Dinner Debrief

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Well, it turned out that I did not, as usual, have any coconut milk in the pantry, so I had to scrap the idea of Melissa Clark's pilaf. Y'all should still try it sometime though as it's delish. Anyway, I was already grooving on the chicken-barley thing so worked off a recipe I found on food52 and ended up with a barley, chicken, mixed mushroom, herby concoction that I liked quite a bit but T found a tad "vegan" despite my addition of chicken. The broccoli recipe is a great one that I will definitely make again. Three cheers for the smoky paprika-garlic oil-vinaigrette atop roasted broc and Marcona almonds. Bene, bene!

And lastly, this pretty corn pudding. It was quite good, and though I am not a pork-lovin' gal, I could definitely see that the addition of bacon here would be a good one; just if you want to up the ante a bit. T cottoned to this, as well as the broccoli which just goes to prove my point that he likes veggies a lot more than he thinks. They just have to be cooked correctly folks. Gray, mush, WASP-y style=bad!

I'm full as a tick! Now that I write that, I do want to send out a PSA- I know three women who've gotten Lyme disease this summer. Please be on the lookout for ticks and/or tickbites and if you suspect one, head to your doctor early and get on some meds!

Deep satisfaction gained from organizing and cleaning

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I will be the first to admit that I am quite a Type-A person. I like a clean kitchen, I don't like it when things -papers, my calendar, closets, etc- aren't organized, I hate stepping in sticky spots and crumbs, I like to know what's coming. Some of this is about maintaining a sense of control amidst the mania of everyday life with young children. When you've got 900 crayons and markers on the floor, empty boxes everywhere- "NO, DON'T throw them out, they're our cars/spy gadgets/etc"- granola bar pieces stuck to your couch/walls/butt, etc, it helps (me, you?) to have one space of clean and calm, even if it's just a lone kitchen counter. So, I try, throughout the day, to just keep things from going full-scale nutso in the organization department. After the nth game of 'super pile rock' -the kids made up and named this game which consists of climbing up onto my bed, unmaking it and throwing the pillows onto the ground, picking them up and starting over- I issue a cease and desist, barring them from my bed for the rest of the day. At some point, we have a Come to Jesus about the situation in the playroom. You get my drift.

On the rare chance that I'm alone in my home -this morning is a surprise few hours of solo- I often find myself, despite plans to plop down and read, cleaning like a happy madwoman. I'll tell you that it is deeply satisfying to have just thrown out all kinds of refuse in the garage (T is NOT an organizer; hilarious to even think of him in that manner as such a joke), wiped off all the counters -not just 1!- made the calls I intended to, ordered more canning labels and to have actually dried and styled my hair post-shower. The house still looks insane, but I know that under the warzone veneer, things are a little tidier than they were when I awoke. And that's nice.

It's the little things, folks. And it made me smile a bit that the other day, when I asked a suspiciously quiet Oliver what he was doing, he replied, "organizin Mom!"