cooking

Chimichurri kid

| patmcg

Molly has become quite the kitchen helper.

Here she is in action making one of her specialities, an Argentinian chimichurri sauce. She has been gradually doing more and more on her own. Tonight, she made the sauce 100% on her own — chopping and mixing parsley, garlic, and more — while I pan-seared some steak to go with it. 🤩

A Very COVID Thanksgiving

| patmcg

If you had asked me a year ago if I wanted to spend all of Thanksgiving week locked down at home with the kids, not seeing any family or friends all week, I would have said, “Uh… no.” But things have changed. The girls and I had a pretty amazing pandemic Thanksgiving to ourselves.

It was so good, in fact, that I forgot to take any pictures of the kids, so this is going to be a mostly photo-free post. 😉

For nine days, we all chilled and barely left the house. The kids got lots of rest and down time. I worked most days, and the girls settled into a relaxed groove alternating between relaxing for a while, and then hanging out for a while. 🤔

At the end of the week, I asked the girls if they ever got bored. “Yesss!” they both said in unison. “But it was good!”

A few highlights:

  • Molly set up a pillow fort in her room dedicated to reading Fever 1793.
  • We had some seriously crazy games of Uno. I didn’t know that game could get so crazy. 🤷🏻‍♂️
  • We watched Jojo Rabbit, an astonishingly beautiful, sad, and funny movie about a Nazi youth. 🙃 I assured the girls ahead of time that it was heartwarming, made fun of those stupid Nazis, and it even had a funny Hitler. 🤔
  • We played some Among Us and had some good laughs.
  • I took a walk with Claire during which we exclusively discussed nuclear power and radiation poisoning. 🤷🏻‍♂️
  • The girls discovered the joys of my PC and worked out a peaceful PC-sharing system. I did not have to get involved. ✌️
  • Claire and I joked a lot about the “most definitely” Roblox guy on Twitch. 😆

I told Molly I was going to have to serve 81 meal portions over nine days, if you could three meals a day for all three of us. That is a lot! I told her I thought we could get that down to 54 portions if we all just skip one meal a day. “Noooo nooo! No!” Molly said. “You’re trying to trick us!” 😆

So we cooked a lot.

We made our favorite “Very-aki” chicken from memory. We made what Claire described as a “modern Mexican Thanksgiving meal”. Between the apple crumble dessert and making Claire’s apple birthday cake, we peeled, cored, and shredded 6 pounds of apples. 😮

Best Thanksgiving ever!

Note the “most definitely” that Claire added to the wall chalkboard. 😆

Just Like Mendl’s

| patmcg

Claire and I love the movie The Grand Budapest Hotel. We’ve watched it together a few times over the years. In the movie, the pastry from Mendl’s not only looks delicious, but it also plays a major role in a prison escape.

The iTunes Extra” included instructions for making the infamous Courtesan au Chocolat. Instead of just idly watching these tantalizing instructions, we decided “Let’s make and taste a Courtesan au Chocolat!”

It’s the perfect pandemic lockdown activity. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Claire did almost the entire recipe herself. The kitchen was a mess, but the result was amazing. It’s a light, creamy, slightly sweet pastry. It tastes even better than we expected. We did not include pick axes to get anyone out of jail, but maybe we will next time. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Way to go on making this happen, Agitha — I mean Claire! 😀👍😋

Chocolate Reindeer Comes to Life

| patmcg

Molly was pretty excited about her Chocolate Reindeer idea and wanted to try it out before we go to Houston for Christmas.  I warned her it may not come out quite like she imaged and to be ready for a mess.  She acknowledged the rick, and then we went all in on making it happen!  Despite my hesitations, I really wanted to make Molly’s holiday invention work too.

Molly and I had a fun time figuring out how to bring  her vision to reality.  It was an interesting challenge and took a fair amount of planning and research!  In the end, it came out a too goopy to, uh, eat, much less bring to Houston.  But it was a fun experiment, and Molly happily ate up her practice Chocolate Reindeer.

I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.

Pound cake

| patmcg

Claire wanted to do some baking, so we picked a lemon pound cake recipe. It was a fun project and an expensive cake – $39 in supplies since I don’t do a lot of baking. At least we’re all set for the next baking project now.

Claire’s Diner

| patmcg

If Claire had a restaurant, she would serve three specialities:

  • Deli Stackers
  • Cereal Cups
  • Tomato Delight
The Deli Stacker is her favorite entree this summer, and onc of Claire’s own inventions.  It is a generous pile of deli-sliced ham and/or turkey, sitting on top of a slice of cheese (preferably Colby Jack).  There is no bread, nor any toppings.  It is pure and simple.  This is what Claire wants most nights for dinner if she can have it her way.

The Cereal Cup is another innovation of Claire’s.  It is like a bowl of cereal, but in a convenient cup.  Fill a small plastic cup with frosted shredded wheat cereal, add milk, and enjoy with a spoon.  Repeat and rinse.  Why settle for a boring bowl of cereal when you can use a slightly more difficult cup?  Seriously, she will not have cereal in a bowl anymore.
The Tomato Delight is a pared down version of something from Rachael Ray, I think.  It is a magical dish that gets Claire to eat an almost unlimited quantity of fresh tomatoes.  Slice a roma tomato into nice bite-sized chunks, then drizzle on some olive oil (“EVOO”), and finally top with lemon juice and sea salt.  Claire had three tomatoes like this just tonight.  I actually had to warn her, “Claire, this is the last tomato for tonight,” as if I were talking about Oreos.  I didn’t want her to overdose on tomatoes.  She does not like many vegetables, but she makes up for it with the Tomato Delight.

No no no no no no no no

| patmcg

As I have stated before, this blog is more about the highlights than the lowlights of raising Claire, so much so that when I go back and read this in 10 years, it will probably seem like even the “terrible threes” was nothing but fun. As sort of a reality check, I like to toss in the occasional reminder that raising Claire is not always 100% fun and sweet. This is the type of thing that happens from time to time…

Tonight, Claire wanted to do some pretend cooking with her playdough. Hey, that’s a great idea. So I set her up with a couple of varieties of playdough and a some plastic plates and cups. That made Claire pretty happy, and then she asked for a spoon. I gave her sort of a leftover spoon that we don’t normally eat with. That way, she was not going to confuse her “playing” spoon with an actual “eating” spoon. When I handed Claire the spoon, she said she wanted a real eating spoon. I told her no, sorry, but we use the playing spoon for playdough. Usually Claire respects this type of rule reluctantly by peaceably. But not tonight. Claire suddenly started yelling “no no no no no no no no no no no no no no” over and over. It went on for literally 30 minutes, with her just sitting there in front of her playdough yelling “no” over and over. I did a few things around the house. Still, “no no no no no!” Finally I asked her to help cook our actual dinner, and that broke the cycle. She was happy again.

Kit gets this treatment much worse than I do. Kit can say, “Look, the sky is blue,” and Claire will respond, “No, it’s not blue. Why did you say the sky is blue?!” in a rather annoyed tone. They say this is a preview of the teenage years, and I can believe it.