own ibuprofen.) Then Eye Guy said, “Or, you could be allergic to your polycarbonate lenses.” 

WUT

If anyone could be allergic to their glasses, it would be I. Forget physics and such. Just have a blanket understanding that the girl who broke her rod in her back, whose doctor flew around the world to redo other people’s surgeries and had NEVER in ALL HIS YEARS had to redo his own surgery…until…, will be the one to defy the odds.

After work today, I took my sweet child shoe shopping. This has never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever been an enjoyable experience. At some point, we are both in tears. We went to Payless because they have half sizes. The Shoe Girl measured her at an 11 and said, “She should go to an eleven-and-a-half,” whereupon sweet child burst into tears. Tried on all the ten-and-a-half shoes (too tight). Tried on all the size 11 shoes (they flipped off). Cried. Left the building. 

We drove to Kohl’s. Finally found a pair we liked. Walked ten feet. Cried. Returned shoes. 

We drove to another Payless. No go. Left Payless barefoot. Mommy carried sweet child to car. 

We drove to Dillard’s, where the woman who is always there was there. I cannot believe after four years of having us as customers she hasn’t quit her job. Srsly. How does she do it? Sweet child tried on 12 pairs of shoes. And she found a pair! I couldn’t believe it. She left wearing them, because remember…I carried her in barefoot, up the escalator…with my giant purse…past the very expensive men’s shirts: 

(Worth every cent of the $99.50.)

We drove to gramma’s to pick up something, and caught the longest light in history. Took the highway. Got home. Came in. Threw dinner on the stove. Sweet child stapled her finger with the stapler and then dropped it in her applesauce. I wouldn’t let her turn on the television and she didn’t get to watch any television ALL DAY OR PLAY WITH ONE SINGLE FRIEND.

Then I found a note in her school planner that she was missing her homework on Monday. She had a folder full of papers I just assumed were classwork or some activity she received at the after-school program. They’re always giving her little activity sheets and things. HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW?!? 

So, I just ordered new glasses. One more try. 

And I’m drinking wine. White zinfandel. AND I DON’T CARE WHO KNOWS IT. 

Oh, and the sweet child went to bed in winter tights. 

I swear….

And So It Goes

Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. So says Mr. Bueller. 

And was he ever right? 

Today was my daughter’s first day of 1st grade, and yesterday she turned six years old. I look at her now and wonder where the years went. I don’t have any stretch marks, and the scar from my c-section is all but invisible. If she hadn’t slept on me for two days in the hospital, it would be nearly impossible to convince me I even had a child. But here she is. Here she was: 

 

A mere four years ago, she knew exactly who she was. She knew what she liked and what she didn’t. She dressed herself (shoes and socks), and knew all the words to every song from My Fair Lady (“Jus’ you wait, ‘Enry ‘Iggins, jus’ you wait!). All she wanted to do was laugh and sing. Nothing has changed. 

Someone once told me that you don’t ask children what they want to do, you tell them they’re going to do it. Without getting too graphic, I experienced something as a child that no child should. When I look at my daughter, I feel a sense of pride that she has made it through six years of life without someone changing who she was meant to be as a person. She has boundaries that I did not. She knows her comfort zone, and knows it well. When I think of all the times I’ve tried to force this child to go somewhere, or do something, that she has clearly expressed no interest in doing I swell with pride that she stands up for herself. She has no problem telling me that she doesn’t like whatever it is I’m trying to get her to accept. She has her own sense of fashion: 

And I have joked many times that she will either be a Broadway star, or a nun:

We have come so far over the years and been through a lot together, she and I. Every decision I have made over the last six years has been because of her and what I want for her. This is the first time in my working life that I haven’t worked two jobs at once, yet it feels like I’m working fifty. There aren’t enough hours in the day to spend with her, and never enough time to sleep. 

There was a blog post circulating the social networks recently that really hit home; so much so, that I had to check and make sure I didn’t write the post (The Day I Stopped Saying ‘Hurry Up,’ http://www.handsfreemama.com/2013/07/16/the-day-i-stopped-saying-hurry-up/). This is me and my child. She is a flower smeller, a free spirit, a tree climber, a Fraulein Maria. I love that about her. I wish I could be more like her. She is sweeter and more considerate than I have ever been, could ever dream of being. I have been trying my best not to rush her life, our lives. Just let her be, yet there is always something to do , somewhere to go, someone to see. And thankfully, she is always along for the ride. My little shadow. 

As she begins this new year in school, I can’t help but think of her as a teenager (hating me) and my wanting to say, “I nursed you for 14 months! I let you wear sundresses in December. I watched you go two weeks without eating a bite of food when you had your tonsils out and cried myself to sleep every night. I PEELED GRAPES FOR YOU, DAMMIT.” 

But maybe she won’t hate me. Maybe she really will be my best friend, just like she says she is. Maybe she’ll want to fill our home with her friends and she’ll tell stories about how I let her sleep in a suitcase just because she wanted to. Or maybe she’ll tell them how I let her wear a full-face of makeup (blue eyeshadow and red red red lipstick) to the grocery while pushing her new baby doll in a stroller.

Whatever she thinks, and whoever she becomes, I know that no one will ever make her do something she doesn’t want to do. I consider every day with her a gift. Even the days I couldn’t get her to wear pants or shoes other than flip flops or walk into the other room without my having to go with her. And if I live to be 100 years old, I will only have lived on earth as her mother for sixty-six years and that is not nearly long enough. 

Happy Birthday, sweet girl. Nobody loves you like I do.