Since Julia gifted me the Dream Dinners, I’ve been determined to get back on the creating frozen dinners bandwagaon. My quality of life goes way way up when I don’t have to worry about cooking every night (or telling Brett what to cook — since I’m the chief menu planner/grocery shopping and LIKE IT, that means directing him falls to me, too). My weekdays can get pretty stressful so marking one thing off my to-do list even before I get up in the morning is a HUGE HUGE sanity saver.

In mind of this, we’ve been doing a big shopping trip once every two weeks and then going out for produce and milk as needed. I still only plan one week’s worth of breakfasts, lunches and dinners but when I cook dinner, I make twice as much and then freeze it. This Saturday I was feeling the culinary ambition (must have been that heady Pepsi Cake) so I made six dinners to freeze. Altogether to feed us for two weeks, we spent $217 (remember we’ll head out sometime early next week or later this week to replenish our produce supply).

Our planned dinners (each are planned twice):

• Sesame Salmon
• Penne Pasta Bake
• Manicotti
• Peanut Chicken
• 5-Spice Chicken
• Stromboli
• Turkey Burgers

On Saturday I made the salmon (all you do is marinate it and then freeze it), which we will grill and we’re going to have it tonight. I used already frozen salmon fillets — you can dump the marinade in and then as it defrosts in the ‘fridge, it’ll marinade. Easy-peasy. We’ll have it with rice and vegetables (we eat a lot of brown rice around here because it the kids don’t like the main dish, they can always fill up on rice plus it’s cheap and nutritious). I also made the Penne Pasta Bake (whole wheat penne, pasta sauce, italian turkey sausage, cheeses) and then split it between two 9 x 13 containers. Freeze then either defrost to bake or bake frozen for a little longer. Same goes for the manicotti. I went ahead and splurged on the disposable baking dishes to save myself time & trouble. Every little bit helps around here.

Normally I make my own turkey burgers but the premade ones were cheaper than buying the ground turkey so I went ahead and got them. They’re pretty good.

Stromboli wi’ll be annoying because I’ll need to get out the bread machine to make the dough but then I’ll bake them and freeze one when it cools and serve the other that night. I could make calzones this way, too. I thought about buying the frozen dough but 1) it’s expensive compared to homemade; and 2) it was white flour with high fructose corn syrup. Deal breaker. Rats. Fortunately I have a great pizza crust recipe but my bread machine squeaks like Mickey Mouse caught in a thresher and I’m too cheap to thrift a new one so we all suffer and dread baking. (I really need to just get another one. They are ALWAYS at the thrift store, often un-used.)

The Peanut Chicken is a recipe that you cook then freeze, which normally I’d avoid but I’ll just make a double-match on a slower evening and then freeze half of it. Again, served with rice and vegetables or salad.

5-Spice chicken is the same thing, really. Freeze it in the marinade and then let it defrost in the sauce. Last week we tried a spicy lime chicken recipe that Brett and I loved (it’s what I just ate for lunch) but the kids thought it was too sour and spicy so we’re going to try these other recipes.

That’s it.

I usually buy those bags of frozen boneless, skinless chicken breasts unless the fresh stuff is a better price (sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t). I’d like to get ahead enough that I could stock up when things are on sale but truthfully we’re close to our grocery budget bone and right now we can only shore up our pantries on a fairly small scale.

So that’s fourteen dinners and the pasta dishes make a lot of left-overs so that’s some lunches, too. I don’t plan lunches at all (or breakfast); I just try to have stuff on hand like sliced turkey, mac & cheese, etc. I buy a lot of eggs because both the kids will eat them hardboiled and Noah will scramble himself some if he’s hungry. Brett is also fond of hobo eggs.

I’m trying to think of what else about our shopping this time around. Hmmm. Oh — we went to Aldi’s and ended up doing the bulk of our shopping there. I have a love/hate relationship with Aldi’s; you never know what’ll be there so sometimes showing up is a waste of time. They’re owned by Trader Joe’s now so sometimes what they have is really good but you have to read labels. This time around their frozen chicken breasts & tenders and salmon were all priced right and we decided to try the turkey burgers (12 to a package). Also their frozen veggies and frozen fruit is really well priced so we got a bunch of that. And their canned goods — tomato sauce, etc. I was pleased to find jarred spaghetti sauce without sugar or high fructose corn syrup there for only $1.25 so that inspired the pasta dishes. Other Aldi’s finds: 100% grape juice, which we’ll turn into popsicles and whole wheat pasta, which they don’t always have.

