Category Archives: family life

>Great Grandma’s German Potato Salad

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>Guest Post by Husband, the better cook in the family. Based on this piece of history, maybe his talent is genetic!

Great Grandma Frances’ German Potato Salad

This recipe was handed down to us. I remember looking forward to eating this as a young child. We would arrive at Grandma’s house on 14th Street in Milwaukee and the kitchen would have this wonderful almost sweet and sour aroma. It can be served warm, which is how I like it best, or you can make it up in advance and serve it chilled. Enjoy!

3 pounds, about 6 medium, Red Salad Potatoes
1/2 cup sliced White Onion (A Sweet Yellow Onion may be substituted.)
2 Tablespoons Flour
3 Tablespoons Sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon Salt
1/2 teaspoon Celery Seed
1/8 teaspoon Pepper
3/4 cup water
1/3 cup Vinegar
6-8 Slices Bacon cut into 1 inch pieces (I prefer the Patrick Cudahy Thick Sliced, Double Smoked style in the black labeled box).

· Combine Flour, Sugar, Salt, Celery Seed and Pepper into a small bowl or Tupperware dish so they are thoroughly mixed.
· Peel and slice Potatoes into bite size, 1/4 inch thick pieces. Boil until they are cooked, yet still firm, drain.
· In an Electric skillet, cook the Bacon until crispy. Set bacon aside on a paper towel to soak up the grease. Drain all but about 2 tablespoons of the bacon grease out of the skillet.
· Sauté Onion in the hot skillet with the bacon grease for 2 minutes.
· Sprinkle in the dry ingredients mix. Stir in the Water and Vinegar. Stir constantly until it bubbles then let it reduce to a syrupy consistency.
· Reduce skillet’s heat to simmer, blend in Potatoes. Blend bacon into the mix. Let simmer and stir occasionally for 30 minutes.

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>Chicken a la Mom

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>I can’t call it a la king, or a la queen, for that matter. This was more of a Chicken Experiment, really, and it turned out well. The refrigerator, while not bare, doesn’t have much in it right now, so I’m relying on the freezer and the back hallway pantry. But wait…I have fresh herbs growing on the deck! In cappuccino mugs! Okay, that’s irrelevant.

Experimental Chicken

Olive oil
Four chicken breasts
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 can diced tomatoes (do not drain!)
1/4 cup diced green onions
1/4 cup diced celery
1/4 peppers, green, red, yellow, or mixed (optional)
1 Tablespoon each fresh rosemary and basil
lemon pepper
Leftover vegetables, already cooked (optional)

In large skillet or electric frying pan, brown chicken breasts. Remove from pan and dice. While dicing chicken, begin sauteing celery and green onion (and peppers). Add can of diced tomatoes, undrained. Stir in can of cream soup. Add chicken back into the pan, and sprinkle with rosemary, basil, and lemon pepper (to taste). If you’re adding leftover veggies, do it now. I added peas and corn. Heat through; let simmer to thicken. Serve over egg noodles or rice or pasta of choice.

Optional: I wished I’d had green peppers. I would have cooked them with the celery and green onion. Come to think of it, red or yellow peppers would add color and flavor to the mix.

Note: Husband doesn’t like celery, so I used very little. La Petite doesn’t like mushrooms, so I couldn’t use cream of mushroom soup. Amigo prefers pasta to rice, so this time I chose pasta. If you’re not a tomato fan, add a little water to the soup instead of the canned tomatoes. About 1/2 cup should be fine.

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>What if?

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What if you were accused of neglecting or harming your child?

What if the Disease of the Week suddenly jumped off the lifestyle pages and entered your life?

What if your family were subjected to a trauma that left your marriage rocky and your spouse’s love severely tested?

What if secrets in your family history suddenly forced you to make decisions you’d never even considered?

What if your distant past became public in a very negative, defamatory, even racist manner?

In More than it Hurts You, Darin Strauss takes these questions and weaves a plot that traps its characters in tangled nets that will twist and shape their lives forever.

