Real Food: Day 5

Today I felt like I was on Top Chef...not because I was using a blast chiller or searing foie gras, but because just when I thought things were getting easy, someone through a wrench in things.

That someone is two feet tall and very chubby.

Who me?

I walk into the kitchen tonight and Padma Lakshmi greets me.

Oh no! Not Tom too!

Hello, chefs. Tonight you will be cooking a very easy dinner. One you have prepared many times before. However, tonight you will have to prepare dinner with only ONE HAND. You will have to prepare homemade chicken nuggets while holding a 20 lb. baby in one arm. You must use your body as a human shield, protecting the baby from oil splatters. If you burn the baby or drop the baby, you will be sent home.

Teething baby screamed his bald little head off the second I put him down, so he was my sous chef tonight. Except he didn't exactly make my life easier.

Chompers.

So what should have been an easy ending to an easy day became a monumental pain...quite literally as my left arm was shaking from holding my little bowling ball throughout dinner prep. I had to put him down while I chopped the chicken and scraped the carrots, but the blood-curdling screams even got his siblings' attention as they came running in asking what on earth I was doing to the poor boy.

DINNER: Kyle plays golf on Thursdays, so I usually make a kid-friendly meal that night (read: I usually order pizza). So tonight  it was one-handed chicken nuggets with homemade honey mustard to dip, fresh carrots from our Visser Farms CSA with guacamole to dip, and leftover watermelon from last night. It may have taken an hour to make, but it was tasty.

Tom would mark me down for presentation, but my flavor profiles were spot on.

BREAKFAST: Go-to oatmeal with cinnamon, honey, banana, raisins, and a splash of whole milk. I had friends in town overnight, and everyone had the same thing. Kids had OJ, adults had coffee and tea.

Cherry tea from Up North. Felt like a Pure Michigan commercial.

SNACK: I had some leftover oatmeal from feeding the masses at breakfast, so we made some whole wheat blueberry and oatmeal muffins. I make these all the time, but I had to make a couple small adjustments in the recipe to make it Real Food approved: used all whole wheat flour and substituted coconut oil for the canola oil. Couldn't tell a difference. The original recipe calls for steel cut oatmeal, but you can use old-fashioned rolled oats, which is what I used here.

LUNCH: It was Leftoverpalooza for lunch today. Charlie took oatmeal from breakfast, PB on a brown rice cake, raisins (to add some bling to his rice cake), watermelon, and a plum. Somehow I forgot to take a pic.

Kyle took leftover spaghetti, broccoli, and garlic bread from last night. Soph had the same. Again, fell down on picture duty.

I polished off the salmon from Thursday as I figured it was on its way out.

SNACK: Blueberry muffin binge.

Brain food.

A couple notes about dinner:

BREADCRUMBS: Made these yesterday out of the last few slices of whole wheat bread Jill made for last week. I am ashamed I've bought breadcrumbs all my life. So. Easy. Throw them in the freezer and they last foreva.

DIPPING SAUCE: We have had outright riots in our house when chicken nuggets have been served without sweet and sour sauce. McDonald's, Wendy's, La Choy—doesn't matter as long as it was sweet, sour, and stained the shorties' little mouths with red food dye. I tried a homemade honey mustard sauce tonight—equal parts honey, mustard, and mayo (I'll save the mayo saga for another post). Anyway, I went a little heavy on the honey and the shorties ate it...a little reluctantly, but no one even ASKED for sweet and sour, so I will count it as a victory.

GUACAMOLE: It's the utility man of the dinner table. So easy, so versatile, so tasty. I think we've had it every day. Evidently, I didn't bring my guac-making A-game tonight because Charlie said to me as he cleared off his dinner plate, "Mom, you made good guacamole tonight, but I think you can do better." Everyone's a critic.

CHICKEN: As I said, I've made my own chicken nuggets in the past, but been underwhelmed by the results. The combination of the homemade breadcrumbs and the local chicken tonight convinced me this is worth adding to the regular rotation. I can't say enough about how juicy and tender the chicken from Kapenga Farms is.

We've half way there!