Luxuries

Baby eye candy first: You'll notice she is adept at getting into backpacks, purses, drawers... she gets it from her father.

In the old move Sabrina with Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn, it begins with a voiceover: "The Laraby estate had an outdoor swimming pool, and an indoor swimming pool, an outoor tennis court, and an indoor tennis court." Me, I'm a little different. I have an outdoor clothesline, and...

...an indoor clothesline. Actually works quite well, especially with the fire going.

Speaking of, I need to go switch the laundry and feed the fire. Have a great day-- I'm going to be laundrying.

Ciao bella laundry,

Breanna

You're a Mean One, Mr. Dawkins

Christmas thoughts are starting early for me this year, since I'm already doing some shopping.

Ok, for some reason my pictures loaded in reverse order that I wanted. So I will have to be more creative about the captions. First of all, here is the final destination... (with a camera strap hanging over the picture)...of any toys bought for this little girl....

that look like THIS....

And no, that isn't Lindsey Lohan, bless her screwed up little heart. THAT abomination is a hooker *ahem* sorry, a Bratz doll. Apparently they are all the rage this year. I think, given that they are marketed to six-year-olds, that the world's gone mad. Oh well. Fair warning to all ya'll who might have been thinking about giving one to Miss Boo.

Next, do you see the resemblance?

Shocking, isn't it? Don't know why no one has picked up on it before now. :)

The context is that Richard Dawkins, the grinch look-alike and the "bulldog of Darwinism", is the wealthiest and most famous contributor to an ad campaign being run by secular humanists in England (and copied by secular humanists in Washington D.C.). The ads are apparently on buses, and say, "There's probably no God. So stop worrying and have a good time." The logic for doing it this time of year is that, since secular humanists don't celebrate Christmas, Chaunukah, or presumably Festivus, they "feel alone during the holidays".

Apparently they are a bit miffed that the religious community is looking on this with amused toleration. I feel kind of bad for them, that nobody's getting upset or hysterical. Kind of like when the three-year-old you're babysitting, finding that his clever ploy of "my mom lets me eat ice cream before bed" has failed, brings out the nuclear weapon: "I hate you!" To which you reply, "that's great, but you still have to go to bed". Oh the deflation.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not minimizing the bitterness that some atheists feel or belittling those who are honestly intellectually convinced that there is no God. I think they're wrong, but calling them dumb isn't going to solve anything and anyway they're interesting to talk to. However, I think Dawkins is an interesting case because of an interveiw I saw with him. The interviewer was asking how Dawkins thought about the origin of life. Dawkins replied that while a Creator, of course, was out of the question, "A higher being or intelligence might have seeded life onto our planet from space. Though they would have to be explainable, of course." (By "explainable" I take it he means "evolved somewhere else in an undefined fashion.")

What I don't understand is, how is "a higher intelligence seeding life onto the earth" any different from the ancient Baal worshipers's idea that Baal rode around the sky in a chariot spitting on the earth and making people and animals and crops? (Actually Baal did worse than spit, but for the sake of keeping this blog G rated, he spits.)

So, poor Richard Dawkins. Pray for him this Christmas, because he'll be feeling alone, and like he wasted his bus money.

In other news, I've gotten quite a bit of Christmas shopping done. But a lot of you who are presumably reading this are terribly hard to buy for, so I'm afraid you're all getting new combs. (Just kidding. I hope.) I am trying to be terribly creative and also not give people clutter. So! If you get something interesting, consider yourself fore-warned and know you have my permission to actually use the gift reciept.

Ciao,

Breanna

Plllleeeeeeeeeeeaase Mom!

No, you can't start your own multimedia empire until you're at least a year old.

No, you still can't have bacon.

Let Sleeping Babies Lie

Shh! The baby is still sleeping, at the late hour of 6:40 AM. So I'm getting to compose this in the relative peace of early morning, with only the tick of the woodstove and the whining of the dog to keep me company. (The dog smells leftover bacon in the kitchen and thinks he needs it, since he has done such a good job...um, holding the floor down all night.) The baby's nose was whistling in her sleep this morning, which made me think about staying in the room where she's sleeping to hover, but then the whistling stopped and I decided to take my luck where I can find it and get something done this morning. Wahoo!

