Tag: schedule

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Household items I would rather sell my children for than live without (not really, but maybe somedays)

Momginerd

Since I have been in “list mode” lately, I decided to add just one more (for today…shut it, I like lists).

Here is a list of my favorite gadgets that are not games/phones/etc, or battery operated and no this isn’t a post about B.O.B.s!…let’s step UP to the gutter folks!

1.  Rice Cooker.  We LOVE rice.  Brown Rice, Basmati Rice, Jasmine Rice, Spanish Rice…they all are in regular rotation in our menus.  In the past, I found making rice on the stove top to be hit or miss.  Sometimes the rice would come out okay, but most of the time it was either too mushy or too dry.  I purchased a Rice Cooker a few years back and now we have PERFECT rice every single time.  You can do other things with the rice cooker, like steam veggies and the like, but I use mine for cooking rice…duh. 

2.  Pressure Cooker.  I grew up with the sound of the pressure cooker hissing in my mom and mamaw’s kitchens.  Older versions have this counter-weight you put on the pressure valve, and when the pot reaches pressure the valve swings back and forth making a sound similar to the sound of cicadas in the Summer…anyway, I have a newer version and it saves so much time cooking.  You can cook a pot of green beans in literally 5 minutes!  You can make a whole pot roast in less than 30!  It is a working and/or just busy parent’s savior.  One of the added benefits of the pressure cooker is you use very little water when cooking veggies/meats so that means many of the good flavors and vitamins are locked in via the steam pressure.  Roasts come out fork tender…I kid you not!  It does take some getting used to, because I am a pot-peeker.  I like to open the lid, sample, and peek at what is cooking.  You have to learn to TRUST the pressure cooker, there is no peeking or opening the lid to check it out. 

3.  Trampoline.  YES I know how unsafe they are…yadda, yadda, yadda.  I also know that my kids saved up their money for a whole YEAR and paid for 75% of the trampoline.  It is used within sight of an adult and with rules.  We also researched (you are shocked I know) and found the “safest” one we could buy.  It is not the $150 special, trust me.  Anyway, my kids LOVE the trampoline.  They have had it for about a year now and have spent countless HOURS jumping away.  They get lots of good cardio, and mommy gets to drink her wine and watch them…just kidding…sometimes I don’t watch them. 

4. DVR.  I adore my DVR.  There are some shows (Have you checked out Duck Dynasty or An Idiot Abroad?…hilarious), that I really enjoy watching.  I am also very busy running mom’s taxi service, so I don’t really have a lot of time to watch said TV.  So, I rely on my DVR.  It is also awesome for recording kid appropriate shows, although mine is usually so full of episodes of Game of Thrones, True Blood and other things there isn’t room for kid shows.  Hottie Husband and I will usually pick a Sunday every few weeks and call Pajama Day.  We all keep our jammies on all day, eat breakfast food and get caught up on our shows.  I call Pajama Day a day in HEAVEN! The bestest feature of all on the DVR is you can fast forward through commercials, so you can watch an hour show in about 42 minutes!

5.  Whirly Pop.   This is a stove top popcorn popper with a paddle in it that you spin to keep the popcorn from burning.  I can’t stand microwave popcorn, and this makes the most awesomist popcorn.  This thing should be plated in gold and given an award.  I kid you not!  I got mine from an Amish store many years ago, but I now see they are readily available from Amazon.com and other places.  We have a local popcorn distributor and if we are feeling really gourmet, we will go there and buy different types of popcorn (did you know they have BLUE popcorn, and popcorn with no hulls?). 

6. Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer.  I cook a lot.  I looked through the calendar and in the last 60 days we have gone out or had take out only 3 times.  Cooking is almost like therapy for me.  Unfortunately, with working full time and running Mom’s Taxi Service as a second job, I do not have as much time in the kitchen as I’d like.  So, I love my stand mixer because it does a lot of the work for me.  I have the meat grinding, pasta making, and slicing attachments.  I can get an indentured servant (kid) to do the grinding/slicing/kneading while I am doing something else towards the meal preparation.  When we remodeled our Kitchen (see remodel from Hell parts 1, 2, 3), I took the measurements of my mixer with me when working with the designer.  I had to be SURE that my mixer would fit exactly where I wanted it on my counter top.

