Macaroni May #2

Last week I set the bar at 20:55 for preparing a quick meal. This week I made a better meal and I beat that time, barely.

Sausage Spaghetti and Broccoli
One jar spaghetti sauce
Some sort of pasta
One pound of sausage
Broccoli
I won't insult anyone's cooking ability by explaining how to cook this meal. If you've managed to keep your kids alive then you can handle it without my help. 
Simple spaghetti is nothing more than noodles and a jar of sauce. It's not bad, but adding meat to it makes it taste better and it makes it a more complete meal by adding a protein source. Ground beef is traditional, but sausage is better. I use a turkey breakfast sausage because my kids don't like things that are too spicy, but I think Italian sausage is best. You can brown it in a pan in less time than it takes to cook noodles. For veggies, I steamed broccoli. You can cut the heads up while the water heats and it too is done before the noodles. In fact, the noodles are the slowest part of this whole operation and nearly caused me to miss my mark. I finished the meal in a terrifyingly close 20:44. I think I need to switch pasta types next week if I really want to bring my times down. Some sort of thin spaghetti perhaps. 
Anyway, the point is that in a shade over twenty minutes I was able to cook up a meal that had a protein, a starch, and two vegetables (sort of) one of them fresh. It was a meal that was eaten fast and everyone made it to soccer on time. We were actually a few minutes early. I'm really enjoying the process of optimizing meals for cook time. Wait until you see what I have on tap for next week.

Distractions

This little guy? I wouldn't worry about this little guy.

Just two days ago I wrote this post talking about paying attention and making sure that things are done when they should be. Then today, I'm a complete flake. I'm outside messing with that thing you see in the picture when I have a sudden moment of clarity and realize that I'm supposed to be on my way to the orthodontist! Right now! Gah!
A quick call to my wife to tell her what was going on while I was on the way to school to pick up my son. She called the orthodontist to let them know what we were going to be 10 minutes late while I snagged him from school. We ended up only being 8 minutes late and they already had him checked in thanks to the phone call. We (barely) didn't mess up their scheduling for the day and all is well (barely). Team work and a little luck saves the day again.
Every now and again I read parenting books or articles, and it always sounds like the authors really have their sh*t together. Now I'm wondering if they're really knocking out another chapter while the roast is burning. Watch who you take advice from, especially me.

Just Parenting

Not much stay at home dad stuff to say today. My wife is spending 6 hours at the soccer fields between team pictures and games. My son was the one kid who wiped out playing before pictures, so he was the one dripping fresh blood out of his band aids in the team picture. Lovely.
A lot of time spent parenting is just making sure things happen the way they are supposed to. Be there when you say you will, do the things you said you would, be a good example for your kids. That kind of stuff eats up whole days and weeks and years. Keep yourself in the right frame of mind and it's a good time, otherwise it can be a burden. Be careful.
Just sifting through old pictures to put something entertaining up, and I found one of my older son when he was young. Naps would often sneak up on him and we'd find him keeled over in the oddest of places. This nap destroyed the farm yard. The sheep made a full recovery.

Why I'm Snipped

This would be awesome! No it wouldn't. Yes!

I find it surprising that when I'm hanging out with my four kids, people ask me if my wife and I are going to have more. More? Really? No, we're done, I'm out of the game. That simple phrase, "I'm out of the game", lets people know that I'm not having any more kids, that I can't. It's a simple, yet discreet, way to let people know that all of the proper tubes have been disconnected. 
I probably had the shortest consultation in the history of vasectomies. The doctor was being harassed by a drug rep so I was waiting in the waiting room longer than I should have. In the waiting room with me was my wife and four kids and they weren't waiting as well as they should have been. When I finally got back to the room, the doctor asked my why. I pointed to his waiting room as said, "That noise, that's my four kids." Consult over, appointment scheduled. It was easy because he thought I was telling him that I had four kids and I didn't want any more, and that's a darn good reason to have things disconnected. What he didn't know is that I was getting snipped because having more kids actually sounded like a great idea.
For example, my wife went out with friends the other night for dinner. One of her friends is getting close to the 11th hour with her first pregnancy. My wife came home all lovey eyed and said that she'd totally love to have another baby. As for me, there are three new babies that moms have had at preschool in the last few months and quite frankly, another baby sounds awesome! We're both idiots of course. We have four wonderful children and four is quite enough for us and having more would not be a smart thing to do. But every now and again, every year or so, the stars align and we have both been around babies recently and one of us says something and before you know it both of us are saying that it would be awesome to have another baby! We're both idiots. We simply can't be trusted.
So that's why I'm snipped, not because I don't want more kids, but because I do, and I can't count on either my wife or myself to always think clearly when we've been around babies.

ETC: Dick and Jane

The Dick and Jane series of books have been a staple of children's literature since the 1930's when they were used to teach reading to kids in school. They've been undated and revised and they were re-issued in 2003. Though they were once the standard for teaching kids to read, but they've fallen way out of favor for that task. They were originally very homogenous in there depictions of race and culture. This made them hard to relate too if you weren't white and middle class, and it's hard to learn to read things that you don't understand. They've also been criticized for poorly focusing on the basics of reading and just not doing a good job of what they are supposed to do. Despite all of that, we have a bunch of them, and our kids have indeed used them to learn to read. First I want to say that these aren't kids books like you are probably used to. They are not books to read to your kids. They suck for that. They are books for your kids to read to you. They are very simple, they are very repetitive and they should be tossed aside once they've been mastered. Used like that, they're a great tool and I don't hesitate to recommend them. The kids are able to read them not too long after learning letter sounds, they seem to enjoy them, and they get a real sense of accomplishment when they finish a chapter. They can get done with a book and know that they can read, and that makes them quite happy with themselves and with reading. They're not perfect, but they have value. We like them.
Of course, if you find Dick and Jane too pedestrian, and what to spice things up, you can always try Dick and Jane and Vampires.

