Chaos

F&^% you, Daylight Savings time. My kids were all sleeping until 7-730 solid until this morning. I even let them stay up later last night so that this morning would not be abruptly early. At the bright hour of 6am, it started with Rory coming in who is fighting a cold (probably b/c I just commented that my kids hadn't been sick since June). It followed with Shelagh 5 minutes later and then Kelly yelling "Mom! Dad! Daddy! Dad!" from her room until Joe got her. All 5 in bed, which was nice except that I became a jungle gym with kids fighting over who was snuggling me. Oy. Plus it's freezing out today so I really don't want to go out and advance Rory's cold. It's only 1030am and Joe is out golfing for the day. Can I institute required Sunday naps? Let's see if I can pull it off. Why am I so annoyed already???? Calgon, take me away.

Extended Vegetable Share Loot

I got the extended share from the Food Co-Op that I belong to which is 2 double-family sized deliveries of vegetables and fruit. I got a massive amount of food:

• Beets (Made Roasted Beet and Potato Borscht from October 2010 Everyday Food. Left the stove on while I got stuck upstairs with the kids, boiled away all the liquid, but saved it by adding more broth and cooking it down for 10 minutes. Delicious!)
• Potatoes
• Leeks
• Garlic
• Collard Greens (Braised them in chicken broth, onions, and apple cider vinegar)
• Kohlrabi
• Butternut squash
• Some off white/yellow-green striped squash
• Carrots
• Apples (Cameos & Candy Crisps)
• Baby Bok Choy
• Turnips

I think I'll take the potatoes, garlic, kohlrabi, carrots and turnips and just do a few trays of roasted vegetables. I'll eat them for lunch this week.

Food stress, welcome back!

Massive Weird Squash

Imagine butchering that thing??? Rory almost tipped over.

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2nd Tooth!

Look who lost her 2nd tooth yesterday!! 1st tooth was swallowed down with a brownie. Tooth #2 got spit out in the sink while tooth brushing. Of course I was in the process of getting her a tooth box from Etsy so I had to print off the picture of the box and leave a note from the tooth fairy on it that I was taken aback by how fast that loose tooth came out and will make a special trip to drop it off when it's done. Nice.

PS - She didn't seem too miffed that Tooth #2 got $2, whereas Tooth #1 got $3.

Recipe for Buckeyes!!

I had these once and think of them often. SmittenKitchen posted a recipe for Buckeyes that I will try within the week, for sure.

Halloween Preview

Our town does store trick or treating on the Friday before Halloween. Here are the kids before we head down there this afternoon:

Candy overload, here we come...

Spaghetti & Meatballs: new Recipe

With Fall weather comes the urge for roasts, pasta, braises, and LOTS of vegetables. Molly Wizenburg's writing in Bon Appetit makes me want to try everything she does. In this months issue, she writes about spaghetti and meatballs. I usually make my mom's version. For the sauce it's garlic, basil, tomatoes, and salt. We are of the no-onion sauce camp. For the meatballs it's all beef, progresso Italian bread crumbs (just a little), egg, and they are cooked stovetop in a pan, not in the sauce. This is the way I've always done it and I love it this way...it brings me to the memory of waking up to garlic and sauce on a Sunday morning. However, I also like a spongier meatball and it drives me nuts that my meatballs come out triangular from the pan fry and not round.

I decided to try Molly's version which is a sauce with not only onion but butter! I seriously don't need ANY more butter in my diet so I secretly hoped I wouldn't like the sauce. Her meatballs have an enormous amount of breadcrumbs and parmesean and more egg than I would normally use and they are a mix of beef and pork. You can see all the breadcrumb/parmesean in the raw meatballs below. This was a sure sign that they would be too bready. Actually, I was so scared of overmixing them (she said that was the key) that I probably erred on the side of less combining so I would say the bread is not as distributed as it could have been.

Anyway, final result is that I did like the sauce, but not as much as my usual which is ok with me. The meatballs were not distributed enough, but I do like the cooking of them in the sauce instead of frying...some of the meat moves into the sauce and makes a nice robust version. Finally, I do not usually eat spaghetti...the shape annoys me - all that splattering of sauce (you CANNOT cut your long pasta so it flies everywhere. just my opinion). With meatballs I like a penne type of noodle. I went with Rigatoni which was perfect.