This week’s prompt from Ginger at Ramble Ramble? Make us all hungry–what are your top 10 favorite foods (individual foods, or full meals, your choice)?
Well, I do love food. So here goes.
1) Steak. I don’t eat it often, but I do like it. My all-time favorite was the dry-aged New York Strip at the Chicago Chop House. But I’m certainly not going to turn down Fogo de Chao’s fraldinha or prime rib at Lawry’s. Or Ruth’s Chris. Or Morton’s. Mind you, I’ll need a gift card to go to any of these places. Oh, and while we’re on the subject–medium rare.
2) Ice cream. I’d meet my poorly identified weight and fitness goals more quickly if I stopped eating ice cream.
3) Potatoes. I love them so much, I once–no joke–gave them up for Lent.
4) Mu shu pork. This is one of my key comfort foods. I don’t need the pancakes.
5) Pancakes. Although I love them beyond mu shu. I’m still working on my perfect recipe, but that’s okay, because it means I get to eat pancakes.
6) Chocolate-chip cookies. I make the recipe on the back of the Nestle package, with some slight variations. I could eat these all day, which is why I rarely make them.
7) Corn. Corn on the cob. Corn in soup. Corn pudding. Creamed corn. Fritos. Pass the corn.
I’ve shared a few entries in my Mom-Friendly Meals series (you can also follow #MomFriendlyMeals on Twitter, and please feel free to join in the hashtag fun). One of the things that makes these meals easy is having ingredients available.
That sounds obvious, but it’s not necessarily. I like a lot of different kinds of food, but that doesn’t mean I can stock all of the ingredients required for a particular recipe, much less cuisine.
It’s not that we don’t have storage. We have a regular refrigerator and freezer in the kitchen, along with dedicated pantry space nearby. In the garage, we have a chest freezer.
All of this space is full. The problem is that it’s full of things I bought a while ago and forgot about, or random bits of leftovers. So one of my goals is to eat what we have in the freezer, and in doing so, determine what we want to make more of going forward.
I’m sure I’ll share those meals as they emerge from the icy depths. But what I want to talk about right now is staples.
As you may have guessed, one of my staples is steel-cut oats. After all, I eat them at least five times a week. Eggs, clearly another staple. But what else?
Macaroni, for Baguette’s Macmomee Cheese (technically not mom-friendly, but come on, of course it is). Egg noodles. Flour tortillas. Capellini.
Dried beans, for when I have time to soak them the night before. Low-sodium canned beans, for when I don’t.
Every other week, we get a box of fresh fruit grown on local farms; I also visit our nearby farmers’ market on Sunday mornings, where I get lemons, tomatoes, eggs, and berries.
I buy just about all of my spices from Penzeys. I recently cleaned out my spice rack, because it was overflowing, and there were too many impulse buys that I just wasn’t using. I like it so much better now; I can find what I need, and I’m using what I have.
This was the “before” shot.
And I make my own chicken and vegetable broth. Stock. What have you. This is so much easier than it sounds.
For vegetable broth, I buy a bunch of vegetables, scrub them, cut them up, cover them with water, and simmer for an hour. Do not peel! It takes too much time, and you lose the nutrients that are in the peel. After an hour, just strain it.
Chicken broth is just as easy; it takes more time, but it’s all slow-cooker time. I use a carcass, chop up an onion, throw in a few garlic cloves and celery and carrots, cover everything with water, and add some peppercorns. Then I cook on low for at least 12 hours and strain.
Having stock in the freezer means I can make soups at a moment’s notice (well, maybe a little more than a moment). And I can pick the ingredients, which means it has more flavor than packaged broth, and a lot less sodium.
I may have just used the last of my stock. This is why I need to clean out the freezer.
And I’m starting to think that the problem isn’t entirely with the teen stars, either. Why, exactly, do we want to watch these girls destroy themselves? Why is there so much ravenous glee when they implode? Why do we want to see them to be so very, very damaged?
Voting on your favorite mug shot? Tell me that’s not ugly. Of the website. Of the people who vote. Of all of us who clicked on the link. Of me for even providing the link.
This isn’t right. It seems like once we’re done with one, we’re ready for the next. We crave new meat. So I hope it’s not too late for Selena Gomez and Miley Cyrus. But I’m not sure that’s in the cards.
I love shrimp. Love, love, love it. Yet for some reason, I almost never cook with it. I’m trying to change that, though, because I have come to the conclusion–quite vocally, if you check with Mr. Sandwich–that I don’t like chicken.*
So a couple of weeks ago, we bought a bag of frozen shrimp at Costco. Surprisingly, it was not enough shrimp to feed all of Los Angeles–but we will get several meals out of it. We started last night (well, the night before, because the shrimp had to thaw) with this dish.
