Test ONE!

My baby boy is turning ONE - so before I have another 10-month-delayed postpartum incident, let me get to the point.

I had been trying to decide whether to host Houston's party at our house, or go somewhere cool like Kaleidoscope. The pros of somewhere else: NOT CLEANING. The pros of staying home: not spending money to rent a facility (although it may be THE coolest place for a newly-budding toddler), letting Houston relax in his own environment (I don't know WHERE he gets his shyness from... cough, cough), and not being limited to certain dates and times.

Soooo... obviously the pros for staying home outweigh the negatives - especially in these times when we're trying to save as much money as possible. So the Domestic Dunce's FIRST test is Houston's big birthday BASH! I am hoping to clean, cook and hostess my first major event (other than ones for friends who already know me and don't really care) for friends and family on March 6!

That means I have a little over ONE month to get this house in tip top shape, my recipes in order, and my prettiest outfit ironed. It may sound minor, but this is the first test to help me turn from Domestic Dunce to DOMESTIC DIVA! 

I was psyched to find two last slices of bread for my sandwich this morning. I was NOT psyched that they were the heels. I thought I was the queen of ranting... but I think this guy hates bread heels more than me:

Week 1 - success!

As I slid the pork roast into the oven tonight, I thought back, one week ago to my pork attempt/fiasco last week, and realized amidst all my struggles, that I had been successful in my cooking debut. I cooked meals 4 out of 5 weekdays last week (and one well-deserved Panera break with my favorite neighbor!), which is a huge step up from ONE per week.

It's the start of a new week, which means I'll probably need another trip to the grocery store this week. Any suggestions? Comment or email me!

And PS - thanks for the HUGE support since the start of this blog! Keep reading for what's sure to be new and exciting, and probably dangerous, experiments in the house! :)

Even the best cooks were dunces once

Justin and I shared a delicious dinner at my grandmother's house last night - she is an amazing cook. Nothing gourmet or fancy... just great home cooking. 

Yet she told me a story of when she first got married and started cooking for my grandfather, and decided to make him a pie. She had heard that, when in doubt, add an egg. So she whipped up an apple pie and threw in an egg for good measure. She set the pie on the windowsill to cool (old school, right?) and when my grandfather came home from work, sliced into it. And there, amidst the apple filling, were scrambled eggs.

...and he ate it anyway.

I guess there's still hope for me yet - maybe when I'm 70 I'll finally have my act together!

Ode to....YOU?

You can have an "Ode to" too! Send me your favorite recipe and let my try my hand at it! Remember, I'm a recovering dunce, so leave the Julia Child stuff to Julia... I need the basics for now. Or, if you're aiming for a humorous read, send the Julia stuff too.

Ode to Sarah Smith

So dinner started out a bit tragic... but ended up decent!

I found two things that make me a better chef - confidence and pinot noir, and believe it or not, the pinot helps the ol' confidence factor and it works in a happy cycle - the better I feel, the more I drink, the more I drink, the more confident I feel.

So it started at Hannaford yesterday when I bought the ol' pork tenderloin. I kinda thought it would be like the roasts that are tied up with string? Big and loggish? But this thing, labelled "whole pork tenderloin" looked more like an elephant's penis. Long, skinny, pink. I brought it home and thought about it for a while more while searching for a home in my fridge for the thing... it felt too dirty to mix in with the rest of the food in my meat drawer. I wondered how it would look when it was done. It had to change form in the oven or something, right?

I had a recipe that sounded delicious from my college friend, Sarah Smith (not related, unless you trace our lineage back to John Smith... lover of Pocohantas). But when I unwrapped the penis, I started doubting myself. I had Justin run back to the grocery store and buy some thick piece of meat, but after confirming with Sarah that it SHOULD look like a penis (really?) I felt a bit better. (Side note: anyone have a recipe for pork end roast?) Here's the recipe: one pork penis (j/k... it's funny in my own mind only because I'm still drunk), a bag of baby carrots, two cut up potatoes, two jars of sweet and sour sauce. Put all the ingredients in a glass baking dish and dump the sauce over the whole thing. Bake in the oven for an hour, covered, at 375 for an hour.

EASY!

Except apparently, my oven sees tinfoil and just shuts off.

WTF?! Every time I cook something covered with tin foil, it just doesn't cook. Sure enough, I took the loin out an hour later, unwrapped it, and the whole thing looked exactly the same as it had an hour earlier. I texted Sarah in a panic, and she told me to try uncovering and cooking for a half hour.

Sure enough, 30 minutes later the tenderloin was cooked PERFECTLY. It was amazing! The veggies were still a little crunchy, but my crowd liked them better that way anyway.