The Husband's football team won last night:


As you can see, they are Miss Boo's team too, by default. (She's actually stopped using the binky now but this picture is almost a month old.) The man is shameless, doesn't mind shaping this impressionable mind to be a Steelers fan. Of course, the Steelers are doing better this year than MY team, which *ahem* shall remain nameless until Mike Shanahan begins taking his medication again.

Actual news at our house has been pretty slim. The Husband and I have started singing/playing on our worship team at church. They needed a guitar and soprano last week, and Miss Boo doesn't go to the nursery, so she sat on my hip in her sling and smiled patronizingly to the congregation yesterday during the song service. That and she took my earring off right during the song for which I was the designated soprano, but considering all the things that can happen with babies and sound equipment, it went well. (She was convinced the microphone was hers, because the cover was green, and well, all green things are hers.)

The half of the tree that wasn't killed in the windstorm actually seems to be doing well. If you can tell how well a deciduous tree is doing in November, that is... I can't. At least it didn't fall down.

The big project for Miss Boo and I today is to Talk To Customer Service At Costco. (I know, the excitement, it might be too much.) But the fun part is, I get to ask them, "my husband won a contest at his workplace, and they write the check directly to the merchant, so if we brought in a $900 check, could we get that switched to store credit?" Yipee-ki-yay!

The contest was "Safety Bingo." What can I say. My husband works in a cement plant and they have to do what they can to make MSHA regulations and industrial safety fun. Money always works!

Miss Boo is up now, and throwing her books on the floor, but eyeing the stack of DVDs, so I should stop writing for now.

Ciao bella,

Breanna

Menu Planning, Windstorms, and Extreme Babying

I had many ambitions for today. I needed to tidy, dust, and vacuum the living room, clean the kitchen, straighten up the clothes that always pile on the hope chest in the bedroom, and keep the woodstove going. To make it challenging, here is what Miss Boo has been doing all day:
And here is her contribution to the "pick up toys" effort:

Also on the list is "make a potpie of all the meat and potatoes-type leftovers I have" because something MUST be done about the leftovers. Here is my fridge, unretouched (am I not brave?):

Sorry, can't figure out how to rotate it. This is one of the major ways I do my menu planning, by the by; I look at my fridge of death (and my related pantry of death) and see what absolutely, positively MUST get used. We'll talk seriously about menu planning here in a bit, but first, look at my dramatic picture!

That is one of the poplar trees in my back yard, blown in half. Not down, you understand, just in half. We had a terrific windstorm here yesterday that sent me running around the house filling our oil lamps, making sure the flashlights had batteries, and that we had wood in the house for the stove. You'd think some lines would have gone down and we'd have lost power-- it was always happening when I lived here before-- but we never did. We just lost the tree instead. It's not so bad, really; the tree was eaten alive with boring beetles anyway that we couldn't eradicate this spring. But I can thing of funner ways to get firewood.

OK, menu planning. Here is the standard way, which is not the way I do it:

1. Look at sale flyers for your friendly neighborhood grocer. Notice pork chops, broccoli, and potatoes are on sale.

2. Build a week's worth of meals around sale items, sketching out each day's breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

3. Write your shopping list based on what you need to make these meals, and the sale items.

4. Go to the store and purchase what is on your list.

5. Come home and follow the menu. You get negative twenty points for having to go back to the store because you forgot to get green chiles.

This style of menu planning is cumbersome to me for several reasons. One is that, being smart, grocery stores never have enough things on sale in a given week to make breakfast, lunch and dinner for the whole week.

So the best way to use this system ends up being to buy more expensive items, like meat and fresh produce, which are on sale and to fill in everything else with things that are generally low-cost. I don't like to do this, because then you HAVE to buy whatever is on sale that week, instead of doing the cheap and sneaky thing of waiting until the chicken legs you want are at their absolute cheapest price. The other reason I don't like this style of menu planning is that I like to have more than a week's worth of food in the house. What if we have a blizzard and I just don't want to haul myself and the bambinos in to town to go grocery shopping?

So here is My Way of menu planning, which is of course a conglomeration of ways that I've stolen from other people. It takes a little more time at startup, but pays you back when you don't have to go to the store as much or spend as much on groceries (I'm right around $60 per week, but I can get it lower if I try):

1. Make a list of what you like to eat. This is a list of breakfast and dinner foods. Lunches at our house are either leftovers, soup and sandwich, or salad and sandwich. Make sure this is a list of what you REALLY eat and not what you think you ought to like to eat (i.e., if you like ham sandwiches, don't feel you need to put lentil burgers on the list just because they seem more virtuous).

