Big Brother: "Mom! Tank just threw applesauce at me with his spoon! And it got all over the floor!"
Me, giving Tank "the look": "We don't throw food. Get down here and clean this up. If you throw food again, you will go to timeout."
Sister: "Is that for the rest of dinner?"
Oh, I need to nip this in the bud.
Me: "That is for the rest of his life."
Friday, October 16, 2015
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
The Perfect Mother's Perfect Breakfast
I hand grated cinnamon this morning for the kids' cinnamon toast. I hope you aren't too intimidated.
I mean, since Tank woke us all up half an hour early, I was sure I had enough time to bake pumpkin bread. And the box said the cooking time for muffins was 20 minutes, but since I don't have the patience for muffins (Yes, you read that right. I hate fighting those little paper muffin liners that fall all over the floor with the slightest breeze, and washing the muffin pan without using liners? Pah-leez), I thought I would just put all the batter in a loaf pan and bake it for 30 minutes. How much longer does a full loaf take over muffins? Well, I can answer that. It takes 30 minutes longer. So with 15 minutes left before the kids had to walk out the door to catch the bus, and a half-baked loaf of pumpkin bread taking its sweet time baking in the oven, I had to pull breakfast out of my......pantry.
Cinnamon toast! And knowing this menu item would meet with resistance (there is no accounting for taste), I decided to use sugar instead of my usual honey because we have all read how much healthier honey is, right? I got the toast buttered with real butter which I probably should have hand churned, but Tank only woke us up half an hour early, so I fell back on the store bought stuff. Then I sprinkled on the good mood-inducing, cell aging accelerating, shut up and eat the breakfast I made for you, sugar.
Now for the cinnamon because you can't have cinnamon toast without cinnamon right? I was going to go out into my urban garden where I grow all of my family's produce needs (remember that Sister doesn't do fruits or vegetables), and harvest the cinnamon sticks, but I was operating in a time crunch. So I opened the cabinet for the sub-par, store bought jar of ground cinnamon only to encounter four jars of various peppercorns (I may have an impulse buy issue) and no cinnamon.
To the big pantry! Oh, don't be too jealous of the big pantry. It is really just a little closet that holds a year's supply of paper and plastic bags that I have brought home and intend to reuse because I can't seem to remember the reusable grocery bags that hang on the garage door, so I won't forget them. The big pantry has a variety of spices from my single days when I was free to cook recipes without "nuggets" in the title. No ground cinnamon. But, there is a jar of cinnamon sticks that I don't remember buying, so they could have been purchased yesterday. And you know the old saying "necessity is the mother of invention". I am a whiz at inventing! Ooops, was that humble bragging? I'm pretty good at that, too.
Well, I broke out the cinnamon sticks and my nutmeg grater. Yes, I have a nutmeg grater. It was my Grannie's, and I remember her using it all the time. What sweet memories it brings up, and I take special care of it. Don't fret, I am sure you take special care of all your family's most special heirlooms, too. Anyway, as I was saying, I moved aside every spice in the pantry to dig out the nutmeg grater from under an old box of baking soda and knew I could finish off the cinnamon toast with hand grated cinnamon. Again, please don't think about the soggy store bought, processed cereal you fed your kids this morning and feel like you missed the Perfect Mother Boat. It takes many years to reach Perfect Mother Status, and I have been hard at it for at least the last five minutes.
So I started grating the ageless cinnamon sticks on my family heirloom nutmeg grater over the toast, and all I can see is nothing. But I can smell it! So I grate harder, which produces shards of cinnamon stick on the toast, and those shards only mess up my presentation. I pick them off and soldier on with the grating. It produces the most wonderful smell, and the grating is so fine that it doesn't add any of that unappetizing cinnamon color to the toast.
But the clock is ticking, and we have a reputation for being punctual, if not a little on the early side, so I quickly cut the toast into kicky little triangles and drop the plates a little too loudly on the kitchen table, announcing, "Cinnamon toast!" And my little angels, staring blankly at the gorgeous presentation of cinnamon toast while they skeptically sniff my culinary masterpiece, only jumped a little when I exclaim with enthusiasm, "Eat it!"
