Wordless Wednesday on Tuesday.

My eldest has taken to taking pictures of the food I make. She's better than I am! Well, any way, with my inability to follow recipes I started out to make Mrs. Tuna's gringo Spanish rice and wound up with a Mexican rice bowl because I didn't want to wait forty five minutes for it to cook in the oven.

Meyer Lemon Beignets-just in time for Mardi Gras

Ah, what can't be done with Choux pastry? It's the deceptively easy stuff that eclairs, profiteroles, and other French pastries are made of-and it couldn't be easier.

You'll need:
The juice of two Meyer lemons+ enough water to make 1 C liquid.
6 T butter
1 C plus 2 T flour
1/4 t salt
2 T sugar
3 eggs

Oil for frying, powdered sugar and lemon zest for garnish.
Optional:the Princess and the Frog. If you can handle all the Voodoo and the fact that Mama Odie makes out with a snake.

In a medium sauce pan, bring the water and Meyer Lemon juice to a boil, along with the salt and the sugar. Dump the flour in all at once, and cook on the heat, stirring with a wooden spoon, until it forms a boil. Remove from heat and dump the ball into your mixer bowl. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, until smooth and glossy.

Heat your fry oil. On my stove, it's just a little higher than medium, a bit of dough tossed in should dance and sizzle.

Place-don't drop-dough by rounded teaspoons into hot oil, CAREFULLY. You should scoop the dough back and forth between the spoons two or three times to form a ball, then scrape the dough carefully into the hot oil. It should float- cook until a nice, attractive, golden color.

Remove to a paper towel lined plate- top with powdered sugar and lemon zest.

Serve with hot coffee and let the kids enjoy the donuts (what do you think Beignets are?) with milk and a the movie.

Pat yourself on the back for being a kick ass mommy. This last step is NOT optional.

Mommy Stuff-Good and Bad

While this is not an "official" product review, there's a couple of big things I found out recently.

Silk Soy milk may contain almonds or coconut.

This is a big deal in my family. I'm disappointed in Silk, and it would explain why MissAngelLittle girl had an itchy throat at the last family gathering. NO SOY MILK FOR MY KIDS, people, unless the label doesn't say that! We're talking death, here, people. The change should have been printed in Dayglo Orange right on the very front of the package.

It wasn't. In fact, if it wasn't for the Mom blogger community, I'd probably be risking a nice trip to the ER. I usually only clear a product once.

Bad me.

Ok, now on to the good.

You know those little brightly colored goldfish (Pepperidge Farms) that are so appealing to little eyes... NEON colors... well, you KNOW how I feel about food coloring.

Not a fan. To say the least.

Well, Goldfish were on sale yesterday, and I told Daddy and MissAngelLittleGirl to pick out two bags. Those are their FAVORITE. And I don't have a fish shaped cookie cutter.

He tosses a bag of the neon colored ones into the cart and says "It says natural food coloring."

I saw RED. LITERALLY.

I mean, bugs are natural food coloring. And that's what I said as I snatched the offensive bag out of my cart, looking for the dreaded Carmine.

Beet Juice. Turmeric Extract. The food coloring in the neon Goldfish is actual food.

Points for you, Pepperidge Farm. My kids couldn't be happier with the colors, and neither could I.

Well, last night's surprise party was successful, I think...

We had a lot of fun last night...It's great to have such a fabulous family. Before I go and attack the mess left in my own kitchen, I wanted to share with you the really simple recipes I made...(yes, I actually FOLLOWED several recipes..almost to the T). We also shocked my mother in law, and I really am glad to have that part over with. I don't really like lying, but for a surprise party, I guess it's OK.

I started with one batch of artisan bread in five Broa dough. This is by far my favorite dough from the book...the cornmeal just adds a lovely texture. I like to completely ignore the instructions for forming the loaves and make it just like the boule. For this batch of dough, I subbed out 1 C of all purpose flour with one C of whole wheat flour, and added about a tablespoon of fine herbs to the flour before mixing the dough. This I left sit for forty eight hours, to allow the sourdough flavor to develop.

This was divided in half, then one half divided again, and each piece of dough quickly stretched into a ball as indicated on the website. I let these rest for an hour, while I worked on other things for the party, and Mr. Lovinangels washed dishes! Yay!

