A Texture Breakthrough Tonight!

I made "Mac 'n Cheese" tonight with quinoa, instead of pasta, for the 1st time. Guess who didn't like it?  I have been struggling with B's dislike for quinoa for a couple of years now.  He doesn't like the texture.  He also does not like brown rice because it's texture is more firm and crunchier then white rice.  However, tonight I realized that when we went to a friend's house last year, and she sprinkled a sesame seed and sea salt mixture over the brown rice she served, B gobbled it up!  I am now thinking his mind thought the firmness, or texture, came from the seed/salt mixture instead of believing it was the brown rice, itself...


After a bite or two of the quinoa 'n cheese tonight, B said, "Mama?  I'm sorry, but I don't care for the mac 'n cheese with quinoa.  I really don't like the feel of quinoa at all."  Then I thought of something.  I served My Made-Up Mexican Dump Recipe, which contains quinoa, for dinner on Friday and he ate the entire serving I gave him - no complaints.  In fact, it dawned on me that he's eaten that dish every time I've served it with no complaints.  When I said to him tonight, "It's funny that you say you don't like quinoa at all, because you ate your entire bowl of My Made-Up Mexican Dump Recipe with quinoa Friday night."  His eyes got big and he said, "I didn't know that had quinoa in it!"

So, what is the issue?  Does he not like it when he is told there is quinoa in the dish or is it truly a texture issue?  As I've pondered this over the last 4 hours, I think it is a moisture issue (which falls under texture, as far as I'm concerned).  I make My Made-Up Mexican Dump Recipe with pureed, thin, runny salsa in it, making it a fairly moist dish.  Homemade Mac 'n Cheese, however, has a thick cheese sauce that clings to your starch of choice and definitely tastes differently.  I am so excited with this breakthrough!!  Quinoa is not off the plate; I just need to make sure it's served in moist dishes for him.  Do you know what it is like to "unlock" a mystery in a child with special needs or sensory processing disorder or learning disabilities, etc?!  It ranks up there with unsolicited hugs/kisses/"I love yous" from your child, winning the lottery, best day of your life moments!  I'm so excited, I don't know if I'll be able to fall asleep tonight and I can't stop grinning!

Easter

How was your Easter?  Ours was relaxing and thankful.  I usually work on Sundays, but since the previous Tuesday was my last day at work, I was home, doing what I love best - spending time with my mens and cooking!  The kitchen is my happy place; can you tell?  ;o)  The Masters played this weekend, so the hubs watched that all day while B spent 9 hours outside, playing with his "brother from another mother" as he calls his best bud from up the alley.

Since B has food allergies, the Easter Bunny does not fill his eggs with candy; B gets coins.  The eggs could be empty, for all he cares; it's the hunt that he loves and I'm sure your kids are the same.  This year, B received coins in most of his eggs, but 10 of them contained coupons.  My friend, Julie, a fellow homeschooler, shared these Easter printable coupons on her Pinterest account, Creekside Learning.  They were a huge hit!  B shook every egg he found before opening it.  The 1st egg with a coupon in it did not shake.  He thought it must be empty, but opened it anyway.  After reading the coupon, he was so excited.  After that, the eggs that didn't shake were more valuable to him than the ones with coins in them because of the anticipation of what the coupon would offer him.  I totally recommend them for next Easter; print one page, cut out and stuff in the eggs.  No running to the store, no spending money.  And B didn't even realize that this year, there were no gifts in his Easter basket.  The Easter Bunny left his empty basket hanging on the inside doorknob of B's room so when he got up, he grabbed the basket and started scouring the house for eggs to put in it.  Win-win!

Work, Cooking and a Gift Card Giveaway

After 4+ months as a WOHM, last Tuesday was my last day.  The nature of the customers I dealt with was unlike any I'd ever experienced before.  Rudeness, disrespect and interruptions plagued most of my interactions, no matter how friendly and respectful I was to them.  It took a toll on me physically and emotionally and affected me outside of work.  Plus, the hubs and I sat down and went over the budget and discovered that the cost for me to work was not worth it.  55-60% of my salary went to gas and tolls and another 30% went to daycare expenses for B.

I don't think I can express just how happy and relieved I am to be back home!  I have been cooking non-stop and the hubs made me stop b/c we ran out of room in the refrigerators and freezers.  LOL  I've made spaghetti sauce, a new salsa recipe I found on Pinterest, a double batch of the perfect Italian meatballs, Meatball-Stuffed Garlic Rolls, My Made-Up Mexican Dump Recipe, pizza, ham, hash, green bean casserole with homemade mushroom sauce, brownies...I'm in Heaven, back in my kitchen!

Meat-ball Stuffed Garlic Rolls - YUM!

My Made-Up Mexican Dump Recipe.  I used a homemade salsa this time, a copycat recipe of Chili's yummy salsa!

And I want y'all to share in my happiness.  So, I am giving away a $20 restaurant gift card good at Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Longhorn Steakhouse, Bahama Breeze and Seasons 52.  It was awarded to me by my employer for excellent customer service.  :o)  To enter my giveaway, leave a comment stating your favorite dish at your favorite restaurant (does not have to be one included in the gift card) under this post on my Facebook page or reply to this post on Twitter.  Entry posts must be made by 11:59pm ET on April 15, 2012.  Winner will be randomly selected and notified on April 16, 2012.  Good luck!

