Sunday dinners prove to be hard here. It’s the day I want a good, hearty, home cooked meal. Unfortunately, cooking here feels a bit more like cooking at a campout. Minimal dishes, sparse food selection at the store, no base ingredients stocked in the pantry. Today was just one of those days. I tried my best but karma wasn’t on my side.
I bought what was labeled a “slow cooker” in the store, hoping to replace my beloved crockpot. It was obviously quite different, so I knew it would not be exactly what I had hoped. I waited two weeks before I broke it out to use it. Thursday night I made pork chops. It usually takes 4 – 6 hours and they are soft, juicy and fall apart with a fork. I put them in at 1:30pm and the whole thing was cooked and ready to serve by 2:45pm (of course Brian got home at 7pm that night). So much for the SLOW part of the slow cooker name.
Today I had a 15 bean dry soup mix on the menu. Knowing my slow cooker wasn’t going to be slow I waited until 4pm to begin. I put it on low since it seems to have more heating power than I really want. Then we went swimming for an hour. At 5 o’clock I came back upstairs to stir the pot and add the flavoring. I guess I put it too low. Even though it had clicked “ON” and the lights lit up when I set the thing, it was only on the “keep warm” setting. I cranked it up to high and started thinking of dinner alternatives which is what led us to grazing tonight.
Grazing is the term we learned from Anthony when he and my sister lived with us for a year in Houston. It basically means cleaning out the fridge. Tonight I warmed some alfredo, spaghetti and green beans. We all sat at the table but since the quantities were a bit small I decided to wait and eat whatever the kids didn’t finish. Brian must have figured out what was going on because he didn’t dish up anything either. After a while I smiled at him and asked, “Do you think if I skip dinner tonight all together that I’ll lose ten pounds?” He smiled and asked if that was just tonight or a daily plan. We laughed but the kids caught onto what we were saying.
Ben asked, “Why do you want to lose ten pounds?”
I explained that sometimes when a person eats too much or exercises too little their body starts to store fat. Showing signs he didn’t totally understand what I meant prompted me to grab a chunk of flab from my stomach and point out that while I wasn’t super huge, I would probably be better if I exercised that fat away.
Maddie jumped in at that point and said with the most disgusted look I have seen on her face her entire life, “I wish your stomach was normal. It’s poking out down here on the bottom of your tummy. I wish it was just straight instead of with a bump like that.”
Sometimes she cracks me up. I hope she reads this some day when she is in her 30s and calls me up to apologize.
1 comment:
that's awesome! kids are so, well, truthful. I also have to figure out how to lose the muffin top. Ella tells me occasionally when I lean in to whisper good-night (or usually good morning), Mom, you have stinky breath!
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