Josh and Dori Goldin rush their baby, Zach, to the ER after Dori sees blood in his vomit. Dori, a phlebotomist who speaks Hospital Language like a native, notices an omission in the testing. Bringing this to the attention of the doctors in pediatrics has an unwanted result; the doctors over test in an apparent effort to overcome their earlier mistake. When Dori and Jack object to the invasive procedures on their eight-month-old, an all-out battle begins that escalates into a war that none of the participants could have imagined. It’s not a spoiler to let you know that a court case, Child Protective Services, and Munchhausen’s by Proxy are just a few of the many twisted and knotted threads of this tapestry. Surprises await the reader at around each corner of the hospital corridors, at each turn of the page.

The story is outrageous, yet believable. I’ve had contact with CPS in my work as an elementary teacher. The social workers in this field are caring yet overworked professionals. They do their best with the tools they’re given. But an accusation, true or false, proven or unproven, can shatter a family’s emotional balance for years, if not for life.

Strauss tells the story through the character’s emotions more than through their actions. Their inner traits, the manner in which they approach emergencies, their skills (or lack thereof) with personal interactions, all contribute to bringing the reader deeply into the sticky web of a complex story. With this character focus, however, comes the potential for confusion. A few character names are too similar, making it essential to interrupt the flow to stop and think, “Who is this?” before continuing on. Darlene vs. Dori in particular lead to confusion where clarity would be more valuable. But don’t let this small glitch stop you from reading More than it Hurts You by Darin Strauss. Strauss knows his characters well, and by the time you finish the book, you’ll know them, too.

Looking for more on this book? Look here.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book free of charge in order to read it and write this review. After my family of readers finishes it, I will share my copy.

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>Blogging means expanding my (recipe) repertoire

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Margalit’s Oatmeal Whole Wheat Bread with a Daisy spin

I found this recipe on Margalit’s site and I’ve made it several times. Any mistakes below are mine, not hers. I did make a few small changes to make it work for my everloving and starving family.

Add the ingredients as they are printed into the bread machine pan.

1 cup old-fashioned oats
1-1/2 cups water (add more if dough is too dry in 1 tbs increments)
3 Tablespoons canola oil
1/3 cup honey
2 teaspoons salt
2 cups white bread flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2-1/2 Teaspoons active dry yeast

Place all the ingredients in the pan, using the least amount of liquid and adding more if needed, as seen below. Select Medium or Light Crust, Wheat course, and press start. Daisy tip: Stay home and enjoy inhaling the lovely aroma of baking bread.

Observe the dough as it kneads. After 5 to 1- minutes, if it appears dry or stiff, or if the machine sounds like it’s straining to knead it, add more liquid 1 Tablespoon at a time until dough forms a smooth, soft, pliable ball that is slightly tacky to the touch. Daisy tip: put a little hot water in the honey-coated measuring cup and use this for the additional water, as needed.

After the baking cycle ends, remove bread from pan, place on cooling rack, and allow to cool 1 hour before slicing. Daisy tip: good luck waiting. It smells so good you might have to hire a guard or set an alarm to let it cool for an entire hour.

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>Top o’ the mornin’ to ya!

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>Ah, mornings. My collegiate-type daughter doesn’t like to do anything that has an A.M. after the numbers. My teen is more of a morning person, but he’s still, well, a teen. He’ll do mornings, but grudgingly.

On a school day, Amigo’s alarm goes off at 6:00. He drags his mind out of sleep mode, drags himself to the dresser for clothes, and slinks downstairs to have breakfast. By this time I’ve already been out of bed with some semblance of coherence since 5:30, showered, dressed, and more while waiting for him. We sleepwalk through breakfast, brushing teeth, morning medicines, and then watch a little morning news and weather before going outside to wait for the bus.

It all runs fairly smoothly unless he oversleeps. Let’s not even suggest the possibility.

Lately we’ve had an additional body in the house. La Petite is home from school and working, which means we have three drivers and only two vehicles. Most mornings now Husband wakes up an hour earlier than his usual, drives me to school, and then takes care of himself and gets to work. La Petite takes her break to run me home in time to meet Amigo’s school bus.

