The Best Kept Southern Secret

Here we are at the end of week two of the cookbook, 366 Delicious Ways to Cook Rice, Beans, and Grains. We have had some successes, like the Lemony Couscous salad. We have had some total failures, like Hoppin’ John on New Year’s Day (the most memorable thing about that meal was the fact that I forced my family to hop once around the house for good luck). And we have had some weird, but honorable mentions, like mushrooms and leaks cooked with buckwheat groats (honestly being able to say “groats” repeatedly was the best part of thatmeal). But the winner for the past two weeks is Huevos Rancheros, which is basically breakfast burritos in a bed of oven-roasted potatoes.

Okay - I stole this picture, but it basically looked like this.

Now … I’m from Montana. And the fact that I have lived in the south for fourteen years and have never had a homemade breakfast burrito means that someone has been holding out on me. THOSE THINGS ARE AMAZING!! Are you freakin’ kidding me?! I have made them for breakfast, lunch and dinner in the past two weeks and my mind is still blown. The fact that every Southern woman isn’t knocking on the door of the newly re-located Yankee in her neighborhood with a piping-hot casserole dish full of breakfast burritos (with mild salsa please – extra-mild if you can find it … which you can’t south of the Mason-Dixon line) is a travesty that needs fixin’.

 

366 Days to be cheap, skinny, and disciplined

New Years resolution time and I have limited myself to one this year. And I mean “limit” in the same way I decided to “limit” myself to one husband – meaning it is such a ridiculously difficult endeavor it would just be stupid to try and take on another.

I am going to cook through the cookbook “366 Delicious Ways to Cook Rice, Beans and Grains”.

The Book

This year is a leap year and I am a GIANT nerd and cannot help but notice the beautiful relationship between there being 366 recipes in a book and 366 days in a year.

The benefits of this project are thrice. One, beans and grains are cheap. I don’t care if I have to drive 45 minutes for amaranth or order jarred grape leaves from Amazon.com, the average recipe in this book will set me back around $.16. Two, beans and grains are healthy. I dare you to get fat eating quinoa and cranberry beans. And finally, eating beans and grains every day for one year will be the most bad-ass act of discipline I have ever accomplished (with the possible exception of squatting my third son out Amazon-style on my bedroom floor).

Right here ladies and gentlemen

 

Trying to get into my pants

The other day my husband tells me I am one of the most intelligent people he’s ever met. Being that he is a computer scientist I assume he is trying to get into my pants – and, you know – he’s not the only one. I am desperately trying to get into my pre-pregnancy pants (I WILL NOT buy new ones!) and I am also constantly trying to fit into my mom pants – adjusting to life as a mom.

I have been asked more than once how you have kids without losing your identity, and my answer is always – you don’t. You will never be the same again. You grow, you change, and like growing out of a pair of pants – the old ones just aren’t going to fit. NOW, that doesn’t mean the new pants aren’t fabulous- it just may take some getting used to. No, I am no longer a person who can get away for coffee or a workout whenever I need it, or wear dry-clean only, or pee with the door closed (seriously – sometimes I forget to close it in public restrooms). But those things aren’t really who I am.

Don't worry - the cigarrette is fake

At each stage of life I have to learn and grow and try different pants until I find some that fit, a routine I can live with that gives me a sense of who I am, only to have another child or another change and begin it all again. So I relax. I let it go. I embrace new pants .

 

To Hell With All That

That was the name of the first book about being a mother that made me think it might just be something I could be good at. Up until that point I was a career-minded girl who used to stand in front of every microwave she could find (because it is supposed to make you sterile) who oops! met and married this awesome guy (YES!) and double oops! found out she was pregnant ten minutes after turning in her application for grad school. *brief pause to cuddle baby – okay, I’m back*  Four years (and another baby) later when someone suggested the aforementioned book I was still deciding whether motherhood was for me (ignoring the fact that I had in fact been a mother for quite some time). Besides being an amazing read, the book revealed one thing I had been missing: there are as many ways to mother as their are mothers and “doing it right” means “doing it”. Doing it right is being there *hold on, baby pulled a pillow on top of his face – okay, I’m back*. Doing it right is wiping the noses and the bottoms and the floors. Doing it right is being patient when you are and apologizing when you aren’t. Doing it right is being the kind of mother your kids wish they had.

This blog is about me (obviously) and the life lessons I have learned (mostly the hard way) *hold on, Pandora what were you thinking? – okay, I’m back*. I imagine I will monologue on motherhood (I’m for it now), healthy living (also a new development), marriage (not as scary as I thought) God (much scarier than I thought) and all the other things a bored SAHM with a bachelor’s degree and an internet connection could think of during the kids’ nap-time (there are three now BTW – kids, not internet connections). I am crass (you can take the girl out of the trailer park, but you can’t – you know), I am clever and I am honest as I write about things I used to believe to which I have now said “To Hell with all that.”