Homeschool Notes and Laundry

A few weeks ago we read Detectives in Togas by Henry Winterfeld as part of a History lesson.  I really did not like this book but B, of course, did.  The 1st sentence on the back cover is, "A hilarious whodunit in Ancient Rome."  Not.  I did find one line, near the end, funny but nothing was hilarious.  I'm glad we're done with it.  But, once again, love that I am pushed out of my reading comfort zone to expose us to new works.

Recently, B was spending forever on a creative writing assignment one day and we were not able to get anything else done that day.  I was getting impatient, but then realized he is just like I was with creative writing assignments in school.  I remember the days in elementary school when we were given a Xerox (do kids nowadays know that word??) picture and told to write a story about what was happening in that picture on one side of loose leaf paper.  While some kids struggled to fill a page, I was on page 4 and still going when the teacher told us time was up and we had to turn in our one-pagers.  I consistently got marked off for my lengthy stories.  The teachers said that, although they appreciated my creativity and ability to spin a tale, I was unable to follow directions and contain my story to one side of a sheet of loose-leaf paper, so I lost points.  I will gladly postpone B's History and Science lessons now to allow his creative juices to flow...

B was recently reading to me about weather and I was following along.  He came to the word, "disappear" and read "disapperate" instead, and I thought nothing about it!  We seriously need to detox from Harry Potter.

B told me the one thing he misses from public school is yearbooks.  He looked forward to getting those at the end of the year and getting his friends', and teachers', signatures.  So, we are going to have to make us a yearbook!

B and I were in the car and One Republic's song Secrets came on the radio.  A line in that song is - "I'm gonna give all my secrets away."  B says, "Maybe one of them will be the lady's secret from Moves Like Jaggar and we'll finally know what her secret is."  LOL!  I love how that boy connects dots!

The hubs is notorious for spilling whatever he is eating or drinking on his clothes.  And over the years, out of necessity, I have become an expert at stain removal.  Since I have been working on the opposite schedule as the hubs, he hasn't been able to communicate to me what clothes of his have stains.  Evidently he's been placing the stained clothes in places where he thought I would see them.  I haven't seen them.  So recently, I discovered his new strategy - he placed his stained clothes in my hamper.  LOL!  Very smart of him!

Cobb Salad

I love salads, but they rarely ever taste as good as they do in a restaurant when I make them at home.  However, my Cobb Salad is an exception.  Yes there is some effort to wash and chop and cook, but the end result is so worth it!  Especially when you line up the ingredients like I did in the picture, above.  I think my presentation is Food Network worthy.  ;o)  So here's how I built it:

• On the bottom is chopped romaine and iceberg lettuces, but you use whatever greens you prefer
• I grilled some chicken breasts in Wegmans' Basting Oil but I have also cut up ham and turkey lunchmeat from the deli into ribbons
• Hard-boiled a couple of eggs and ran them through my mini-chopper, but you can just slice if you prefer
• Diced a red onion
• Cut up an avocado
• Cut some grape tomatoes in half because, as good as they taste, the explosion that occurs when you bite into a whole one is not pretty
• Crumbled up some Feta cheese
• I ran out of room for the cooked and crumbled bacon in the salad bowl, so I served that on the side and we sprinkled it over our portions of salad on our plates.

It a one dish meal!  You can serve some bread on the side or not.  Enjoy!

TastyKitchen.com's Scalloped Hasselback Potatoes

I have drooled over this recipe since I found it on my very 1st day on Pinterest.  Scalloped Hasselback Potatoes.  What a beautiful sight to behold!  I have been wanting to make them for so long, and today I finally did it.  They were worth the wait.  I, of course, had to make adjustments to the original recipe, and have noted them, below.  Please check out the original recipe and give them a try!

I scrubbed, dried and sliced russet potatoes almost all the way through, and alternated thin slices of butter and Parmigiano Reggiano cheese in the slices.  I drizzled the potatoes with Wegmans' Basting Oil, since I am allergic to olive oil, and sprinkled freshly ground pepper and sea salt on top.  I lined a sheet pan with foil and baked in the oven at 400 degrees for 40 minutes.

There was so much liquid on the pan from the melting butter, that I moved them to an 8"x8" baking dish after the 40 minutes.  Then I poured heavy cream over each potato, sprinkled with cheddar cheese and put them back in the oven for another 10 minutes.

Here is the hubs' potato with peas and sliced, grilled sirloin steak.  I topped my potato with sour cream.

Easiest. Best. Man Dinner. Ever.

 

The hubs is one of those people who can eat fresh tomatoes, but cooked tomatoes give him heartburn.  That makes it challenging to make dinners on a budget or make quick dinners for our family since he and I are now both working full-time but on opposite schedules.  Most budget meals involve a tomato base with various ingredients.  *sigh*  I love tomato products - tomato sauce, tomato paste, crushed tomatoes, diced tomatoes, ketchup, pizza and I make my own spaghetti sauce.  None of which, agree with the hubs' tummy.  So here is my easy-breezy, go-to meal for him that both me and B will eat.

Take a 16oz pkg of frozen meatballs and dump it in a crockpot (this fits perfectly in my 1.5 qt one.)

  

Pour a can of beef gravy over the meatballs.

Put the lid on, turn to high and set a timer for 1 hour.  That's it.

Once done, I put them in a Tupperware container for the hubs to reheat tomorrow.   He'll make rice or noodles to serve them over with a veg on the side and be in hog heaven.  I told you it was the easiest!