2. Figure out what you need to make most of the dishes. You will be surprised how few ingredients this will be. Remember, I'm talking about real ingredients. "Kentucky Fried Chicken", while a dinner option, is not one you'll be cooking.

3. Decide which foods on the list you can afford as "regulars". This is an optional step; if you have a fat grocery budget, go ahead and buy all the kalamata olives for that Greek chicken dish you want. If, however, you are like me and trying to stick to a certain amount per week, you may find that you have to say you're only going to make that dish with the expensive olives on your birthday-- other days you might need to use the regular cheapie black olives.

4. Your list of "regulars" should be a list of dishes that is about 20-25 items long for dinner, and 3-5 items long for breakfast and lunch. Think about it-- how many different things do you really eat for breakfast? Aren't most of us rather stuck in the familiar mud? Besides, Dr. Oz says that if you have fewer options, you also eat less. ;)

5. Decide which seven of the dinner regulars and which 2-3 of the breakfast and lunch regulars you want for the next week. Write them down if you like. I don't put them in a specific sequence, and I also leave room for "leftovers" as an option.

6. With your selections in hand, and knowledge of which ingredients it takes to make them, survey your pantry, fridge, freezer, and spice cabinent and write down which ingredients you will need from the store this week. You will be surprised at how few, if you've done your planning well.

7. Go shopping. If something you need is heinously expensive this week, check to see how many meals that ingredient is for. If it's for just one, scrap that meal and pick a different "regular".

8. Go home. You have everything you need to cook for the next week, two weeks, or however long you shopped for. As you build up your pantry, you will eventually have on hand most of the ingredients for your "regulars" at all times, only having to get fresh things like dairy and some meats (freezers rock). Eventually you might get to the point where you only have to menu plan the night before, since you know you have the ingredients for all your "regulars".

This sounds a good deal more cumbersome than the system I rejected, I know, but if you put a weekend into the listmaking activities, you'll find yourself with much less overall planning and shopping to do. This doesn't preclude special shopping and meals for birthdays, holidays, etc., but for day-to-day meal planning it makes my life much easier.

One other tip: keep your shopping list on the fridge or someplace central. When you run out of mustard, write "mustard" on the list even before you throw away the old bottle. In this way, especially if you maintain a pantry, you'll have your list mostly made for you before shopping day. You can also add items as you think of them while doing something else (like, "my blog post is getting long... mmm, chili cheese grits sound good but I've got no grits").

Tomorrow I'll try to post some links about pantry theory, if anyone is curious. There are folks out there who should have a degree in this stuff who only go shopping every six months. I personally don't want to drink that much powdered milk, but I steal what good ideas I find applicable from them.

Whew! That's long. All done for today.

Happy Menuing,

Breanna

Butter and Baby Teeth

First, Baby Eye Candy for the grandparents. You can sort of see her teeth:



Lambie lies senseless under the table, possibly drunk on all the crackers that Miss Boo tried to feed it. Can you tell that it's easier to type when you're holding a graham cracker? And no, this picture wasn't taken on the same day as the last one, she just ends up wearing this shirt a lot.

Since she got the teeth, she's been weaning herself (which is fine with me) and has been eating more and more solid food and drinking what seems like endless sippy-cups of water. The challenge becomes, as she nurses less, to make sure she gets enough cholesterol in her diet. I know, this is counterintuitive, but kids do actually need a good bit of cholesterol until they're two years old, for nerve development. Most of this comes from whole milk, for most kids, but Miss Boo can't have milk until she hits her birthday later this month. In the meantime, we're experimenting with little dabs of butter on her carrots.

So you can see I've been thinking about butter lately. There is an absurd commercial on TV that has a 50s-style household eating dinner, and the mother brings out baked potatoes with a whole stick of butter each in them. "We didn't know much about saturated fat back then," says the voiceover, "but now there's Smartchoice" or whatever the name of the margarine that it's advertising was. I say absurd, not just in the idea that equivalent amounts of margarine would be better for you than butter, but because even in the 50s butter was expensive, and people didn't use it to that crazy extent. I have a thing for old cookbooks (surprise!) and here is a typical dinner menu from one of mine, admittedly from the 60s and not the 50s:

Hamburgers

Lima beans

Marinated Tomatoes

Custard Bread Pudding

Coffee

Mmmm, just decadent with fat, isn't it? Actually it could be quite reasonable, depending on how lean the hamburger is, whether you butter the lima beans, and how many eggs go in the bread pudding. My point is that fat has always been expensive in human history-- only recently have we become rich enough as a society to start paying extra for things which have the fat removed from them. It's kind of a funny turnaround.

