Suburban Bliss:: Birth Control Via The Written Word

Did They Eat It?: Grilled Chicken With Shells II

This is a repeat, because you may have noticed, I haven't been cooking very much for my family. I don't know why exactly other than I've been feeling uninspired. Possibly because I keep thinking we could eat for 6 months on $10 and a shit-ton of ramen noodles. I could tell the kids this is practice for college. Or we could eat beans out of the can, cooked over an open flame, just like the hobos!

Logan and I have been talking about having a Recession Party where everyone comes wearing a barrel. Or maybe dressed as a traveling hobo, or in a burlap sack. We'd serve beans and Spam and everyone would drink moonshine from a ceramic jug.

The problem is this is Detroit and the threat of job loss is like a black cloud over your head and YOU KNOW we'd plan that party and Logan would be laid off that day....just to add to the atmosphere.

Anyway I made this again because we really love it and I think it's pretty to look at. Also, I wondered if there would be a change in the kid's reaction to this dish.

Did They Eat It: Spaghetti Carbonara

The other day I sent out some smoke signals on Twitter. The smoke signals said, "Help! I'm a suburban housewife and I don't know what to make for dinner." Then I put a finger on my cheek and looked vaguely helpless and 100 strangers favorited my picture on Flickr.

Then I got this note, a version of spaghetti carbonara that is immensely simplified and easy to prepare. If you're a spaghetti carbonara purist, please don't read any further because I know. There's no wine or cream or any of the things that MUST be in carbonara. This is going to be our special version everyone!

Did They Eat It: Cincinnati Chili

Have you had Cincinnati Chili before?

I used to eat this chili at the house of my second family, The Mitchell's.  I've talked before about this family I grew up knowing. I've mentioned how I watched them ferociously looking for how normal families work, how normal marriages are, and least dramatically, how people cooked food that tastes good.

Things I learned about food at the Mitchell's:
Hamburgers from McDonald's are not "gourmet".
Spaghetti with clams and red sauce is amazing.
Pork Chops can be cut with a knife without straining your bicep.

Chili from Cincinnati is the best kind of chili in the world. It's made with chocolate and if you hate chocolate you're probably not human.

Did They Eat It: Simple Chicken & Noodles

This meal wasn't exactly meant to challenge my three children's tastebuds. If they didn't eat this, I would have made them wear it for sure. And not just for a couple of hours or something. No I'd make them wear it for days so they could really think about how picky they've become and is it worth it now that you're wearing a hat of chicken breasts and noodles.....

We grab lunch at Noodles quite a bit, it's right up the street from us (yay!) and across from the bookstore and since, as a family, we all enjoy eating lunch out and browsing the bookstore we do this quite a bit.

Here's the order, as I've messed it up about 429 times, I now have it tattooed on my forehead.

Maddie: buttered noodles, no parmesan, with seasoning and grilled chicken breast

Max: buttered noodles, with parmesan, seasoning and parmesan crusted chicken breast

Maddie loves the chicken so I decided to try and recreate it at home.

Snickerdoodles: The Day Before Payday Cookie

It's almost like when ABC News came to the house we were just tempting fate with our budget.

Reporter: Would you say your financial situation is better since you're renting?

Me: Of course! Ha ha ha!

......two weeks later......

God: How about now?

Ho Ho! It's not that bad and we'll make it work, the nice thing is we have a lot of flexibility with our financial landscape, plus all the late night fretting I do, so everything will be fine.

Our cash flow however has run into some snags in the last month. Mainly related to lawsuits against douchey ex-landlords who have illegally held our security deposit and those types of things. That keeps coming up doesn't it? I should just grow up already.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaa.

So at the end of the pay period we're sort of very careful with our money and this is my (typically) long-winded way of telling you how I decided to make Snickerdoodles today since my house has been cleared of everything except a variety of condiments, 3 eggs, some questionable hummus, and a lot of things you can mix with alcohol to make cocktails. It's what's for dinner!

I decided to try a recipe I saw at Tastespotting. Tastespotting has become my new hobby as I'm eating a really unsatisfying meal of peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or worse, a spoonful of peanut butter. I browse and think, "Gee, I wish I was putting that in my mouth."