We still had to head to our regular store for milk (because Kroger’s storebrand doesn’t have bovine growth hormone) and rice (because Aldi’s only had white) along with produce and italian turkey sausages. But we saved enough at Aldi’s that we stayed well within our budget and will enjoy wriggle room because of it.

So someone asked what we actually eat. Here are the basic answers based on what’s pretty much always in the cupboards/fridge: those dinners, left-overs from dinners, yogurt, cheese, crackers, pretzals, eggs, fruit, veggies (kids mostly eat carrots if it’s snacks and Madison likes frozen peas), dried fruit, frozen fruit, nuts, cereal with milk, cereal with yogurt (cheerios go great in yogurt), plain cereal, cereal-based GORP (raisins, chocolate chips, nuts, etc.), pancakes, waffles, muffins, cookies, mac & cheese, egg salad, tuna salad, oatmeal, popcorn, apple sauce, mandarin oranges.

I guess that’s it? I bake two or three times a week,usually to make something for breakfast that the kids then snack on. So a typical day (BJ asked)?

Breakfast: Brett and I usually have cereal or oatmeal. The kids have cereal, oatmeal or something baked (pancakes, waffles, muffins). On weekends Brett might make eggs and run out for these fancy turkey sausages we like.

Lunch: Left-overs, sandwiches, peanutbutter crackers, eggs along with some kind of fruit, yogurt or cheese

Snacks: Whatever I baked that morning (if I baked), fruit, yogurt or cheese. Basically lunch again. Popsicles. Whatever.

Dinner: You know, dinner.

Then on the nights we go running, Brett usually makes popcorn. And sometimes on the nights we don’t go running, too. Also in summer popsicles and occasional ice cream. In the winter, hot cocoa.

Ok. Back to work.

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I like to see him with his friends (it helps that I like his friends a lot) and I like to see him stretching his way past his insular family even though I’ll miss him when he’s well and truly gone. (I’m sure he’ll visit. Some.)

Anyway. I decided that in honor of the great American tradition of the suburban potluck I’d make a Pepsi Cake. I found the recipe in a cookbook we had at work (our organization does a whole lot with small Ohio towns and one of them put out a cookbook as a fundraiser). The Pepsi Cake was a hit although I couldn’t bring myself to eat a whole piece — too sweet! Mostly I just wanted to try it because it sounded hilarious only I wanted to make it with Coca-Cola since that seemed more patriotic. Brett doesn’t like Coke as much as Pepsi because he’s blasphemous but since he’d be the one drinking the left-overs, I let him make the final decision.

The result was a very very very moist cake with a tiny bit of a bite like the first burn when you sip soda. There wasn’t any left when we headed home so I guess folks liked it (I know my father-in-law did). Next time I’d like to try it with chocolate and maybe a cherry cola. Here’s the recipe:

1 box white cake mix (didn’t I tell you it’d be very American??)

4 eggs

1/2 cup oil

1/2 cup Pepsi

Mix it all up and bake it according to the box instructions. I did it in a bundt pan but then had trouble getting it out because I need a new bundt pan. (Note: Some people add a package of vanilla pudding to this mix. And some people add nuts to the bottom of the pan.)

The topping is the kicker:

stick of butter (I use real butter even though this recipe really cries out for Oleo if you want to keep with the theme)

1/4 cup Pepsi

1/4 cup water

1 cup sugar

Stir it up on the stovetop and bring to a boil. Boil for 3 to 4 minutes then pour over the hot cake. It’ll all soak in (it may take some time so pour slowly) and you’ll end up with a very juicy cake.

Apparently cooking with soda pop is a time-honored American tradition and colas work especially well as a meat tenderizer. And when I was hunting around the internet, I also found a ton of people who make a “diet” cake by using a box of cake mix with a diet soda, no other ingredients. Stir it up and bake it. There are long bulletin board discussions about which flavors go with which flavors. Like lemon cake with diet 7-up or yellow cake with diet orange Faygo. I will leave you to that because I think this recipe is as far as I want to go down the soda pop baking path. (The diet soda cake doesn’t ring my bell AT ALL.)
—————-
Now playing: Lynn Miles – I’m The Moon
via FoxyTunes

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And I said, “Yes. What’s important is eating right and getting exercise. If someone is doing those things then their body is going to be exactly what it’s supposed to be, which might be fat and might be skinny.”

