One Thousand Words

One of our guests, who I don't know as well, cancelled. This is sad, but we can get together later.

The other one who came is someone we know extremely well so we didn't, uh, we didn't wind up cleaning as thoroughly as we should have.

Everything's on track so far to go into the oven and come out of the oven at the same time.

I wound up making red sauce for the lasagna. If I were making this lasagna again I'd double the ricotta mixture.

Nesko has a new appreciation for what a pain in the butt it is to use lasagna noodles you have to boil instead of no-boil noodles. They absolutely do taste better but it's nice to not scald myself or have a pile of noodles that are sticking together.

Crabgrass by Tauhid Bondia for 11-15-2022

There's two big issues with planning things for Thanksgiving:
1) How to get everything so it's hot and ready to be put on the table at the same time
2) How to plan out what needs to be IN the oven, what needs to be ON the stove, and what can go in a slow cooker.

I'm doing a ham, 325* for 10-15 minutes per pound, which will probably take up an entire oven rack.

I also need to juggle in the oven:

Reheated Lasagna (oven, 375*, 30 minutes, until filling is 165*)
Reheated Broccoli Casserole (oven, 375*, 30 minutes, until filling is 165*)
Mashed Potatoes (stove top)
Gravy (stove top)
Stuffing, Slow Cooker, High, 3-4 hours
Roasted Sweet Potatoes, Slow Cooker, High, 5 Hours

I can fully make, including bake, the lasagna and broccoli casserole ahead of time. Then I can pull them out of the fridge an hour ahead of time and heat them up for 30-40 minutes. The broccoli casserole? I'd put the crunchy cracker stuff on top of the casserole only before heating it up - not at the original bake.

One of the big questions will be if I want to cook red sauce from scratch or not. It's something I can do ahead of time. Even ahead of time, though, it's still time consuming. It tastes so much better though.

Monday:
Double Check All Bakeware and Serveware
Pick Up Grocery Order

Tuesday:
Make Red Sauce?
Cut and Steam Broccoli
Dice Onion, Celery, etc. and store in water
Slice and Dry Bread

Wednesday:
Assemble & Bake Lasagna
Assemble & Bake Broccoli Casserole (NO crumb topping)
Make Stuffing
Peel and Cut Raw Potatoes and store in water
Set the Dining Room Table
Buy Bolillo Rolls

Thursday:

The sweet potatoes need to go in around 10:30.

The stuffing needs to go in at noon.

Appetizers Go Out, Guests Arrive

Casseroles need to come out at 2:00 to come to room temperature.

If I want to eat at 4:00 then I want the ham out around 3:15. It needs to rest before being served, under a tinfoil hat. The time it goes IN will depend on the SIZE of the ham, which I don't know yet because I haven't bought it yet.

If the ham is out at 3:15 then the two casseroles can go in at that point. Just bump the heat, stick them in. Check the temperature after 20 minutes.

The potatoes, peeled and cut previously, needs to go in boiling water immediately when the casseroles go in.

The roux for the gravy needs to be started immediately after that.

Another option, though, is to make half pan lasagna and broccoli casseroles and put them in earlier with the ham so they come out at the same time and rest at the same time. They can all cook at 350*. Since it's all cooked ahead of time we can have more set aside in the fridge as leftovers/for people to take home.

If I had a third slow cooker I'd cook the broccoli casserole in that. I might get a third slow cooker, which I've been meaning to use for a while.

Either way I'm going to have to disappear into the kitchen around 3:00 and the room is so small and poorly laid out that nobody will really be able to come in and help me. I'll have to really make sure I have room to put things, and to work.

It's only going to be 4 adults and 1 picky teenager at most so I'm just going to use our regular plates and cups and things. It's not a big crowd.

I grew up in a kitchen with a parent who was a professional cook for many years, which means that a lot of very basic knife (and general kitchen) safety was burned into my brain from a young age. Never put knives in the sink. Never run with a knife. Always pass a knife to someone handle first. Never touch a knife blade. Dull knives are more dangerous than sharp knives. Don’t use a too-small knife. I even know how to hone a knife on a whetstone. As I’ve said earlier, some of my earliest memories are helping my mom in the kitchen and I don’t really remember a time when I wasn’t actively helping.

Our current kitchen isn’t very usable, for a number of reasons, so I’ve been doing the bulk of my cooking solo. Even though Niko is at that magical age where he wants to help and is capable of helping in some ways, I’ve been curtailing that because it’s just so inconvenient for me. And that’s a wrong headed attitude to have, frankly. So lately I’ve been asking him to help me load and unload the dishwasher, put his dishes in the sink, measure coffee into the coffee maker… and cut red peppers.

Yes, I’ve given my baby a knife.

Several people have mentioned using things like the “Learning Tower,” which is a wooden scaffolding that costs quite a bit of money. If we had the money and the space for it I’d totally consider it, but as it is, Niko is very happy on his 2-step stepladder. We pull it right up to the counter and we practice handing a knife back and forth handle first, and then I give him strips of red pepper to slice in half.