You can find the recipe for snickerdoodles here.

Here's why I make snickerdoodles after growing up without ever even knowing something called a snickerdoodle existed. You can make them with 7 ingredients we almost always have in our house. The only cookie more reliably made from our kitchen would be one composed of ketchup, barbeque sauce and Rose's lime juice.

Let me know if you have one!

Did They Eat It: Sweet and Sour Chicken

I grabbed this recipe from Elise Bauer's great Simply Recipes site while I was at the grocery store deciding what to make for dinner. I take a (humorous, loving) beating from my friends and family because of my (really unbecoming) dependence on my phone. But this iPhone is a life saver in so many ways. One way being that I can be as flaky as I am and still buy the correct ingredients for dinner.

Maddie likes very few things and sauces make her fly into a wild rage, WHY DO I HAVE TO RUIN EVERYTHING WITH SAUCE!? But this Sweet and Sour Chicken has chicken, she likes, pineapple, she likes, and the sauce is like a punched up ketchup so I decided to risk it.

Here is everything you need, except an egg and the chicken that I forgot in the fridge.

Did They Eat It: Chillied Black Bean Pasta

Hey! Look! I cooked something while using a camera. The only bright side to the Spring Forward segment of daylight savings time is the extra daylight in the kitchen so food doesn't look unappealing in my dimly lit kitchen. (You remember that kitchen I was cooking in for most of the winter? The one we "trashed". Ahem.)

Last night I decided to make Chillied Black Bean Pasta, you know how we feel about black beans in this house. This is a recipe from my old neighborhood's cookbook. Logan designed it for them and we planned on getting them made into real books but that proved too difficult to get together. We ended up making the book into a PDF you could either print or use on your computer.



I like reading cookbooks while I eat something particularly unsatisfying, like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, thinking about what else I could be eating that would actually be satisfying. So I had my book printed and put into a binder.



This is a recipe from my friend Andrea's collection. We'll be eating a lot of black beans in the next few months because, hey Mandatory Paycut at Logan's office! Woooo! I am loving this economy!

Here's what you need

Did They Eat It?: Queso with Chicken, Black Beans and Rice Velveeta Edition

Finally! The (Rather Lamely Named) RECIPE!!!!!!!!

This is most of my ingredients: Multigrain tortilla chips, diced onion, brown rice, black beans, Ro-Tel, minced garlic, cumin and chili pepper. And, you know Velveeta (2%!)

Did They Eat It?: Pumpkin Polenta with Chorizo and Black Beans

As I read this recipe, I found myself laughing a little to myself. As I've said before, I like making things my kids believe they'll die from eating. It makes me feel just a little more alive.

This one, had all the makings of a deadly recipe. Sausage! Polenta! Even onions. Onions I diced while my husband watched, remarking every 20 seconds, "That's a lot of onions, huh?" and "Jeez...how many onions are you putting in that?"

You can find the entire recipe here.

I skipped the red peppers (ever since I was pregnant with Maddie, I can't eat red peppers. Her pickiness made it's way into my blood a little. I also used sharp cheddar in place of the Manchego cheese, just because it seemed a little silly to search the cheese refrigerator at the market for a special cheese when I knew the kids were going to spend the entire meal gagging and dying on the floor.

This was a really, really easy meal to make.

Here are most of the ingredients I used...sloppily displayed with Logan and Max sharing a before dinner snack/drink.

Did They Eat It: Pasta Primavera

I made this Pasta Primavera from Elise Bauer's Simply Recipes for my book club.

I realized while deciding what to make for this group of women that I'm okay with one food restriction. I can cook vegetarian meals with my eyes closed, but if you add an additional allergy to the mix, I end up running around the kitchen spraying flour on every surface while fretting about what to make.

My book club includes a couple vegetarians (poor things) and a lactose intolerant lady (unfortunate soul), so I'm constantly finding vegetarian recipes that include cheese, or non-cheese dishes that include animal flesh. One of the conditions for membership in our book club, at least in my head, is "You have to at least eat pasta."