She said, “Ok.”

I said, “Were you thinking about me being a little bit fat? Were you watching my body when I was putting away the cart?”

(The line after this paranthetical paragraph is where you see how Dawn will climb up on the cross for the public good of her blog reading public to combat size prejudice. Much of the following info is similar to what I’ve written before but further down you can see what Madison says about herself and see why being explicit — i.e., getting up on the cross and daring to say, “You mean my fat ass?”  is important.)

She said, “Yes, I was looking at your tush.”

I said, “My fat tush, huh?”

She laughed.

“Well,” I said. “You know how I eat a variety of food and you know I’m running and exercising so you know that my body is just supposed to be a little bit fat.”

“Not straight like Lis [babysitter].”

“No, not straight like Lis. But that’s how my body is and that’s how Lis’s body is. You know, people might look at me and Lis and say, ‘Wow, Lis is so straight! I bet she really exercises!’ but actually I exercise more than Lis and this is just how my body is. That’s why you can’t ever look at someone and know if they eat too much or too little or exercise at all. People will tell you that you can look at someone and tell but they’re wrong. And they will try to tell you that how people look is ok or not ok but they’re wrong about that, too.”

(Lis will not mind my telling you that I exercise more because she is one of the people I talk to about this stuff anyway.)

Madison then said, “It is just racist to say that people who are fat don’t exercise!”

I said, “It’s not nice to say things about people’s body shapes and sizes but it’s not racist. Racist is when people make assumptions about people based on race — on being black or white or Asian. Some people call it size-ist when people make assumptions about people’s size.”

“I exercise and I eat a variety of foods.”

“Yes you do. You are really healthy.”

[beat]

Then I said, casually, “What do you think about your body?”

“A little bit little and a little bit fat.”

“And since you exercise and eat right, your body must be exactly right.”

[Note: Here I wanted to say all kinds of "beautiful" and "strong" and "pretty" but I felt like this was coming from my reaction to her saying "fat" and wasn't necessary and in fact would be "she doth protest too much." Because if she had said, "A little bit little" I would have just said that bit about being exactly right so I stuck with it. I sat on my proverbial hands. The ones that would otherwise be wringing.]

“Yes,” continued my dearest darling Madison. ” Can you be straight and fat at the same time?”

“Yes, you can have a fat tushie or a fat tummy and straight arms and legs. Bodies come in all shapes.”

“Like a fat belly? Like Pennie has a fat belly because Roscoe is in there!”

And then we segued right from size and body acceptance into how babies are born, what they do before they get born and adoption.

It was the longest ride home from the grocery EVER; I am exhausted and recuperating with coffee (to make up for that lame-ass diet coke I had this morning).

I have been wondering when Madison would bring up the fact that she is bigger than her friends because obviously she knows this. For one thing, they play dress-up together and clothes that fit her friends don’t always fit her. That she used “fat” matter-of-factly gives me hope because this is a label that will be put on her (she is female after all and I think you could be 5′4″ and 105 pounds and still could get that lobbed at you) and I’d like her to own it and not the prejudice that comes with it. And note: The first step to this is asking her explicitly, “Are you talking about my fat body?” And then saying explicitly, “Because my fat body is ok.”

The very first time I heard a 4-year old girl call herself fat was when I was babysitting and this adorable, beautiful and yes, round little girl said, “I am too fat to be the princess; I have to be the prince.” See, the problem is not that she (lovely as she was) called herself “fat”, it’s that she thought beautiful princesses could not be fat. Fat is not the problem; some of us are fat. That word isn’t the enemy. It’s the prejudice behind it and the only we can dismantle it in our own families is by disempowering it as an insult. First step to doing that? Not flinching when your kids say it and even inviting them to share their thoughts even when you know it’s your fat ass they’re eyeing.