7.  Keurig.  OMG, the only thing that keeps me going is coffee.  The Keurig makes the BEST coffee I have ever had.  It even has a timer on it, so the water is ready to brew my first cup of awesomeness as soon as I come down the stairs in the mornings.  I do not even miss what used to be my almost daily trip through the Starbucks or Big B coffee stands anymore.  As a bonus, I have more money to spend on k-cups and get to work 15 minutes earlier every day!

Until next time,
Nic

P.S. Did you know there is a Momginerd FaceBook page?  Also, some of my best sarcasm can be found on my Pinterest!

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My top menus that satisfy almost ALL of my offspring

Momginerd

Being a working mom, I struggle with meals.  One of the big rules in my household is we eat dinner, sitting down at the table, with REAL plates every single night….even if I don’t want to!  99% of our meals are home cooked, from scratch.  This mostly started due to Bubbie and his pervasive food allergies, and then just became the way we do things at the House of Chaos.  So, without further ado, here are the top meals that are in my rotation that can either be made ahead, made quickly, or put in the crock-pot while I am gone.  We only have 3 rules at our family dinners.



1.  We eat what we get and we don’t throw a fit.
      – I am NOT a short order cook.  I make every effort to prepare meals they will all at least tolerate.  I am also fair in NOT putting things on plates if it is something that they have a real aversion against (Manudo: No food touching, Bubbie: No onions, Princepessa: No tomatoes, HH: Triple servings of everything).



This is wrong in so many ways…electronics AND
elbows on the table????



2.  NO electronic devices allowed….not even for Mom and Dad.  There is nothing so important that means we have to eat meals while our noses are buried into cell phones, iPods, DS’s, TV, etc.  No one is going to DIE if they miss a text, I promise.
3.  Family meals are a good time to practice our manners so if mom is nice enough to take us OUT to dinner one day, we won’t look like we have escaped a barn.
Those are the rules, and for the most part the kids and HH don’t complain about them.  It works for us, so we all make the effort to be sure we are home and present (both physically and mentally) for our daily together time.
I will try to link to recipes if I have them.  If there is a meal you’d like the recipe for, add a comment and I will post it there.
  1. Homemade Mac -n- Cheese, Smoked Sausage baked in the oven with green onions and mushrooms and Steamed Broccoli with lemon.  I SWEAR my kids would eat all of these daily.  I know that I am very lucky that they like veggies, and I hope that by typing this, I have not jinxed myself.
  2. Breakfast for dinner:  Eggs (okay, I WILL make eggs to order…some like them scrambled, some like them over easy), Bacon or Sausage, and a fresh fruit salad.  Sometimes I will mix it up with pancakes or French Toast.  Let’s face it, kids of working mom’s don’t have the luxury of really good breakfasts on most days, so it is always a treat to have their favorites as dinner.
  3. Crock-Pot Roast, Mashed Potatoes, steamed Green Beans.  My kids, and especially HH are huge carnivores.  They love meat, even if I don’t eat as much as they do.  I like the pot-roast because it usually leaves left-overs for HH and my lunches.  If I am especially organized, I will pre-boil the mashed potatoes the night before to make it a faster meal.
  4. New Improved Joe’s, Sweet Potato Fries, Sliced Apples.  I had to stop using almost all pre-made canned items when Bubbie was younger, so I came up with this recipe for sloppy joe’s using no canned sauces and with spinach for extra nutrients.  My kids LOVE it!  I have also served it over pasta ala Cincinnati Chili.
  5. Salmon Patties, Rice, and Asparagus.  I make the asparagus in a pan on the top of the stove with a pat of butter, splash of soy sauce, and 1/4 cup of water.  I have a rice cooker, and have found it so worth the investment.  Rice comes out perfect every.single.time.
  6. Broiled whole pork tenderloin (just baste with a mixture of stone ground mustard and maple), Vanilla sweet potatoes, and spinach salad with orange/balsamic dressing. I bake the sweet potatoes the night before, and keep the dressing for the salad in a cruet in the fridge at all times. 
  7. Tacos, Refried Beans, Spanish rice….need I say more?
  8. Pasta with Basalmic Puttenesca Sauce, Garlic Bread, and a Salad.  When I serve this, I try to keep the olives out of Bubbie’s serving :). 
  9. Pulled Pork (whole pork tenderloin, favorite BBQ sauce, diced onions, cook in crock pot all day, shred with two forks), Cole Slaw, Baked Beans.
  10. Chili, Homemade Corn Bread, Salad.  I mix it up by sometimes doing white chili, beanless chili, or traditional red chili.  I like to really spice it up, but keep some extra spices on hand to sprinkle on HH’s and mine when the kidlets are around who seem to be opposed to anything spicier than a hot dog some days.

