5:00 Fridays

Hot damn! I was too wrapped up, so to speak, to stay on top of my blogging this past week. Hence I totally missed my 5:00 Fridays post. Head bashing on wall right now.

Both Bird and Deal got bottles of hot sauce in their Christmas stockings. And yes, they both use it. On eggs. Pizza. Tacos. Quiche. Chili. Grilled chicken. Ribs. Sometimes popcorn. This spicy mama is proud to have equally spicy boys.

So today's cocktail, albeit a tardy one, is a:

Spicy Martini

1 shot of gin (I'd go with Tanqueray for this one.)
1 oz vermouth
10-15 drops Tabasco

Shake the gin and vermouth with ice in a shaker. Pour into a martini glass. Add drops of Tabasco into the shaken drink. Stir ever so slightly. Garnish with a whole pickled jalepeno pepper.

Sizzle. Sizzle. Sizzle.

When Wrapping Becomes Obscene

Bird goes to a Go Green school. It is one of many reasons we adore his elementary school. And oh, do we adore it! His teacher (who rocks!) and principle share ideas with us every week to help us treat the earth in a gentler and kinder way. It's wonderful to see my children engaged in protecting the environment. What astounds me is the vernacular in their young conversations. Recycle. Reuse. Land fill. Soil content. Run off. Pollution. I assure you that I did not know these terms until about college when we started recycling all those Beast cans and bottle of white zin for the times we were feeling fancy. The other thing that makes me take note is that all of us, including the smallest of children, can have a hand, and indeed a responsibility, to help clean up our planet. The smallest, most inconsequential of acts can be enormous in aggregate. And by teaching our children a green lifestyle, we are giving them a gift. A gift of responsibility, civic engagement, sense of community, and a cleaner, healthier earth.

Christmas is perhaps the most un-Green of holidays, despite its evergreens and color scheme. The tinsel, garland, bows, plastic lawn ornaments, energy sucking light displays, blow up lawn art, boxes, styrofoam peanuts, bubble wrap (fun as it is to pop), greeting cards, fake snow. And that's not even including the damn toy packaging. Seriously, is it really necessary to require scissors, a regular screwdriver, phillips screw driver, pliers, wire cutters, and gorilla teeth to open a box of Little People and a Hot Wheels race track?

Wrapping paper is lovely, but let's be honest, it is a waste. A. Waste. Kids don't give a damn if you use the comics or fancy three-ply metallic embossed paper. And if the adults in your life care, they deserve coal. Pththtpthth (That's my attempt at a raspberry in onomatopoeia). So I struggle with the gift wrap thing at every birthday and tend to reuse gift bags. So I apologize if I have returned your gift bag. I assure you I am not regifting the gift. Unless it is the Lorax. We have three copies.

Tips for wrapping presents from our Go Green school: Instead of gift bags, buy reusable totes which come in all shapes and sizes! Instead of wrapping paper, reuse newspaper, brown paper bags, old posters or maps, pictures from calendar pages or heck, even old wrapping paper! It's fun to have the kids help decorate the brown paper bags with ink and stampers, stickers, markers, and my personal favorite (cough, cough) glitter glue. No one cares about the crinkles. They only care about the present inside. And I can't help you out there.

If every American family wrapped just three presents in recyclable materials, we would save enough paper to cover 45,000 football fields. Reuse that ribbon! If every household reused just two feet of holiday ribbon, the 38,000 miles of ribbon saved could tie a bow around the entire planet!

Now that's a present I'd love to give my children.

Children Deserve Better Than Chuck

A few weeks ago the Parade magazine insert in our Sunday paper showcased TV news anchor Brian Williams, who talked of his mother's famous goulash. A can of Spaghetti-Os and half a pound of ground chuck. Blech. Gag. Yuck. More ghoulish than goulash in my humble opinion. No disrespect, Mrs. Williams.

Why do so many people presume kids don't have taste buds? They are not predisposed to mushy, salty, saucy, rubbery, processed foods. It is our job as parents to hone those taste buds and help develop our children's palates.

Our culinary responsibility as parents does not consist of sustenance alone. General rule of thumb: if I won't eat it, neither will my kids. This is precisely why we skip most of the grocery store aisles (unlike the parents of two with a third on the way shopping alongside me yesterday - their cart had enough sodium content and high fructose corn syrup to drive a race horse to heart failure).

Needless to say, no ground chuck in my house. Last night for dinner we grilled some rib eye steaks. Natural beef with no additives. I find it interesting that we spend so much time and money protecting our kids from touching hot stove tops, tumbling down stairs, and staying warm on a winter day, but we pay little to no mind to what we put into their vulnerable little bodies.

So back to the rib eye and our very simple yet delectable dinner...

Grilled steak, cut into quite manageable pieces, was a lovely treat. I assure you that I didn't get such good cuts of meat on my plate until well into adulthood. I made a "kitchen sink" steak sauce that made the unadorned steak even better, and besides, condiments make everything better. My semi-homemade sauce was equal parts of black pepper sauce from the Asian market, sour cream, and molasses. I added a tablespoon of fresh horseradish, a couple splashes of worcestershire sauce, and a few drops of cream. Stir it all up and dip away. And in terms of budget, flank steak is a great affordable alternative. Just slice it pretty thinly against the grain, marinate, and grill. Takes just a few minutes on each side.

