Forgive me

I'm sorry but quesadillas are kind of on my mind lately in the same way health consciousness is perfectly fitting.  If you're gonna go ahead and make up a batch of black beans and corn to be sandwiched between a couple of tortillas with cheese, might as well have a white bean and tuna concoction to throw down with.  Just recommending.

I'm addicted to quinoa as well and knowing how to microwave a butternut squash into a soup with shredded chicken and kalamata olives is the next obvious step if you know me, which some pretend to but don't.  Besides this harvest chicken and quinoa soup that proves white and sweet potatoes both have a home right beside each other, I'm not sure what to make of any of it.  Plus it's got the kale going on.

Kalamata olives are everything

Who wants scrambled eggs was my answer for dinner.  Dangblasted son, he's a nine year old, requested the last crescent roll toasted with jelly on it, he's my hero.  Everything I make tastes great to him, should've seen when he obliged my "please try the quinoa and black bean delicacy I created".

Called it fantastic right before my eyes, which means he knew what I now know, the secret to long-lasting life and insurmountable happiness?  Doing right by your kitchen.  Ask the butternut squash and sweet potatoes who are currently engaging me in banter..., from THE GROCERY STORE! Not even in harm's way yet summoning me to take part in their cause.  Paired with quinoa even!

New high in life, goal setting

I didn't expect black beans and quinoa to take over my life, though they have.  Leftovers reserved only for me is my new high in life, cooking exclusively for health conscious reasons, leaves me searching for oatmeals, beans, and grains that are my staples, my ones and only.

Everybody wants to adjust their diet in favor of eggs in a burrito, beans, vegetables, grains, and oatmeals exclusively.  Waking up in the morning with thawed frozen blueberries stirred into steel cut oats leaves me exhausted, imagining destiny.  Heated with a dribble of milk (more like a pouring, a moistening), an instantaneous adherence to Mel's stringent six to two cups ratio. Leaving room for an additional dose of milk is the trend of the century.

So when you're making Mother's White Beans mixed with ham like I am, keeping your pantry STOCKED with white beans AND black beans galore, because you like variety in your bean repertoire.  Think of me in my kitchen, pursuing my quinoa in its chicken broth, alongside the black beans I always use when I'm throwing around a green pepper and an onion like it's nobody's business, taking a can of diced tomatoes, more broth, and enjoying it to smitherings.

Distance

There is an uncertainty to having just the 5 tablespoons of butter you needed but hadn't planned on, an eighth of a stick filched from the end of the unsuspecting, just to make your melted six, seven more tablespoons left to wonder what their fate looks like.  Isn't pretty.

Because when breadmaking's in order, you're really in trouble, and I haven't even gotten started berating yeast yet.  It knows what it's in for.  Trust me, when buttermilk croissants are pretty much your first choice, though you've never made 'em.  You go right to the rolls section on instinct, because vanilla pudding cinnamon rolls ARE going to make their way onto your table, their comfort is bidden, calming's in store.

An afterschool snack festivity galore, rolled and coiled in an ambitious attempt to set right order, returning all serenity to my kitchen, and future.

God that smells heavenly

No, flouring is not necessary post-greasing a jelly roll pan geared for sheet cake.  Melting two sticks of butter with a cup of boiling water on the stovetop, is.  Making way for a teaspoon baking soda, half a teaspoon salt, mixed with two-cups each of flour and sugar, there, that oughta do'er.

Letting the butter concoction cool as much as necessary, adding 2 eggs and a half cup buttermilk, a teaspoon vanilla, mixing until pouring in a greased pan just comes naturally.  Should take a year or longer.  Don't forget to set the oven for 300 degrees, you'll need that low heat for moderately 30 minutes.

Don't go over thirty in general until brownness prevails, you want a moist sponge with a thin layer of crisp to spread all that icing on.  Pour it on actually, like a stick of melted butter with a half cup bath in buttermilk, 3 to 4-1/2 cups powdered sugar, half teaspoon vanilla.  Letting the cake cool for twenty minutes before making frosting, don't let heat separate your buttermilk!

Poured on just another white Texas sheet cake recipe in the oven by eleven thirty, I've icing to prepare, more loads of laundry to run.

Deal breaker

Yesterday didn't go quite as planned and so today has become unpredictable, I'm warning you. What's wrong with me that first thing in the morning all I have my sights set on is carving and chopping all my vegetables, despite plans to exercise, and I follow through with it.

Learning to go with my gut and oblige urges and instincts, putting lesser needs on hold because life teaches you, prioritize.  Deep in my heart I know the best Friday afternoon can do is provide a tomato/vegetable/bean/spinach soul-soothing minestrone, devoured by eager young children.

Capped off by an evening fruit smoothie laced with MORE spinach because vitamins and minerals are the theme of today's preferences, so sue me.  Ree's peanut butter sheet cake will have to wait until next week, when visions of snack cake splendor reignites action, surpassed by a new cookbook I'm exploring.