First, I cut up some Yukon Gold potatoes into chunks and boiled them until they were cooked, at which point I drained them.
Then I deveined the shrimp (it didn’t take as long as I always imagine it will; this stage was done before the potatoes finished cooking). In a skillet, I melted about half a stick of butter and sauteed some minced garlic. You know how people say not to use the pre-minced garlic that you can buy in jars? Well, we use it anyhow. It’s easier.
Once the garlic started to brown, I added the shrimp and flipped them once after about 2 minutes. You want to be careful not to overcook them, because they can get tough. Meanwhile, I returned the potatoes to the pan and dry steamed them to remove any additional moisture. After I turned over the shrimp, I added the potatoes to the skillet and tossed everything to coat with the butter and garlic.
Then we ate it.
You might want to have some vegetables, too. That’s always a good idea.
*Except fried chicken. I still like that. Because it is fried.
I don’t just eat oatmeal for breakfast. Even with some nuts thrown in, I need some protein to kickstart my day. And my protein of choice is eggs.
For a long time, I made hard-cooked eggs the way my mother taught me, which involved bringing them to a boil and then attempting to maintain a simmer for what I now realize was much too long a time.
No wonder my yolks kept turning that funny gray-green color.
Somewhere along the line, I acquired a copy of The New Basics Cookbook, which told me I should bring them to a boil, turn off the heat, cover the pan, and come back 15-20 minutes later.
With this method, you still get gray-green yolks–but at least you don’t have to maintain a simmer.
At some point, I started looking for how to cook a soft-cooked egg. And do you know what I found out? That’s right, I was leaving the eggs in the hard water for way, way too long.
So here’s what I do:
Put eggs on counter for 20-30 minutes.
Put eggs in saucepan and cover with water.
Add a dash of salt.
Turn on the burner and bring the water to a boil.
Turn the water off and cover the pan.
Leave for six minutes.
That’s right. SIX minutes. Not three times that long. Six minutes.
At that point, take the eggs out of the hot water (use a slotted spoon, not your bare hands) and put them into a bowl of ice water. Put that in the refrigerator.
I usually make two or three at a time, because after more than two or three days, they get hard to peel. I put one into a small container and take it to work; once there I peel it and have it with my reheated oatmeal. Presto! Cheap, easy, delicious breakfast.
Oh, and I like brown eggs because I find it easier to see the shells if some gets into a dish I’m making. And these are local eggs from our farmers’ market. How local? About a mile and a half away, I’m told. That’s pretty local. They’re crazy expensive, but they’re delicious. And they’re not from a factory farm. I like that, too.
I leave before 7 a.m. for daycare dropoff and work, which means that I eat breakfast after I’m at my desk. There’s a deli on the ground floor of my building, so I’m able to buy breakfast and lunch there, but that adds up quickly.
In an effort to keep the complex mornings as simple as possible–and to keep costs down–I’ve started making a big batch of steel-cut oats and reheating a serving once I’m at work. I also take a small container of walnuts, brown sugar, and cinnamon to mix in.
For a while, I was making the oats in the slow cooker, but I found that they wound up mushy. If you like mushy oats, then that technique will work well for you; I’m having better luck with the following method:
Stovetop
Saucepan
3 parts unsweetened almond milk
1 part steel cut oats
Put all of those together and bring to a boil; reduce heat to a low simmer and cook for 25 minutes, stirring several times. Cool and refrigerate.
If I start this process early enough, I set aside a portion for the next day. If I don’t, I do that in the morning. Once at the office, I transfer it to a microwave-friendly dish, heat it up, and stir in the toppings.
Someone will tell me I shouldn’t be boiling the almond milk. You can also use water.
Mr. Sandwich wrote this on Monday, and we both wanted to share it here.
Last week we got the news we had been both expecting and dreading. Baguette was formally diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. This was not a complete surprise, we had been looking at symptoms and ‘benchmarks’ to one degree or another for at least a year. There was speech therapy, there were visits with the principal at daycare about her behavior and class integration issues, of potty training, and the need for her to have further help. To the friends I’ve talked about it with, I have likened it to a punch that you can see coming. You can brace for it, but you’re still going to feel it.
