Shore journal

Saturday, June 21st, 7:44 AM Never fails. No sooner do I sit with my coffee than everyone else wakes up. Everything is packed, but I have yet to shove it …

Some new things

A couple of announcements:

• I am feeling ambitious this weekend, so I added a new entry to my slowly growing Snapguide page, on how I make my favorite chili. There are also a couple of other guides there, so check them out.
• I also launched (sort of) another blog I have been wanting to write. It’s called Indefinite Articles. It will be the place where I explore the art and craft of writing through my own work, and others I follow. Please take a look and follow me there if you like. I appreciate all feedback.

Goldfish and eggs

“No, we have to go now!” My Dolly stood in front of me with that look on her face, insistent on going to the pet store. We inherited a few …

Viva la fajita

Holy lactose intolerance! said I to myself as I suddenly halted in my kitchen.
A huge plastic bowl, brimming with a two-toned blend of shredded cheddar and jack, sat warping my kitchen table and intimidating the guests. There had to be eight pounds of it in there. If someone had carved a life-sized calf out of cheese, then shredded it, it would not have matched this. Enthralling.
On a recent bright Saturday, we were hosting a small family lunch to celebrate Dolly’s First Communion. Everything was great–the house was clean, everyone looked nice, the beer was icing, and lunch was arriving. The stars had eased into alignment.
Actually, lunch was the only part of the constellation we weren’t sure of. We had asked Dolly’s opinion, and the chance to pick lunch spun her into a tirade of pleading for fajitas. Not sure why she was stuck on the idea, and neither was she, but no matter.
With good cooks around, we usually don’t cater. It can be expensive and risky. Plus, we avoid too many leftovers, which becomes tiresome for both my palate and my ears (“Hot roast beef sandwiches, again?! Awwww, maaaann…”).
But when we thought on it, we decided “Great idea!” Because it was! No cooking! Easy clean up! And fun, too. Since half of our guests were grade-school kids, and we all like this kind of thing, it was a win all around.
Or so I thought.
Just ordering proved challenging. Our order was too small, or they were either booked or way too costly (a mortgage payment is a bit much to ask). Our southeastern Pennsylvania hometown isn’t overpopulated with southwestern-specializing caterers.
But perseverance rewarded. Relieved, we told them our story and worked out a menu that, on paper, was about right. And just to make sure, at the last moment we added an extra taco platter. Better a little too much, we reasoned, than not enough.
But, instead of the “couple of dozen family members” my wife described, the caterer apparently heard “couple of dozen football players.” We unpacked super-sized platters, and what we eventually realized were double orders of everything else that went with them. Salsa, cheese, hot sauce, tortillas, dips, all of it. There seemed to be enough for an entire week of training camp.
To make it even better, the sight of this bounty somehow shorted the hunger impulses in most of the guests. Hardly anyone ate. Few would even take anything home. We guilted my brother-in-law into taking a couple of meals’ worth of stuff, and we found out later he went to another party and fed eight of his friends.
So, it was up to us. I actually lost count of how many fajitas I ate. The kids got school lunches in tortillas every day that week. I told them to stop asking what was going to be for dinner. On more than one occasion, I swore I heard them bickering in Spanish.
Eventually, we got through it with taste buds intact, and none the worse from it. The jalapeño taste wore off. We had to think about dinner again. Routine resumed.
Buddy’s birthday is coming up in a few weeks. We’ll make him the same offer we made Dolly. He’ll probably just ask his grandmothers to cook.

Angry and Tired

“I think that I like Angry and Tired,” considered my second child, once asked which of the Seven Dwarves is his favorite.
I laughed about this recently, because angry and tired described how I felt after another too-long day. But there was still the need to concoct another last-minute, un-terrible dinner plan. The end of the work day hardly means the end of work for the day, and I’m used to it, but figuring out a decent meal can be the last thing I want to deal with.
This is chiefly how we fall into one of the many convenience traps. We’ve used, for example, nearly all of the nearby pizza places (kids arguing about whose pie to get is a sign of pizza-overload, but, some of these places are pretty good). I have more than one smartphone app for ordering out. The freezer picks for us more often than I’m comfortable admitting.
Little things, but add them all up, and it’s Saturday-morning blocks of cooking shows accompanied by big sides of guilt.
While I’m probably bothered more than necessary, it doesn’t help that my occasional informal polls always get me the same answer in stereo: “Pizzaaaa!!”
These episodes set not only bad examples, but are wasted opportunities. To keep away my burgeoning parental issues I need to brainstorm an easy and clever plan, construct some awesome time-saving innovation, devise a solution so clever and brain-bendingly obvious that the most enthusiastic life coach would pop out for a cigarette and some soul searching.
Or, I could stop being so lazy and spend a few minutes researching a better way. I’ll probably find that someone has already figured it out.
For example, quick searches for “meal planning” in a couple of places got me tons of helpful apps, relevant podcasts, and sites such as monthlymealplanner.com and realsimple.com.
Some of my favorite sites even have sections with specific ideas, like this one at Saveur.com, or this one at Lifehacker.com.
So solutions and help are out there, we just have to use them. A little time spent sketching weekly plans will pay the dividends of better menus and more efficient shopping trips. I’ll try out a few ways and see what I come up with. In any case, it’ll beat making things up as we go.
And maybe that will keep the angry and tired traps to a minimum.