I took the smallest ball of dough, rolled it out on parchment, and formed this pizza. I left the skin on the beautiful green apples, and used diced prosciutto in place of the ham. I also finished it with the leftover shredded cheese I had from the Gougeres, which I took to calling cheese puffs, because I have no idea how to say that word. We used a lovely New York state sharp cheddar instead of Gruyere. I just don't like that.

Finally, I assembled the salad, which was just a bag of arugula, two heads of fennel, split and julienned, two green apples, split and julienned, and the insides of two pomegranates, cleaned out in a bowl of water to save my kitchen. I tossed this with some fresh lemon juice and olive oil, and really hit it with a lot of fresh pepper.

And that was it. I have to say, remarkably easier than I normally go, but still good.  Now off to run the bulldozer  through the kitchen and get ready for tomorrow's trick or treat!

Vichyssoise and Bad Parenting

Today, I'm a bad mom.

 It's been one of those weeks. I came down with a horrible stomach bug on Saturday. (I won't horrify you with the details). Suffice it to say, three days later and I still feel like Mr. Lovinangels somehow managed to run me over with his dying Bronco. I've managed with the kids, in some bizarre fugue state, my shiny floors covered in chalk and tiny foot prints, my children in varying states of disarray.

Fortunately, it's nice out, so they think that this has been the best weekend EVER. Miss TweenAngel had a half day today, and the kids spent the afternoon enjoying the last official golden day of summer buried in the miniature tent fortress daddy spent yesterday building, and they are happier than pigs in, well, you know.

I misjudged the amount of food we had on hand.

This is never good.

 At the end of searching through the cupboards, and a considerable amount of cursing, (remember, the kids were outside)  in a vain attempt to locate the package of chicken I knew we had, we wound up to doing meatless Monday.

Now, I have guilt.

Why, I'm not sure.  I think it may have something to do with the fact that we just ate the whitest supper in the history of the world. I'm hardwired to believe that white=bad. It may also be that I didn't CHOOSE to eat vegetarian tonight, I was forced to because of poor planning. That may be it. Or it may be because I just fed my kids potato soup for dinner.

Potatoes=Bad. Yummy, but pathetically lacking in nutrition. Now, granted, the soup was phenomenal, really gorgeous, and loaded with veggies other than potatoes, pureed to a fabulous silky smoothness and topped with cream. The little buggers were in heaven.

I served it with homemade, crusty dinner rolls, also made with white flour, from leftover dough from my cancelled Saturday night dinner.

 I'm going to parental nutritional hell. To make it worse, and to cover my poor planning, I've taken to calling the soup by it's French name.

Vichyssoise. Should mean fattening empty calories disguised as soup.

Do you think the kids will be mad when I nix dessert in favor of sliced raw veggies?

Update on the Moving Budget.

Well, here we are, six weeks out, and I realized that while I've expounded on everything from gay marriage to hamburger helper, I haven't actually updated you on our moving budget.

I'm proud to say, I'm well on our way to coming up to the positive! (and no, I'm not using that very special fuzzy math known to politicians near and far).

We've sold several items on ebay, and our profits total over $145 dollars used. Now, if you remember, I had appliances and a new couch to purchase, a deposit to pay on electric service, a moving truck to pay for, and food for the moving party.

We've decreased our expenditures considerably by purchasing used appliances and a set of couches from my brother in law. That takes our out going budget down to a tenth of what it was... yay us! Those totalled $180, the truck is $150 up front, the electic is $200, and I think maybe $150 for food, beer, and soda for the day of.(The food budget is high, but that includes the cost of me possibly ordering pizza for everyone if I'm losing my mind that day.) So the whole budget is -680, I've added $140 in ebay sales, leaving me at -500. I'm sure I can make that up in the five or so yard sales it's going to take to get me through all this stuff!

What do you think? Can we do this?

Samples worth mentioning...

