Uh-oh, Spaghettios!

Bruce and I haven't had health insurance in years.  I'm not complaining; just stating a fact.  So last week I took advantage of SLCC's Student Clinic and had a physical.  I had a physical, a pap test (oh, hooray), and some blood labs done.  I was a big girl and I did not cry.

Anyway, they called me with the results of my blood tests yesterday.  Everything looks very good—all normal and healthy . . .

. . . except that my cholesterol is high, my bad lipids are high and my good lipids are low. :-(

I am not terribly surprised by this.  Actually, I wasn't surprised at all—I am slightly overweight, not super active (you know . . . outside of being a mom and full-time student), and have been going through a phase of craving—and indulging in—rich foods for the last eight months or so.  Nothing is "you are a prime candidate for a heart attack tomorrow morning" high.  It's more like, "Keep an eye on this and fix it before it gets bad" high.

>sigh<

OK then.  I can do that.

I told my family yesterday that if I gotta do it, then they gotta do it!  So it's limited red meats (doable), limited eggs (which I don't especially love anyway), and limited dairy (with which I have spasmodic love-affairs—except for ice cream, which is an ongoing affair). Plus we need more veggies and fruits (which I really love but never eat enough of), and more whole grains and brown rice, etc. (which I also really love), and more seafood (which I love discriminately). And less salt, but I don't use much salt when I'm cooking anyway—except on French fries, which are mostly a no-no. That doesn't seem so bad. The trouble is that my kids are getting older and gaining some kitchen skills and they frequently make yummy treats (like two to three times a week), and I'm supposed to cut back on that stuff, too.  Oh, sad day.

Well like I say, if I gotta do it, then they gotta do it.  Sweet treats once a week. And who knows?  Maybe I'll lose a few pounds along the way.  :-)

8:20 p.m. All right.  I've been to ballet class tonight; it's the first night we dressed for class.  I was right—I am probably the only one who's had as much ballet training as I have had.  The teacher knew my name by the end of class.  But I don't know if that makes up for my body.  Bleaaagh.  I feel like that ballerina-hippo from Disney's Fantasia.  >sigh<

So, I embark on another a new adventure! We'll see how this goes.

The Most Important Meal

Everyone says it: Don't skip breakfast! Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!

Well, I often skip breakfast. Not because I'm not hungry; I usually wake up starved! But I look in the fridge and in the pantry and my body says, "Bleh." After about 45 minutes—the amount of time it takes to get the kids up and ready for our daily drive to school—I'm not starving any more, but I do feel ready to eat. So when I get home I can eat something in a nice, leisurely fashion, and stave off my hunger for another few hours. It's good.

Bleh.

Except on Tuesdays and Thursdays when I go straight from the kids' school to my school for Cardio Fitness Class (aka Play Like a Hamster on a Wheel Class). Then I feel a little guilty because not only did I skip the most important meal of the day, but now I'm exercising after having gone my entire night with no food to energize me or get my metabolism going. But it's still not too bad, because the class is only an hour and then I go home and have something to eat in a nice, leisurely fashion, staving off my hunger for a few hours.

But Wednesdays are terrible! On Wednesday mornings I go through the usual routine: Wake up ravenous; peer into the fridge, "Bleh;" get the kids up, get ready for school, etc. But this time I have to go straight from the kids' school to the train station and head up town for six hours of classes. By the time I've made it to my first class I know I could eat something. About an hour into class I am truly starved. After another hour my body quiets down and stops complaining to me, and I can finish the first three-hour class in peace.

But then I have to go to Patterns, the class that requires the most brain work. And the five minute walk from Tailoring to Patterns reminds me that I am starving, and that I have three hours of mind-intensive class to finish, and that the classroom is fiendishly hot. And then the afternoon blahs hit. It makes for a tough class.

