What's for Dinner

Do you get this question too? I am sure all households get it at some stage.
Do you always know what you are having? Are you super organised with a meal schedule?
I do have a menu and I do try to stick to it, but sometimes we need to jazz things up a little.

However having someone else make the decision for you is always much nicer, sometimes it just makes thing flow smoother having someone else make the decision and you just get on and cook it.

Turns out our local supermarket are trying to help in just that way.
They are suggesting a meal to make and also giving you a great special on the cost of actually getting the ingredients required.

Each week on a Wednesday they are offering a meal deal for $14.95. The Meal Deal for this week was a Corn Beef Meal with Dessert. For that price you got the following:

• 3kg Corn Beef
• 1kg potatoes ($2.99)
• 1/4 of pumpkin ($1.49)
• 500g bag frozen mixed vegetables ($3.49)
• 1 pkt white sauce mix ($1.30)
• 4 white magnum ice creams ($3.99)

The prices in red are what they normally cost. Adding them together it came to $13.26 so for $1.69 I got a nice piece of corn beef that actually did us dinner and lunch for Steve the next day. Corn Beef is usually selling at about $6.99-8.99/kg

Now I must admit that if I was doing dinner I wouldn't have brought all of that, although I was very clever and made sure that when they had items to choose from (pumpkin & corn beef) I got the biggest pieces. They were all the same price at the end of the day!

We didn't have this for dinner but I am now going to make a pumpkin soup out of it, so it will now do a few lunches for me and Steve.

The Magnums are definitely not something we would have brought for dinner, but they are now in the freezer for when we need a special treat sometime, cause we sure didn't need them after dinner on Wednesday.

It was just lucky that Wednesday was my day off and that I thought to go check out the special at 9am as that allowed me to put the meat in the slow cooker (crockpot) and leave it simmering all day, the house smelt lovely when we came home from soccer practice.

However, it wouldn't have made any difference because for a deal like that I would still happily have brought it and cooked it the next day, apart from the pumpkin, there really was nothing that was going to go off if not used within a day or 2.

So next week I will happily skip along to the supermarket and see what the special is, because unless it is something that we really don't like then it turns out to be a great deal.

I do know that last week they did a spaghetti bolognese meal and the week before a roast chicken meal, so will be interesting to see what comes out next week.

Not a Cafe!

When I was little I always remember my mum saying at dinner time "this is it, I do not run a cafe"
Whatever was served for dinner was it, she was not making 26 different meals for 4 people just because 1 person didn't like/want/fancy whatever she had decided to cook for dinner.

Now I am a mum I am sticking to the same rule. After having to decide what is for dinner for the last 8 years, believe me when I say, I am not mucking around with dinner, this is it, like it or don't eat!

So we have stuck to the same rule, we cook one dinner and that is that.
However I am prepared to adapt what I am cooking, if it is simple, so everyone will eat this one dinner.

When the boys were younger they didn't like the chilli as hot as we did, so I cooked the chilli basic, took their's out and then added more heat to ours. No worries there as we all still had the same thing just adapted slightly.

I have found 2 pasta bake sauces in the supermarket which we like. However Ben does not like them, so instead of not having this dinner anymore because of that, then I have adapted.
I cook the pasta and fry the chicken.
Then I serve his pasta into a bowl and place chicken on top. Then I tip the sauce into the remaining pasta along with the chicken and everyone else has pasta with chicken with sauce.

Both bowls then get baked in the oven and hey presto we have a dinner that everyone will eat and everyone is happy when going to bed as they are full and satisfied.
To me this is not bowing to their every whim, just adapting slightly to have a pleasant family dinner that everyone will eat which leads to a happy home enviroment.

Now if they said they didn't want it all together and wanted a totally different dinner then ........tough, this is dinner, eat it or starve!

Stubborn

I have several posts written and waiting to be opened up to the big world over the next few days, but I just had to write this little bit.

I am a very stubborn independant person, have been for many years. If I want something, then I do not just sit around and wait for it to happen, I get on and do it myself. Fraid I have been very independant for many years too. I am not really sure how Steve ever puts up with me?
Ok, so he is a very stubborn person as well and so I am not at all surprised that at least one of our kids has turned out stubborn too.

Ben is very laid back, goes with the flow and nothing fazes him. Yes he gets all panicky when there is change involved but he seems to skim by and manages to miss the bad stuff.
Alex on the other hand, well he is as stubborn as they come, in fact even worse!

When he finds out what is for dinner, if he decides it is something that he doesn't want / like / fancy then you have no chance whatsoever of getting him to eat it.
He will actually sit there, at the table, and watch everyone else eating dinner. He will sit there with tears in his eyes telling you he didn't want this because he didn't like it / want it / fancy it.
And the thing about it is even though we tell him there is nothing else to eat, no snacks, no cereal before bedtime, nothing at all. He will still sit there and not eat one little thing, nada, nought, zero, zilch.
He will then leave the table when we all leave the table and he will carry on with his evening and then go to bed, without having eating.

