Convos that Make Me Smile

Dave: This soup doesn't seem right. I followed the directions. You know you don't add water anymore?
Me: (picks up can) Honey it is well past time, you so need glasses!
D: What? I followed the directions! (Takes can and holds it out while trying to read the label)
M: (pointing)It says right there "soup + 1 can water"
D: Well, there's another one of your old man stories!

M: You DO love me! (Throwing arms around Dave)
D: (continuing his cleaning) who says I don't?
M: You know, that depressing voice in my head.
D: Wha? That's still talking? I thought I shut that thing up years ago!

MA [little girl in Jack's class]: What's your name?
M: Marie
MA: Marie, I wanted to play at Jack a-doo's [Jack's school nickname] house!
M: Oh?
MA: Does Jack a-doo have a sister?
M: No, sorry, there's no little girls at our house.
MA: Well, I'm gonna need your phone number.
M: (with broad smile) Should I write it down for you?
MA: Yes you better so my mom can call you.

M: Honey why [insert complaint about some silly thing Dave did that makes no sense but irritates me]
D: Hahahah, another silly old man story!

D: Bye, Jack, have a good day at school.
Jack: Hug!
D: Aw (hugs Jack) hug! I love you!
J: I love you!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Not Me--Quack, Quack!

1.I did not put spring mix mixed with honey mustard dressing on my child's hot dog to make me feel better about feeding him a hot dog for dinner.

He enjoyed it. What's the difference between that and relish (except that the spring mix is better for you) anyway?

2. I did not have a recent weight gain which caused me to change clothes three times one day and still end up being a poster child for muffin top awareness.

3. I did not comment that my favorite book is a children's book called "I Love You All the Time" cementing the thought in my mind and those of others that Marie is missing and JacksMomMarie has taken over.

4. I did not say to my preschooler look, "Ducks. Quack quack" while waddling like a duck and flapping my arms only to hear another mother say quite loudly (I'm pretty sure for my benefit) to her daughter, "Honey, take some bread for these geese."

5. I did not relate to this post at all since I am not forbidden from burning candles in my home since the time I smoked up all the cabinets in our apartment after arguing that indoor candle burning was a safe way to add a nice fragrance to your home.

Hope you've enjoyed laughing with me!

Don't forget to check out the latest installment of Life is Therapy.

Simple Cooking for the Dairy Intolerant Part 1

Back when we were completely avoiding dairy (except for possible cross contamination during processing), I was frequently asked "What can you eat? What do you eat?"


I would frequently browse the internet for various restaurants' and fast food chains' ingredients lists. I compared the ingredients to my handy dairy and hidden dairy cheat sheet and made a list of "safe foods" so I could always find something we could eat when we were out and about.  Of course, I also carried "safe" non-perishable foods in the car just in case.

But safe dairy free foods were not the only concern. The other hurdle was having something that Jack would eat. Food still has to be the right texture. He eats a wide variety of foods but the texture has to be right.

Now that we've been given the clearence to add some dairy back in, we've been able to expand a bit on things that we eat around here. Jack is now considered dairy intolerant.

Excessive amounts of dairy protein still lead to increased congestion for him and that can quickly spiral out of control. We still avoid actual milk, yogurt, cream, and ice cream.

Some days I work from home and some days I am gone all day for appointments but I am busy every day. While I like to cook, trying to be too fancy frustrates me. I like to try to keep it fairly healthy but I mostly figure if we are eating at home and it's not mostly boxed pre-packaged food we are doing pretty well.

I thought I'd share with you some simple easy meals that we have around here. Don't look for fancy pictures or fancy stuff. I'm a simple cook and this is gonna be simple stuff. :)

Tonight's dinner: Grandma's home grown peas/beans, baked potatoes, and leftover Publix fried chicken.

This was typed up as I prepared dinner tonight so this is how I did it.

For the home grown peas/beans, marry yourself a man whose mother loves you over and abundantly than you deserve, get her to garden, and always remember your favorite things and freeze them for you. (Or if you cannot do all that just go buy your favorite kind of frozen peas/beans.)

