Daddy, Papa and Me (we)

Our eldest, Emma, has a favorite food. Cheese quesadillas. Favorite would be lying, the are what sustains her, she can’t live without them and eats them for any meal and any snack. If I’d let her, she’d only eat cheese quesadillas. I am not exaggerating.

Needless to say, even on a limited diet of cheese quesadilla, we go through a lot. Of course, one of my favorite breakfasts are Huevos Rancheros, so there’s that.

I am perennially concerned about my own and our daughters’ food intake. Several years ago I started shifting our diet to more unprocessed foods. I make almost every meal from scratch, but the glaring hole in that process is snacks. We tend to eat processed snacks, not really bad but, well, not great either. Both daughters (and myself) tend to eat absent-mindedly, in other words we will eat what is in front of us.

I’ve somewhat solved that by leaving out lots of fruit… and will they eat it! 4-5 pears at one sitting, or  a half dozen mandarins… and I will be begged for cheese quesadillas till my ears hurt.

So, I decided from now on snacks will have to be made from scratch for all of us. Starting with corn tortillas. (next ice cream.. we do have an ice cream maker). I hate the corn tortillas in the chain grocery story I shop at. Dry, very little corn taste. Bleh. The ones at rainbow grocery, handmade and in the refrigerated section, are good… but not cheap. Those are the ones I buy.

So, I figured by requiring we make our own corn tortillas, we’d save money, eat healthier and eat less.

So, I got to the internet and found recipes. I settled on this one. Seemed simple enough, 2-3 ingredients. Mix and cook. I showed Emma how to do it and we made some. It took nearly an hour to make 6, and a big mess. I figured there was a learning curve. Undaunted, I went and tried by myself. I only made 4, the rest were bits and pieces and it took nearly 45 minutes. Yeah… shaved 15 minutes off the time.

It was going into the bin of “stuff that sounded good but wasn’t” like the Worcestershire  sauce (18-22 ingredients, uhuh).  Then I looked at the recipe again. OOPS. Somehow it was too simple. I was putting in 1 cup of corn flour to …. 1 1/8 cup of water. It called for 2 cups of corn flour. I blame it on the simplicity. On complicated recipes, I check and double check. But how could I get a simple one wrong? Well, by assuming I could just look at the recipe once and have it memorized.

So, now we make beautiful corn tortillas and it takes all of 5-10 minutes and a few pennies. My daughter can have a cheese quesadilla any time she wants, as long as she makes the tortillas and grates the cheese. She’s been self-limiting her intake because she has to decide if she wants one bad enough to take a bit of effort.

Save money? check. Eat healthier? check. Better tasting? check (by far).

So, now… if she wants cookies….

Our newest tradition

Now that Christmas is over, I’ve been mentally going over our Christmas traditions as they have evolved over the last decade.

Interestingly, in the period between post-nest-fleeing and pre-nest-building (adulthood before children), I barely kept our family’s Christmas traditions except at my parent’s homes. Nor did I think much about traditions.

Then came the kids, and I’m all about tradition. I know other adults are different, some don’t need kids to keep and cherish traditions. And it’s not like I didn’t cherish or ever kept traditions, it was just that I wasn’t all that conscientious about it.

But over the years we’ve taken ones from our family, ones we’ve gained while living in Germany and new ones to create quite nice traditions. We do the advent wreath and candles and advent calendar (though we seem to always be missing a day or so and having to catch up) and almost every year the Sound of Music Singalong. Of course there are the traditional Grinch (animated) and a Christmas Carol (either play or movie) and other Christmas movies (Guy’s favorite is A Christmas Story, mine is a Christmas Carol and I tell you, I’m such a sap.. I choke up every time).

When we lived in Germany (1999-2003), we began a tradition of using candles on our Christmas tree. Christmas eve we’d have a dinner and invite family and friends over. Then we’d sit around the tree and light the candles. While lighting them we sing Christmas carols, then we’d read two Christmas stories by candlelight:  a children’s story (usually Grinch or Twas the night before Christmas) and one about a child (Luke usually).This year, Emma asked if she and her friends could read the Grinch (instead of the adult), so she and her friend read it. I nice change to the tradition. It was wonderful to listen to them read. This is our eleventh year of that tradition. I love it. Family, friends, food, song and stories. What more can one ask?

