Yearly Archives: 2008

Cooking for my family

Food, , , ,

I used to like to cook. I don’t mind cooking for other folks but cooking for my family has become a pain, especially during wrestling season. Here’s why…

My daughter is a vegetarian – albeit one that eats fish, dairy and eggs, but won’t touch poultry or meats. She is also not a fan of many vegetables. My son won’t eat cooked vegetables, but eats meat (but only meat that has been cooked on a grill (which also means he doesn’t like stew or pot roast) and seafood. He also won’t eat hamburger with a low fat content. He doesn’t much like poultry, but will eat some chicken recipes. My husband pretty much eats everything, but he doesn’t like chicken except for some recipes (luckily, the same ones as my son). My husband must have a starch with his meals (potato, rice, pasta — in that order) oh, and bread — he must have his bread. I like chicken and turkey and could eat that almost exclusively, but I also like meat and seafood (except scallops) and many vegetables (but I, too, prefer them raw). Neither child likes quiche (and my son doesn’t like eggs). Neither one likes home-made pizza, although they both love pizza from a pizza parlor.

Looking at the likes and dislikes above one might conclude that I’m just whining. That’s not entirely true. Because now we must consider the days of the week. My husband often skips dinner on Monday evenings because he has tae kwon-do practice most Monday evenings. My son plays soccer so about 9 months a year he has practice twice a week, often interfering with dinner. So Monday and Thursday meals need to be something that can be kept warm until after sports. During the winter (November through March) my son also wrestles and must watch his weight. He often eats very little in the days before a meet or tournament.

So, aside from trying to work around the likes and dislikes of this family, I also need to consider the ever changing schedules. Usually I end up cooking two meals – one for the meat eaters and one for the vegetarian. The best days are days we have fish and salad, because everyone is happy then.  Although one of my new year resolutions was to cook for myself, and if the others were not happy, so be it — let them cook the next meal.

We eat a lot of pasta. And fish, although that gets expensive. And Tex-Mex.

Tonight for dinner we are having chicken piccata. Except for Clare who will have tofu piccata. We’ll also have penne agli olio and a salad.

If you have a recipe/meal plan that will fit our preferences, I’d be forever in your debt.

[Nearly] Living in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood

Memories, ,

I heard on NPR this morning that Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood began broadcasting 40 years ago today. While I’m too old to have actually grown up with Mister Rogers — I was 12 when the show began — Fred Rogers and the show hold a special place in my heart.

When I was in college and taking a child development class our professor, whom I considered wise, told us that if a young child is to watch television, the programming should be varied. Sesame Street alone was not enough. If the child watched Sesame Street, he/she should also watch Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and vice versa. He explained that Mister Rogers, although annoyingly sweet to many adults, was a comforting presence to young children. They could learn to count and learn their letters and sounds from Sesame Street [or The Electric Company], but children also needed reassurance that they were valuable, cared for and loved — even through the TV.

I didn’t think much of Mister Rogers or his neighborhood before then — and if I did, it was probably to make fun of the wholesomeness of the program and his near-feminine demeanor, but I took my professor’s advice to heart and planned on recommending his suggestion to parents of students I’d eventually teach (which I did) and following it in the event I had my own children (which I tried, but they preferred Barney). I also may have watched a few episodes and understood the potential appeal to young children. I became a fan of Fred Rogers at age 21.

Then in 1981 something extraordinary happened. My boyfriend was accepted at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and invited me to come along. I’d not expected to move away from my hometown, but jumped at the opportunity. We searched for apartments, settling on one in the Shadyside neighborhood.

I don’t know when I discovered that Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was filmed in Pittsburgh and that Fred Rogers lived in one of the eastern neighborhoods, but it was probably when I worked at the Shadyside Giant Eagle with a woman whose daytime job was on the set of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, who when she learned of my fondness for Mister Rogers, brought me a tee-shirt and two records from the show. Or it might have been when Mister Rogers was featured in Carnegie Mellon’s newspaper because he used their tennis courts regularly as it was close to his apartment. While technically not the same neighborhood as Shadyside, Oakland, where CMU is located, is directly west of Shadyside, so they are neighboring neighborhoods. So, you see, I can almost claim to have lived in Mister Rogers Neighborhood.

Besides [almost] living in Mister Rogers’ real-life neighborhood, was the fact that, in the apartment directly below us, lived two and a half college girls. The half of a girl was a girl that claimed she lived in the apartment — her mail came there and she stored some belongings there. But she didn’t live there — although I saw her once or twice. Instead she lived most of the time with her boyfriend.

And guess who her boyfriend was.

He was Mister Rogers’ son.

So even though I fudge a bit on the living in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, I definitely lived in Mister Rogers’ son’s girlfriend’s neighborhood.

Reduced to weather talk

Weather

This morning I was surprised to see the temperature was 56 degrees at 8:00 am. I checked to make sure it wasn’t the attic temperature I was looking at (we have one of those digital thermometers that show four different channels). No, it was set on channel 2 – outdoors. By the time I got ready to head out to take my car to the shop, it was in the mid-sixties. When I was at the shop the temperature climbed from 67 degrees to 72 degrees. (I know this because the news was on and the reporters told us the temperature every two and a half seconds).

The weathermen said the unusually hot weather would not last, and it was going to get pretty cold in a couple of hours, and there I was sitting in the car repair shop, waiting for my rental to show up. I was anxious to get home because I had newsletters to deliver for my home owners’ association. I’d been putting it off all weekend because it had been cold outside and wanted to take advantage of this break in the weather.

When the car rental guy finally showed up in a car that smelled like cigarette smoke, I didn’t argue for a different one because I just wanted to get home. In hindsight I wish I’d not even gotten a rental — Dean rides his bike to work and I could have just used his car while mine was in the shop. But that’s a different topic.

When I got home I grabbed the newsletters and delivered them on our street, then on another street. Finally when I got to my last block the rain started. I worried, thinking it was February forgodsakes and why wasn’t my family helping me deliver these darned things. Then I realized that the rain was simply a warm, gentle rain and I was wearing a rainproof jacket. It was fine.

But it is February forgodsakes. I didn’t even know that they made gentle warm February rains in our neck of the woods.