     Everyone knows how I love samples... little packages of frugal goodness that make me happy and stretch my budget just a little further than it already is. I spend a couple of minutes every day scoping out all the latest freebies, and have gotten more than my share of free lunches and mini bottles of shampoo suitable for travel. Everyone once in a while, I'll get a company's offering and think it wasn't worth the postage they paid for it. Brawny sent me *A* paper towel. One towel, folded neatly in a package with a coupon. That one towel wasn't enough to convince me to buy anything. I did buy the product, one time on sale with the coupon, and at the end of the day, even a whole roll of them wasn't enough to convince me that they are anything but over priced. It was waste of their, and infinitely worse, my time.

    Now today's sample of taster's choice coffee was an absolute gift. (See photo, above.) Six little packages of instant coffee in different flavors, including a decaf.

   Well, we've been having a rough kind of day at Casa De Angels, and a little cup of coffee sounded, well, truly fabulous. And here's the kicker... it WAS truly fabulous! What a happy thing! In a world where instant coffee has the bitter metallic quality of a mouth full of seaweed, this was an absolute delight. I was shocked.

   Compared with the Starbucks VIA I received a sample of last month (one single serving envelope), it was absolute heaven. The VIA has that pretentious bitterness that I've come to expect from Starbucks products.

Evidently price doesn't account for quality. Or taste.

How to Get Your Man to Cook...Every Day of the Week.

My Husband and I spent the better part of the first five years of our relationship fighting.

About chores.

I love to cook, love it... but I hated that the entire burden of nourishing our two bodies was placed squarely on my shoulders.

Literally. He would eat "snack stuff" all day long.

Snack stuff. I still don't know what that actually means. In my head, it means my daughter perched on the chair next to him, while they both pig out on chips and soda.

*sigh....or flat out *curse depending on my mood.

Later on, much later on, it occured to me that he and I...we don't speak the same language. I say, "you need to have lunch before I come home."

He hears, "there are five drive thrus in between where we have to go and home. Sweet!"

The constant nudging made me feel like a control freak. In reality, though, I didn't tell him what was in the kitchen, I expected him to go out, poke around, find something he wanted to eat, and fix it.

The male brain hears "Drive thru! Much easier. Saves five steps."

So, we've compromised. I no longer leave him to plan a meal for himself or the kids, and we cut our drive thru budget by 7/8ths. Now, it's a fun treat, not a panicked stop to fill bellies for lack of better planning.

And, it turns out, he is perfectly willing to cook. I used to joke that meant spaghetti or tacos, but the man is really accomplished at man food.
As in, grilled food.

Therein, lies my rescue. I simply pick up large packages of simple meat, and let him have his way with them on the grill. Usually that just means salt and pepper, which is perfect, because the rest of the week, the leftovers are easy to work with. Yesterday, he fired up the grill and made sausages and corn, and I'll take the leftovers today and make spaghetti, along with a breakfast casserole for tomorrow. (We leave for the beach bright and early.) I make french dips out of leftover steak, and grilled chicken just has so many uses it isn't funny. It doesn't require a lot of supervision from me when I have a stack of grilled meat to work with, and (I think) he enjoys it.

Win, win!

So, I guess he's not technically cooking every day of the week, but it feels that way since I have such a head start on things. Plus fighting with that grill is not my thing, and I've been more than guilty of ordering takeout on hot days to avoid turning the stove on.
Of course, the other option is marry someone who likes to cook all the time

Do you have a strategy to get your man to cook?

Coping with Picky Eaters and Food Jags.

If you've spent any time at all around a group of mommies, you've heard of a picky eater. The child who will eat NOTHING but grilled cheese. You see the smiles pass through the group, as each mom recalls at least two seemingly unending months when each child consecutively would eat nothing, nothing at all, but one or two things. The battles, the endless frustration, the fear that said son or daughter would stop growing completely if not fed meal after meal of the same. exact. dish. Prepared the same. exact. way. (No switching out elbow noodles for penne, Mom!)

Personally, I don't buy into it. My little monsters, ahem, ANGELS go through, and get over, their food issues in a relatively short amount of time. I put what I make in front of them, and move on with my life. I like my food hot, and I'm not going to waste time with someone who's not even hungry when I am.

That's right, I said, NOT HUNGRY.

But, it's dinner time!!! (or lunch, or breakfast!)