Our tradition has also turned out to open presents Christmas morning and then drive to grand mom and granddad’s house for dinner with family. Always fun and filled with warmth.

A few years ago I started a tradition of making my grand mom’s fruitcake recipe I found while rummaging through some papers. It’s filled with dried fruit, nuts.. and rum (no candied fruit or fake fluorescent pieces to be found). I make enough to give as gifts to those family members who like it and don’t mind the rum .

Then last year I started making my grandfather’s (husband of above) eggnog. My cousin sent me the recipe. I have fond memories of my grandad making it every Christmas day. Some he’d make for the kids and the rest he’d make for the adults, with a good portion of rum and brandy. His recipe is very similar to George Washington’s recipe, only with just two liquors instead of 4 (wine and whiskey…wow). I remember the first time my grandmother (I think I was 16) let me try a bit of the ‘adult’ eggnog. I kind of liked it, but stuck to the kid’s version for years more. I made it again this year, to everyone’s acclaim. Needless to say, I ingest more rum in a week over Christmas than I do all the rest of the year (that’d be zero).

This year we started a new tradition (is one time a tradition?). When we lived in Heidelberg, we’d buy lebkuchen for my step-father. It was his favorite cookie at Christmas when he was younger, though they called it Lep Cookies. This year we decided to make some as a gift. He loved them and was very appreciative (and the recipe was good!). My mom asked we make the it a tradition. No problem there! We loved them, so I’ll make a double batch every year for a new tradition.

The girls and I used this recipe from AllRecipes. But I made some changes (because I can never leave a recipe alone). I eliminated the candied fruit (yuck) and the slivered almonds. Everything else is the same, but next year I’m going to place a single almond in the middle of each cookie.

Emma’s school‘s 4th and 5th grade class had a play last night, Sundiata, Mali’s Lion King. They did amazingly well. The children are quite talented and the music teachers are wonderful. The play was a delight to watch from start to finish.

Emma had her solo debut. Brought a huge smile to our faces:

Three years ago I spent a summer teaching our eldest daughter to read. It was suggested to us she was going to need to be held back (one more year of kindergarten). Well, extra support was the decision instead and I was going to do it (links below to chronicling how we did that extra support this summer).

I am happy to report that in reading, she is at or above grade level. In fact, in many things she is at or above grade level.

Except math. She needs substantial support in math beyond her school work. We had some assessments done and found that she needs help in ‘concept imagery’, a fancy way of saying seeing what you are thinking, or some such. Frankly, as they described it I swear I have the same issue. In fact, her educational trajectory matches my own so closely it both unnerves me and comforts me. I couldn’t read at all in 2nd grade. The intervention of a 3rd grade teacher (who stayed after school with me every day for the entire year) brought me up to 6th grade level and beyond. But then it was math. I always had struggles with math till I had the perfect teacher in calculus in college.. and suddenly I absolutely ‘got’ and loved math (especially calculus). I still have problems with subtraction and addition, multiplication, always have.  I can understand complex mathematical realities in my head, but ask me to multiple 54 x 45 or subtract 245 from 987 and I pause. And I swear it’s the same reason she does. She seems to have the same problems I had (though she didn’t have a 2nd grade teacher who told her parent that she was “retarded” and would never make it beyond a “special school,” that was me) and intervention seems to help a lot. I got a Ph.D. in molecular biology eventually (take that Ms. Harmony!) and though I won’t expect her to, I know that with the right help, she’ll do well.

But lets get back to her.

It has been suggested to us that going forward (in later school years), she might not be able to keep up with her classmates in this area.

So intervention it is. We considered Linda-Mood Bell because the reviews of that were over-the-top and it seemed to match what she needed. Small catch, the 4-6 week program (2-4 hours a day, 5 days a week) costs 8,000 to 12,000 dollars. Yep, the cost of a state college tuition. So, well, unless I win the lottery tomorrow (without buying an actual ticket), that’s not going to work.