And that is it, he stands his ground and doesn't budge. He will just sit there staring at you with a tight lip determined not to eat one little thing!
If he manages this at 6 who knows what he will be like when he gets bigger!

Crock Pot

I love crock pots / slow cookers. They can make life so easy and the wonder of walking into a house at the end of a hard day and smell dinner cooking away in the corner is awesome.

My mum came to stay once and as she left she put what food I had left out for dinner in the crock pot, unbeknown to me.
The smell and awesome feeling I got when I walked in the door later that evening with 2 kids under 4 after a hard day at work was amazing. In fact I was so grateful, I had tears in my eyes as I realised what she had done for us. I was touched by something so simple yet so wonderful a thing to do.
The recipe she used was a made up one, what ever she happen to find in my pantry at the time, but it was awesome, in fact I got her to tell me what she put in there and I have since made it loads of times. She called it Chicken Hotpot and I have shared it with several friends who love it too. I will try and remember to put it up here soon so you can all try it, very simple and easy.

I have an awesome large crock pot. Must be about 5 or 6 litres in size. I can nicely cook a large whole chicken in there with no problem.

If you want to make chilli for 20 then this is the beast to have, but that is the problem, there are only 4 of us!

When you make a casserole, I find that it cooks very very quickly because there is hardly anything in the bottom of the pot. It only fills about an inch or 2 at the bottom. Handy if you forget to put it on and need something done in half the time, but not so good when you want to put something on for 8 hours on low and hope that it is nicely cooked when you return, not fried to a crisp and dried out!

So with the remainders of some Christmas vouchers and a very nice sale, I purchased this for us last week.

A nice 3 litre crock pot, that will hold a casserole for 4 very nicely, will cook it in the appropriate time and will not dry everything out because of over cooking.

I put a nice chicken dish in there yesterday and it cooked beautifully. The chicken was perfect and moist where it had slowly cooked for 8 hours rather than speed cooked in 3!

I love my crock pots.

Pizza

My 2 go on about having pizza for dinner quite regularly.

We are lucky enough to have a Pizza Hut all of 300m round the corner, but we do not use it!

I keep convincing myself that the next visit will be good and each time it gets worse.

So the last time we went, I decided that if I ever think we should go again, then I will kick myself. I just have to keep remembering that 'It will not work, it will not get better there!'

It doesn't really matter though, because we make awesome home made pizzas.

So I do have pizza on our menu at least once every 4 weeks.

Tonight was one of the nights, and with my trusty sidekick, we had homemade pizza for dinner.

We even manage to make it so everyone gets their own individual pizza, so everyone is happy at the end of dinner.

Food

Ben is a fussy eater, there is no 2 ways to put it to even say he is not.
He just doesn't have the wide palate of taste of others and so is very limited on the foods he will eat.
He doesn't like dairy, no cheese, yoghurt etc
He is not a great fan of tomato based sauces or spicy.
He only likes potatoes that are mashed, doesn't like things that are fried. Not a great fan of the fat. (not that that is a bad thing)
He is also not a great fan of sugar, again not a bad thing. He does like chocolate cake and twix bars but doesn't eat candy.
He will eat rice and pasta, plain, until there is nothing left! He will also eat bread continuously until there is nothing left!

He loves Apricot chicken, mac cheese and fish fingers, chicken noodle soup, meat balls and fried rice, sweet and sour chicken, mince and pots with sweetcorn and sausages.

So when you do serve a dinner that he likes, then it disappears very fast sometimes.

BUT he has got into, not sure if it is a habit or not, of wanting something to eat an hour later just as he is going to bed. Now usually it is cereal and I have no problem with what he is eating prior to bed, it is just the fact that sometimes he is planning this cereal whilst eating his dinner!

He will finish dinner, in which he will eat everything given to him. We will then sit down and watch Friends on the tv, and he will then say 'Can I have something to eat please?'
10 minutes prior to this as finishing dinner he will say he is full and then suddenly he is hungry and wants food?

We tell him that he has to wait for his food to go down, to even register that he has eaten dinner, which he will do but he is still then planning food prior to bed.

So is he really needing this food at bedtime or has he got into a habit?

It doesn't happen every night, so he can do without it. But it is the fact he is planning it during dinner time. He will say 'if I finish all this can I have cereal before bed?' We do then tell him that finishing dinner has nothing to do with getting food later and that if he is hungry then to say now and we will get more food for him, but then he says he is full and doesn't want anything!
Sometimes he is having as much on his plate as I eat. I am nearly 40 and he is 5 1/2!

Is this normal?

Dilemma

Yes I have a small dilemma on my hands, well not exactly this moment but as of next Friday I will have.......

