{"id":612,"date":"2010-02-22T16:16:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-22T21:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/monday-february-22-2010\/"},"modified":"2010-02-22T16:16:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-22T21:16:00","slug":"monday-february-22-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/monday-february-22-2010\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday February 22, 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m on food kick today. I have no idea why except that maybe since I’m crawling out from under round #2 of the flu food actually tastes good again. <\/p>\n

Aside from the two (shhh) brownies I ate today, I’ve been thinking a lot about food. Maybe it’s the rain outside. What is it about rain that makes me want to bake food and eat food? Mostly eat food. I wish someone would bring me a latte with caramel right now. Or at least some hot chocolate. <\/p>\n

Today was a happy day for a lot of reasons. <\/p>\n

1. I’m finally feeling better. People at this house have been sick for too long. It’s terrible when you all get sick at once. But really, this round after round of taking turns hasn’t been much fun either. The last two weeks have been the worst. Or maybe it’s just that my stamina was completely gone. Anyhow, aside from the fact that my head is still so plugged I don’t think any ear bones are capable of vibrating when receiving noise signals, things are going much better. Liam has a bit of a residual cough; but Adam and David are well again.<\/p>\n

2. It is grey and rainy outside. Normally this would not help to make a happy day; but today it does. I think (or at least I hope) rain melts snow. We still have too much snow. I would really like to see some mud.<\/p>\n

3. I was brave enough to give both boys hair cuts before their baths this morning. Liam hates hair cuts even more then I hate giving them. It usually takes one person to hold him down and one person to cut hair. But now they both look like self-respectable people again. Except they need their fingernails trimmed. What is it about ears and fingernails? They should come self-cleaning.<\/p>\n

4. I have a new camera<\/a>. This is the by-product of an unwise financial decision to use mileage based credit cards several years ago. When we started building our house, Steve and Christy lived in TX. We thought we were so smart paying $50 annually with a card that would quickly earn us flights to TX. Very funny. Or not. We bought most of our building supplies through someone David works with and he offered us a contractors discount OR the ability to pay with credit card … but not both. So the miles eeked up slowly and the black out dates are ridiculous. Why we still had the credit card after three years is more then I can say. Oh, I know. It felt like such a “waste” to throw away all those miles so we kept paying the annual fee. Ah, yes. Makes so much sense, doesn’t it. Finally we got smart and traded in the miles for product and now I get to have fun. Truth is, it was a good deal to get this for $150 in annual fees; and I did really want something small to throw in my bag for certain things. So the deals not sour. Just bittersweet. Because I can bet you some tomato basil soup from Cafe Europa we’d have used that $150 on something other then a second camera. Takes nice pictures though, no?<\/p>\n

5. I’m feeling a little better. Oh, I already said that. My brain is still not processing normally and will not do so until Spring warms it. The other day I went to the doctor’s office and completely forgot to grab my diaper bag. No diapers. No wipes. No Liam-friendly snacks. Not even his sippy cup.
I walk into a room and have no idea why. Worse yet, I walk across the kitchen, stare aimlessly into the pantry or frig, and have no idea why or what I came to get.
On Wednesday I was desperate for a break. The boys were getting better at least and I was not yet sick so I took the boys all the way to Mom’s house and drove all the way back in order to go to Richmond with David. I was almost three miles down the road before I realized I had completely forgotten to wear a coat and we had to turn around. I don’t do well in winter. Not mentally. Not physically. Not emotionally. I do not think there was winter in the Garden of Eden.
\"Feb<\/a> <\/p>\n

But back to that food kick. Last week I found another menu that works for Liam. And that makes me REALLY happy. The jumping up and down kind of happy. A lot of our menus get centered around meat. This should make David happy, too. I think the Beachy family had an extra three or four meat lover genes embedded somewhere along the line. The problem is, there isn’t a lot of variety in the ways I get to fix it. Nix soy, dairy, and tomato and you’re just kind of stuck. Not so long ago when I met David for a kitchen photo session, we ate at Sticks. Great lunch. Great inspiration.<\/p>\n

I concocted my own very simple marinade.
\"Feb<\/a> <\/p>\n

1\/2 c. oil
1\/2 c. vinegar
1\/4 c. brown sugar
3 T. lemon juice
1 1\/2 t garlic, minced (or three cloves)
dash of black pepper<\/p>\n

The next time I do this I will, hopefully, plan ahead and marinate this overnight. In my winter stupor it never occurred to me to get the meat out until lunch time so it spent all of three hours floating in the brine. Too bad.
\"Feb<\/a>
\"Feb<\/a>
David grilled the steak til it was perfect and I served it on rice with homemade hummus on the side. Why do green things like hummus and guacamole look so disgusting on pictures? Oh, and I found mint tea concentrate in the freezer when I was looking for the steak. The combination of flavors in that meal was fantastic! After so many slightly boring potato and chicken menus, this was amazing. David said it was even better the next day. That’s a pretty high compliment in my book. Leftovers, better? <\/p>\n

Speaking of food, it’s time to do something with the chicken sitting on the counter or dinner is going to be late. All this grey weather is making me want comfort food so I’m coupling our favorite creamy baked chicken (I’ll bake a seasoned chicken breast on the side for Liam) with one of our new Liam-friendly favorites. Peel and chunk potatoes. Place in pan and drizzle with olive oil, salt, and seasonings of your choice. We like Italian seasoning and garlic. Or fresh basil in the summer. Bake, covered, at 350 for one hour or until soft. These are perfect because the olive oil keeps them moist and eliminates the need for butter or sour cream later. What’s for dinner at your house?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m on food kick today. I have no idea why except that maybe since I’m crawling out from under round #2 of the flu food actually tastes good again. Aside… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p39ynQ-9S","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}