We work on paying attention to what he’s doing, to the cutting board and the peppers. We work on how to hold the knife in his hand. We work on remembering that the blade is sharp. We work on how to hold the food steady. We work on not going too fast. And then he hands the knife carefully back to me and we put the peppers in a bowl, and he eats them all because red peppers are basically the bomb.

I know there are dull knives that people use for toddlers. There’s some plastic lettuce specialty knife that a lot of people laud for its dull blade and inability to puncture skin. I considered getting one of those, but in the end decided that with close supervision using a real knife was the better choice. Knives are sharp. I want my child very aware of that, at all times. I want him to know knife safety, and I want him to develop cooking skills that will last him through his life. If you have young children in your life you may very well make a different choice, and I’d love to hear what you have chosen or will chose. But Niko’s enjoying cutting up his own peppers, and he’s enjoying helping me, and he’s learning a lot while doing so.

How old were you when you started using a sharp knife?

Would you let a 3 year old use a knife?

What would you do?

Technorati Tags: child, cooking, kitchen safety, knife safety, parenting, safety, teaching, toddler

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Happy Birthday to me!

To celebrate, yesterday, I made brownies, and Nesko got me a knife sharpener that was on clearance at Target, because he was tired of hearing me rail at the heavens about how our (sort of) expensive knives are crappy and dull and don’t so much slice things as mangle them terribly.

Today is going to be an especially great day because yesterday? I did every single chore on my chore list, including making dinner and cleaning up after. And I did it while my gall bladder was busy punching me in retribution for drinking a Shamrock Shake. I need to seriously reconsider ever eating food ever again.

If you are interested, this is what is on my list for daily chores:

Make the bed
Refill Humidifier (ok, this isn’t a chore, but it’s on the list so I don’t forget)
Wipe down high chair
Clean off dining room table (this helps keep mail and junk from accumulating)
Sweep dining room floor
Pick up toys in living room
Clear all dishes, clothing, etc from living room
Pick up toys/tidy Niko’s room (he is really too young to help, because “picking up” is too close to “fill and spill”)
Remove all dishes from office
Remove all clothes & towels from office (sometimes one of us will take a shower, then chill in front of the computer while her hair dries a bit)
Wash all dishes (yes! all of them!)
Clean kitchen sink
Clean stove top
Clean kitchen counters
Sweep kitchen floor

It seems like a lot when it’s all typed out, but most of it’s pretty basic easy stuff. And a lot of what I do every day automatically isn’t on the list, like making sure there’s no clothing in the bathroom or on the bedroom floor, or making sure all shoes are on the shoe rack. I also don’t have a designated laundry day because we have a washer and dryer so it’s pretty convenient to do it whenever.

On top of the daily stuff, I also have stuff that gets done once a week.
Monday is cleaning the bathroom and also mopping the kitchen floor, for instance. Tuesday is dusting and sweeping Niko’s room; Wednesday I dust and sweep in the bedroom and change the bed linens; Thursday is dusting and vacuuming in the living room and looking over the sales circulars to make a grocery list and meal plan for the next week; Friday is dusting and cleaning mopping the Dining Room, and grocery shopping. This leaves Saturday and Sunday pretty open for relaxing, doing home improvement, or doing big jobs like cleaning windows.

In an ideal world, Nesko does all the dusting and sweeping and vacuuming. I’m allergic to dust and have (poorly controlled) asthma, so sweeping and dusting are very unhealthy for me. As unhealthy as letting all that dust lie around? The jury’s out on that one. I’m not as poorly off as one friend of mine who physically leaves the house when her husband cleans to avoid having an asthma attack, but yeah. In reality, I wind up doing the dusting and sweeping and vacuuming and try really hard to remember to use my inhaler and keep taking my allergy medication to try and keep allergy symptoms to a minimum.

I keep my list of chores on the fridge, and I cross stuff off when I finish it. This helps me feel a sense of accomplishment, and also helps me be mindful of stuff I don’t do one day so I can be sure of doing it the next. With the exception of dishes, I don’t really stress over not doing every single thing every single day. The world won’t come to a crashing halt if the dining room table has some mail and dirty cups sitting on it over night. Leaving dishes in the sink, though, really makes mornings more difficult.

One thing I want to improve on is meal planning. I do a lot of from-scratch cooking, and have a lot of cook books and recipe magazines. But despite my abundance of potential meal ideas I tend to make the same stuff over and over (chicken soup, beef stew, chili, oven fries, roasted cauliflower, lasagna, pasta bake in general, 40 cloves of garlic and a chicken, mashed potatoes, split pea soup, black beans and sausage, macaroni and cheese made with a roux, buffalo pulled chicken) or wuss out and toss some tater tots and dinosaur shaped chicken in the oven while saying TWO TEARS IN A BUCKET. When Nesko was working from 2pm till 10pm every day that was a lot easier to manage. We had a hot lunch together every single day, plotted out ahead of time, and he had leftovers for dinner at work. It was time saving and super economical! Now his schedule is scattered and he works at different times over the week, and we aren’t home together as often for meals. So it’s like “ehhhhh…. it’s me and the kid, chicken nuggets it is.”