There’s a lot I do wrong as a parent. Like yell at the kids when the root of the problem is that I’m drinking diet coke at breakfast instead of coffee. Or get so tense about money that I have a heart-attack when someone innocently asks why we are so mean as to deny them a trip to the (expensive) movies. I mean, these kids have worlds of lame parenting to explore in therapy someday. But this stuff — this explicit talking about fat and about sex and about race and about adoption and all the hard stuff — this I can do. And I have a strong belief, surely born of my fear that I am screwing up in many ways, that if we see our kids as the full-fledged people they are with ideas and concerns and experiences that matter as much as our own and treat them with the serious attention they deserve then they can deal with our neurotic breakdowns. Knock wood.

From Madison telling me that she wishes we were all black (you should’ve seen her, elbows on the table, waving her hands and rolling her eyes as she said it) to saying that she is “a little bit little and a little bit fat” with the same casual certainty that she says she likes pink, I figure this girl is gonna be ok.

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2. I am not surprised that Madison gets tired of being the only black person in our family and I’m freaking proud as hell of her for being able to say it and say it without hesitating. I want her to OWN her feelings because lord knows she has a right to them. I told her that sometimes I wish we were all black, too, and I’m sorry that sometimes it feels lonely in the family. People don’t think she notices but she does. I can see her noticing at every family BBQ. I can’t fix this for her (because I don’t have the emotional fortitude to adopt again even if I could scrape up the money) but I can hear her and believe her and affirm her feelings.

3. I thought of this affirmation bit when I was watching the trailer to this documentary: Off and Running. There are several parts that broke my heart (I can’t wait to see it) but there are two bits that really stayed with me. One was where her mom says, “I’m going to tell you who you are…” and then proceeds to define her daughter only within the context of her adoptive family. Now I don’t know what she said before or after so I’m not talking about this particular mom here but I was thinking about how so many of us adoptive parents don’t see our kids in the context of their whole lives including their beyond-adoption existence.  I mean, we don’t see them beyond the context of us. The other part that got to me was when the interviewer asks the young woman if she feels black and she says, “I don’t know what that means.” I want Madison to know what that means.

4. We’re out of coffee but I found a lone diet coke in the ‘fridge. It’s totally not the same but it’ll get me through the morning before I can head to the grocery store. I mention this in case there are embarrassing typos here. It’s the weakness of the diet coke caffeine.

5. Running has improved except that the last time I ran I ended up with a really bad shin splint that was swollen and throbbing. I’ve been icing it for two days and hoping that I don’t have to stop. The thing is with shin splints is that you have to rest but also your legs won’t get stronger if you don’t work them so it’s a balancing act. (I hear shin splints a’re caused by weak ankles, which makes sense to me.) Running has improved my mood, insomnia and occasional headaches. I only noticed the headache part last night when I was taking an ibuprofen for the shin splints and realized I hadn’t hit that bottle for a headache in awhile. But see I just typed that and I have a headache now. I think that’s the diet coke.

6. Last time I ran I was thinking about how I would decorate the waiting room in my office when I have a counseling practice one day. I was thinking about how I wouldn’t want to have glossy magazines because I think glossy magazines do more harm than good so I was thinking about what reading material I would have. It was very pleasant. Until my shin splints started acting up.

7. I get so excited when I think about this new career path! It has so many possibilities and so many different directions. I’m also really grateful for the time I spent full-time freelancing for helping me understand where my strengths lie and what kind of work environment best suits me. Honestly, even with the networking and the late-paying clients, that time spent full-time freelancing was the happiest I’ve ever been work-wise. Seeing a way to getting back to the great parts of it makes me really happy.

8. I’d love to dip my toe back in the freelance waters but can’t figure out the time to find work (it’d have to be really the right kind of projects because I’m so busy) and also what exactly I’d do. I keep doing these speaking engagements and speaking is the best way to find clients, right? (It really is the best way to drum up business.) I do the speaking because I love it but then I have nothing to offer to anyone who wants more after. I don’t have a business, I don’t have a product. So I’ve been thinking about very small consulting — what would that look like? Nothing too big because I don’t want to get back into the whole mess but just something where I could say, “Yes, I could do this for you” because generally after I talk people approach me looking for something and I have nothing to share. It’s too lazy of me. But I have time to think on it because I don’t have any speaking engagements coming up.