Oh, did I tell you I was cooking for GUESTS? Like I said, I was drunk. And everything worked out fine. Self-confidence and wine. The perfect recipe.

TenderLOIN?

Does the LOIN part of tenderloin mean penis shaped? Because I bought a pork tenderloin at Hannaford for a recipe for dinner tonight and was slightly embarrassed to check out at the register. I swear my face turned red just taking it out of the package... just wondering.

Check back later for an update on penis dinner tonight :)

I'm gonna make MILLIONS...

...when I invent the BEST accessory EVER for other "Domestic Dunces" like myself.

You know when you find a really great recipe in a cookbook, but you read the list of ingredients and go, "Shallots, what the eff are shallots? Welp, I'll figure it out when I get to the grocery store." Then you get to the grocery store and realize that no, you will never ever find that mystery ingredient...?

GPS FOR GROCERY CARTS! Type in the ingredient, and it navigates your cart STRAIGHT to the necessary food product. How friggen awesome would that be?

I spent 20 minutes looking for FOOD COLORING Wednesday morning, only to realize they had NONE! I knew where it was supposed to be, but if I'd had a GPS on my grocery cart, I would have realized earlier that they were sold out, instead of scouring through the beer aisle wondering if maybe they had some special food dye end cap or something.

Welp, see you poor suckers later - I'm off to get a patent, head off to Shark Tank, and make enough money to HIRE myself a gourmet chef.

THE recipe

Sooo... it's been awhile. You can blame Justin for that. He thought he did the impossible - catch a virus on a Mac! We were really kicking ourselves about NOT installing anti-virus software, but turns out the ol' girl's fine. Phew. It was really rough not being able to use Facebook for 24 hours.

So about that cooking thing. It's been a while there too. I've enjoyed my old friends, Domino and Spaghetti-o lately. Oh well, I'll be back at it after the weekend. I promise. Kinda.

In the meantime, chew on this fabulous family recipe, called "The Recipe"

1 serving = 1 cup cooked elbow noodles, 1 slice of American cheese broken into 4s and jammed into the noodley concoction, 1 mini can of spicy V-8 poured lovingly over the top. Mmm. Poor man's spaghetti, and 1 whole serving of veggies. God knows we don't get many of those in this household!

Oh! And so psyched to start reading my new cooking for babies book - we'll see. So far he's the only one getting square meals, a la Gerber, Earth's Best and Beech Nut. Phew.

Oh, F*#@!

Typically the Gap isn't the place where you're dropping F bombs...

unless you find your baby dangling from the bottom of his stroller, looking up at you with his head on the seat and his feet dangling on the hardwood floor. Apparently "dunce" moments don't just happen at home. Really, this is something that would only happen to me.

Justin and I were shopping at the mall and he decided to try on some jeans. I had been holding Houston because he was a bit antsy (my baby? nahhh) and Justin had been pushing his stroller. Naturally, it's nearly impossible to hold a wiggle worm and push a stroller, so I bribed him back into his seat with some puffs (God and Gerber's greatest contribution to baby food). Justin would only be in the changing room for a few minutes, I figured, and Houston was so squirmy and agitated, I consciously decided NOT to buckle him in to his stroller. It's not like I forgot, I just was lazy and irritated.

So we were browsing in a little nook, waiting for Justin, when I looked down and saw Houston sink, quickly, out through the bottom of his highchair. I literally threw the shirt I was looking at, and dropped a rather loud F bomb in the process, running around the stroller like it was a game of duck, duck goose. He was at such an awkward angle (kind of like a backwards L?) that I couldn't lift him by the armpits. I had to find his chunky butt and push him back up through the stroller into a sitting position. He never cried or anything, just looked at me like, wtf, mom?

I'm pretty confident that no one else witnessed my 10 seconds of public humiliation/bad parenting, but I learned my lesson - no matter what, buckle in the baby.

"This was back in the day, when my mom cared about me and my safety."  ~Houston

SUCCESS! Royalties to be split this way: 40% Me, 30% Him, 30% Crock Pot

YES!!!!!

I made a meal that Justin said, without prompting, "This is a 10! I'm going back to get more after the baby goes to bed." YES YES YES!!

Okay, so he made it.

But I found it on the internet, and it was just a crock pot recipe, so yeah I guess he made it, but all he had to do was throw 4 ingredients in the pot and push "on" right? Finding it took way longgger. Psh.