Things might be different if this was in my fridge

or my pantry in the morning

Well, yesterday morning was kind of awful. I'd stayed up Tuesday night until 1 a.m. finishing a whole lot of hand-sewing for Tailoring class because I'd missed two weeks in a row due to strep-throaty kids, and was falling behind. This late-night sewing got me almost caught up with the class (and, as a bonus, I got to "watch" BBC's Sense and Sensibility while I sewed). At 1 a.m. I carefully laid my coat-fronts on the ironing board, so as not to wrinkle them, and then headed to bed.

Wednesday morning: I wake up about half an hour early, but still starved; look in the fridge, "Bleh." I think, "Maybe I can work on that late project for Patterns." But instead I start packing my school bags. Between my preparations and getting the kids up and ready for school I spend the entire hour and a half just getting myself ready to go. And now I'm really starving! But it's time to hop in the van and drive off. I throw a few granola bars and a bottle of water in my bag and we leave. As I'm pulling up to Entheos it suddenly hits me: I left my coat pieces lying on the ironing board! After some choice expletives (shoot! dang-it!) I drive back home. And then, thinking that I'm late anyway, I make myself a sandwich—which was kind of bleh, but quick and easy to do. At least I won't be hungry through the first class. I get my stuff together and drive for the train station. I get there just as the train does, and I have to RUN to make it (I am too old for this kind of adrenaline rush!) This gives me a headache and nausea that make me regret the turkey-pastrami sandwich for the next hour.

And then, a miracle happened! I didn't feel hungry throughout my Tailoring class! I didn't get hungry in Patterns until the last 30 minutes or so of class! I didn't feel like I'd rather go to sleep than draw another pattern all afternoon! I felt pleasant all day!

Could it be that I'd jump-started my metabolism for the day? Maybe breakfast really is the most important meal of the day! Whaddaya know?

Of course right now, first thing in the morning, having woke up (woken up? awakened?) feeling starved, and having looked around and gone, "Bleh," I am blogging about breakfast instead of eating it.

Nibble, Nibble, Like a Mouse . . .

The other day Michael told me you could tell that Hansel and Gretel were children, because who else would see a whole house made of gingerbread and candy and decide to eat it?

Um, yeah; he's right.



Yesterday we finally finished this year's gingerbread house. It is so cool! Really, you should come see it before my girls eat all the candy off of it. I've told them they can't eat any of it until everything is way too stale to be desirable—at least a week. We'll see . . . The snow (cotton candy) is already melting today, and the snowmen are tipping over; I don't know how long it will really last.

This is our biggest gingerbread house ever. And it took the longest to make—more than a week, from mixing a triple recipe of dough, to cooking the candy windows, to putting the finishing touches on. But it looks awesome!

If you feel the urge to make a gingerbread house, click here for a recipe. (Or just use the recipe to make gingerbread men.) If you don't want to make a big ole' house, you can just admire our pictures:

putting the candy in the windows

under construction

putting on the candy decor


And, all finished:

left wing

front door and wreath

back of house

Merry Christmas!

The Dynamics of Feeding a Deca-Family

Feeding a family of ten can be a problem. Not that it's harder to cook for ten than it is for one or two; in fact, I think it's easier. (But I've cooked for the entire Relief Society before, and enjoyed it.)

No, the problems arise in considering who will eat what. Once again, this topic is spurred by my Body Image class. We are talking about nutrition right now. So I had to keep track of everything I ate for three days and then turn it in to my teacher. It was a bad three days: baked potatoes (which need butter), meatloaf, lots of salads (which need dressing, although I do use light, and I use it sparingly), missed breakfasts, late lunches, etc. As I talked to Dollie about my atrocious eating, I did make an excuse for myself by saying that it's been harder to do good meals since I've been in school—which is true. As we talked, she said something that made me answer that I only cook ONE meal for the family. Period. If they don't like it, then too bad. She suggested keeping a pot of soup in the fridge for the picky eaters—something like five-bean soup, or corn chowder, which are easy to make. Then they could opt out of dinner, and just heat up the soup.