9. I recently gave a very touchie-feelie talk about blog narrative that I enjoyed even though the audience was slow to start. I had no idea what to expect (it was at PodCamp Ohio) and we were rushing through my presentation so I kept stopping to try to egg people into volunteering info. When they did I was impressed by how much people shared — it was a really brave audience. I’m getting in touch with my touchie-feelie side professionally. Now that I don’t have to be all selling and stuff. I’d much rather ask how people are feeling than ask about their expected ROI (return on investment). I hate talking in acronyms and jargon.

10. So they cut Brett’s hours at work yesterday. It’s a temporary thing (probably — unless it isn’t) and I’m worried but not just for us. It’s a family business; we know and love the family. I’m worried for all of us. It means we can save on childcare, which is good but things are tight around here and we don’t have a whole lot of wriggle room.

11. It shouldn’t but for me it adds some tension in our open adoption. Pennie honestly doesn’t give a rat’s ass about money as long as her daughter is fed and clothed decently. We were both raised by single parents and we have a similar class background and our values around money are also very similar. But I still feel like I’ve let her down when we can’t whisk her off to dinner when she comes over. She would never expect it. Never ever. And she’s made us dinner tons and tons of time, too, so it’s not like being the blustering big shots is even a dynamic in our open adoption but still I feel it. I want to shower her new baby with gifts and spoil her rotten and I hate that I can’t. Even though I know she understands, I still hate it. I just hate being broke and I hate being ashamed of being broke because I know (theoretically) that there’s no shame in it — we’re working as hard as we can and then a little bit harder (because not only is our A/C broken but so is our dishwasher). And it’s not like we’re alone in our current economic struggles but still.

12. Again with the plus side — I keep thinking about this. See, if I’m a counselor than all of these trials and tribulations? It’s a good thing because it breeds compassion. If I get a client in an economic crisis or struggling with career choices? I’m there, full of empathy.

13. Not that I mean to end on unlucky 13 but looks like I have one more thing to add. I’m short-term pessimistic (very worried about hanging in there until the economy creeps back — did I mention the severe state funding woes that make me a touch nervous about the state of my own job???) but I’m long-term optimistic. The reality is that Brett and I could both lose our jobs and there’s not a whole lot out there to replace them. That’s just facts. But other than keeping my eye on the big picture and trying to keep a lot of crazy-ass balls in the air, what can I do? We know our jobs want to keep us around and that the powers that be there will do what they can to keep things going so we’ll just keep doing the best we can and keep cutting costs (although there aren’t a whole lot left to cut really — we’ve always been frugal and there comes a point where there aren’t really many extras to go) and hold on to each other when we get scared. At least we’re paying our bills.

14. Ok, I’ll end on 14. I’ll end on an up note. I have great kids. I have a great husband. I have fabulous, fabulous friends in real life and through the magic of the computer. I’ve got a job I like with co-workers I adore and long-term plans that make me giddy. And I’ve gone from not being able to jog one lap around the track to running a mile plus without stopping. (Ok, PLODDING a mile plus but still!) I just had to mention the money stuff because the anxiety is an underlying hum in our lives right now and it’s a blog of my life, right? Right. So there you go.

—————-
Now playing: Samamidon – O Death
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Madison was a cesarean section baby and she was worried about that, worried that the cut hurts the mama. I told her they give the mommy medicine so that it’s ok and everyone is just so happy about the baby that the hurting doesn’t matter so much. She asked if there was blood and I said that when babies get born, there is blood but this is because bodies make blood and isn’t bad for the mommy or the baby. She asked if Noah was a c-section and I said that he was a v*ginal birth. Now THAT surprised her. She has her “how babies get made” books and so she’s seen the (cartoon) pictures and all but this was hitting close to home. She could not stop thinking about it. She asked me if that hurt and I said yes but again, it’s such a happy time with a baby that the hurting is all right.

Still, she was just amazed that such a thing could HAPPEN. Then after a little bit of reading her book (we were sitting in bed reading together) she said, “Does it go to your SOUL?” I said, “Does what go to your soul?” Then I realized she meant women’s v*ginas because after all, if a baby comes out of it, it’s something pretty special right?

I asked her what she thought and she said she didn’t know but probably. I said some people thought that. (I didn’t tell her that zillions of years of patriarchy have been based on similar theories.) I said she was right about v*ginas being special.

She’s a budding feminist, that one!

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