*All pictures for this post were taken with camera phone and while in the midst of cooking and trying not to get run over by fast tricycling preschooler. Please forgive the (lack of) quality.*

1. Rinse however many potatoes you need to feed your bunch while you preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

2. Dry the potatoes and wrap in foil (I usually just kind of shake them dry before wrapping them).

3. Put them in the oven to one side of the middle rack.

4. Get the peas out of the freezer, place them in a pan of water with some salt, bring to a boil, turn down to simmer and let them cook.

5. At 30 minutes, check your potatoes. They're not done yet.



6. Crank up the oven to 450.



7. Place your leftover Publix fried chicken in an oven safe dish of some kind and place it on the middle rack next to the potatoes.

8. Set timer for 15 minutes.



9. When timer goes off, squeeze largest and smallest potatoes to check level of tenderness. Still not done. (Do not burn finger through cheap pot holder).



10. Turn chicken pieces over using tongs. Next time remember to perhaps oil your dish a little before putting in chicken.



11. Set timer for 10 minutes.



12. Check beans/peas. Yum just like I like them. Turn heat off but leave pan on stove "eye" so peas/beans don't get cold.



13. When timer goes off, squeeze taters again. Nice and squishy except those two bigger ones? Everybody out of the oven. Those two biggies are gettin' zapped in the microwave.

14. Remove chicken from oven.

15. Fix kiddo's plate first since it will need to cool a bit. Add dairy free buttery spread

to potatoes if you like.

16. Fix your plate.

.

Yes, we do eat that much. We're big eaters around here. :)

This was actually the night before last and I did not have time to get the post together. Last night, I added a defrosted previously cooked roast to the leftover peas/beans and potatoes. Yummy! I put them all in the oven at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes. I prefer oven heating to microwave because I think it all just tastes better but if I was in more of a hurry they all could have been zapped.

Hope you enjoyed this view of our dinner.

Not Me--I'm Not Posting this Late Monday Evening

1. I did not dress Jack and I in our team colors every Friday and Saturday during football season for the past couple of years because I believe it impacts the team.

2. I did not tell my four year old, "Eat this. It's like pie except it's cake."

3.I did not tell everyone that a certified bra specialist snapped her measuring tape around me to prove the tininess of my bra size.

4.I did not post a link to this video as part of my Life is Therapy series because it was so darn cute that I wanted to share.

5.I did not have a Sally Field moment when I was chosen to write a guest post at 5minutes for parenting, as loyal commentor of the week at 5minutes for mom, then had the Life is Therapy series mentioned at 5minutes for mom, and received an Honest Scrap award from Jennifer all in the same week! (Thanks everyone for the mentions and the awards! I am going to do a real post about that.)

Thanks everyone for laughing along. If you want to see some good "Mommy Confessions", head over to Say it Face to Face.

Word is Out--I'm an Alabama Blogger

That's right! I was born in Alabama and I live in Alabama and I blog. I. AM. AN. ALABAMA. BLOGGER!!!!!! Want to meet up with me and other bloggers too? November's Meet-up will be at Jason's Deli outside of Brookwood Mall at 11:30 on Friday, November 13th (You can remember Friday the 13th, right?). If 11:30 is too early, just come when you can - some people end up staying at lunch for about 2 hours.The hashtag for this meet-up and all future Alabama Bloggers meet-ups (to make it simple) is #AlaBlogMeet.Please help spread the word by re-tweeting and posting on your blogs! Also please RSVP at the Alabama Bloggers post so that tables can be reserved. I'm planning on being there for my lunch hour! Hope to see you there!

Not Me! I'm Not Shamelessly Pluggin' Life is Therapy

I did not enjoy last week's Not Me writing last week so much that I did not decide to do it again this week.

1. I did not shamelessly post a link to my Life is Therapy series everywhere I could possibly think of because I believe that everyone could benefit from it.

2.I did not allow my child with developmental delays to climb the neighbor's back fence and nearly drop into their yard because I was so excited to see him try and wanted to see how far he could go. ('cause you know Life is Therapy)

3. I did not allow my child to nearly climb over into my neighbor's backyard (using Life as Therapy)also because I wanted to get a good look at what they did to it since the old neighbors moved out.

