Mother's Day Eve Chicken & Waffles

I always tell the Monsters that they don't need to buy me gifts. And I mean that sincerely. But I will always be more than happy to cook with them, which is gift enough for me. 

+Dean Robinson Izzysat while Joey and I made the Chicken and Waffles (storebought frozen Belgian waffles today, and my fried chicken recipe) and Mads and I worked together on our Broccoli Raisin Slawlad.

Two timers went off on Joey at the same time - the last batch of chicken and the waffles in the oven - and he learned yet another valuable kitchen lesson today: Whatever you do, DON'T PANIC, and just do what you can, trying to remember which is more urgent. In this case, the waffles were more urgent than the fried chicken because we didn't want them to go from perfectly done to crispy, so I helped him out by taking the waffles out of the oven while he fished the last of the chicken out of the oil.

The rest of them went for gravy instead of maple, I went for both, and Joey, the kid who drinks Worcestershire out of the bottle when he thinks I'm not looking, looked at me like I'm weird. 

Cooking with my kids, eating fried chicken with the whole family, drinking a cold beer... HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY EVE TO ME. :)

shinae

Full album HERE.

You Can Be A Bad Mom And Still Cook With Your Kids...

My time spent in that place where underachievers overachievers go to die live made it glaringly obvious that I am not made of ubermom material. All around me were mothers who seemed determined to joyfully devote every last ounce of their energy to the molding of their children.

"Alton says you need to cover the bottom of the pan
with aromatics, MAWMMM..."
(He did a nice job cutting them carrots, didn't he?)

And whether it was

- participating in the PTA,

- hanging out in the classroom helping some of the most overprivileged teachers I've ever met grade papers, tutor kids, staple shit together, cut out shapes, and chaperone Valentine's Day parties, or

- spending the better part of their afternoons and evenings shuttling their kids from music lessons, to dance or martial arts lessons, to Kumon, and back home just in time to eat dinner, shower and go to bed,

they did it with a smile on their faces, a triple skim milk mochalattefrappucino in their hands, a pair of Juicy Couture sweatpants on their asses, and the steering wheel of a tricked out Suburban or minivan in their hands.

"...so you can use the pan juices for gravy, MAWMMMM..."

And while I was determined not to spend my afternoons doing the same after a full day at the office, I would be lying to say that seeing those moms in action didn't often make me look at myself and wonder if I wasn't failing my children because I only spent half an hour one year typing names into the PTA database, rarely ever showed up in their classrooms, and only enrolled them in one activity at a time, none of them designed to make Ivy League attendees of my kids.

"Don't forget my Balsamic vinaigrette, MAWMMMMM...
And not too much oil! You know I don't like too much
oil in my vinaigrette!!!"

But at some point, after years of questioning my worth as a mother, I realized that every halfway decent parent has something different to offer their children and that, despite some cries of martyrdom, people mostly do what's in their nature and ability to do. That is to say, those parents, unlike this parent, who seem to take joy in rolling around in the grass with their children, really do take joy in it. Those parents who like to sit with their kids and have a reading hour on a Saturday afternoon do it because they themselves love to read and want to impart that love of reading to their children. And those women who devote every waking moment of their lives to their children and take immense pride and credit in so doing do it because deep down, it satisfies them to define themselves by their achievements as mothers.

And so it was at that point that I decided my options were to:

- continue to beat myself up for not being for my children what other parents seemed to be for their children, and/or

- try to be something I'm not and make myself, hence my children, miserable in the process,

OR

- accentuate the positive, share with my kids those gifts and abilities that came easily and naturally to me, and allow other people in their lives with other abilities to impart those gifts to them.

He doesn't eat corn anymore. Weird kid.

And that's why I choose to take my kids to beaches or botanical gardens or on roadtrips while allowing their dad the <ahem> *pleasure* of spending a day at Disneyland with them. That's why I watch Chopped and Iron Chef with them while allowing their grandmother the fun of watching Spongebob DVDs with them (though I am not immune to the occasional outburst of *BRING IT AROOOOOOUUUUUND TOWN!!!*). That's why I try to limit their TV/videogame time to one hour a day and force them to learn how to use their creativity and amuse themselves rather than carpool them from activity to activity.

And finally, that is why I cook with my kids instead of rolling around in the grass or going for bike rides with them (that's the Man's job).

There's a lesson in good bad parenting to be found
somewhere on this plate...