Instead, today, we embark on a Papa-daughter tutoring program. We borrowed the Cloud Nine Manual from the learning specialist at the school and I read the entire thing and watched some online tutorials/workshops. The Cloud Nine program is the math tutoring program from Linda Mood Bell.

I liked what I saw and we decided to bite the bullet and bought the entire kit. Starting today, we will have 2 hrs/ 2-3 times a week of tutoring, our eldest and I, and 20-40 minutes/day 4-5 times a week of tutoring sessions.

The program starts with ‘simple’ imaging of numbers and works through addition/subtraction, multiplication/division to decimals and fractions. It should be about 60-80 hours of tutoring.

Additionally, she’s getting 2 hours of outside-of-class tutoring at school.

yes, it’s intensive. But research shows that a burst of intensive intervention is better than small increments for times when there is some distance to catch up.

After this, I’ll be ready for the younger daughter if she needs reading and math help .

My Reading Tutoring experience from summer of 2008:
Reading, Riting, Rithmatic: Part I
Part II

Part III (includes links to books/materials we used)
some more.

We also did a Hogwarts Summer School of Witchcraft and Wizardry that summer. You can read about some of it here:
Part I: the first letter and mexico
Part II: back in san francisco
Part III: Utah and Canyons

There was so much more of that I didn’t chronicle… witches in Provincetown, ghosts in Germany, wizards in london. Some day…

We’ve had the problem before. We get a free (or .99) game for our kid on the iPad. We let them play it at and for limited hours. Turns out the game directly aimed at children has purchases the child can make _without a password_ to buy virtual things for the game (like virtual pet food for a virtual pet). Not only can they buy a virtual something in the game with real money and without a password or need to enter payment information (it’s attached to the iTunes account), they can spend $100 dollars or more in one single purchase (two taps of a screen). The Daily Show, as always, hits the nail on the head.

This happened to us once a few months ago (let’s just say the sum was higher than that in the video here before we found out). We thought we had it resolved, had the money returned, consequences, etc. Then it happened again after we thought lessons were learned. We finally figured out how to turn off in-app purchases.

It’s not simple, intuitive or explained. It’s 5, yes 5, layers of menus down including a password. Even the iTunes representatives NEVER told us that it was possible after many emails and phone calls. I found it from advice from a friend and googling. The simple solution on Apple’s side would be to require a password for in-app purchases for any game marketed to children. But that would eliminate the ability of those companies to fleece innocent children and their unsuspecting parents of thousands of dollars (the company mentioned in the video makes 1-freaking-million dollars a month from in-app purchases).

Yeah, yeah, I can hear some of you saying that parents should be more aware. The immature part of me wants to say ‘bite me’. But I won’t . I suspect most people thinking that don’t have children at home (the corollary does not follow that people with no children at home think this).

Listen, modern life raising children has it’s blessings (I’d rather raise our girls here and now than any time or place in history), but give us parents a break. Our days are filled making limiting things that parents never had to limit before. Instead of 3 or 4 channels of TV, there are hundreds. Instead of watching it only when it was on, we have internet, Tivo and DVDs. Food was less accessible and more expensive, now it’s everywhere. Etc. Etc.

Our family’s solution is to just eliminate it. We cut out our cable, we just don’t buy processed food, etc.

It would be nice, just once, that a company would use common sense and not make it really easy for children to max out their parents’ credit cards and difficult for parents to know what’s happening.

Really, in-app purchases of thousands of dollars in a children’s game without barriers at all is not something you’d expect. It’s just a deliberate ploy on the part of APple and the game developers to prey on the inability of children to manage that kind of thing and the harried lives of parents.

So our solution? Eliminating all online games. Yes, it’s drastic (in today’s society), but I just don’t trust the companies to not try to manipulate thousands of dollars of unintentional purchases from our bank accounts.

I’m feeling like occupying Apple.

thyme & oregano! (rosemary is in another pot)

One of my 4 principles of saving money with minimal effort and maximum return is production of my own food. Of course, one could grow fussy fruits and vegetables that don’t yield much, or vegetables that are still cheaper at the store no matter how well you try. You have to make a lot of decisions, how hard are they to grow, how much do they yield, can you really do it cheaper than the store, do they taste enough better that it’s all worth it… but there is one food item I grow that I find the return far outweighs the time and effort needed to grow them. Herbs.