I’m thinking of putting together a binder with a meal plan for the week with space for notes and a shopping list with all the recipes for that week behind the list, and go-to recipes (annotated!) behind THAT and organized by category. I need to find an appropriate binder, though.

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Technorati Tags: month 24

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Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress.

We hosted Christmas Dinner this year, the first time we’ve REALLY hosted a holiday meal. We’ve participated in pot luck in the past (including one year I made a turkey and it was the best tasting turkey IN THE ENTIRE WORLD and I’d never made a turkey before), and one year we half-assed it to the point of not bothering to check to see how long a spiral sliced ham needed to cook and wound up pan frying slices of ham for everyone’s dinner.

This year we made lasagna, cauliflower gratin, mashed potatoes, peas, 2 kinds of rolls, and a spiral sliced ham (well, the ham only needed to be heated up; it was already cooked). All of this, except for the ham, was made from scratch.

There was also cheese and crackers, pumpkin-cranberry muffins, and 4 types of cookies, as well as sugared almonds and spiced mixed nuts. The muffins, cookies, and nuts were also made from scratch.

This was a lot of cooking. I have a 9 month old who needs to be within touching distance of me at all times. I did a lot of prep cooking while he napped or was in bed.

Whew!

Nesko has never personally had to work to host a holiday meal. In the past, we either went to my parents’ or else his family hosted, which is to say that he sat around and drank and talked while Teh Wimmens busted their asses cleaning and cooking. Which meant that Nesko kept fluttering around the kitchen on Christmas early afternoon waving his hands and exclaiming that Christmas “was ruined.”

It was hilarious. And of course nothing was ruined.

The ham and lasagna went in then came out and were covered in foil to stay warm, and the cauliflower and potatoes went in. The peas were microwaved. The rolls were cooked the day before (but I should have heated them up in the oven but I was afraid they’d dry out or something).

Oh! There was also devilled eggs and fudge that didn’t set right (and I need to make a cake so I can melt that fudge down and turn it into frosting).

Next Christmas we are going to make appetizers, cookies, and pie. And if people want actual food we can have sandwiches or something. But people were very interested in the appetizers and were kind of full when the main meal came out. Sure, we could just skip appetizers, but they are MUCH easier to throw together than a meal is.

When we finally have a million billion dollars, we’re going to remodel our kitchen and put in two ovens to make life easier.

Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress.

We are, obviously, not going to be able to move into the new apartment by the end of this month. Which, yeah, means we’ll have to pay an extra month’s rent on this crap hole we’re currently in (I use crap hole in the literal sense, here, as every time someone upstairs takes a crap and flushes the toilet, water falls onto anyone taking a crap on our toilet. Or a pee. Whatever. There is a hole above our crapper.) but also gives us more time to clean and paint the old place, gives us more time for roach abatement, and allows for a less stressed move. So it’s more good than bad.

I’ve been packing stuff from the living room and dining room, mostly books and vases and candle holders and the like. You know, stuff that can be boxed up and not missed for awhile. Although I do want to get at some of those books. I started in on the kitchen today, even knowing that we won’t be moving for awhile. We have one million glasses, many of them cute little juice glasses, and the extras are now all packed up. Shot glasses: packed up. Extra little bowls: packed up. The remnants of the nesting glass mixing bowls that survived Nesko’s glass mixing bowl rampage: packed up. Cookbooks: packed up. Several pans: packed up.

By “several” I mean “a very large box full, and then some more added in on the top of the box of cook books.” I went through cabinets and drawers and asked myself Very Hard Questions. “Am I likely to make a cake in the next month? No? In the box! How about a pie? Eight pies? No? In the box! A cheese cake? No! In the box!” One might question the wisdom of having enough pie pans to even make eight pies, but those people obviously hate Thanksgiving and Pie and The American Way Of Gluttonous Life. Also, several of those pie pans are glass and I make casseroles or cakes in them.

I should probably go through and pack up pantry items we aren’t going to use, like the five bags of semi sweet chocolate chips and the two bags of milk chocolate chips and the bag of red hots and the six cans of sweetened condensed milk and… well. You never know when those will come in handy. What if I want to make my fudgey chocolate one-pot cookies which calls for flour, butter, chocolate chips, sweetened condensed milk, walnuts, and vanilla? I could omit the walnuts, sure, but everything else is necessary and the cookies only take about ten minutes to mix up, and then they go in the oven. Fast! Easy! Tasty! Impossible to make without ingredients!

…

Yeah. I’m not going to make cookies in the next month.