Of course, if you look at it from the perspective of trying to grow some of your own food, which we experimented with this summer, it's difficult to obtain fat unless you have livestock. Sure, you can grow sunflowers and things that have oily seeds, but it takes a lot of land to grow enough to get the amount of fat you need in your diet. Just makes for interesting thinking, and it makes you grateful for the fact that you can go to the store and buy a pound of butter and a gallon of milk without having to actually handle the cow.

This is a long digression in a post in which I meant to talk about old-fashioned cooking. I am impressed when I read old cookbooks and discover how simple their menus were. It gets discouraging, on the other hand, to look at the recipies in magazines that all want you to have arugala, black cherry cordial, and pine nuts in your pantry. Old, simple menus generally call for real food, from scratch, which I have in the house. The magazine recipies generally want expensive ingredients and at least one thing that is pre-cooked-- a rotisserie chicken, a jar of alfredo sauce, or a packet of spice mix. Very frustrating, when you're trying to menu plan for a week or two AND come in under budget AND eat something other than hot dogs and canned corn.

However that may be, this post is getting long, so I think I'll save my thoughts on menu planning for next time. I've noticed that not a lot of resources have you do it my way, and I'm egotistical enough to think my way works better than "first, look at sale flyers, then, make out a menu for the week, then, go shopping." And don't worry, I don't feed my husband lima beans. Or hot dogs and canned corn.

Ciao bella,

Breanna

First Real Post - Motherhood is an Adventure

She's not really in a cage, she just really likes to sit in this little tent thing that Grandma gave her.

I think Miss Boo is cute, as well as literary; you can see she's surrounded by books as well as a lamb that she's trying to teach German (one book is in German).

She's napping right now, finally, which is the only reason I can post this. Something that no one ever tells you about motherhood is how drastically it realigns your priorities. Oh sure, they tell you that you'll clean up your language and start liking to watch The Jungle Book again, but they never mention that it will crowd out things like recreational reading, shopping, and bathing. The reading and shopping I can deal with, but having to take strategic showers is something that really should be addressed more in childcare books. Dr. Sears says, "remember, your baby needs a healthy, rested mother. Take time for yourself" and says exactly zippo about how you're supposed to do that if you don't happen to have a pouch like a possum. So let's just admit it, shall we? New mothers are going to smell a bit more... shall we say cosmpolitan? I am informed by someone who knows that American bathing habits are considered compulsive in some parts of the world.

Of course, Miss Boo is nearly a year old and so I should have a handle on this by now, and I do have clean hair as we speak, but it's the sheer amount of brainpower the issue takes that boggles me. Anyone who thinks that stay-at-home motherhood is unthinking drudgery (or bliss) has never tried it.

As always, the reality is in between. There's plenty of drudgery in any job, SAHMing included. (I am thinking about a particular diaper I changed earlier that I would have paid someone to deal with.) There's a lot of fufillment in being able to do all kinds of things I never could do while I was still in the "workforce". I'm still working, of course, just for my man instead of The Man (whomever HE is).

For instance, tonight we're having pot roast. It isn't a special day, I just need to use up last year's beef in the freezer. Good pot roast takes about five hours start to finish, very little of it hands on, but you should really be present when burning fossil fuels so I need to be in the house while it cooks. When I was "working", I could have only made this on a weekend. It's nice to have it on a Wednesday when we're all feeling blah. I can also stop and nap if I want to, type a blog post, work on my novel(s), or even do a little housework. And all tax-free!

Sure, there are diapers involved. But hey, I'm a nurse-- I had to change diapers at work, too. At least this time I'm actually related to the changee and when she poos on me, I know she didn't do it on purpose.

I can't think of any neat news for the fam at large that you all don't already know, but I will try to blog daily or every-other-daily so if you're really interested in what we're doing, just take a peek. Oh, and grandparents and greats: I will post more pictures, I'm just still figuring out how to get the picture post thingy to work.

Ciao for now,

Breanna