Children don't have a disfunctional relationship with food. They are born with a clean slate. We teach them to be crazy about food. It's the one surefire way a twenty eight pound toddler can best a two hundred pound daddy. We beg, we plead, we cajole, we make giant asses out of ourselves trying to get the little monsters (ahem, angels) to eat whatever we've prepared for them. And they love it. They love the attention, the show, the way the world stops for them.

Enough, already.

The next time your child refuses a meal, remember a couple of things.

His or her stomach is the size of his or her little fist. Chances are that stomach has crackers, juice, milk, banana, grapes or cookies in it. If you are that concerned that he/she isn't eating at meals, cut off the all day buffet table.

He or she will be LESS HUNGRY as the day goes on. Grown ups have a strange relationship with food. For some reason, we eat our biggest meal at dinner, when we are winding down for the day. Kids, who haven't been psycologically reset yet, eat when they need to eat.

They only need about 40 calories per inch of height per day. Ok, so lets say that's 1000 calories, which is a good average. So in the morning, the little one eats a half of a bagel, (100 calories) a glass of juice (100 calories) and maybe some cream cheese (50 calories). Then at snack she has a banana and a glass of milk (230 calories). At lunch she eats the better part of a grilled cheese, milk, and some apple slices (approx 400 calories). Then, after nap, you offer her some whole grain cookies, and a glass of water. (100) cals.

By dinner, you're having a panic attack because she won't eat. Guess what? She doesn't need to!

At this point, you can enter a power struggle, and reteach her to keep eating when she's not hungry (obesity epidemic, anyone??) or you can smile, and give her veggies with her breakfast from now on so she'll eat them.

At the risk of sounding Grandma, no kid ever starved themselves to death. They are learning their cues from you, so teach them well!

Did you eat a beaver anal gland today?

Well, you may have if you ate some raspberry candy!!! Don't give me that look! How about a daily dose of sand or ingredients used in caulk? Well, if you've eaten at taco bell, you have!

Maybe some crushed bugs in your red candy? The best part of this coloring labeled carmine or carminic acid, is that it can be labeled "natural coloring." I guess that fairly accurate, since buds are natural. Crushed and boiled, they're just,well, yummy. And, evidently, PRETTY.

Ugh, the list goes on and on. Beef fat in hostess snacks (lard). Ok, I admit this is not a biggie for me, because I eat meat. But, when I was a vegetarian, I scarfed these down every week.

So-my freak out list for the week contains-
Taco Bell: I've been feeding my kids sand in the form of Silicone Dioxide.
Beaver Anal Glands: or
Castoreum used in perfumes, and raspberry candy.
Carmine- the red food coloring is used in lipsticks as well- so I've been smearing crushed red bugs on my mouth while spraying my neck with beaver anal glands and eating sand. Fabulous!!!!!

Three ingredients I didn't know about before. Taco bell dollar menu, I will miss you, but I can eat sand and msg for free.

What your 8% tip says to my boss

I love my job. I wait for my two shifts a week, and my little foray into the grown up world of employment. I love waiting on tables, as silly as that might sound. It's fun, it's active, and I get to socialize with a crazy amount of people in a pretty limited amount of time.

Personally, *I* don't mind how people tip. (Of course, *I* am not the average server.) I'm good, I know it, and whatever tip you give me is the most you would ever give. I would rather have a 12% table, than an empty table making zero percent. Of course, I would also rather have the table that's going to leave me 25%, as well.

The industry standard for average service right now is 18-20%. Sorry to break it to you in the cheap seats, but there it is. Personally, whatever you leave me, we're good. That's what you wanted to give me, and I'm happy you came in.

However, there is the matter of the credit card slip. It's the kryptonite in my happy go lucky work philosophy. It's the note that you just handed to my boss that says I suck. You see, my company holds me to the industry standard of 20%. Yes, they use those credit card slips to judge how well we take care of you. You had a good time. I know it, because you and laughed a lot, you had everything you asked for as fast as I could possibly acquire it, and then you said so on the way out the door. This is all great. And then you handed my boss a note that says I'm the worst server in the world. I know most people don't think like that, but there it is.

Here's your fix- either tip the industry standard, or carry a couple bucks in cash to give your server. Unless they really did suck, and then go ahead and slip in that permanently documented poor tip. They deserve it.