Friday, August 13, 2010

kids independence

Read today about a celeb who was afraid to let her 16 yr old daughter go off on a plane to visit a friend for two weeks. Something aboutworrying over her and not being able to have her be gone for that long. I am SO not that kind of mother. I CHOSE to send my six year old to an out and about day camp where I willingly put him in the care of other teenagers (the counselors for the most part are pretty young), put him on a bus and send him out into the world to do fun things. My rationale is partly that this summer is already so crazy with the birth and the newborns and the exhaustion of the parents and the integration of the grand-parent carpool train that he might as well have FUN. And the places he is going are things I could never do on my own with him to such a degree and he is having a blast. I could have chosen to send him to arts and craft camp all day or gymnastics or something indoors at the center (like his little sister), but in this case, I feel like I am giving him the opportunity to be an adventurer (in a somewhat controlled environment) and explore what it is to do these things that he would not otherwise have the opportunity to do (movies, ball parks, fun kid places that I've never even heard of before). I actually did choose to send him to gymnastics camp for the middle part of the summer, but he got carried away in the spirit of the specialties camp where he spent the first part of the summer and instead, he chose to stay there with one of his friends and do a bunch of different activities that he got to choose on his own (lots of sports instead of art or music which I would have picked).
This independence is something that I am actually trying to cultivate in him, and reminds me of some of the choices that I have made for myself...(Israel, train station TA to Jerusalem, leaving Kenes) My choices may not have been the best ones at the time, or may have had been hard, but they were ALL mine and they all had actions and reactions that came from making those choices. It's taken me an adulthood to be this innocently independent. Yoni can do it with innocence in his youth with only his own results.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

leftovers

Here's another recipe I just tried because it is what I had in my refrigerator. Can you tell I haven't darkened the door of a grocery store in awhile?

Chicken Salad
1 leftover cooked chicken breast diced into small cubes
1 Tbsp light mayo (I used a big soup spoon to scoop it out)
almost that much Fat Free Italian salad dressing
1 mini cucumber diced into oblivion (I didn't have celery)
pepper to taste

I served it on a bagel thin open faced (thanks mom for providing me some sort of sandwhich bread) with a side of raw baby carrots and cold sweetened iced tea. Was gonna add the raw carrots to the salad and decided that it wouldn't go together so well. And I also wanted to put it on a bed of lettuce which I am also lacking at the moment. While eating it, I decided that it might also go well with some sweet peas, but not a lot of them. [Interesting, that's also pretty much how I like my homemade potato salad.]

Necessity is the mother of invention and right now I am totally winging it.
I am a little tired of breakfast foods and snacks for all my meals....

Monday, August 09, 2010

cooking tips

who knew I'd ever be giving cooking tips...

A lady I know was clamoring on at a birthday party about how she had made a toddler banana birthday cake for her son's birthday and because it was "the cake" and she therefore didn't taste it, she was unpleasantly surprised when it was pretty unappetizing to the adult palate.
So I suggested that whenever I am making a new recipe for a big cake for an event or whatever, I just reserve some of the batter and make a cupcake to bake and try to ensure I know what I am serving. This idea actually came from when I was baking challah regularly on my Fridays off, I would make some lachmaniot to give the kids and Eran before dinner. It made lots of sense to me - I had a little serving to try first of what was to be the star of the show...who doesn't taste their food before they serve it. How else would you know if it was acceptable? On the food shows Eran watches, they are always berating the chefs for not tasting the food when it comes out unappetizing!

Also, on a whim, I was cleaning out the refrigerator of dairy products that were reaching their expiration date. So I made a quiche with no milk (using egg beaters, sour cream and cottage cheese). I went for spinach as the veggie of choice since I hadn't had that in awhile [and I had 3 boxes of chopped spinach staring at me from the freezer, and I couldn't find the portabello mushrooms I wanted to use up.]
Since I like the lemon juice Eran adds to one of the spinach dishes that he makes, I added some fresh lemon juice to the quiche - I figured that without the milk, any extra liquid would be appropriate. It was an extra yummy flavorful surprise. Despite the runniness of the original quiche (I could've baked it longer I suppose, but the edges were burning) the flavors were spectacular. And I think it would have benefitted from having a crust to tie it all together. I'll try it that way next time.

Monday, August 02, 2010

adorable...

Originally posted 7/31/10 19:56 hrs
I know you think life is all about the twins and all their cuteness, and truth be told they are filling out and starting to look like infants and not alien old men.

However, today's post is all about the adorableness of first crushes. Eran's boss's family came to visit from Israel and made it over this afternoon to see the twins for the first time. Now what is interesting is that they have 4 girls of various ages from 12 to 3. The oldest was here for a few minutes before she went to see a movie with some friends and the younger two stayed for several hours. The 6 year old went to school with my older ones and I am pretty sure she was my Yoni's first little crush since one day she went home crying that he threw her shoes over the fence or into the bushes or something. She also wormed her way into spending the night one night [my kids' first and so far only sleepover that lasted the whole night]...I put her off the first time she wanted to stay by telling her she didn't have a toothbrush, so the next time she made sure she had packed a bag to come to our house. She played well with Yael so it wasn't a problem.

So they turned up at the house and Eran knew they were coming but didn't mention it to Yoni and Yael on the off chance that they didn't show up. So it was a bit of a surprise for them. Yael was excited as she always is to have friends come and play. Yoni reacted quite differently. First of all, I like to hide presents and things in my walk in closet in my bedroom. So the kids know that the closet is off limits to them. And lately with so many people stopping by to see the twins, I have shoved even more stuff in bags in the closet so it is now impassable. In any case, the visitors arrived with the little girls and Yoni ran for my closet claiming that he was looking for something-sometimes I put the toys in toy-time-out in there as well, so I thought he might be looking for something specific. Then I realized he was hiding when he crawled up under his dad's clothes and sat on all the shoes (that could not be comfortable). It was the cutest case of shyness around a girl I had ever seen. If he knew how to blush he would have been red from the tip of his head to his toes! Somehow we finally coaxed him out and after the first few minutes of him still being akward, he finally relaxed and they played together (the 3 of them-Yoni, Yael and T... and they tolerated the littlest one who was so excited to finally play with dolls and toys that she entertained herself for the most part)

Eran's my hero.
He took care of the turtle cage with minimal disruption and did not make me deal with it.
Kids still haven't noticed and I'm not telling.