So now we have a doctor’s diagnosis. We have a downloaded packet of steps to follow and paths to pursue. As I read my packet I see that I can expect to go through the stages of grief, which I don’t know if I am, or I don’t know if I started months ago when it became so clear that Baguette was different from her peers. I’ve talked with friends whose children are affected too. I’ve felt at alternating times that I am dizzy and steady, even keeled and bowled over. Today Baguette bowled me over, and I haven’t quite gotten up yet.
I picked her up from daycare late and was rushing to the pool. We’ve noticed how she seems to respond positively to the water, both with speech and behavior and for the past several weeks I’ve been trying to get her into the pool every day. When I buckled her into the carseat she asked for her Sesame Street CD like she always does, but that was in the other car, so all I could do was turn on the radio for the 3-minute drive to the park pool. Of Monsters and Men’s “Little Talks” was playing on the radio and we heard most of that by the time we hit the parking lot. I was running late, and we would only have 12 minutes worth of swimming so I was hustling as fast as I could. As I scooped up Baguette, she was reciting to me. She frequently recites, she doesn’t speak directly, she reiterates whole passages, whole verses of books and songs she knows and keeps as her friends and repeats them to me and Mommy and the World. While I was initially distracted as I fast-marched through the parking lot, she reached out and grabbed my face to turn me towards her and I heard clearly what she was reciting.
“Listen word I say. Hey. Scream sound same. Hey. Truth vary. Ship carry. Safe shore.”
She was repeating to me the lyrics she had heard on the radio just moments before. She’s heard that song played before, but not recently, and even if she did I’m not sure I’d expect any three-year-old to mimic lyrics like that. For a brief moment I was struck dumbfounded in the parking lot, trapped between wanting to laugh and congratulate her on her razor-sharp retention and cry over the fact that she couldn’t tell me things other little girls can. The fact that the lyrics are about a woman whose mind is at war with her and the man who still loves her despite this is just the brass wrapped around these particular knuckles. I didn’t have time to process the moment completely. She had started singing “The Farmer in the Dell” and time was ticking away. We only had a few minutes to get in the pool and that was the reason why we were there, for her benefit, not mine.
Hours have passed now and I can’t shake that refrain she recited to me. I can’t help but think that she was trying to tell me how the wheels in her mind were turning, how she needed me to communicate to her, how she hears the world. “Don’t listen to a word I say. (Hey) The screams all sound the same. (Hey) Though the Truth may vary, this ship will carry our bodies safe to shore.” That song will never be the same for me. Nothing will ever be the same.
A hundred years ago–okay, in January–I wrote about our efforts to help Baguette with her speech delay. I was going to write more. I didn’t, really.
It’s not that I was avoiding the subject, it’s that I didn’t really know what to say about it.
Since January, we’ve eliminated the idea of thrice-weekly occupational therapy appointments; while she does have some sensory-seeking characteristics, we don’t see indicators of the Sensory Processing Disorder that the therapist suspected.
We’ve tried–and failed–to get Baguette’s hearing tested (she would not cooperate with the protocol). We’ve also determined that if Baguette really had a hearing problem, she wouldn’t hear as well as she does, and she wouldn’t be able to memorize what she hears as well as she does. So we’ll probably try the testing again at some point, but we don’t think it’s a priority.
We had an in-network evaluation with a speech therapist, who recommended twice-weekly sessions that were denied by the insurance company. This is both infuriating and not a big deal, because we were happy with our speech therapist and could not have gotten Baguette to the location that the insurance company would have insisted on.
We’ve continued–mostly, Mr. Sandwich has continued–her twice-weekly speech therapy and music therapy sessions. Once a week the speech therapist comes to school, and once a week Baguette goes to the therapist’s office.
We’ve hired a “shadow,” who helps Baguette with classroom activities, encourages her to look at and speak to her classmates, reinforces the activities introduces by the speech therapist, and tries and tries and tries to help her with potty training.
And we went to a developmental pediatrician. He talked to us and observed Baguette for an hour, and sent us home with a form for us and a form for the teacher and a request to take video of Baguette in class, to see how she interacts with other children.
At the first meeting, he said that he couldn’t yet diagnose her with Autism Spectrum Disorder, but he saw things that might indicate it. At the second meeting–last week–he did issue that diagnosis.
This is not a surprise to me. My reading to date has been admittedly spotty, but it seems to fit. And there are a lot of things that now connect–the sleep challenges, the picky eating, etc.
But at the same time, I recognize that a lot of those things are also simply Baguette. She is a happy, funny, intense, independent, adventurous, STUBBORN little girl who chooses whether to comply. And she has autism.
How much is autism, and how much is her personality? I’m not sure they can really be separated. But I do know that autism is not the only thing that makes her who she is. It is part of who she is, just as many things are.
