The Worst Mom Ever?

All of this talk of habits--particularly building good ones--has made me think about the types of habits that I want for my son. There are some things I am doing very well.

I want to teach Connor respect for his world. When he throws something on the floor, he has to pick it up. When I talk to Connor about my hopes for his future, I always add the caveat "if that's what you want to do." We eat dinner as a family every night, and Connor stays in his chair until everyone is done. I want him to be a lifelong learner. We count everything--in fact, Connor practices counting by pointing and multiple objects and saying "dah, dub, ah," ad infinitum.We practice naming body parts, he takes a daily bath, and he trusts me enough to know that when I leave him at day care I will pick him up again.

However, I also see myself teaching some of my worst habits to my son. Here are three lessons that I wish I were not teaching to Connor:

1. If you're sick, you get stuff
Connor has had stomach flu five times in six months; two of those times were all-out barf fests in which the crib was changed no more than seven times and Bryan and I each got the pleasure of being vomited on by our child. The last time Connor got the bug, he and I were at Target when it opened. Into the cart went three DVDs and a car-shaped bean bag chair. When I accidentally terrified him by showing him the dancing caveman in the toy section, he got a singing car toy as well. Connor got treated well when he banged his head twice in the same day--those of you who follow this blog might recall that he was rewarded with Leann Chin's cheese puffs and lo mein noodles.

2. Special occasions mean special food
Recently, we have had many causes for Special Occasion Food in our family. Auntie Julie was here for a whole month, which meant indulging in her favorite Minnesota fare (okay for Auntie Julie, not so okay for those of us who have access to said fare at all times). And speaking of fare, all Minnesotans know the staple of that Great Minnesota Get-Together: the deep fryer. At 10:00 A.M., on the day of our State Fair visit, despite eating breakfast no more than three hours earlier, we three indulged in a pronto pup, a deep-fried Twinkie, and Italian cream deserts (also deep-fried). Birthdays, holidays, vacations, graduations, minor successes... almost any occasion could call for a special desert or a trip to a favorite restaurant.

Food can be fun, and sometimes it's a really good thing to allow yourself a bit of indulgence. My fear, though, is that it's entering Connor's life as not just one of many rewards or treats. A cookie is cheaper and more readily available than a toy. He's too young to tell me that he wants to do a particular activity as a fun treat, but I know exactly what types of food treats he might like.

My main food goal with Connor is to teach him that food is not a reward, it is fuel. Today, his favorite foods include bananas (na-na) and grapes (ball!), but I wonder how long this will last if I continue to sooth his wounds and reward his successes with food.

My Personal Quickfire

It will not surprise you to know that I am a bit addicted to reality T.V. Two shows that I particularly love are Top Chef and The Next Food Network Star. (I am, however, behind on Top Chef episodes this season. It's hard for me to get through that intro in which Padma says, "Hail to the Chef.") Despite my growing culinary prowess and personal sense of adventure, I marvel at the brains of these chefs during the dreaded Quickfire Challenge. "You must make an appetizer from food found in a vending machine." "Create a dish using only three ingredients." "Satisfy Padma's pregnancy cravings using only your psychic powers and superb knife skills." Okay, that last one was never a real Quickfire Challenge, but you get the idea. Crazy parameters, no time in which to do it. Go!

This afternoon, I got to participate in my own personal Quickfire Challenge. My mother-in-law was in town on an impromptu visit (a topic for a different kind of blog), and she thought she was being picked up at 6:00 and that she would be eating dinner on the drive back to Wisconsin. Bryan and I had secretly planned to make tonight our first Pizza Friday of the school year, and were mentally salivating over Detello's menu. At 5:00, however, the call came. Mother-in-law will be picked up at 5:45. Her traveling companions have already eaten. Dinner must be on the table in thirty minutes or less for her to eat before leaving. 

Gentlemen, start your engines. 

Quickfire Challenge

After a brief squabble ("You don't have to cook for me." "Don't be silly; you need to eat." "No, no, I'll just drink some water in the car. I think I have some mints in my purse...."), I grabbed my iPod and bounded upstairs. What do we have, what do we have? Saturday is shopping day, so we were down to three chicken breasts, miscellaneous leftover greens, some cottage cheese, and French Vanilla yogurt (plus condiments, obviously). I tossed the chicken on the counter, briefly wondered if we would really taste the French Vanilla if I spiced up the yogurt with my tandoori spices (I decided we would), and started rummaging through the pantry. I came up with some whole grain breadcrumbs, flour, and vegetable oil. The fruit basket produced a lemon and a handful of Yukon Gold potatoes, and I had my idea: lemon-crusted chicken and rosemary potatoes. Brilliant. 