Our dinner was rounded out by a salad of quartered tiny tomatoes, seeded cucumber slices, sweet onions, and chopped Italian parsley. A few drops of olive oil and red wine vinegar, along with the requisite sea salt and pepper finished it off. We also had roasted fingerling potatoes that are quite buttery on their own and green beans quick roasted with slivers of fresh garlic. Some warm french bread helped up sop up all the juicy goodness on our plates. Giving kids the opportunity to "play" with their food makes meal time more fun.

And for dessert, fresh madelines (those cakey French cookies) from the Costco bakery, raspberries, blackberries, and home whipped cream with a touch of vanilla.

Clean plate club all around.

And just for kicks, we ate in the dining room. But no fine china. I'm no risk taker.

Cross posted at Foodie Mama.

Word to Your Mother

Bird and Deal say so many things that astound me, for better or for worse. I am floored by their train of thought and rationale. Their little personalities are amplified by the things they say. Take for instance the other day:

Me, kissing Deal good night: "You are so sweet. You are going to be an amazing man one day."

Deal: "You mean when I am a daddy?"

Me: "Yes, you will be an awesome daddy."

Deal: "Will I still live with you when I am a daddy?"

Me, chuckling: "No, you will live in your own house."

Deal: "Then I'll be your neighbor, Mommy."


And the next day, when Bird, Deal, and I were making and decorating cookies (also known as trashing my kitchen with flour and sprinkles and frosting):

It goes without saying that baking with a 5 and 3 year old is messy business (gross understatement of the year, emphasis on gross). And if you know me, you know that I abhor a mess. I braced myself for an evening of slinging flour and sprinkling colored sugar. I practically bought out the cookie decorating aisle at Target: green and red sugar, red, green, and white frosting, red and green sprinkles, silver dragees, and coated candy confetti in all the shapes of Christmas. I went to town rolling the dough, and the boys cut various holiday shapes. The counters, walls, and floor, not the mention all of us, were a veritable mess. It looked like Willy Wonka's store room exploded in my kitchen. And you know what? I didn't even freak out. For the first time in my life I went with the flow.

When we were done, Bird was gobbling up all the spilled sugars and sprinkles and such. He'd poke his sticky little finger into a pile of sugared confetti on the counter, pop it in his mouth, and replay. I must have been watching his precision scavenging for a good five minutes.

Bird, looking up at me with pure earnestness in his eyes (not the Eddie Haskell type of earnestness): "Technically Mommy, I am helping you clean up."


Proof once again, that is is indeed possible to render me speechless.

5:00 Fridays

Santa's famed list might delineate people by naughty or nice, but I'm willing to bet we're all a bit of both. Clearly, some sway more one way than the other. I'll leave it up to you to decide where the family at Chez Dirt & Noise fall.


Naughty But Nice
1/2 shot amaretto
1/2 shot peach schnapps
1 shot amarula cream
1 ounce cream

I believe Morningside Mom has tasted amarula cream straight from the plains of Africa. I'm taking her word that the stuff makes for a good cocktail. You see, we were separated at birth so I'm confident our taste buds play by the same rules. Never mind that she's blond and younger than I am. The time/space continuum has yet to be fully explored.

Now shake up all that goodness into a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Strain into a chilled martini glass. Garnish with chocolate shavings. Mmmm...

So you see, too many of these things will make you so nice that you do something naughty.

Wordless Wednesday: Tin Cup Chalice

Christmas Clutter

I love Christmas. I love getting out the boxes of decorations from the attic. I love the story behind all our ornaments. I love the food. I love the excitement and anticipation in my boys' every move. I love the spirit, the fellowship, the merriment. But I hate the clutter.

Bows. Bags. Wrapping paper rolls unwinding all over the place. Tape, but never where and when I need it. Shipping boxes. Damn styrofoam peanuts (shame on companies that still use that stuff!). Greeting cards and those excruciating update letters. Pine needles. Baskets of fruit. Gingerbread houses. Elves on shelves. Bounty of cookies. Homemade paper plate crafts and pine cone ornaments. Candles. Bells. Invitations. Sticky egg nog cups. Advent calendar and the accompanying tiny ornaments. Vases of candy canes. Nutcrackers.

It's all driving me nuts.

I didn't inherit the decorating gene so my futile attempts at wrangling the wired ribbon, bows, greenery, and floral picks look like my son's kindergarten class threw a Whoville all nighter in my living room. I can't get anything to swag. The unsightly cords are plainly in sight. The bows are askew. The greenery droops. The garland sags. The lights flicker. The wreath slips every time I open the door. And falls when I close it. The shatter proof ornaments break. The berries are poisonous. The poinsettias turn brown. The tree teeters (and actually fell over last year). The embroidered stockings keep turning backwards. The train under the tree broke. Even the music skips.

Every year I practically study the pages of Southern Living and try to reinvent my dining table and mantle into a holiday bounty of decorations. I try so very hard. Every year I fail. I'm a pretty smart cookie. I can follow directions. I buy the stuff, trapsing through the aisles at my local garden shop and AC Moore. But I can't set a holiday table scape for the life of me. I sure wish Sandra Dee were my best friend.

So all the clutter is giving me a headache. What's more, it's making me feel incompetent. I love Christmas decorations. In other people's homes.

Cross posted at Deep South Moms.