A Breakfast Tale

Every morning, I offer Silas a choice for breakfast, usually between eggs and hot cereal. Sometimes he picks eggs, sometimes he goes for the cereal. Sometimes he just asks for chocolate milk, please.

This morning he picked hot cereal and as I stood over the stove, waiting for the milk to heat up, he started bawling. Just out-of-nowhere crying as though his little heart was breaking in two. I stooped down to give him a hug and ask him what was wrong.

He looked at me through tear-filled eyes and sniffled. "Green beans!" he told me, his expression suggesting that I was depriving him of the one thing in the world he wanted.

"I'm not making green beans," I said, assuming he was confused about what was in the saucepan. "I'm making malt-o-meal on the stove."

"No! Green beans!" he wailed plaintively, the tears starting up again as he flung himself at me, burying his head on my chest and hugging me as he cried.

Long story short, I heated up a can of green beans and served them to my smiling toddler who, by the way, proceeded to dip them in his hot cereal as if this was the most natural combination of foods.

Making Rolls

Rolls are just the best. And I'm sad to say, I have yet to perfect a roll recipe that provides results as good as some store-bought versions. (It's a personal failure!) But that could change. Today, I am making rolls. Actually, I'm in the process of making them right now!

The problem I come across in my roll recipe is that, like most delicious and yeasty baked goods, there is a lot of time devoted to letting the dough rise. I, however, tend to think about making rolls at most three hours in advance. Considering that's the time the dough needs to rise, and then add the time needed for mixing, kneading, shaping, and baking, I'm usually left with two options. One, don't make rolls. That's a stupid option. Two, be satisfied with rolls that needed to rise at least another hour longer. This option is a little less stupid, because there are rolls in the end, but they don't taste super great.

Today though - today is glorious! After putting Silas down for his nap, I went into the kitchen at noon and began to make rolls. The dough is rising now as I type. With any luck, they'll be ready just in time for dinner. (I think I'm going to tackle homemade sloppy joes, because why not?)

You might notice that I seem a bit hyped up right now. This is a reasonable observation. Not only did I go to sleep at nine pm last night, Silas didn't wake up until five am, which means I got a solid chunk of sleep. AND, after nursing, he went back to sleep for a couple hours, which means I got some catch-up slumber. AND THEN, I had a cup of iced coffee (the caffeinated type).

So yeah, I feel unstoppable right now. And jittery. Just a little bit jittery.

Things I Hate - The Shopping Edition

I hate grocery shopping. I like the part where I get home and can make food for my family. I don't like the part where I have to sift through countless amounts of BS buzzwords and comparative math. Here are a few of my least favorite things that come up in the grocery store:

1. Anything that is " 'something' - style."

The moment, nay - the millisecond your brain perceives this two-word phrase, drop whatever you are holding. For what you have in your hand is not what you think! Certainly, it will be similar to the product you are hoping to buy, but in a sinister way.

Let me draw my example from Greek yogurt. I have slowly been branching out to try different brands (also known as different brands from the one I normally buy have been on sale) and what I came across was a "Mueller" brand yogurt that had the little corner compartment with fruit. They were on sale for a dollar each, so I grabbed a few that looked tasty.

When I got home, I noticed my grievous, horrible mistake. I hadn't paid a full dollar for actual Greek yogurt. I had paid extra for "Greek-style" yogurt. You might be asking what's the difference. The difference is, instead of straining the yogurt to achieve the thick and creamy texture, this brand has simply realized it is much cheaper to add some gelatin and corn starch. There is also a dash of whey protein to up the protein content of the yogurt, but at 9 grams per container, it does not come close to other brands.

I should have looked closer; I shouldn't have been pulled in by the price and by the blaring "Greek Corner" label that very much wanted me to assume I was obtaining Greek yogurt with my money. But my point is, I shouldn't have to take a minute to verify that the product I'm trying to buy is actually what it says it is. And, I understand that legally, the product is exactly what it says it is. But it is also BS, so I will not be buying the Mueller Greek Corner yogurts again.

Also, they don't taste that good.