Twenty-eight minutes to go. The first step was to scrub the potatoes. Three potatoes in, I change tactics and decide to peel instead. I peeled and diced my six potatoes, tossed them into the pot and covered them with cold water. Boiling potatoes, check. I then turned my attention to the chicken. After trimming the fat from the breasts, I laid a sheet of wax paper on top of my cutting board, placed the chicken on top, and topped it with another sheet of wax paper. 

This is when Connor's screaming was too loud and persistent to ignore. Although my husband and mother-in-law should have been watching him, he had crawled upstairs and attached himself to my leg, face red and tearful. "Mom!" he cried. "Mom! Mom! Mom!" (That's right, not "Mommy" or "Mama." I am Mom.) So I picked up my newly clingy son and proceeded to pound out the chicken. 

Let's skip the continued play-by-play; in summary, the lemon was zested, the chicken dredged and breaded and browned and baked, the potatoes cooked and drained and milked, buttered, and rosemary'd. The green beans? They were microwaved. Thank you, frozen steamer veggie revolution.

Judges' Table

Quickfires are a messy business.

This was not a winning dish. In my haste, I had forgotten salt. I actually pictured Padma Lakshmi telling me that my chicken was bland, and it was. It needed more seasoning and it needed a pan sauce of some kind--I'm thinking white wine and lemon juice would have done nicely. The potatoes were fine, but not creative. I think that Connor's interpretation of my dish--chicken and potatoes dropped in his glass of water, topped with a handful of diced peaches--would have won due to sheer creativity. 

In short, a Quickfire Challenge is not easy, and it is extraordinarily messy. It took me longer to clean up from this meal than it did to create it. However, I did send my mother-in-law on her way with a full belly and a sense of wonder at what her daughter-in-law can do with some chicken breasts and thirty minutes in the kitchen.

Setting Goals: Adventures Await

Goal #3: Be Adventurous

Finally, the third goal. For me, it's an essential one: be adventurous. Be fearless, in fact. Of course, in this respect, I am specifically talking about cooking. It is easy for me to fall back on my old recipes without trying anything new. And why not? I know how to make lasagna, chilli, burgers, and marinated chicken without consulting a recipe, buying unfamiliar ingredients, or thinking too hard. The problem? It's boring! Hideously boring. So boring, in fact, that it will ultimately make me fail Goal #2 when I decide that I can't possibly eat chicken and salad another night so I order a pizza instead. 

In pursuit of this goal, I have bought two new cookbooks (more on them in future blogs, but to whet your appetites they are The Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics and Rachael Ray's MYOTO cards.) My first step in adventurous cooking was a Rachael Ray original--Chipotle Chicken Rolls. I had never bought or worked with phyllo dough before. I was thrown when, in the freezer section of Cub Foods, I could only find "fillo" dough. At the checkout line, the cashier (my regular) commented, "You always have such interesting ingredients. Now what," she continued, shaking the rectangle of frozen dough at me like a wagging shame-finger, "do you do with this?" She looked at me expectantly. I glanced around the store for inspiration, and Connor chucked his toy on the floor, thus saving me from answering. 

Thirty-six hours later, I can now say with come confidence that I know how to work with phyllo dough. I can make something darn tasty out of phyllo dough. And I have something fun rolling around in my head for a new recipe or two as well. If you're looking to cook something adventurous, start with something like this! Easy but impressive. Essentially, this is a combination of meatloaf and a Mexican egg roll. It is a mixture of scallions, chipotles, sharp cheddar and ground chicken rolled and baked in phyllo dough--a paper-thin pastry that is surprisingly easy to work with. And the best news, for me, is that I now have lots of leftover dough for experimentation. (Note: if you decide to make this recipe--and you should--the dipping sauce was terrible. It tasted like limes and salt. Make a guacamole and you'll be good.)

Update: Goal #2 

Today was muggy. Connor and I spent the morning at the Children's Museum, and I spent the afternoon painting the bathroom. Our grill is out of propane. So we went out for dinner. Kidding! I pulled together a Fancy Fridge Meal, one of my back up plans that will prevent the mid-week pizza ordering phenomenon. I put some No Name Steaks under the broiler, steamed some bag-o-green beans, and microwaved the Simply Potatoes I bought on sale this week. Dinner in 25 minutes for under 450 calories and $4 per serving? Yes, please!