It was a beautiful, calm, quiet morning in the McKinney House with a lovely homemade breakfast, and I really enjoy this Perfect Mother thing. It is fulfilling and makes me complete. Well, almost complete. I wonder what happened to half of my thumb nail? It seems to have gone missing.
I mean, since Tank woke us all up half an hour early, I was sure I had enough time to bake pumpkin bread. And the box said the cooking time for muffins was 20 minutes, but since I don't have the patience for muffins (Yes, you read that right. I hate fighting those little paper muffin liners that fall all over the floor with the slightest breeze, and washing the muffin pan without using liners? Pah-leez), I thought I would just put all the batter in a loaf pan and bake it for 30 minutes. How much longer does a full loaf take over muffins? Well, I can answer that. It takes 30 minutes longer. So with 15 minutes left before the kids had to walk out the door to catch the bus, and a half-baked loaf of pumpkin bread taking its sweet time baking in the oven, I had to pull breakfast out of my......pantry.
Cinnamon toast! And knowing this menu item would meet with resistance (there is no accounting for taste), I decided to use sugar instead of my usual honey because we have all read how much healthier honey is, right? I got the toast buttered with real butter which I probably should have hand churned, but Tank only woke us up half an hour early, so I fell back on the store bought stuff. Then I sprinkled on the good mood-inducing, cell aging accelerating, shut up and eat the breakfast I made for you, sugar.
Now for the cinnamon because you can't have cinnamon toast without cinnamon right? I was going to go out into my urban garden where I grow all of my family's produce needs (remember that Sister doesn't do fruits or vegetables), and harvest the cinnamon sticks, but I was operating in a time crunch. So I opened the cabinet for the sub-par, store bought jar of ground cinnamon only to encounter four jars of various peppercorns (I may have an impulse buy issue) and no cinnamon.
To the big pantry! Oh, don't be too jealous of the big pantry. It is really just a little closet that holds a year's supply of paper and plastic bags that I have brought home and intend to reuse because I can't seem to remember the reusable grocery bags that hang on the garage door, so I won't forget them. The big pantry has a variety of spices from my single days when I was free to cook recipes without "nuggets" in the title. No ground cinnamon. But, there is a jar of cinnamon sticks that I don't remember buying, so they could have been purchased yesterday. And you know the old saying "necessity is the mother of invention". I am a whiz at inventing! Ooops, was that humble bragging? I'm pretty good at that, too.
Well, I broke out the cinnamon sticks and my nutmeg grater. Yes, I have a nutmeg grater. It was my Grannie's, and I remember her using it all the time. What sweet memories it brings up, and I take special care of it. Don't fret, I am sure you take special care of all your family's most special heirlooms, too. Anyway, as I was saying, I moved aside every spice in the pantry to dig out the nutmeg grater from under an old box of baking soda and knew I could finish off the cinnamon toast with hand grated cinnamon. Again, please don't think about the soggy store bought, processed cereal you fed your kids this morning and feel like you missed the Perfect Mother Boat. It takes many years to reach Perfect Mother Status, and I have been hard at it for at least the last five minutes.
So I started grating the ageless cinnamon sticks on my family heirloom nutmeg grater over the toast, and all I can see is nothing. But I can smell it! So I grate harder, which produces shards of cinnamon stick on the toast, and those shards only mess up my presentation. I pick them off and soldier on with the grating. It produces the most wonderful smell, and the grating is so fine that it doesn't add any of that unappetizing cinnamon color to the toast.
But the clock is ticking, and we have a reputation for being punctual, if not a little on the early side, so I quickly cut the toast into kicky little triangles and drop the plates a little too loudly on the kitchen table, announcing, "Cinnamon toast!" And my little angels, staring blankly at the gorgeous presentation of cinnamon toast while they skeptically sniff my culinary masterpiece, only jumped a little when I exclaim with enthusiasm, "Eat it!"
It was a beautiful, calm, quiet morning in the McKinney House with a lovely homemade breakfast, and I really enjoy this Perfect Mother thing. It is fulfilling and makes me complete. Well, almost complete. I wonder what happened to half of my thumb nail? It seems to have gone missing.
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