The shells, remember?

Sometimes things just work out and today is one of those days.  Do you believe I'm going to put my grade schoolers to work when they come home, peeling and chopping potatoes, carrots, celery, I'll conquer that onion.  All the veggies' goodness will be sautéed with minced cloves of garlic, in the heated-over-medium olive oil for 3-5 minutes, or longer if I push it.  That'd happen never.

Adding the diced Italian tomatoes, the chicken broth, and tomato paste will make 2 T fresh basil and 1 T fresh oregano agreeable with the tablespoon of salt, so I won't even mention it.  Too embarrassing for everyone, trust me.

Thank God for homemade pizza sauce! Needing it for the quesadizzas I'm about to bake at 375 for twenty-ish minutes (some people call them pizzadillas, I wouldn't).  It's like my heart finally gained access to the truth of fresh herbs basil and oregano, and can you imagine a teaspoon of each with a minced clove of garlic simmered in eight ounces of tomato sauce, a pinch of sugar thrown in.

The fraternal order of an afterschool snack at your service with soup and a peanut butter cake sidekick.  I'm goin' in.

Tangible rewards

Deciding what to buy at Target, with an earned 5% rewards card from their pharmacy is the strangest conundrum I've been in yet.  Ever since my daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 almost five years ago, we've been racking up those rewards pharmacy cards like nobody's business.  Who doesn't want to earn rewards cards at Target?

How strange it is indeed that I'm stocked to the gills on everything.  Not even a Christmas gift begging to be taken care of early, like I said I'm all caught up on everything.  It's a state that I've strived for, clean and orderly house, dinners and baked goods tempting me forward.

I mean it seriously is a toss up, do I break out my Swiffers and give my wood floors a quick shakedown?  Shine up the glass fixtures throughout my upstairs, or do mirrors.  Both are at the top of my priorities, put away one more basket of folded, sorted laundry.

Then get started on that minestrone, the medium shells I'll use, the light red kidney beans, the spinach added after everything.  But I have it all, no one's complaining, no loss for words, nothing incubating.  Well, except for Pioneer Woman's three-and-a-half sticks butter Peanut Butter sheetcake, why fight it.

It's political

I just whipped up some honey graham, honey nut Cheerios, Reese's Puffs marshmallow bars.  A six-cup medley mixed into a bag of marshmallows melted with 3 T butter, three total minutes in the microwave.  Had to do it, after school snack was just not the same before it existed, now it's better.

Not for a lack of options for my trial, but either breaded chicken nuggets or Best Goulash Ever  better get its rear into gear sometime this millennium or I conclude with a random pasta salad made on the spot.  I know it's in me.

Take 2 cups of broccoli, a cupful of cauliflower seriously, and make them suffer.  This is the point where you'll want to decide which size you're gonna make 'em.  Not everyone's a natural mother of six children, one stillborn into heaven, a wife to a husband.  An unassisted birther, a pride-filled unschooler.

But if you're making 1/2 cup olive oil to 1/4 cup balsamic anyway.  And taking 2 T juice out of that unfriendly lemon there, adding a teaspoon sugar of your own kind, dashing it with 1/2 t salt, a quarter teaspoon pepper.

Then feel free to add half a red chopped bell pepper, enough to your liking cherry tomatoes, halved and pronounced by a true blood Midwesterner.  Half a cup of chopped green olives dancing its heart out in a mosh pit with enough marinated artichokes to point you in the right direction.  It's the quarter cup of sunflower kernels that gets your goat with gusto every time, isn't it.

What, a quarter cup fresh minced basil solves everything?  An equal sized cup sun dried tomatoes, for extra flavor that's absolutely necessary, ultimately perfecting it.  And two uncooked cups of al dente bowties into the future, the chewier the better we tend to say, leaves the most room for accuracy in the long run.

Victorious

Cubing four cups of red potatoes, a carrot, a green and red pepper, and morphing said ingredients into a chowder craved by everyone has literally changed my life.  Gone are the days when the mystery of soup and its components left me uncertain of my abilities to relate to vegetables, now I know their formula.  Everyone can make a roux.

You really can boil diced potatoes for 10-15 minutes so long as fork-tender is in your vocabulary, and sauté diced veggies for about 8 minutes over medium heat until softened, it's possible.  Just as a favorite minestrone is next in line to be conquered, 3 potatoes, 5 carrots, and 4 celery stalks later you'll congratulate yourself, trust me.

So g'head and stalk your birth sister for her recipes, be as obsessed as a sociopath unable to admit a shred of wrongdoing.  I've seen it happen too many times to keep track of and adjusted to its awkwardness and moved forward.  Soup is basically an antidote, a remedy, a shortcoming that's birthed from insecurity.  Overcome its absurdity, I just did.