Friday Night is Pizza Night (but of course)

Opening rant:
This crazy blog just lost my entire post and I have spent the last 5 minutes staring crazily at the screen debating whether I should retype it. At the same time cursing myself for not typing it in text beforehand and pasting it here like I and any intelligent person always do. If that's corrrect grammar but it sounds good. SAVE. I recall the time of internet dialup with AOL when you always typed your emails in word or a text file and then pasted them into the email to save dialup time. But this was a long time ago. Ten years of interent time is like 50 years used to be I find. Technology is simply speeding everything up. In the rush to eat well I find that I'm missing the good old days! And we do eat well. The entire family is in good shape, we walk, we go to the gym, and only hubby and I can pinch an inch. We both think the other is beautiful and ourselves fat pigs, but still. Can't have everything.

The Problem:
I remember a day when the fridge was where you kept leftovers, which could be lovelingly perused at leisure and interesting snacks enjoyed like having your own private buffet. That was yesterday. Now any time I open the fridge all I find is white wine, yoghurt, the odd chocolate bar, milk rice, jello, cold cuts and cheeses (but never any bread in the basket), berries and juice, kefir and quark. Not a single slice of leftover quiche, never a half chicken or a slice of roast. Not a pickle! Well, yes there are pickles but it's just an expression ... :o) I stalk into the living room and knock on the wall. "Family! The fridge is empty. Why don't we have any leftovers? We must be eating wierd. We need to get organised. NO more cooking on the fly." Everyone looks at me. "But I thought we had decided to cook light, eat light, leftovers were the work of the devil?" "True, but if I have to eat just one more yoghurt at 2 AM instead of the chicken leg I crave I might just pop." Everyone turns back to the television. See, we are prety normal after all. I fetch a block of paper and a pen. "We'll vote." I look at the clock. "Just as soon as we finish dinner."

The solution:
After a dinner of couscous with salmon, tuna and cod served wtih a fresh tomato compote and white wine, I push my plate to the side and put pen to paper. There is some couscous on my finger and I draw it to everyone's attention. "What am I to do with couscous leftovers? Why don't we have potatoes more often? What is this family's fascination with grains?" No one mentions the fact that I cooked dinner and also forgot to buy potatoes from the market. Hubby pours me another glass of wine. After only three rounds of voting we manage to create our family's first weekly dinner menu. Every other day should offer precious opportunites for leftovers too. Does anyone else do this or is it just me?? :o) katrin

Monday: schnitzel (turkey or pork)
Tuesday: pasta and two sauces
Wednesday: chicken (preferably whole and roasted)
Thursday: fish
Friday: pizza night (3-2 vote by the girls) with salad (mum and dad amendment)
Saturday: a roasted meat with all the trimming and dessert
Sunday: quiche or blini/crepes

Cajun Fish Fry Up

Luuuuuuuuuuuuurve fish. Sadly also love fried food, to which my widening hips attest. But I love my hips. What a mess I am! :o) Breading. I like to bread in all sorts of things, and why not. Keep it moist and flavourful - and so polenta is one of my favourite ways to bread.

Salt and pepper on the salmon, then in flour, then egg, then in the polenta. I added fine chopped green pepper and red onion to the polenta and pressed that in. Gently but firmly fry. It was crispy and moist and wonderful! The sole is pressed on one side into chili pepper, and after it has been turned topped with tomatoe concasse with mint.

We enjoyed this with a cold Fielding wineries Gewürtztraminer (2008 from our last trip across the pond) and ceasar salad - and yes! you must make your own ceasar dressing! :O) poka! katrin

Raising Children, Mah Jong and Baking

Just returned from a long day and evening preparing for big event tomorrow. The girls are in bed and my darling man has cleaned and defrosted some salmon. But not left any wine to chill. Hmmm - well then I will go on the wagon tonight. As I was driving home I was thinking about raising my children - who rarely see me it seems, but who at least don't starve. Which is easier, raising children or baking?

Well, have you ever sat in on a game of Mah Jong? You just line up your tiles, move them about and get your ass kicked. It´s a very complicated, stressfull game and I compare it to raising children; because you don´t know the rules. In fact I have yet to discover any rules at all. My girls certainly don’t know what they are because I’ve asked them on many occasions. Children don’t come with a users manual, even though I did write one for my father when he once had the girls for a fortnight. You spend all your time raising them as you would have liked to have been raised at the same time feeling guilty if you aren’t being as good a parent as the woman down the street who’s kid plays the piano and wears clean shoes all the time or the guy in your office who takes two weeks off each summer to take his son to father and son hot air ballooning school in Austria. The guilt and need to ‘keep up with the parent-Joneses’ springs from your subconscious if you even so much as yell at them.

Then there's baking. Pure science - there is one way to bake and you need to follow a recipe. Baking is science, while cooking is art. So perhaps raising children is a bit more like cooking than baking. There is no one, right, guaranteed perfect way to raise them - most of the time you learn from experience what best results from what goes in the pot.

luv - katrin (v tired)