Carrot Top

The only idea that came to me when I read this earlier was to possibly replace all or part of the liquids asked for in the recipe with some good beer. Don't have the slightest idea if it really would *work*, though. But then there's always the advantage that you could finish off the rest of the bottle of beer that you don't use in the recipe, anyway.

So quickly now I'll tell of the results of last night's plan for this weekly food thing. It was Halloween last night. A fearsome night. Not for the goblins, but for the candy. The candy that follows one everywhere. It starts with the buying of tons of it to shove into the addled little chocolate-smeared faces that come to the door with huge sacks gaping for the stuff. (Most children need to be taught to say "Trick or Treat" still, it seems. I insist on it. I want to hear the sing-song phrase. I am selfish in this way. Most of them just hold out their sacks. How dull.) The candy is in the bowl. It awaits the trick-or-treaters but also beckons the household to continually nab a piece of this or that. This year was better than last year with the candy bowl scene though, for last year I grabbed a round lollipop that had a bubblegum filling and was seized with a passionate maddness to get to the bubblegum IMMEDIATELY and biting into it, I broke a tooth which actually required different sorts of dentists and lots of money to fix. This year I only ate softer sorts of candies and therefore only added unneeded calories to my diet. More candy comes into the house later in one's own children's sacks, after you've spent the night walking around with them in the cold sticking pieces of their costumes back onto them as they endlessly trip in the dark over the curbs and bits or turfgrass in the neighbor's yards. Then of course the candy wrappers haunt one for a month or so, turning up in trails that follow the children through the house. Ah! Halloween. I do love it so. Anyway. So *if* the children are going to eat dinner, it must be done quickly before trick-or-treat time which happens at 6PM or the entire evening's food *will* be candy candy candy. I grilled the chicken breasts on the griddle on the stove - microwaved the cous-cous. Put the sugar snaps out to nibble raw. It worked pretty good except that the boneless chicken breasts *should* have been cut into thin cutlets rather than being left whole - they took about 25 minutes to cook (and that could have been cut down to about ten minutes). No fuss, though. The meal was ready and mostly eaten. Leftover chicken today for curried chicken salad sandwiches. So that worked. Quick, easy, no-brainer. Heh. We'll see what happens tonight.

Pah. I give up on the formatting thing. It surely is my fingers and even eating a slice of microwaved leftover pizza for breakfast has not helped. My willingness to work on Saturdays is only equalled by my willingness to be selfish on weeknights. How else would I find time to keep popping onto eGullet and do the other silly tasks that need doing??? Your children will be hungrier the older they get, Tepee, I bet. The approach to the teenage years seems to turn children into eating machines from what I hear. And see. The thing about cooking "at the time of eating" rather than ahead is sort of like my feelings about freezers and crockpots. Odd things that may not seem to make sense to anyone else, but they sure make sense to "us". For whatever reason. I love donkeys. And someday we should trade kids and living places. I am not so sure you would like our version of the Ramadan street food fair, though. There isn't one. There is only. . . .. McDonalds. Everywhere.

Oh no. Please don't, Kristin! Our lives would be made immeasureably smaller by the loss. I've actually been hungrier for Japanese food *now* than I have been in some time. I like those little fishes all over the place. They really do have a sort of artistic merit all on their own. Now I do have to admit that each time I see a food photo with a fish in it posted *elsewhere* that has any sort of liveliness to it, my immediate thought is: "Why didn't they post that in the Regrettable Foods thread?" It's taken all my willpower to not PM these people with "invitations to join".

These are great ideas except for my own wierdnesses about freezers and crock-pots. Why did you have to write that word "spaghetti" so close to the word "breakfast" TPO? I must go make some spaghetti for breakfast now. Yum.

Heh. You are making me giggle when you ask me that about my crock-pot, Sandy. It * would* be good to hear from more miso-people about their recipes. I don't use it "enough" and it is very good stuff. Finally - did you know that Rogov says that journalists are really all monkeys? Someone else made the original claim. He is an excellent researcher so I have no reason at all to doubt him. I am now enjoying this picture in my mind of millions of monkeys at their desks in the newspaper offices, all writing our histories for us endlessly as we run out to read it and then immediately to forget it so that we can read the monkeys writings again tomorrow. Sigh. What a life.

I guess you have teenagers. Well. . .as long as they are eating them and not taking them to the mall to trade them for yet another new pair of jeans and a couple more CD's, that's a good thing, no?

I read the article and to me it was talking about how to get laid. The photo of Maureen camped out as she was seemed to support that idea, also.