So as we now embark on the process of setting up an Applied Behavioral Analysis program for her, I want to pay close attention to what we’re actually working on: helping her develop skills that will give her greater flexibility in the world and throughout her life.
But I also think she’s perfect just as she is, and I want her to be the Baguettiest Baguette she can possibly be.
Recently, some of my friends have said, “You really seem to have this meal-planning thing down. What’s your secret?”
I do not have the meal-planning thing down. My secret is that I have a child who is slightly older than their child.
I think there are a lot of us in this boat. We think, “That person over there is doing this much better than I am.” And the truth is, they’re just working with different circumstances.
One of my college friends has a daughter about two months older than Baguette. She also has an older child and a stepchild. And when her daughter was a baby, every night this friend would post on Facebook about some amazing meal she was making her family for dinner.
Now, I know her. She wasn’t doing this to brag about how much better she was at parenting. She was doing it to show that it could be done–that often when you feel overwhelmed, it’s in your head. She wasn’t boasting, she was demonstrating.
But what I couldn’t figure out was this: how was she managing it? Like me, she had a full-time job outside of the home. Like me, she had an infant. Unlike me, she had two other children. So how was she pulling off this amazing feat?
As it turns out, she has a shorter commute. Like, a lot shorter. Mine is an hour each way. Hers is more like 15 minutes.
See what I mean? Different circumstances.
And my own circumstances have changed. Looking back, I’m not really sure what I ate when Baguette was a baby. I cooked for her, but I don’t remember what I made for myself. After a while, I found that I could use the crock pot on the weekends to make a big batch of something. That counted as cooking.
I no longer use the slow cooker for oatmeal, though.
More recently, I’ve been able to use the stove a little. Last night I made shrimp with bell peppers and zucchini in Red Thai Curry Sauce, served over quinoa. I’m having leftovers for lunch.
I have no idea what’s for dinner tonight.
Again, I think there are a lot of us in this boat. So I’m starting an occasional series called “Mom-Friendly Meals.” I’m going to write about what I cook, how I choose recipes, what tools I use, how I find ingredients, and anything else that comes to mind. You can follow me on Twitter at @tragicsandwich; I’ll be using the hashtag #momfriendlymeals for these posts.
One thing to keep in mind: These are mom-friendly recipes. At our house, we all eat different things. Baguette is going through a picky stage, and while we’re trying to move her through that, I’m not going to pretend that she ate the Thai curry with me. And Mr. Sandwich has his own palate, and tends to do his own cooking. So our kitchen is very busy, but we’ve finally started eating together as a family.
Now we just have to clean off the rest of the kitchen table.
The weekend is almost here, so it’s a good time to think about how to get ready for next week. M.R. Nelson of Wandering Scientist drew upon her extensive experience in project management to write a terrific ebook titled Taming the Work Week: Work Smarter, Not Harder. She was kind enough to send me a copy to read prior to our interview; the insights and perspective she shares in the ebook are definitely worth paying for.
Taming the Work Week quickly and succintly addresses a number of approaches to making your job more manageable. One of the things I appreciated about Nelson’s book was that she emphasizes that this is not just for working parents–this is an issue for everyone, because we all have lives outside of work. She goes on to discuss a number of topics, including how to track and increase efficiency and productivity, how to contain the expansion of the workday, and how to avoid the common fallacy that more hours worked equals more work accomplished. After reading it, I wanted to know more; read on for her responses.
1) Facetime culture–There can be a lot of variation here. It’s one thing to adapt to a boss who prioritizes certain hours, but what about the boss who expects you to always be checking emails? How do you get credit for time worked outside the office? What about the boss who values facetime over productivity?
To be honest, if I found myself in a work culture that strongly favored facetime over productivity, I’d start looking for ways out of that culture. I just don’t have the patience to deal with that nonsense anymore. However, I know that a lot of people can’t get out of that culture or work in fields that are dominated by facetime work places. I think there are some things those people can do to make their work life more sane. One thing I mention in the book is the fact that most facetime cultures seem to notice how late you stay more than how long you take for lunch, or even what time you get in each morning. So one thing to do is to look at what time periods are most noticed and rewarded at your work, and see if you can arrange your schedule to be there for those while taking some flexibility in the less noticed hours. For instance, if your work notices how late you stay but not how long you take for lunch, start taking real lunch hours and using them to clear errands that would otherwise eat into your family time on the weekend.