One morning I requested that Husband drive me through Jo to Go, my favorite school day caffeine source, and the barrista simply looked into the car at me and asked, “The usual?” Husband shot me a half-smirk, half eye-roll, and shook his head. Heck, my morning usual is a 16 oz. hazelnut with no cream or sugar. Nothing fancy or expensive, really! It’s a locally owned place, too, so I’m supporting the local economy. The service is fast enough that I waste a minimum of gas, and….well, I can rationalize anything if I try hard enough. Even on a wild and woolly workday morning.

Fortunately, this routine only lasts until school is out and that flexibility that is a teacher’s summer begins. Then I become the chauffeur, taking La Petite to work and Amigo to appointments. And on most summer days, I make my own coffee.

This post is based on a topic recommended by Parent Bloggers Network and Kraft Bagel-fuls. Please feed your children breakfast before school; trust me, they learn better and test better if they’re not hungry.

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>Not a dream, but a meam…er, meme

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Patricia at Communication Exchange tagged for a meme: 6 Unspectacular Quirks. The rules are as follows:
1. Link the person(s) who tagged you.
2. Mention the rules on your blog.
3. Tell about six unspectacular quirks of yours.
4. Tag six following bloggers by linking them.
5. Leave a comment on each of the tagged bloggers’ blogs, letting them know they’ve been tagged.

I followed rules 1 and 2 above, so here goes #3.

*Due to the excessive rain and heat lately, my compost bin stinks. It’s rotting at a record pace, which is good, I guess, but Phew, it’s aromatic!
*I snore. I’ve taken to wearing a breathing strip on my nose at night, and it seems to help. Some. *I buy too many books. I read them all, none go to waste, but it’s a weakness of mine.
*I speak a fair amount of Spanish, which is a handy skill for a teacher in my neighborhood where one third of the surnames on my class list are Mexican. Wonderful kids and families, by the way! *If I hadn’t become a teacher, I would have become a nurse.
*When school is out for the summer, it takes me at least a week to adjust to sleeping a little later in the morning.

Trust me, it’s painless. I tag:
Margalit, the creator of MidCentury Modern Moms at What was I Thinking?
Suburban Correspondent at The More, the Messier
Nina (my colleague at MCMM) at Voted off the Island
Ilona (another MCMM writer) at It’s Not All Mary Poppins
Janice (yet another MCMM-er!) at Chasing Myself

Okay, that’s five. Any other volunteers to make six? Leave a comment!

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>"Can he cook?"

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>When my college sweetheart proposed and we began to plan our life together, my mother asked, “Can he cook?” I shrugged. Who cares about such mundane matters when in love? “He can cook about as well as I can,” I answered. Her reply? “You’re doomed.” She predicted starvation, at least.

Over the past 24 years (as of mid-June!), Husband and I have developed our own cooking styles. I’m the basic throw-something-on-the-table each night person because I get home from work first. He is the fancier cook, the one who will take a piece of steak or chicken and make a Food Network style recipe out of it. I’ll combine basic stew ingredients with garden vegetables in the crockpot; he’ll start up the grill and whip up a marinade. I’ll bake muffins or banana bread or rhubarb upside down cake; he’ll scoop up a dish of ice cream.

There’s room for both of us in the kitchen.

Both of us have our disaster stories, too. When we moved to our current home, it was a rather drawn out process. I was teaching full time, he was working full time, and both kids were in school. I would load up the car, teach all day, drop off the boxes at the house, pick up more empty boxes, and go home. Eventually we had most of what we needed, and we picked up the furniture and drove it down the highway to the new home.

Okay, we rented a truck.

But we didn’t move everything right away. A lot of the foodstuffs, including the spices, were still at the old duplex waiting for another day and another empty box. One day I attempted to make chili in the crockpot and found myself without chili powder. Always resourceful, I picked up a pack or two of the cracked red pepper that had come with a Pizza Hut pizza a few days earlier. This would work, I thought.

It worked, all right. It nearly burned every tongue in the family. Mom, the Bland Chili Queen, had cooked up a legend.

I’m not the worst cook. Not even close, I dare say. But every cook who experiments will have a disaster now and then, and I must admit I’m one of them. Blog them? Not likely! But you can find more stories at the American Egg Board’s Worst Cook contest. Eat ’em, er, read ’em and weep — hopefully with laughter.