Well, I still don't want to play restaurant. But, here's the real issue:

Over the course of my kids' lives I've had, all at the same time:

• one or two kids who won't eat any meat unless it is a hamburger
• five or six kids who won't eat any fish or seafood
• one kid who won't eat vegetables—especially if they're green; he won't eat most fruits either
• more kids who think the only edible veggie is corn or raw carrots, and if they see even the most miniscule piece of anything that looks like a veggie cooked into another dish (like a casserole), they will dissect that dish and remove even the tiniest bit of veggie matter
• a couple of kids who don't like rice, not of any color
• three or four who won't touch beans
• one who doesn't like the texture of pasta
• none who eat salad—unless there's twice as much Ranch dressing as veggies, and then I think they only lick off the dressing
• four who won't eat tomato sauce (and all of them prefer Alfredo)
• one who refuses to eat soup (it can't be called "soup" or look like soup)
• two kids who don't like milk; it's only good for wetting their sugary cereal
  
  That pretty much eliminates the entire food pyramid.

Now, if I'm trying to feed everyone, and keep them happy—and healthy—just what am I supposed to prepare? And if I did want to keep a spare, back-up meal in the fridge for them to heat up when I cook something nasty like . . . say, lasagna . . . what would that be? I will admit, though, that the boys get a lot more daring and a lot less picky when they hit about twelve years old. Then they'd eat just about anything—and a lot of it!

No, I will just have to stick with my mantra of, "If you don't like it, too bad. This is not a restaurant." :-)

Weird Dinner Weekend

OK. So after the banana bread dinner on Friday you'd think I'd be more on top of things. But, no. For our last-minute dinner on Saturday night we had Stove-Top Stuffing, instant mashed potatoes (no gravy), zucchini casserole (which is, basically, zucchini in a creamy sauce with stove-top stuffing), and leftover salad. I really need to be more on the ball with the whole dinner thing.

Weird!

Friday was a busy day. Painting cupboards all day, cleaning house and doing a little school-clothes shopping with the girls. So, once again, there was no dinner plan—or not much of one. This isn't entirely new this summer, or unique just to busy Fridays. I just plain old don't want to cook in the heat of summer, especially when I'm in the middle of a big project that has much of my kitchen scattered all over the place.

Anyway, I did have good intentions for Friday dinner. I got out about a pound of chicken and about a pound of shrimp to thaw so I could skewer them up and grill them. Yum! I thought I'd cook some kind of nice rice, maybe grill up some veggies too . . . Not bad. But by the time I got home from the store it was already dinner-time and everyone was starving and I just wanted to take the quickest, easiest route to dinner.

I asked Bruce, Michael and Jason (who were on the computer in the kitchen) what we should have for dinner besides grilled chicken and shrimp. Jason had made some banana bread while I was out shopping, and someone suggested having banana bread as the side-dish. You're kidding! Grilled chicken and banana bread, and nothing else? For dinner?

As I start preparing the meat, we are having this conversation:

Me: That's just weird.
Michael: Well, when I'm hungry, I don't care what I eat as long as it fills my stomach so I'm not hungry any more.
Me: Well then, why don't you just go out and eat grass? :-)

Michael: Well, it has to taste good. Banana bread is good.
Me: Banana bread for dinner? That's just weird!

Bruce: Why? I think it sounds great.
Me: Obviously you are all guys.

Bruce: I think it sounds good. People have cornbread for dinner.
Me, hesitantly: Well, yeah. (But I am thinking, "It's not the same.")

I start thinking fast. I could throw a salad together, and grill up some zucchini slices. I'd like some rice, or potatoes, or something, but there's not much space to work in the kitchen, and it's getting late. It looks like we'll have chicken, shrimp and banana bread for dinner—and the above-mentioned veggies to appease my sense of what's good for the evening meal.

As I'm skewering up the meat,
Brandon: "What's for dinner?"
Me: Grilled chicken, grilled shrimp and banana bread.
Brandon: Sounds good!

Boys are just weird.