You see, first, I don’t have a yard. I would love to have a farm, but I don’t (and sadly never will I believe). But I do have a deck. On that deck, I’ve been growing herbs. Three to be exact: rosemary, thyme and oregano.

I live in Northern California. That’s a blessing because I can grow these year round and I have no problem doing so. I think if you live in more ‘seasonal’ climates you might be able to grow them in pots indoors in the winter pretty easy, taking them out for the summer months.

A lot of recipes I make call for fresh and dried herbs. The rosemary chicken and dumpling stew, all kinds of things with thyme like vegetable broth and well, anything Italian calling for oregano.

Fresh thyme and oregano costs over 2 dollars a small box. Even here in the SF bay area, where rosemary grows like a weed, rosemary costs over two dollars fresh. Dried herbs in little jars, even on sale, will cost more than 3 or 4 .

Granted, even using these herbs as much as I do when cooking (nearly daily), I’d only spending about $6-10/month on them  (on those three herbs, like I said, I use them a lot). Still, I started growing my own because they are easy. I really like fresh herbs, and more to the point, I like to use them when the fancy strikes me sometimes. The last thing I want to have to do is make a trip to the store to get them . How much does it cost me?

The original plants cost a grand total of 6 dollars or so (the rosemary was free). I planted them over 5 years ago. I fertilize them with compost from my

I love my worms

very productive, easily maintained, farm of worms. I love my worms and I love them more because they seem to thrive on neglect.  Annual cost of growing these 3 herbs? just about $1. I spend about 5 minutes a month maintaining my little herb garden (composting, snipping, etc). So, for an hour of effort a year or so, I save about  70 dollars. $70/hr?Oh so definitely worth it. Fresh herbs any time I need them, priceless.

Then comes parsley. I LOVE parsley. I love the curly kind and the flat leafed kind, any kind. I put it in soups, pestos and all manner of recipes. Never as a garnish, always in everything .

It hates me.  I’ve attempted to grow it every year. Every year my huge plant of parsley quickly dwindles to a stick from actions of pigeons and raccoons who seem to love it (and completely ignore the thyme, oregano and rosemary), weather which seems to hate it and just luck. I’d love to grow parsley, but well, I gave up this year.

I console myself with the understanding that a huge bunch of it costs a dollar at the store. So, when I need fresh parsley, I buy it. I sigh every time though. I’d love to just walk out on my deck and pick what I need on a whim.

Maybe I can get the pigeons to eat something else (or maybe I should develop a taste for squab).

Just a warning, turn off in-app purchases on your iPhone if your children use it.

You can get a kids game app for free, but then sometimes these allow for in-app purchases of up to and over 100 in a SINGLE purchase, WITHOUT a password (some articles to the contrary, Apple did not institute passwords for in-app purchases by default, that or a lot of kid’s games made it through their controls).

Parents have been protesting this for a while now, and even sued over it. It’s an egregious ‘bait and switch.‘  (and I’ll add as a side note, all the commenters on that site who make comments like “parents should parent” are probably 20somethings who have no children).

I am kicking myself that I didn’t figure this out earlier, but you can turn them off:

1) Tap Settings on your device’s home screen.

2) Tap General.

3) Tap Restrictions.

4) If necessary, tap Enable Restrictions and enter a passcode. This passcode will prevent restrictions from being disabled without your permission.

5) Scroll down to the Allowed Content section. Switch the In-App Purchases option to OFF. Enter your Restrictions passcode if prompted.

Let’s just say, we’ve learned this the hard way.

Ok, so I’ll confess, this is my own recipe. I almost never actually write down my creations. That’s a bad thing. I’m lazy. Today I’m going to.