Setting Goals: Plan It!

Goal #2. Make a plan

The second of my Three Summer Goals is possibly the most simple. On Saturday--during nap time or after Connor goes to bed for the night--I will plan out our family's meals for the week. I will go through our refrigerator and cupboards and make a list based on recipes and staples needing to be restocked. Then Connor and I will go to the grocery store on Sunday, we will cook our meals accordingly, and do it again the following week. Ta da! Goal #2 accomplished. 

This has been something I have attempted for over a year, and it has always failed in the long-term. I didn't realize how notorious this failure was until a few months ago when I told my mom that we were heading to Detello's (an excellent family-friendly pizza joint down the road) for dinner. Again. She snorted a bit and said, "What? You didn't plan your meals this week?" I sheepishly told her that yes, I had and that yes, again we had veered from the plan.  

Perhaps that was because that week's list looked something like this:

Monday: chilli

Tuesday: chicken? salad?

Wednesday: Bryan's meal

Thursday: leftovers

Friday: out?

Saturday: ??? see what's left

I look at some of these old lists--they are all kept as a cruel reminder of my past downfalls in the notebook that contains my weekly lists--and wonder what I was thinking. On Thursday, what would we be having leftovers of? Thy mystery "Bryan's dinner?" How does one buy ingredients for "chicken?" without knowing what type of chicken is going in the oven, on the grill, or in the wok? This was not a plan. This was lazy.

My new goal is not to simply make a plan, but to make a reasonable plan. One that I can stick to because I have specific dishes, ingredients that will cross over into multiple recipes, and food that can be remade on "leftovers" night rather than simply being reheated. This week's list was much better:

Tangy Rosemary Ranch Skewers with peppers, onions, and potatoes

Black Bean Soup with salad

Smoky Turkey Burritos with corn

Orange Chipotle Chicken with green beans

Four meals that left enough room for a night out or two out and a night or two of leftovers. Two meals that used the same unusual ingredient (chipotle peppers) that does not keep fresh for long. And each meal can sit in the fridge overnight, make an easy-to-pack lunch, or be put in the freezer if we need some flexibility.

Because that's what the old lists lacked. My previous plans were too grand and, frankly, too lame at the same time. Each week I would tell myself that "This week I'm serious. We won't eat out at all, and we won't buy anything new until everything is out of the fridge," secretly knowing that we would probably only make it until Tuesday's Kid's Night at Champps before breaking this promise. It simply isn't realistic for us to never go out and to cook every meal. When it was just Bryan and I, we were more likely to eat in only once or twice a week rather than the reverse. We like going out as a family; Connor enjoys the attention of other diners, and we grown-ups enjoy feeling like our lives haven't changed all that much now that we are parents. During the school year, there are some nights when both of us are too burned out to cook. Rather than feel guilty about this, I have decided to embrace it.

So far, this week has been good. When Connor fell on his head twice in the same day, we pitched the night's plan, took him to Barnes and Noble to play with Thomas the Tank Engine and bought him "noodles and puffs" at Leann Chin. And I felt just fine about it.

Update: Goal #1 is going better than expected. Bryan and I are being very good about working hard for less than an hour each day on our house projects. So far, we have cleaned out Bryan's office entirely (including a lovely boxelder bug cemetery that has apparently cropped up over the last two years), setting up the new wireless printer and putting the old one up for sale, and buying some plants to make the front of our home look a little less like a playground for water-logged toddlers. Goal #1 has expanded itself into a full-blown redecoration and reorganization of our whole house; we have decided to become all 21st century and tweet about it. You can follow us at https://twitter.com/decoratewithus. 

Setting Goals: The First Step

One thing that motherhood has certainly derailed in my life is my ability to set and attain personal goals. Don't get me wrong--I have still been successful at achieving some of my goals--completing my runs and finishing my Minnesota license courses were two big accomplishments in the past year--but the day-to-day goals have become harder to complete. Part of the problem is that I'm setting too many goals (i.e. "During naptime today I will organize the closet, finish all of the laundry, and clean the bathroom!" Ain't gonna happen.)

I have decided to revisit this problem and apply my former goal-setting self to the task. After much thinking and discussing with Bryan, I have settled on three goals to get our family into the swing of things for the end of summer and starting off the new school year right.

1. Organize Our House
This goal falls into the "previously unattainable" category, because in the past I have been too hung up on the enormity of the task. Clean. The. Entire. House. Seems impossible. Buy. New. Organizational. Components. Seems impossible AND expensive.