Box Turtle

I was walking around killing time while my son was in preschool last week, and I came upon a mother and her son trying to coax a turtle off of the sidewalk. They were gently nudging it with a stick and it just wasn't working. It was a small box turtle, so I calmly picked it up and showed it to the boy (about 3) and set the turtle back in the woods. They walked away, and I walked away, and it took every ounce of will that I had to not go back and pick the turtle up and put him in my bag and carry him home with me. I was lost in my thoughts about that turtle when, "what's there in the road I'm about to cross?" "Another turtle!" This one got to take a ride. 
I brought him back to the school, and showed him to a couple of the preschool classes, and then took him home. I didn't know that much about box turtles so I got out an old aquarium and put some dirt in it and got him settled in. The problem was that he really didn't calm down. He was going this way and that and generally freaking out. Off to the internet to learn about box turtles. It turns out he's a three toed box turtle, the official reptile of the state of Missouri. It's called a three toed box turtle because they usually only have three toes on their back feet. Pretty cool. This particular type of box turtle lives in the woods and fields of the southeastern U.S. and migrates depending on where it can find the moisture it needs. They're most comfortable if they have a place to burrow in leaf litter and really don't like to be exposed, which is why he was freaking out. I dumped a pile of leaves in with him and within a few moments he was buried and much happier. Through more reading I learned that he was an omnivore, eating worms and slugs and whatever creatures are slower than him, as well as fruits, mushrooms and a variety of plants. They also do best in captivity when kept outside in a pen. Off to the garage I went to get some old fencing and I put a pen up for him in a part of the yard that was shaded and had a lot of leaves on the ground. He wandered around for a bit, decided he couldn't escape, and then burrowed down in a nice little hidey hole. Since then I've been giving him apple slices, which he seems to love every day. He comes out and grabs them and drags them back to the hole to eat. My boys also found a bunch of worms while digging out back this weekend and threw them in to him. If they got close to him, his head would reach out and grab the worm and gobble it down. He's shy, but not shy about eating. 
He's been fun to have around for a few days and I learned a lot that I didn't know about box turtles. One of the things I learned is that wild box turtles do very poorly in captivity over the long term. In the wild they can live for 30 years or more, but seldom make it more than 12 months as pets. Tomorrow I'll load him back into my bag and take him back to the woods where I found him. He seems to be well fed and none the worse for the wear, receiving only an incredible tale to tell his turtle friends. You'd think that at some point I'd outgrow this sort of thing. It doesn't appear that's the case.

Macaroni May #1

May is here and with it comes sports and cramped schedules. If you've got practice in the evening then there is precious little time between when the kids get home and when they go out again and it's hard to find the time to cook food that doesn't suck. One of the great fall back foods is macaroni and cheese. You keep in in the cupboard, it's always there to be ready to eat in 20 minutes, the kids always eat it fast. The only problem is that it sucks. It's not good nutritionally, it has way too much artificial stuff in it, and it's hard to feel like you're doing good parenting when you make it. At least for me.
What to do?

It's ok, but I can do better. Much better.

I'm convinced that macaroni isn't the cure all that it seems to be. In the same 20ish minutes that it takes to make a box, you could actually make a good dinner with better food, or at the very least, supplement the macaroni so it's only a minor player in the meal. The first order of business in Macaroni May is to set a cooking standard. How much time does it really take me to make macaroni and cheese, from pot on the stove to macaroni on the plate. In that time can I prepare add on's that make the meal not suck so much? In that time can I make whole other noodle based meals that are awesome? Nutritious and delicious? 
For a calibration meal I made a box of macaroni and cheese and added ham steak and frozen mixed veggies. On my sucky electric stove it took 20:55 from the time I turned the water on to when I started scooping the macaroni out. A gas stove would be faster, but I don't have a gas stove, I have a sucky electric stove, so that's my calibration time. The veggies I boiled in water in the microwave and that only took 8 minutes. The ham steak took about 10. If you haven't had ham steak, look around your store and find it. Instead of buying a whole ham, you're essentially just buying a thick slice off the big end of the ham. It's cheap and you don't have a whole ham to deal with. Fry it in a pan in it's own juices until it's warm. Done. It's not the best meat in the world, but it's quick, it's protein, and pretty much all kids will eat ham fast enough to get out the door for soccer. With this meal I had a big pile of veggies, a protein source, and a smaller pile of macaroni and cheese. Nutritionally it's so much better than just making a couple of boxes of macaroni and it doesn't take any longer. It's not the best meal in the world, but it gets us out the door on time and it's fairly well balanced. It's also a great baseline. I've got four more Tuesdays in May to write about food. Can I make better, tastier, more nutritious meals, that are still based around cheap pasta in less than 20:55? I think I can. I think I can pretty much kick macaroni's ass. Stay tuned.