I made a pilaf yesterday with some things on hand and I couldn’t get enough of it. Figured if I like it (and our 5year old!), someone else might

1 cup brown rice
1/8 cup wild rice
1/8 cup  raw pine nuts (but I think slivered almonds might work too)
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 TBS chopped flat-leaf parsley
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tsp butter
2 1/2 cups vegetable or chicken broth

*Add rice and wild rice to broth and bring to boil, lower to simmer and cook for 40 minutes covered. Take off heat and and let stand 10 minutes covered.
*while rice is cooking, saute chopped celery till slightly softened (3-4 minutes), add raw pinenuts and saute till just golden brown (1 minute or so). Take off heat and set aside.
*when rice is done, fluff with fork and add to pan of celery and pine nuts. Add butter and heat through (1-2 minutes).
*add parsley and mix well. Add salt and pepper  to taste.

Serve. I served this with pesto fish and the girls ate it up.

What’s pesto fish you ask? Well, Swai is an Asian catfish that is quite cheap here, about $4/lb.  I usually buy channel catfish because it’s not too expensive ($5/lb), and Seafood Watch gives it a ‘best choice’ rating.  (Swai is ‘good alternative’)

I had some Swai, but didn’t have anything to cook it with. I could have just cooked it with oil and lemon, but I wanted something more.

So, I oiled a pan, put the oven on 375′, placed 4 fillets on the pan, and spread about 1 TBS of _PESTO_ on top. Sprayed it with oil.

Cooked about 15 minutes till cooked through.

Not only did it turn out great, the girls _ATE IT UP_. I usually give them each a 1/3 of a fillet. They aren’t big fish eaters unless it’s heavily breaded. They demanded more, they both would have eaten an entire fillet (they were huge) if we had it.

Next time I’ll know, pesto on anything will make them eat it .

We’ve returned from our trip to Morocco. It was fascinating and fun. There is so much to report, but I don’t have the time right now. I think what I’ll do is report on food. Later I will finish my photo slide show and share it, best way to share how our trip went.

Food. Tagines of many different sorts. I love tagines, the ones we had ranged from ‘passable’ to amazingly good. Of course I’m sure eating chicken pot pies in the U.S. is a similar experience. Here are some things I learned about food in Morocco:

*Argan oil is an EXCELLENT substitute for olive oil for bread dipping. I’d say it’s actually much better.

* I didn’t buy a tagine (the pot, not the food) while in Morocco because of size/shipping concerns, but did you know that Le Creuset sells them? Go figure. Of course they are cast iron instead of the traditional pottery, but I could always make one or just buy one. I have two recipes I’ve tried and liked (chicken w/ apricots & almonds, chicken w/ figs. Not sure how traditional that latter one is, but it’s tasty).

* Bastilla is a new dish I had for the first time (served by our wonderful hosts at Riad Dar Guennoun). It’s a chicken (or pigeon) meat pie. Kind of like a chicken pot pie, but totally different . Sweet in fact. I loved it. Speaking of  chicken pot pies, two Aussie women in our camel bivouac had no idea what that is. Funny, I thought chicken pot pies were an Anglo thing that would have been known throughout the Anglo world. Guess not. Apparently, it’s an American version of a English “pastie” but different.

* Gotta love Moroccan mint tea. It’s more of an art in preparation than I ever suspected and its more than just mint. Our host (Abdul) at the above linked riad, gave us his recipe:  Pour boiling water on 2 teaspoons of green tea, a spring of mint and sugar to taste. Let steep for 10 minutes. Bring to boil… again (this is important!), serve. According to the previous link, it’s a similar recipe. Gotta boil again after adding sugar. I had to go out and by Moroccan mint because my peppermint didnt’ taste quite the same.

* We passed fields and fields of rosemary growing wild in the mountains as we were driving to Fes. I regret not buying some of the honey being sold on the side of the road. Never had honey from rosemary-foraging bees.

* Talking about regrets. There were two things I wanted to try Besara (a fava-bean soup) and steamed snails sold from stalls. The former I have a recipe for, the latter is just going to have to wait till I return some day. (though I did get a photo of the live ones being sold in the market .

* Oh, and we had what our guide called a “Berber Pizza” which is yet another version of a meat pie (beef and lamb, not sweet). It was tasty, but that one little maggot climbing off our serving platter kind of ruined the appetite for it (though.. ok, I still ate two slices .. of the pizza, not the maggot… since I figured the maggot hadn’t touched anything

DOMA repeal passes Senate committee. A small step in what I’m sure will be a long long process considering mondern-day Republicans.