What are some of your go to meals?   How do you save time?  I hate feeling like I am in a rut, and I feel that way frequently in the winter when we do not have as many options for fresh fruits and veggies.

divorce, relationships

No, I am not your wife anymore….

Momginerd

My kids’ dad is still very much involved in their lives.  We share 50/50 custody, so we interact a lot.  A lot more than I would really like, but in the theme of “keeping the kids first” I always answer his calls and try to help him if he asks.  My Ex likes to think that since we once were married, I should still do lots of favors for him…NO not that kind of favors, step up to the gutter people! ;-).

For example:  He decided to get Lasik eye surgery.  Not that big of a deal, but then he thought it was appropriate to ask ME to take him to his appointment.  Um….really!?!   I would have had to take one of my few precious vacation days to do this and I have much better things to do with my vacation days.  I did, however, arrange for my uncle to take him.  And, because I still felt guilty for not taking him, I made him a home cooked dinner and delivered it to his house that evening (yeah, I know, I am enabling the behavior).

Not a single day goes by when he doesn’t call me at least 10 times to ask me something.  Sometimes they are important, like what exactly is it again that Bubbie is allergic to eating (yeah, you would think after 8 years he’d know what the kid can and can not eat, but I digress).  Other times it is stupid shit.  He literally called me 3 times once to ask directions to Manudo’s softball game.  Did I mention that I bought him a GPS one year for Father’s day?
Some of the other lovely things he calls about is to ask me to set him up with my friends.  Like I would do that?  He wasn’t a good enough husband to me to stayed married to, so why would I foist him off one one of my friends, I mean I actually LIKE most of my friends?  Now HH’s ex…that would be another story ;-).  He also thinks that I am his permanent babysitter.  Whenever he has a date, tickets to an event, golf game, hangnail, eye twitch or headache he thinks it is my job to take the kids.  Most of the time I welcome the extra time with them, but sometimes I actually have plans!  I mean, one of the benefits of sharing custody is that I actually can make plans sometimes without having to worry about hiring a babysitter.  He then likes to pull the guilt trip on me if I occasionally say no.  He will say: “but you are remarried so you have 2 adults to care for the kids….I am all alone.”  I want to say to him:  “Ever think you are all alone because you keep acting like you are still married to me?”  What lady would want to be with someone who can’t even remember how to get to his daughter’s softball game, at the same field she had just played at 2 days ago, without calling his Ex 3 times for directions?

His latest “favor” is asking me to plan a vacation for him.  He’d like me to make all the plans for him to take the kids on a vacation this Summer.  He said, and I quote: “you know what they like, here is my budget, just tell me where and when and I will take them.”  REALLY!  Like I want to plan some fantasmic vacation for YOU to get all the credit?  You know what they really like?  Going someplace and having to do lots of chores.  Let me know how that works out for you.

Now, as I said, 90% of the time I suck it up and help him out.  But some days, I just want to tell him to stick it up his arse.  I feel like I give, give, give, and 90% of the time he just takes.  On the rare occasion I will ask him to return a favor, he invariably says no because he is golfing, watching TV, picking his ass, or any other myriad of excuses.

At the end of the day, I just keep chanting this mantra:  It is for the kids, the kids appreciate that I help their dad out.

I know that one day the kids will know that even if I am the strict parent, I am the one that helped hold their lives together, especially their Dad’s.

I do have say that I am absolutely happy that my Ex is so involved with the kids, and he does try.  I would much prefer to have to schedule and run his life than have him abandon or miss out on time with the kids.  All in all, he is a great dad to them, he is just clueless about what is and is not appropriate to ask me.

Until next time!
Nic