The Naptime Chef

What’s Going on Today: Actually preparing for the holiday season, ordering gifts, making shopping lists.

Tonight’s Menu: Leftover Beef Tenderloin, Green Beans, Peppermint Patty Brownies.

Naptime Goals: Relax with some delicious hot chocolate and tell you all about my favorite winter beverages.

Parenting Lesson of the Day: You’ll always be amazed at what they ask Santa for Christmas (a trampoline?!)

Today is kind of a fun one. I was brewing up my favorite Christmas tea the other morning – Celestial Seasoning’s Nutcracker Sweet, in case you are wondering – and was struck with inspiration. I use my electric tea kettle daily (thank you Linda & Ginger, it was a most excellent wedding gift) and I was wondering if you all ever use one too. It is definitely the fastest way to boil water. It also is great for filling water baths when baking souffles, dissolving sugar and espresso powder and a whole host of other things when cooking and baking. If you don’t have one, why don’t I give you one? This time there are no sponsors, just me giving you one of my favorite kitchen appliances (a new one though, not the actual kettle from my kitchen) and a box of tea. And, while we are at it, let’s talk hot beverages.

A Southern Table

Gerri is a southern girl through and through. A mom, wife and college student she leads a busy life (to say the least!) but still finds time for great food. Here she shares her recipe for Southern Chicken Pileau and the flood of warm family memories it brings.

Having grown up in the deep south, I am blessed to have a wonderful heritage.  Remembering my grandmother’s kitchen, I am drawn back into a time that is now long gone.  However, in my mind’s eye I can still hear, see, and smell the inviting aroma that floated out of her kitchen.  It was divine!  Countless times she would let me stand on my tiptoes in a chair away from the stove and watch her fry chicken in her “black spider” (cast iron frying pan).  It was almost hypnotizing, making it hard for me to look away.  Watching her make biscuits was like watching an artist sculpt a one-of-a-kind masterpiece.  Her hands would mold and shape the dough without any effort.  The warm vanilla fragrance that would permeate the entire house when she was making banana pudding was one I could recognize even blindfolded.  She had no formal education, but one would have to be schooled to cook with love the way she did.  I enjoyed her kitchen and her love for many, many years.  Even though she passed away in 2001, I keep her memory alive by cooking.

What’s Going on Today: Close to meeting book deadline #1, attempting Christmas card photos, laundry!

Naptime Goals: Make Uncle Will’s Mexican Lasagna, writing, fifth and sixth laundry load of the day (cold weather = more clothes to wash)

Tonight’s Menu: Mexican Lasagna, Spanish Rice, Green Salad.

Parenting Lesson of the Day: Out goes Halloween, in comes Christmas shopping…

My cooking genius brother, Uncle Will, is back! In celebration of getting close to meeting one of my first book deadlines I’ve taken a break from recipe testing and am making his Mexican Lasagna. If you read the words Mexican Lasagna and think, wow, Kelsey, this is going to be a calorie-fest, well, you’re right. It’s not exactly light on the hips, but that’s okay if you only make it once or twice a year.

My brother fine-tuned his love for Mexican food during his Coast Guard years in San Diego. A city renowned for it’s fantastic fish tacos was definitely the right place for him to hone his palate for all things spicy and fresh. He returned to the east coast with all sorts of new dishes and recipes. I mean, we always liked taco night as kids, but he took taco night to a whole new level when he came home with stuff like this in his back pocket.

Emily Paster is a busy woman. This mom of two, wife and part-time law professor lives in Chicago and writes about work-life balance on her blog, West of the Loop. When Emily responded to my query for guest posts she proposed an interesting essay topic: the case against the family dinner with a recipe for her favorite veal stew. Fitting great food into family life, she says, is a challenge with two young children. One of her concessions in recent years has been to eat with her husband after they are asleep. I was interested and excited to hear her argument. I have to say, after reading her essay I do agree with her on many points. There are usually one or two nights a week when we put my daughter to bed before eating dinner ourselves. It’s like having date night in our own kitchen. What do you think about family dinner? How do you feel? Let us know, Emily and I would love to hear.

Shhh…do you want to hear a secret? Come a little closer. Okay, here goes: my family doesn’t eat dinner together and I couldn’t be happier about it.

Are you shocked? Do you think my children will grow up to be overweight glue-sniffing felons? I’m actually pretty confident that my children are going to turn out okay despite my flagrant disregard for the importance of family dinner. You see, my husband and I have given up family dinners in favor of two other considerations that we believe are equally important: early bedtimes and happily married parents.

My husband works long hours.  Most nights, he arrives home at 6:45 pm. That is simply too late for our children, ages seven and three, to wait to eat dinner and still get to bed at what we consider a decent hour. Instead, I feed the kids their dinner around 6 pm and then, when Daddy walks in at quarter to seven, they are ready to head upstairs for baths and the bedtime routine, a routine which is handled exclusively by my husband. That way, the kids get some dedicated time with Daddy every evening.

What’s Going on Today: Prepping for Halloween night, having a bbq with the neighbors!

Naptime Goals: Make Apple Spice Bundt Cake with Maple Glaze, buy beer.

Tonight’s Menu: Brats, Dip, Cake, Beer.

Parenting Lesson of the Day: Halloween is now an endurance holiday, it lasts almost as long as Christmas!

Halloween has proved to be a much longer holiday than I expected. When I was little it was one night of trick-or-treating. But sometime in the thirty year span between my childhood and my daughter’s, Halloween morphed into a much bigger deal. Over the course of the weekend we attended no fewer than four events all of which required costumes and receiving candy. Not to mention the Halloween themed meals, school parties and presents (!) that preceded the big day. I couldn’t believe how busy we were!

By the end of the weekend my Blue Tootsie Pop (her costume idea) was tuckered out. To make the actual day of Halloween fun and relaxed my neighbors and I decided to have a little bbq and restrict trick-or-treating to our local neighborhood only. We wanted to give it the family fun feeling, strolling the streets, chatting with neighbors, that we remembered from growing up.