Genny, Megan, and Pontormo - I loved your menu suggestions! Will check back in on them if this week works out -they are great ideas to fit in! Pontormo - leftovers usually disappear through snacking and lunches around here pretty quickly. . . I am always astounded at the amounts of food that kids can consume.

Isn't this the traditional dish served in a Kabuki production when one character has to kill off another? I think there is something about the uh. . .vitality. . . of Japanese food that definitely gives it an edge in this thread.

Yes, the "time" thing is something strange to me. It rather seems as if we are on some huge ship headed straight for a massive dock where we'll break our prow. Or something like that. Seems to me that the time thing is hugely significant in so many ways - and that it is equal to the other "movements" that have shaped our histories in the past in enormous ways, such as the rise of industrialization. But this time thing does not have a name yet as far as I know. But it effects everyone I know. In many ways and most particularly in food ways. Speaking of that, must run off! Children must be collected from school then we'll see how this project continues.

I love the idea of the kids being responsible for cooking a meal with all that it entails. That is actually on my List. I have a List, you see, that if all goes well (Hmm. Lists. How often *do* they actually work?! ) will have the children doing this probably in the next year. But first, in my evil plan, they must prove their worth to be equal to this fine task of being in the kitchen. How? Why, by doing the other things that need doing in the house of course. Keeping their rooms tidy and doing their very own laundry. Heh. So far, so good, actually. Each of them does tidy their rooms daily (don't say it too loud, it might get hexed ) and the older one takes full responsibility for her clothes. Lots of clothes. So this is good. The entry into cooking dinner one night each week will be a sort of rite of passage, and I hope a very fun and interesting one, for each of them - both boy and girl. They already *do* know how to cook. As Megan said in another thread, one learns a lot from just being around and doing a tiny bit of this and that and by a sort of osmosis. But *listening*? Now you tell me I'm supposed to *listen* to them? Oh dear. This *will* be a task. Let me consider whether I am up to it. I rather doubt it.

*Do* I spoil them, Jack? Perhaps so. I should note that they do "grab from the fridge" and the cupboards - Mommy is not waiting on them hand and foot, believe me. And they do have some good basic cooking skills. During the week even *they* have time eaten up in some mysterious way, though. After school activities, homework (these bookbags weigh approximately 35 lbs. with the texts and papers they drag home every afternoon - it is actually an item that is discussed at school board meetings as to "why" so much homework and the effects of heavy bookbags on the spine . . .) But. I did not have this thing of being "spoiled" by lovely food being made each night while growing up - but I have seen this in other families. The warmth and love that can be expressed by someone in the kitchen at home (yes, usually it has been "the mother") is something that seems to me to be ultimately rather magical. It transforms the moment. . .alters the mundane into something almost magnificent, almost something technicolor . So if this is "spoiling" - then it is something that I feel should be done if at all possible. (Who wouldn't like to be a little spoiled, I ask you )

These guys would be *onto it* so quickly that it wouldn't be worth the ruse. I exaggerate slightly here in my descriptions of them "just for fun". Heh. ................................. Your comments (coming from you who thinks and writes of these things) made me think of the effect that the change in culture insofar as "neighborhoods" go has had on this thing of family cooking. The neighborhoods that many of us grew up thinking were "just the way it was" (where one would just "go outside and play") do not exist in such numbers as they used to. For a lot of reasons. And then there is the technology thing - that computer and those video games are SOP for kids and can be all-encompassing. To me, it all trickles down to a paring-down of ease and time. To lots of other people, too, from what I hear. The idea of a family at table and the things that offers is definitely affected. So I guess despite my cranky grumblings, I am secretly pleased to have the kids wandering into the kitchen and "ruining my plans" for the food by trying to gobble it right up. Can't wait to see how the rest of this week goes. It *was* a lovely plan, as plans go. And as plans go, it went.

Whoa. My mouth is literally hanging open. That is. . . Oh, c'mon. You did it for our Halloween gift, didn't you!

But then he would have had a desperate and immediate need for the homemade lasagne that you hadn't made, no?

It has been almost an hour since my last post. My daughter has now decided that the baked potatoes look too good. She thinks a baked potato with butter, bacon and cheese would be a fine bedtime snack. How can I argue? She is trying to charm me into being happy about the growing ruination of my Great Plan of Weekly Cookery by asking me if I have a degree in "Potato-Ography" while she smiles and eats. Some plan this was.

Sounded good, huh? Heh. Reality check. Okay. So why did I expect any thirteen-year-old child who drags me into that g*dawful Hollister place with the dim lighting and blaring music to buy the right pair of jeans to want to eat *lentil soup* with a *grilled cheese sandwich* tonight for supper? When there is - - - -shrimp?! And what she wants her brother wants. So we have eaten the shrimp. Naturally, she wanted hers on top of the caesar salad (the romaine bought in the pack ready washed was disgusting by the way and more than half of it had to be thrown out ) and he wanted his "re-heated" and served separately. I am madly eating caponata to keep calm. With lots of warm bread. ..................................................... One meal down, in the one hour since cooking. What on earth is next, I ask you?