I know some will call me a selfish mother, and that's ok. I'd rather be a selfish mother who teaches my children by example how to be aware and accepting of their strengths as well as their weaknesses than to be a selfless one keeping emotional score on them and waiting for the day they'll thank me for all those years I *sacrificed* to turn them into whatever they were already capable of becoming themselves if they really so desired.

shinae

P.S. I do realize that, in the spectrum of human experience, there must be ubermoms who aren't also insufferable martyrs. I'm just saying that if I were one of those ubermoms, I'd probably also be an insufferable one. :)

Making Pasta & Memories...

I received my pasta maker as a gift years ago when my kids were very young and I was still working in a corporate environment and life just didn't seem to allow for something so leisurely and indulgent as making pasta by hand. So it went into storage. For a very long time. And I cooked storebought pasta, some fresh, most dried, for years.

fresh, tender pappardelle with pork ragu
and topped with basil...

But last weekend, as I was taking bits and pieces of my non-essential kitchen gadgets out of storage, I was inspired by a "What's For Dinner?" post about homemade fettucine by a fellow foodnik who seems to share my unhealthy obsession habit of photographing meals. Hearing about it was one thing, but the visual of those lovely strands of fettucine air drying on the rack, and the knowledge of the light and tender chew of the noodle that would result was enough for me to pull the pasta maker over the fondue set and make us some fresh pasta.

Sometimes, inspiration meets situation, and the results are not only delicious, but wholesome, collaborative, and downright fun as well.

...or arugula and red chili flakes

HOMEMADE PASTA
Serves 4

Armed with my dusted pasta maker and her simple recipe of 

- 1.5 cups of flour,

- my addition of 1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt to add a little depth to the flavor, and

- 2 large eggs, all whipped up in a food processor, with

- just enough water poured in gradually to form a ball (roughly 2 Tablespoons+)

 

I enlisted both Monsters and Man to make fresh pappardelle (pahppahrDELLeh) to go with the freshly ground pork shoulder ragu (rahGOO) I planned to make. (If I'm going to have to take that food processor apart and clean it, I will find every reasonable use for it before it gets put away. Laziness, after all, is the mother of all efficiency.) 

And you know, it's probably a good thing I waited this long to make pasta with my kids. Because the <cough> occasionally Type AAA person I used to be - and by *occasionally*, I mean *whenever in the kitchen or doing anything else creative* - couldn't have risked the havoc that chubby little preschool and kindergarten hands would have wreaked on dinner.

Awww... The hands still have a little chub. <3

Never having used the pasta maker before, I didn't have a pasta rack on hand to air dry it before cooking, so I used my IKEA laundry rack, which worked perfectly and also floated my efficiency boat big time.

Laundry rack as pasta rack. This kind of thing makes me
a little too happy, I think.

The sauce was a simple ragu of

- olive oil
- tomatoes, both fresh and canned - I usually just use canned crushed tomatoes, but I had three fresh tomatoes that were fixin' to be not so fresh in a minute
- onions
- garlic
- freshly ground pork shoulder (about two pounds from a massive ten pound chunk bought at the Meximart for a pittance)
- salt and pepper
- and a little pork stock.

rich, porky...

simple ragu.

No herbs added in as I was planning to top the pasta with fresh basil from the garden for the Monsters and fresh, super beefy arugula from the farmers market for me and the Man.

The result was a light, tender, wide ribboned pasta that cooked to perfect doneness within 3 minutes and took to the sauce beautifully without having to be tossed in it. The sauce was rich and simple with the concentrated flavor of pork and tomatoes and nothing else. Topped with a little fresh green for flavor and pretty, it was one of those simple, delicious and simply delicious meals worth every bit of the setup, rolling, drying, cutting and cleaning. So much so the girlchild said that the Man will probably never let me get away with dry pasta ever again, which really means she won't. :)

pretty pappardelle...

There was something so truly lovely and idyllic about watching my children help me crank pasta, seeing it drying on the rack as it waved in the ocean breeze, watching the Man cut it carefully, earnestly, and gingerly, and sitting down to dinner with all of them on a Sunday afternoon knowing that we each had a hand in the deliciousness of it all.

simply deliziosa

Just some flour, eggs, tomatoes, pork and teamwork made for one of those lovely moments in life that I wouldn't mind savoring a million times over.

shinae

P.S. Grazie, L. Nightshade.  :)