This post was written for Parent Bloggers Network as part of a contest sponsored by the American Egg Board. Go ahead, check them out. PBN always has more stories to share!

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>Roots and stems, nuts and twigs

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>We’ve gotten creative with our menus since Amigo has been ordered off all dairy and onto a bland, somewhat low fat diet. We pulled out a holiday standard the other day: rootmash. It’s one of Husband’s specialties. He saw it on Food Network, made it, liked it, and now we offer it as an alternative to mashed potatoes every Thanksgiving. I made it the other day as an alternative to the ever-bland pastas and potatoes we’d been foisting on the teen, and it was easy enough to handle.

4-6 potatoes
2 large carrots
1 small turnip
1 small parsnip
1 rutabaga

Boil vegetables. Drain. Add a small amount of water or milk. Mash. Season to taste. Voila!
There may be other tricks to it, but I’m a low-maintenance cook. I like to keep it simple. The only hint I can offer is this: start with the hardest veggies, gradually adding those with shorter boiling times.

I’ve suggested adding chives or green onions to the mix. Sour cream on top would be good (but not for the non-dairy Amigo). Husband will not, will not add any ingredients that are not roots!! I tease him a little, but I’ll respect his wishes. It is, after all, one of his specialty dishes.

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>A Petite Recipe

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>I’ve thought about posting a recipe each week, Scribbit style. When school is not in session I bake and cook a lot more, so I’ll have more to share very soon. As the garden grows, I’ll have recipes that deal in the fresh ingredients of my backyard, too.

There. That decision’s made. Every Tuesday, a recipe. Here goes:

When we got married, my MIL gave me this book so we could record our favorite family recipes all in one place. Husband and I have done that. The cover has fallen off, but the pages still contain Husband’s guacamole, Great-Grandma Frances’ German potato salad, and much, much more. On my way to finding something else, I came across this.

The young La Petite wrote this. She must have observed me or Husband writing in the family recipe collection and decided that she should do the same. It has all of her favorite letters from the early days (H, M, Q), and it’s grouped (sort of) like words. I don’t have a clear memory of watching her writing this little piece, but it is indeed priceless.

What does it make? No one knows, not even La Petite herself, but it probably tastes like chicken.

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>Shoes, shoes, shoes

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>Amigo has what we sometimes call a “double whammy”. His two handicapping conditions, blindness and high-functioning autism, sometimes join together to work against him. Where clothing is concerned, that’s very, very true. He has rather weak fingers and poor fine motor skills which make it hard for him to engage a zipper or button a shirt or tie his shoes.
He started dressing himself in kindergarten, and we adapted by buying sweatpants and t-shirts so he didn’t have to deal with fasteners. This way, he could be independent.

Shoes are another issue. He has worn prescription orthotic inserts since he was two years old. These, combined with his high insteps, make Velcro-fastened shoes impossible. Special education people kept telling us, “Oh, I know where you can buy Velcro shoes that work!” but they didn’t come through. I was rather insulted by their insistence that I wasn’t looking hard enough. I’ve bought his shoes since he was two years old, after all. I’d buy easy-to-handle shoes for him if they were out there! Our solution: elastic laces. These laces (that look at first glance like a telephone cord) have been a godsend. He can tighten them when needed, and they never come untied.

But again, no one else in high school has elastic laces. They’re more for the youngest and the eldest (Grandma loves them). While Amigo doesn’t mind having these in his shoes, the day will come when he needs to look somewhat professional, and coiled shoelaces won’t do the trick.

Enter Lands’ End. They have casual shoe with elastic, and the laces are purely for show. The shoes are narrow enough to fit Amigo’s foot, roomy enough to accommodate his orthotics, and look reasonably decent, too. If the shoelaces keep coming undone, I give in and (gulp) cut them short. Amigo keeps his shoes on, they look decent, and we’re both happy.

Until he grows, which at 16 happens all. the. time.

Maybe I should be grateful he doesn’t have his sister’s fascination with a shoe wardrobe.

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