Fifteen Minutes of Delusion

Last night my dad took my sister and I to Greg's restaurant at UVU . Greg's is a Culinary Arts Institute student-run restaurant located in the McKay Events Center at UVU. Last night's menu was Creole. I had the breaded catfish. Dad had the alligator. I was quite impressed. It was a great meal for just $20, and it was kinda fun knowing that the food was all coming from people doing their college work.

My blogger buddy Josi Kilpack over at What is a Sundial in the Shade has started an "It Worked For Me" linked list as "a way for us to share our tricks and tips about home, family, kids, etc." I've shared with several people our little strategy for sending hot lunches to school, and decided this would make a good contribution. And this time I illustrate with fuzzy pictures. The first thing I do in the morning is boil water in the teapot. Today's lunch menu is tortellini, so I also started some water in a second pot. Once the water in the teapot boils, I pour it into our trusty little thermoses - one for each of the girls, and one for me. No need to make lunch twice. Unless lunch is mac and cheese. Then I make breakfast and heat lunch while the boiling water warms the thermoses. This is also when I nag the sleepyheads. Yum! Tortellini! I empty the water and fill the thermoses with the hot food. We usually try to plan our dinners so there are leftovers to us...

I have some freezer dinners. I bought them before my trip, so the sitter could use them if she wanted to. There are some left, and I'm using them on special occasions. Like today, where the occasion is that there are still dinners left in the freezer. That and we're taking a Christmas shopping trip to Wal-Mart. The problem is that I put them in our good, big upright freezer, which freezes much colder than the one over the top of the fridge. How is this a problem? I'll tell you. I cook the food as long as the instructions say, but the instructions are designed for 20 degree F food. My food is at 0 degrees F. When the time is done, the food is not. Just thought you'd like to know.

This has been a somewhat stressful trip for me. The work part of it has gone well, but Kara has had a hard time, and it was tough being away while she started back up on TPN . Also, I have had a coworker along on this trip. This is good in that I have had someone to talk to and do things with. However, mostly what we have done is go to nice restaurants and eat good food. Good food and stress go together really well. Except I now have guilt because I've been eating so well while my wife is getting food through a tube in her chest. In addition, I'm going to lock the bathroom scale in a closet until around St. Valentine's Day.

The other day, Kara showed up with what looked like a large tree root - knobby and narled, six inches in diameter, and at least a foot long. She explained that it was a Chinese Yam, and this morning it was breakfast. She started the yam boiling, which is how she prepares most of her food, and sampled a little piece. It was extremely bitter . She came to me in a panic, because this was her whole breakfast, and it was terrible . Is that how it was supposed to taste? I couldn't answer her. By the time I took a taste, the root had boiled for a few minutes, and it really wasn't all that bad. She tasted a piece that had been cooked, and gave a great sigh of relief. It now tasted more like a potato. I tried to look up nutrition information, but most listings just described Chinese Yam as an Exotic Pest Plant . Lovely. While we're on the subject of exotic foods, I ought to tell you that last night I had the "pleasure" of helping prepare a couple of squab. This is the fanc...

I went to the public forum for the Environmental Health symposium yesterday. The first two speakers were really helpful and informative. I wasn't particularly interested in the second two topics, so I did some grocery shopping and indulged the ultimate delusion. The last speaker was a bit of an alarmist (we'll all be dead by 2050, you know), but in all I'm glad I went. Last night after I got home, we made sugar cookies. We don't try to cut them out into shapes right now. We just roll them into balls, flatten them out, and make pictures and designs with whatever we can find in the kitchen. We have some fruit juice based food colors that we use. Some are a little better than the others. (Can you pick out which color is supposed to be blue ?) Plus, the black currant juice concentrate adds a nice, tart kick to the cookies.

The expected visitors to our house never materialized. The girl is in even worse shape than Kara at the moment, and was up sick all night and in no shape to drive the hour from Dallas. No matter, though. All of the work that we did was sorely needed. We even got the upper hand in the girls room, although it required a tremendous effort, and a significant number of tears were shed in the process. The girls had their fair share of play time, though. They had a lot of fun making a "bubble" out of a fitted sheet. Anna would flip the sheet into the air to fill it like a parachute, then set it down on the ground. The resulting bubble lasted for a full minute or more, and was good for quite a few laughs. Alyssa is actually under the bubble. Anna could also do it where both of them got underneath. With today being Cinco de Mayo, I thought we should have a nice Mexican menu for dinner. After all, we have a special dinner for St. Patrick's Day , and Kara is always asking us what we...