Pasta is one of those uniting foods that brings people together over the table. Kind of like the Olympics or sharing outlandish landlord stories. Oh wait that's only at my table!

Did They Eat It?: Shells with Grilled Chicken and Mozzerella

My family is very wary of recipe titles.

They're certain that by only telling them the name of the recipe I'm serving,  I'm leaving out all the many things they hate to eat. So I can spring it on them just before dessert. "You like that? Guess what? It's PEOPLE! Surprise!"

But this recipe is pretty much what it says, except it  makes no mention of the tomatoes (thankfully that's a welcome  surprise for my family). It has a little something for everyone,  grilled chicken, tomatoes and cheese.  It's a really easy meal,  especially if you think to grill some extra chicken at a meal a couple  days earlier. I never do this because all of my brain cells are being occupied by Project: Keep The House Standing.

There's no heavy sauce to scare Logan under the stairs in the basement. Maddie likes  three out of the five main ingredients (depending on her level of PMS) and Max likes everything in  the dish, unless he's constipated. These are excellent odds for a happy dinner table.

Did They Eat It? Chicken Corn and Black Bean Stoup Edition

My mom bought me this cookbook for Christmas. Do other people do this? I eat something really boring and unsatisfying but I read cookbooks while I do it and think of how good something really good would taste.

I don't quite get the rage Rachael Ray elicits, (seriously?) (Whoa.) I'll admit she's a little over saturated perhaps, see this 5ives list. But overall she cooks in a way I can cook, well at least close to the a way I could strive to cook. Simple, fast with not so many dishes to clean up.

I realize I haven't done very well with the Did They Eat It feature I promised months ago. But there's a good reason for that. I suck at cooking for my family! I want to be better, I truly do. But I just can't seem to create the ever elusive Meal Plan System I keep thinking will make me able to plan meals each week with little effort. Also I get bored making the same meals over and over. I start to feel like there's no point in cooking unless I'm trying something new. Trying something new each time I cook is annoying because I'm always the equivalent of a newborn in the kitchen.

Suburban Bash: The Kind Of Lazy But Still Fun New Year's Eve Party

I meant to share our New Year's Eve party with you. This was the party that broke my back so to speak. There was the Holiday Progressive which left me invigorated and then all the last minute Christmas preparations I did, then Christmas dinner with my extended family, our trip to Chicago, followed by frantic de-Christmasing and preparations for 12 adults and 17 kids under nine to ring in the New Year. I was exhausted. I wanted it to be fun for the kids but to be honest I sort of wanted to throw a bunch of confetti at them and call it the New Year.

Still, it's not often kids get to stay up until midnight (or later if no one's killing each other) and I don't get to spend the first minutes with my best friends all the time so I wanted it to be reasonably special.

I made this event potluck-ish, emailing the guests while still in Chicago asking them to bring their own drinks and an appetizer to pass. I made just a vegetable tray with two dips, these really yummy Brussel Sprout, Bacon and Cheddar skewers (huge, huge hit both times I've made them).

Did they eat it?
Max and Maddie didn't try it.
Logan did and said, "I love these. Come to think of it, I've never tried a brussel sprout in my life!"

I just don't know where Maddie gets her inhibited taste buds from.

Did They Eat It: Chicken Casserole Edition.

This is a casserole my friend Jean used to make for me to serve when I babysat for her kids or for dinner when I lived in their basement in my early 20's. ("Hi, I'm Melissa....I live in the basement.") I love it and, when Max was a baby I used to make it for he and I to share because he loved it too.

Logan does not like it, you see it contains 1/4 cup of mayonnaise. If you divide a 1/4 cup of mayo into an 8 serving dish, that means you're eating like 1/2 a tablespoon of mayonnaise and that is enough to kill a man.

Logan is out of town though, ha ha! So I decided to mix it up for the kids and I. I thought, given Max's babyhood love of this dish I'd get at least a 2 out of 3.

This is the sort of dish which would be easiest to make if you had extra chicken from another dish and 2 cups of rice leftover as well. I had neither of these things so I made the rice and used cooked diced chicken I purchase from our school's fund raising food place, Market Day.