2. Chocolatey Whatever.

Admittedly, this isn't too much of a problem for me anymore, since I've moved away from certain brands of granola bars and cereals. But it still scratches me the wrong way, so let's look into it.

Actually, there's not much to look into. Companies use "chocolatey" to get you thinking about chocolate while they conveniently don't include any sort of actual chocolate in the product. Quaker oats bars are guilty of this. You might wonder how they can afford to dip their granola bars in chocolate and keep the prices somewhat low! Well, wonder no more. They simply dip their granola bars in "chocolatey whatever" and it's kind of like chocolate except it's not. Again, saving money while staying in the legal confines of convincing people that they're getting something they're not.

Come to think about it, Quaker also appears to own the fake Greek yogurt brand mentioned above. I used to trust them. Now I just assume that whatever they claim to be selling is not what I can expect to buy.

3. Ice Cream

Well, I was going to go on a rant about the annoying trends in ice cream, namely, shrinking the container sizes while charging the same or higher prices.

But then I decided I'd rather talk about Publix brand ice cream.

Look, I moved over a thousand miles away from my family to live with my husband down here in Florida. It is some small compensation that Publix brand ice cream is actually the best ice cream I have ever had in my life.

You know how you buy the store brand when you want ice cream and the name brand isn't on sale? That's how I ended up with my first container of Publix brand ice cream. (Which, might I add, is still a half gallon and not endlessly expensive!) Imagine my surprise when a month or so later, a name brand went on sale, I bought it, and subsequently realized that Publix brand was better. Bam. That's it. I'm a believer.

Publix does all sorts of flavors and styles. I stick to the regular style - no splenda or low fat or whatever they do - and I love it. Also, they make great seasonal stuff. When we had roommates, our fridge always had several containers of Publix ice cream.

So no, it doesn't completely dull the achy homesickness I occasionally (often) feel when I think about how my parents are literally at least seventeen hours away from me even in the direst of emergencies. (And my siblings who are off at school are even further north from me!) But it is like an extra tasty consolation prize.

Apparently I'm on "Rantmode"

Almost before my first trimester was over, I had scoured the internet and bookstores for information on pregnancy. I like to know what information is out there and I like to read a lot of it to see all the different perspectives. One "piece of advice" that came up time and time again was to "remember you're not eating for TWO! You only need about 300 extra calories a day!" This advice always came, without fail, with an example of what these three hundred extra calories would look like: "that's the equivalent of a small bagel - WITHOUT cream cheese!" or "that's only a small apple and a piece of whole-wheat toast - NO BUTTER".

 Maybe it's something about the way that this advice always felt so criticizing, as if pregnant women were so stupid that they needed to be told in the most basic terms that food, surprise, has calories.

I'm not saying that we, as a human population, don't have problems with estimating portion sizes and the amount of calories in a meal or snack. I am saying that the way to teach someone about portion sizes is not to wait until they are at their most emotionally vulnerable (aka being pregnant and hormonal and probably seeing numbers on their scale that they don't want to) and then start shouting about how many calories are in that bagel they ate for lunch.  And don't forget to use all-caps when you assure this hypothetical pregnant woman that this calorie count is WITHOUT cream cheese. God help you if you added cream cheese to that bagel.

I don't know. At first I thought it just bothered me because it felt criticizing. I tried to rationalize it. I thought to myself, well, maybe a lot of women see being pregnant as a time when they really can eat anything and maybe we need to address that somehow.

But, no. Not like that.

While it is important to know that pregnancy doesn't require more than 200-400ish extra calories (depending on the individual person and the pregnancy), there's no reason we need to be so critical. I would argue that 90% of the reason that most women feel like they can eat anything while they're pregnant is because being pregnant is the only time in their entire lives that they feel like they don't have to be hyperaware of what they are eating and it is the only time in their lives that they feel like they can just enjoy what they eat.

As women, we spend a lot of time thinking about what we eat, and how much of it we should eat, and how much society will hate us if we eat the wrong amount of the "wrong" stuff. Aren't there always studies coming out about the high percentage of teenaged girls who say they need to lose weight and who say they have dieted within the last few months? Isn't it obvious that we are messing up girl's minds?