Ben came home from school a little while ago and asked if he could play cricket?
Seeing as the only extra thing he does was swimming, then we thought why not.
Do him good to actually do something that is school based and nice that he is showing interest in something other than swimming, although he does still love swimming.
So I completed the form, and even put Steve down as a parent helper and sent it back to school.

All good so far, we know his games are on a Friday evening somewhere around Hamilton at one of the schools to be annouced on a Wednesday.
Today, well last night at 3am, I realised that I am not sure how we are actually going to make this work??

I work on a Friday, so Ben goes to After School Care and Alex to Daycare.
Cricket starts at 5.15pm onwards, so we are going to have to collect Alex and Ben from respective cares and then collect Steve from work and go to the cricket field, where ever that may be.
2 problems immediately spring to mind??

1. How do we do dinner
2. We only have one car

So this is the dilemma.......
Because I am working I therefore have to organise some dinner for Ben and Steve, but it has to be something that can be sorted that morning and taken with us, and I then have to bear in mind that wherever the game is, there will probably be no kitchen facilties, so it has to be something simple! Steve said he would be fine until they got home at about 7.45pm, but when I questioned him further about what he would have eaten since lunch, he said lunch would have been his last meal and that he would be ok until he got home! I don't think so. I am not having him go nearly 8 hours having not eaten anything and also running after 8 5 yr olds! Talk about major hypo alert!
I could organise sandwiches for them, but that seems a very poor meal every Friday night (especially as that is what they would have had for lunch, you can only survive so long on chocoalte spread sandwiches!).
The other small problem is the one car thing, they would either have to drop Alex and I at home before they go or we go with them, which I have no problem doing because it would be fun to watch Ben play have a go but then I have to sort dinner for 4 on a Friday morning at 7am!

So does anyone have any ideas as to the sorts of things I could try for dinner?
Anything I could possibly leave at home in the fridge ready to go and that I just have to throw in the bag on the way out?
If Alex and I stay home, then dinner is not too bad as I can make something and they can get by on a sandwich or two until they come home.
But it is just all that running about at 5.30 /6pm when my family are beginning to loose it because it is the end of the day and dinner time that is going to take a little of getting use too.

Ben Never Forgets

For dinner the other evening I made Corn Beef Pie (I will add the recipe as it is yum)
Now this was a slight experiment as the boys have never really taken to this and I decided it was time they tried it again.

Alex ploughed into it along with red sauce and plum sauce.

Me I usually have HP Sauce or Plum Sauce, same as Steve.

Ben took one look at what was on his plate and immediately informed us that this is what we had for lunch when Uncle Peter came to visit in Auckland.

Well blow me down with a feather, how does the boy remember this stuff, because Peter came to lunch when we were fixing the house up to sell, so we are talking June or July last YEAR.

Even I couldn't tell you if that was the last time we had the pie, I could tell you what we had to eat when Peter was there but how did a 4 1/2 yr old remember that.

Man he amazes us sometimes with the things he remembers.

Makes me realise I will have to be very careful what I do when Steve is at work because I think I have a little spy amongst us who will report all back to Steve!

Recipe as promised:

Potato & Corn Beef Wedge

Ingredients
4-5 medium potatos, peeled and cooked
340g can Corn Beef
1-2 tsp minced garlic
1/2 cup finely chopped spring onions
2 cups grated cheese
4 eggs
1 tbsp hot mustard or wholegrain mustard
ground black pepper


Method
Preheat oven to 180c
Grease and paper line a 23cm loose bottom cake tin
Mix all ingredients together apart from 1/2 cup of cheese
Pile into the greased tin, sprinkle remaining cheese on top
Bake for 45mins. Leave to cool in the tin for 10 mins before turning out.
Slice and serve with salad and sauces/chutney

Recipe came from www.foodinaminute.co.nz
Hope you enjoy

The Police

OMG, I just had the wonderful experience of a Police Concert with 30,000 other people on a warm Auckland evening.

I got Steve tickets to the show for his birthday in December and this past weekend we drove to Auckland, left the kids with a friend and spent the night in a motel.

Some good friends of ours joined us and we had a wonderful weekend of eating dinner out and also having breakfast out on Sunday morning, just what every parent needs the oppotunity to do once in a while.

The concert was amazing, we even had Fergie as an opening act, so it was almost like 2 concerts in 1.

Now I will be the first to admit that the Police are not exactly my most out there favorite band, but I know a lot of their songs, but having said that Fergie is kinda new to me as well.

BUT at the end of the day the concert was fab and I am amazed at how much I enjoy it.

Funny thing is I paid all that money to see my cousin as well, because she was there so we caught up with each other, rather expensive way to meet and say hi, but hey family is family.

Grandma's Camper Van

When you have a camper van in the drive way, then why not make use of it.
Our 2 decided they wanted to hold a party in there and then have dinner as well, who were we to say no.
So we set the table, placed a sheet down to catch the mess and away we went, sitting on our own driveway eating dinner in Grandma's camper van.

Unfortunately the fun ended abruptly when Alex fell out the door!