So here it is: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Slow-Cooker-Dump-and-Go-Cheesy-Chicken/Detail.aspx

Slow cooker dump and go cheesy chicken - which really doesn't make it out to the gloriousness it is. I have a problem with the word "dump" in title of a recipe, but regardless, it was sooo good. Even Houston was diving into my lap for another bite. And I almost forgot that the rice I cooked when I got home as a side dish was just a little bit too watery. Why is rice, water and a stove top so IMPOSSIBLE to perfect? Anyone have a clue here? I'd love to be enlightened.

But I can't let something as small and bland as rice deter me from my success, and fine, his success too.

Shredding Meat aka: Shredding Any Ounce of Dignity You've Ever Had

DAY ONE! Time to do some cooking! I decided to devote January and February to improving my cooking skills - so last night I created my first, reformed meal.

So I climbed up on top of my counters (really) while my son Houston sat on the floor, thumping tupperware with a wooden spoon, casually glancing up at me as if saying to himself, what the hell is she doing now? I hauled the ol' crock pot down from the top shelf of the corner cupboard and nearly fell backwards onto the hardwood floor trying to get my post-baby-body ass back onto the ground. (Side note: any other mommies out there lose all sense of grace and poise when they had their babies? I STILL feel like a bumbling idiot sometimes!). Houston startled as I nearly came crashing down beside him... then went back to banging. Crisis averted.

I flipped my laptop around to face me and carefully followed the two whopping directions for "Slow Cooker Barbeque" from allrecipes.com:

Directions

1. Place roast into slow cooker. Sprinkle with garlic powder and onion powder, and season with salt and pepper. Pour barbeque sauce over meat. Cook on Low for 6 to 8 hours.
2. Remove meat from slow cooker, shred, and return to slow cooker. Cook for 1 more hour. Serve hot.

I thumped the roast in the pot, wondering what those strings were for that were tied around my meat. So I typed, "Do you cut off the strings on a roast?" into google, and welp, what do you know? You leave 'em on there! Things were going great - I sprinkled the spices onto the roast with the nonchalance of Rachel Ray, and dumped the barbeque sauce on with the finesse of Julia Child.... cooking isn't so hard after all! 

... then 6 hours later passed.

After texting my mother in law, I realized that my next task of shredding may be a bit more involved that I thought. She told me to use two forks and just pull the meat apart, but my meat had so much fat, that I had to really PULL the forks apart with all my graceful strength. Obviously it eventually ripped apart, with such a sudden unexpected tear that the two pieces sloshed to the edges of the pot and barbeque and meat juices and liquid fat went flying across the counter and my apron-less shirt! Note to self: invest in an apron. I was literally SWEATING by the time I was done shredding the meat and cutting fat out of the meat. But finally, I was done. The meat cooked for another hour and we ate it over cheap Target hamburger buns. Not bad for a first meal - we both gave it a 6.5 out of 10, and Justin even said he'd eat it again some day. 

The crock pot is still sitting in the sink, as I type, a layer of Dial and juices floating for the past 24 hours. But hey, I don't want to shock the system too early. My cleaning focus will be in March or something. Try the recipe yourself and let me know how YOU do: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Slow-Cooker-Barbeque/Detail.aspx

New Year, New Resolution...

I was sitting in the teacher's lunchroom, sniffing, yet again, these delicious concoctions coming out of the microwave and toaster oven - jealous as I heated up yet another Smart Ones frozen meal. I imagined myself, sitting at their dinner table just 18 hours earlier, sampling their lasagnas and chicken caccitores as they came out of the oven... fresh, hot, delectable.

Lasagna is made in the oven. Right?

See, this is my first problem. I don't know how to cook. At all. But it's the first of many problems. I can't cook, or sew, or clean because I never learned the proper way to do any of those things. I always truly believed, all those times when my mom tried so desperately to teach me, that my future husband would not only know how to take care of these silly and mundane tasks, but excel at them.

And then, 15 years later, I got married.

This blog is an attempt, a resolution to myself and to my family, to learn to be domestic. I'm not trying to demean women or "put them where they're supposed to be" by any means. I'm a working woman, and now a working mom, and love my job. But I want to be a better contributor to my family. I want to learn how to create nutritious meals. I want to be able to repair the holes in my little boy's jeans. I want to learn how to set a table and have a dinner party and have some sense of etiquette. I want to feel like I am in control of my home - not overwhelmed and out of place in it.

So this is my resolution for 2010. To gain control of my house. To take back this $240,000 investment and make it more valuable than money can buy. I hope you'll follow me on my adventures in discovering my own home, and my own (dis?)abilities. And if you were a little girl, like me, who believed her prince charming would be more of a housemaid than a life partner, this blog is for you too.