So then we have a problem. On the one hand, we need to fix society somehow and work towards having a healthy relationship with food. In the meantime, what do we do with this condescending eating advice for pregnant women?

This is the part where, if I were a smarter person, I would lay out a solution. I don't really have a solution.

Healthy eating (and living) starts with a simple concept - eat less and move more. Be mindful of what you eat and make an effort to move around during the day. And then it gets complicated by foods that taste really good but have a ridiculous amount of calories and by social norms and by entire industries (beauty, food, diet, etc) that might not have our best interests at heart. It gets complicated by the fact that each person will respond a little bit differently to the information they hear.



I do feel that if we could start with a healthier relationship with food, pregnancy might not be viewed as the only time that a person can "cheat" on their life-long diet.

With that in mind, I'd love to hear your opinion on whether or not I'm overreacting! Smiley says I might be reading just a bit too much into everything. I'm always game to hear what other people think!

Adventures in Grocery Store Shopping

Despite my good intentions, I cannot seem to get pictures onto this blog. I expect this to be my undoing. After all, no one will read more than fifty words on the internet without pictures, right?

But setting that aside for a moment, I'm going to talk about a serious subject. Well, ok, not that serious. Only slightly serious, in a "Silas is going to wake up from his nap any moment and can I type fast enough to finish this post before he wakes up" sense.

Time was, I used to plan out meals for each week. All leftovers would be accounted for in the next day or two with lunches and grocery shopping was a once a week event, with MAYBE a second trip for fresh fruit and vegetables.

Now, thanks to Silas's love for going out and seeing the world, I find myself at the grocery store more often. We buy less each trip and meals are more on the fly. I thought for sure that this would add up. I'm positive I've read no fewer than six "money-saving" posts that implore you to go to the grocery store only once a week, and, for goodness sake, BRING A SHOPPING LIST or your budget will explode.

Neither of these things (going to the store more often and not bringing a list) has hurt my budget. Thanks to the magic of spreadsheets, I can confirm that I spend within the same average from month to month regardless of how I shop. This is good. Silas really loves getting out of the house and I really don't feel like planning out meals for each week.

This going to the store more often has also resulted in a few positive changes since I buy a few pieces of fresh fruit each trip rather than a bunch at the beginning of the week that goes bad before the week is over. And this is done without negatively affecting the budget as mentioned above. So, woo. Plus, I've recently had to start buying food for Silas as he has joined the ranks of babies who eat solids.

A typical trip to the store these days involves going to the produce section and buying fruit for Smiley, who will only eat green fruit. (This is maybe 25% exaggeration.) Then back to the meat department to pick up whatever meat is on the best sale, or, depending on the sales, no meat at all. Then up and down the aisles, mostly for Silas's benefit, but I check out sales prices on various items as well.

The back wall has the almond milk and eggs. We started drinking almond milk not for the price but to avoid the amount of calories in cow's milk. I suppose once Silas is old enough for milk we will add back in whole milk for the important fats he will need in the upcoming years, but that's still a few months down the road.

I buy whichever brands are on sale and I am not above pulling out my cellphone calculator to make sure that I'm getting the best deal in a world of varying container sizes and amounts.

My weaknesses are juice and whatever food I'm currently craving. For budget purposes, I want to shift towards drinking more water, but I really dislike having water all day. So I have to work on it some more because even on sale, juice is about a million times more expensive than water, which is more or less free from the tap. It might even be two million times more expensive than water.

As for the food I'm craving, that usually takes the form of some sort of easy-to-eat item that I will base my diet around for the next few weeks, occasionally months. Right now it is greek yogurt. I don't know if it really counts to call it greek yogurt since it is probably closer to a dessert than a yogurt, but I really love the thicker texture. Yoplait used to make a "thick and creamy" version of their yogurt that was similar in consistency, but it got phased out to only non-fat versions, and seriously, non-fat yogurts are the worst. They have a terribly chalky taste to me.

Well, I hear Silas starting to stir, so I best be on my way. We're going to have lunch and then hit the grocery store!