Then, I went on a trip for a week. Before my trip, I organized and cleaned the house in the most superficial ways, but I neglected the big stuff, such as cleaning out the fridge or taking out the trash. The result? A stinky fridge, a lot of overripe leftovers, and one lemon worthy of a science experiment. Out of necessity, then, the next day, I took my refrigerator to task. I cleaned out all of the bad food and threw things away without remorse. I removed everything and cleaned it with Lysol. I even organized the condiments on our door by--get this--cuisine region. For the curious, our drawers are England (jams and marmalades), America (ketchup, mustard, BBQ sauce, and various salad dressings), Asia (Sriacha, soy sauces, curries and chili sauces), and Mexico (peppers and salsas).

Placing the newly purchased groceries in the freshly clean and sparkling fridge was surprisingly satisfying. I loved having an organization to every part of the fridge, and I particularly loved that everything was earmarked for a particular purpose (see Goal #2, coming next). I took the extra ten minutes to prep my fruits for the week to ensure that they would be used (it is always easier to eat ice cream for dessert rather than cut up the fresh pineapple, but if the pineapple is ready to go in a Ziploc container, there is little excuse).

The entire process took me a little more than 45 minutes, and it got me to thinking. What if I apply this single-task approach to the entire house? I don't have to complete everything, just one or two small tasks per day. Of course, that means that I will not have my completely cleaned and organized home in under a week as I had hoped. But allowing myself "me" time during my day is just as important as having a clean house. And although I know that I want to...

organize the closets, vacuum EVERYTHING, make file folders for documents, print said documents and file them, make lists of our basement "extras," paint the downstairs, paint the bathroom, organize my dresser, make Bryan clean the office, find a spot for our weights, put all the DVDs in the correct cases, sell old clothes and books online, convert my recipes from the file to a bigger binder....

I get no small amount of satisfaction every time I open the fridge.

(Stay tuned for Goals 2 & 3, to include recipes for my new Tangy Ranch Skewers and Orange Chipotle Chicken!)

Meet the Chef

My husband and I moved into our first apartment together in August 2004. At the time, I made one thing clear to him: I DO NOT COOK.

I bake. I will treat you to a restaurant date. I am excellent at ordering pizza, sandwiches, Thai takeout. I will walk downtown to pick up food with you. But I do not cook.

So Bryan took over as the main chef of our household. "What are we having for dinner?" I would ask when I came home from a 10-hour day of student teaching. "I don't know," he answered from the smoky side kitchen in our little two-bedroom apartment, "but it has chicken in it." It turns out it was a sautee of chicken, garlic, red pepper flakes, light beer, and broccoli served over brown rice, and it was surprisingly tasty. I envied him his kitchen confidence and his willingness to experiment. On the rare occasion that I did cook for him--or for anyone, for that matter--it was an all-day affair. I would painstakingly seek out a recipe, list the ingredients, then organize my list by what order I would find them in the grocery store (produce first, then meats, followed by the center-store boxed items, and finishing with dairy and bakery), head to the grocery store for at least an hour to gather the items on my list, spend extra time re-reading, verifying, and consulting my recipe, and always ending up feeling defeated by my efforts and not the least bit interested in eating what I had made.

When family came into town, I would plan our meals out by applying the same research and organization I used in my graduate school studies. There was a restaurant for every occasion in Bloomington, IN, and I was an expert on where we should go at what time depending on our hunger level, attire, attitude, time available and sense of adventure. It turned out that being this knowledgeable about restaurants had a serious side effect: weight gain. By the summer of 2005, I had slogged my way through an accelerated graduate-level teacher preparation program, had worked 30 hours a week at a bagel shop in town, and put on 20 pounds. In July, I decided that enough was enough. I was done with the restaurants, done with relying on someone else to make my meals, done with being overweight.

I was going to learn how to cook.

And learn I did. I joined Weight Watchers and tried recipes from the community boards. I read cookbooks. I watched the Food Network incessantly. When recipes didn't taste quite right, I added a little something that I knew I would like. I mimicked the chefs on my favorite T.V. shows by tasting and adjusting. I learned to relax.

I learned to love to cook.

Now, over five years later, I am the chief chef of our three-person household. After an exciting year in which I scrambled to update my Minnesota teaching license, had a son, almost lost my job, and ran two half-marathons, I started the summer with my weight higher than I'd like and my confidence low. It's time to rev up my cooking engines once again.