two months in - an action plan

In the last post, I gave myself a 3.6 out of 10 on the scale of work-life balance. Which, I say again, is pretty abysmal. I committed to developing an action plan so that my precious few non-work hours didn't slip away from me.  Well, my friends, the time has come to commit to that action plan publicly, in front of you.  This is mostly for my own self, to hold me accountable, but if anyone has suggestions, they would be appreciated in the comments!

Also, sorry about the lack of pictures, but this post is very serious.  Also I only had a short amount of time to work on it.

1. Gardening. Just so you know, the lawn is no longer a foot tall.  I mean, it's a good 8 inches again, but not a foot, and it's been raining all week.  Kathy and I have decided a good way to handle this is that one day a week, when I can get out on time, I'll mow while she cooks dinner.  Usually one of us cooks and the other bops around the kitchen chatting, so this is a small sacrifice of some family time together, but we make a point of sitting down as a family for dinner each night, so we will have to catch up then.  Also, C has baseball games each Saturday morning, so when it's our weekend with the kids, I'll stay home while the rest of the crew goes to the baseball game, so I can do the other gardening -- weeding, mulching, planting, etc.  I bought a flat of annuals for some fun color and we actually have an enormous amount of mulch left over from last year stashed in various places, so I am all ready for the implementation phase.  Two hours every other weekend is not as much time as I would like in my garden, but it's a heck of a lot better than nothing.

And Kathy has promised to help me plant Stewart.

why I cook

When you live in Manhattan, you exist on take out.  It's so easy to fall into a rut of pizza, Thai, Chinese, Italian, Greek, repeat.  Many of my friends (and myself included) have folders or even entire binders full of takeout menus.  It just seems simpler to have someone else make the food -- especially when every restaurant, including McDonald's (if you can call that a restaurant) delivers to the door of your apartment.  Kathy was a big NYC takeout eater too -- until her mother came to visit and a 2 year-old A yelled "FOOD!" when the doorbell rang.  It was hard to explain that Pavlovian response in a way that did not involve copious amounts of takeout.

Growing up, my busy mom's cooking style was mainly this:  (1) go to the grocery store and buy things that are on sale and that she knows we like; (2) put most of it in the freezer; (3) at dinner time, open the freezer and stare in, trying to figure out what to make for dinner.

I thought this was how everyone did it, which is why, when I went to college and "invented" my own method for planning/shopping/cooking, I felt like a genius.  Then, I discovered that my sister had also "invented" this method, and that, in fact, it was what a lot of people did.  But there is so much joy to be gleaned from good food, and really, it's not all that hard, even if broke or busy, or both.  The key, I think, to being able to cook good food at home, is the grocery shopping.  If you want to make good meals, you need to have the ingredients in the house at the time you want to start cooking.  And that is why I started writing a long, preachy post about grocery shopping, one of the most mundane of topics.  A post that was so long, and so preachy, that I deleted almost the whole thing.  Believe it or not, this masterpiece is a mere fraction of what I have to say about grocery shopping and the benefits of learning to cook, even if you just learn to cook a little.

muffin mania

I have never been that interested in baking, but lately I have started baking muffins like they are going out of style.  I have also started pinning a lot of muffin recipes on Pinterest.  B and C both have to take a snack and a lunch to school every day, and we were tired of sending them with pre-packaged crap.  So I started baking muffins, first from box mixes, then gradually more and more from scratch.  The advantage to muffins over quickbreads and the like is that muffins are easy to grab-and-go, so they are perfect when you don't have time for breakfast or to put in a kid's snack.  The downside is that they can be a teensy bit packed with oil, sugar, butter, and other things that make them delicious but perhaps not so good for you.  Sometimes I try to modify to increase the nutrition and decrease the calorie count, but sometimes I say f- it and just make a tasty muffin.

Here are my favorite three muffins that I've made recently...

1.  Apple muffins.  I wanted to make something fall-ish, and these were the first fall muffin recipe I found.  I made some adjustments, like using crushed-up granola to top the muffins and pureeing the apple peels and adding to the recipe to up the nutritional value.  The commenters to the recipe complained that the muffins didn't peak, but I didn't have this problem -- maybe because I was careful not to overmix, and/or because I melted the butter before I added it.  (The full list of modifications I made is in the comments on Pinterest, for my reference in case I want to make them again.)  In case you're curious, I used Gala apples.  Because they were the cheapest.

marinade

This morning, I made a marinade for the pork loins we'll be having for dinner.  It consists of this:

3/4 white onion, chopped
1 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp Allspice
1/2 tsp ground thyme
1 tsp sugar
1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1Tbsp water
2Tbsp vegetable oil
Dash hot red pepper flakes

I blended it all up with my immersion blender until it was a disgusting paste, and spread it over the meat, which I then covered and put back in the fridge for the day.  Kathy's going to brush it off with a pastry brush before grilling it tonight.  This is what it looks like now:

I'll let you know how it goes.

I've been home from work for a few days, sick.  I'm going to go into the office later this afternoon, then try to resume normal life.  The time off sick has given me time to consider what it is I'm going to do with my life, given this post from last week.  After thinking, and researching, and talking with Kathy, I think I've actually come up with a plan. 

soup, or how to feed a family of four on one chicken breast

Kathy's youngest child, C*, is obsessed with making soup.  His grandma bought him the book Stone Soup last year, and after successfully feeding the family stone soup, he asks pretty much weekly whether he can make soup.  Since Kathy and C are both home sick today, and I am stuck here because of the snow (I actually tried to drive to work today, and turned around and came home because the roads were so bad), it seemed like a good day to indulge C's inner chef.  In case you're interested, this is how a kindergartner makes a very basic chicken soup.