Okay the results are in. One and a half hours prep today. Including packing the stuff up and putting it away and loading the dishes in the dishwasher. Granted, the floor is a disaster. Here's how the dance went: Poached shrimp with savory ingredients and pernod. Started chix stock. Made caponata. Pot roast ingredients browned and to oven. Orzo cooked. Chix marinade made, chix thrown in. Succotash made. Potatoes scrubbed, put into oven. Pears put in oven to poach with port and spices. Celeriac and carrots peeled, julienned, briefly blanched. Bacon to oven to cook. Cheese grated. The chicken stock is cooling now, and the pot roast and the potatoes need to be taken out of the oven a bit later. Now the only problem is I want to start noshing NOW. Will let you know how it works out during the week!

I like anyone who is named Mr. Wozencroft. The children will be sent post-haste to you with the hopes that you will have some Dickensian form of British pick-pocketing to teach them. In the meanwhile, here is the menu I came up with and shopped for: Monday Caesar Salad, Warmed Baguette, Caponata Shrimp with Basil and Pernod Orzo Tuesday Grilled Chicken, Spicy Yogurt Marinade Coucous with Raisins and Pignoli Sugar Snap Peas Wednesday Mexican Pot Roast Succotash Egg Noodles Thursday Escarole Soup Pizza Pears Poached in Port Friday Celeriac-Carrot Salad Twice-Baked Potatoes with Bacon, Cheese, and Spinach Lemon Sorbet with Blueberries Will be back later to tell you how long it took to do advance prep.

I'd rather have some one else than myself be my own personal chef, but one uses what one has around, you know? And yes, if you are willing to call my children "people". They certainly do "eat at will". And rather constantly it seems, too.

Mmm hmm. Do with my topic title what you will, Jon. Your assumptions are correct. And yes, I do have both good Tupperware and a vaccuum sealer which sits in the cupboard ignored by me among the other kitchen equipment that has sort of wandered to the "wrong side of the tracks" in my opinion. I open the cupboard door and they growl at me and I growl back. I think the thing might be done without the vaccuum thingie if really good planning is done, with accurate knowledge of how long things will last without spoilage and with the idea that what I buy in the first place has to be rather bright and bushy-tailed. I had thought to just have some general suggestions from people, and then I could put together the week's menus so that they would "work". Probably things like shrimp/seafood to start the week, moving on to chicken etc. then forward to the beef or lamb or pork then on to pasta with sauces and maybe all-veggie meals or soup to finish. Braises are always good but one doesn't want to eat them every day unless one has no teeth. We are lucky, we have teeth here. I'm off to go grocery shopping with this idea in mind and will post what happens a bit later.

There is a strange thing that happens in my house. Every day I plan what to make for dinner. The food is there in the fridge, the time approaches and voila! Like magic something happens - something odd with the time. All of a sudden it seems one child needs to go to the store to get poster board for a project that I'd never even heard of that is due *tomorrow*! The computer starts having strange glitches that are driving the other child trying to do her homework to distraction that require my sitting there stupidly trying to fix it for an hour till it magically fixes itself. The cat jumps in front of me making me throw my arm wide to knock over a vase that breaks all over the floor. Or my karate-loving son decides to swing his Japanese sword into the overhead lamp and my skateboard-loving daughter starts doing jumps on the board in her bedroom, trying to leave huge craters in the floor no doubt. Time escapes me. There is no way to gather it back. So I've thought of a plan. No more weekday cooking. Stock the fridge on the weekends and nosh nosh nosh without the need to cook during the week. I need your help in two ways: First : What would you think the fridge should be stocked with? What would you have in your fridge to nosh on? "Meal"-like things you know - not just things like cheese and fruit and crudites et al that are there just because they are part of the refrigerator neighborhood. Second: If you are religious, please pray that my weekends find a few free moments to cook! P.S. Not stuff for the freezer for I have a grudge against freezers. For no good reason. I just don't like them and they don't like me. Nothing ever tastes good to me from the freezer. Yes, I know I am difficult.

Not ugly. Mysterious. Rather geographic. I felt if I dug in with a spoon there might be little villages that would appear before the eyes - with tiny people in them and cows and sheep on the higher mountainous regions. . .

I don't know for sure - but it looks like it holds some sort of secret message. Do you have a de-coder ring around somewhere?