4. I did not gain 3.5 pounds eating leftover Halloween candy. (It was not more like five pounds.) [Unwrapping ALL those wrappers could be therapy.]

5. I did not back right into an oncoming car because I was so focused on avoiding the tow truck parked at least a car length (maybe two) behind me. (An example of NOT Life is Therapy)

6. I did not publicly admit to possibly having a blogging problem. (Possibly a problem that might benefit others.)

7. I did not try to read Phillipians on my Palm Treo everytime I stopped at a stop light because our pastor encouraged us to read it everyday one week.

8. I did not put my camera on a step stool with a children's bible, my bible, a box of crackers and another book on top to get it to the right height for shooting a video for my new series Life is Therapy

only to remember after I finished that I had a perfectly good tripod sitting in the closet.


9. I did not feed my preschooler the following lunch--dry cereal (for grains), a Kashi fruit and grain bar (for the fruit, grains, and protein), and a bag of those freeze dried fruits for toddlers(more fruit)--one busy day when we were running around and I figured it was healthier than anything we might pick up.

10. I did not get excited that our house guest would not be arriving for a little more than another 24 hours because it meant I could clean later and blog now.

Seriously, please take a moment and check out my new series Life is Therapy . Perhaps you could link up and share a story of how you help your child to grow and develop in the course of normal day to day living.

Chicken Salad

A friend posted on her blog quite a while back that she wanted some recipes for chicken salad. I promised to post my recipe and I'm finally getting around to it. It's not actually so much my recipe. I think my sister-in-law Lisa who makes a fab-o chicken salad that involves cream cheese kind of gave me the basics and I transformed it into my own dairy-free chicken salad.

I took pictures as I made Jack a chicken salad sandwich for school the other night. Keep in mind that Jack eats a wide variety of foods but they have to be the right texture so this chicken salad recipe is chopped up quite a bit more than I would chop it if serving it to a bunch of adults. You use the same recipe just chop less. In fact you can skip the food processor and just do your chopping with a knife to make it more "adult-pleasing". I'll post the whole recipe at the bottom but here it is with pictures.

1.Take about a handful of walnuts (or little more) or pecans (they give a slightly different but still good taste to it) and throw them in your food processor.

2. Chop them up.

3. Rinse one apple or about 1 1/2 handsful of red or green grapes. I just cut the sides of the apple off the core and then cut the apple the apple into small pieces with the peel on.

4. Add to the food processor.

5. Mix it up.

6. Cut up chicken breast leftover from making Kelly's simple easy recipe for dinner. [Note: I leave out the second lemon that is sliced. We thought it made the recipe too lemony and instead of lemon pepper on top of everything, I use greek seasoning] You can actually use any cooked chicken breast you have on had but this particular recipe turns out a delicious chicken salad.

7. Whir it up!

8. Next you need to add some mayo.

9. Just experiment until you get the creaminess you like. I did about three tablespoons this time.

10. Whir it up!

11. Serve over salad greens on bread of your choice.

12. I actually add the spring mix to the food processor and chop it in too for Jack's sandwichs. He likes it. I just forgot to get a picture of it.

I forget to take a picture of my chicken salad all plated up and pretty so I was searching online for a picture of pretty chicken salad and came across this picture which is what my chicken salad would look if not chopped up quite as much and you used grapes instead of apples.

Her recipe is nearly the same as mine but measured and with celery.

So here's my recipe without the pictures. I'm writing these directions as if you are serving to adults or children who chew well without a texture sensitivity.
Ingredients:
One handful to handful and a half of Walnuts or Pecans
One Apple or one handful to handful and a half of Red or Green Grapes
One Cooked Chicken Breast
About three tablespoons Hellman's Mayonnaise (On most everything I'm flexible but I really think you need to use Hellman's. It has a good flavor.)
Spring Mix or other bagged salad

Directions:
1. Chop up nuts into smaller bits.
2. Cut apple sides off the core and dice. OR Cut grapes into halves.
3. Cut up chicken breast.
4. Put all cut ingredients into bowl.
5. Mix in mayonnaise.
6. Chill.
7. Serve on bed of salad greens and/or bread of your choice.

Enjoy!