The easiest way to get credit for the time you work outside of the office is to leave some obvious sign you were working- such as an email or two (just don’t start expecting answers after hours or you’ll become part of the problem!) But more important than that is to actually be productive during that time. There is no point in bringing home your laptop just to log two hours of busy work. In most non-pathological work places, the productivity will be noticed and people will know you’re really working at home. It is not enough to just login from home. You really have to make that time count, or else why bother? Even in a facetime culture, people notice who gets things done and who doesn’t.
You can gently teach a boss (and colleagues!) about the benefits of valuing productivity over facetime by occasionally mentioning a study or article you saw about the benefits of downtime for productivity or the like. But here again, I think productivity tends to speak for itself. Even in a strongly facetime culture, it is hard to argue with results. So start racking up the results, and keep a file with the evidence of the results, for use come review time.
For a boss who expects constant email responses, I’d try setting some expectations. At various points in my career, I have had jobs that required me to be reachable after hours, and to take a Blackberry on vacation. I handled this by making sure my team (and my boss) knew when they could expect me to check my email, and telling them to call if they needed a response more quickly than that. On vacation, I checked the Blackberry twice a day. After hours, I’d check as soon as I got home, after dinner, and after I got the kids to bed. I only read emails whose subject indicated they were urgent. No one ever abused my trust and called me for frivolous things. I’d also make sure that the boss really expected those responses. My current boss sends a barrage of emails, full of questions, over the weekend. But he doesn’t expect us to respond- in fact, he laughs at his penchant for getting into discussions essentially with himself (because no one else is responding). It just happens that weekends are the time he uses to catch up on emails. Not every weekend emailer is as aware of the potential impact as my boss is, but not every weekend emailer expects responses, either. Don’t assume that you have to respond- pay attention to what happens if you don’t, and adjust accordingly.
That leads into my final tip, which is that sometimes a facetime culture isn’t as strong as it seems, and you can set boundaries and keep to them and still succeed. Don’t request accommodations, just state your boundaries and stick to them- and keep producing a lot of high quality work. If it seems that this approach is not getting you where you want to go at your company, then you can start looking for a healthier place to work.
2) Time tracking–what methods have you tried? What do you find most successful/versatile?
I’ve used spreadsheets and an online tool called Toggl. I like Toggl better than the spreadsheets, hands down. It is very easy to use, and not intrusive, particularly since I have a computer-based job and can just leave it open in my browser. It is designed to be used by people who charge by the hour for their work, but that is essentially what time-tracking is: charging yourself for your time, and holding yourself accountable for how you spend it.
3) How do you balance accountability with a lack of authority?
Ah, this is a biggie. I remember very well the first time a boss told me I had to demonstrate I could get results without having the authority to demand them. It really pissed me off. But he was right, that IS a key skill. I didn’t really appreciate how key it is until I spent a lot of time as a contracted project manager, which is the ultimate “accountability without authority” position- I didn’t even work for the same company as the people I was trying to direct, but my continued employment depended on my getting them to do what I needed on my project. That job taught me how to pay attention to what would motivate the people whose help I needed, and figure out how to make them want to do what I needed. Also, it turns out a lot of people are happy to help you as long as you give them enough lead time so that they can work it in around their other responsibilities- so having a solid project plan can be a big help. I could give people weeks or even months notice about something I needed, and then just check in with them periodically to make sure it didn’t get forgotten.
Of course, sometimes, you just have to flag a lack of progress to the people who have the authority to issue orders- but I haven’t had to do that as often as you’d think. When I do need to do this, I make sure the person with authority knows the consequences of the schedule slip: i.e., it will delay the project by X weeks, or require us to spend Y extra dollars to keep a data center open longer. So again, a solid project plan is key: I’m not just whining that I can’t get what I want. I am stating a problem and describing the consequences of that problem.
4) What’s the most challenging thing for you about taming the work week?
I have a tendency to over-optimize, so sometimes I can burn myself out even though I’m not working a ridiculous number of hours. I forget that the breaks in the middle of the day are just as important as leaving at a reasonable hour. Yes, it really is OK to spend 5 minutes reading a blog post after I finish a big task! Finding the happy medium between wasting heaps of time and trying to be productive in every available minute is key, and I struggle with that sometimes.
5) What’s one change to your schedule that you’d like to implement, but haven’t been able to?
I’d love to have full control over my schedule, so that I could optimize my time globally, not just within my work week and within my non-work time. But our corporate culture is really not set up for that. I have a lot of flexibility, but not full control.
6) What do you most want readers to take away from your ebook?
Can I name two things? I want readers to recognize that you can have a successful career without allowing it to consume your entire life, and also that long hours can actually be counter-productive.
Taming the Work Week is also available on Amazon.com.
