“Want to go for ice cream?”
The Little Empress enjoying (yet another) summer ice cream cone
If it seems like I have a disproportionate amount of The Little Empress eating ice cream pictures posted on my blog, it is because my usual bribe treat is ice cream. A scoop of ice cream is her treat for having a good week at school, a doctor’s visit that didn’t result in a tantrum or to make an otherwise ordinary summer day into a special one.
Sometimes I worry that I’m spoiling her a bit on ice cream. She’s still a wee thing, barely on the weight charts, so high calorie foods like ice cream get the green light from her doctor. Still, I try to make it only a twice a month treat. But she does love it so. Her eyes light up and she claps happily whenever I mention going for ice cream. After all, what’s better than getting an entire cup of ice cream to yourself when you’re 2?
And honestly, when the local ice cream shop is a mere $1 a scoop, how can I say no? We may not be able to afford much but this is just too good of a treat to pass up.
No, I want CHEESE darnit!!
So I was randomly checking my GMail when I spied a Google Ads link to a food service ingredients site that sells things like ready made roux, flavor enhancers and what not.
I’m not so naive to think that all restaurants make their own roux or stock. That requires manpower and manpower requires money and let’s face it — restaurants that I can afford to eat at likely can’t afford all that manpower.
I can maybe understand taking certain shortcuts with stock and such. No different than the home cook that uses bullion, really. No, it is not ideal — all that salt! — but not every home cook has the time nor inclination to make their own stock.
However, this particular product just made me go “…”
CheezMaxTM is a revolutionary new dairy product replacing up to15-20% of mozzarella cheese on pizzas. This product is made with whole milk, and has less fat than mozzarella cheese. It is synergistic with cheese, and actually binds with existing cheese to give the appearance of more cheese – while increasing hold time. It has applications in fresh, refrigerated and frozen pizza, and can be custom formulated to meet specific cheese flavor profiles. It can also be utilized in other applications such as enrobed cheese products. CheezMaxTM has a potential of up to 30% savings over current cheese cost.
In two words – “F*ckin’ euw.”
But cheese replacement? Um, no, dammit. I’m paying for cheese on my pizza, stromboli, calzone, whatever. (And I usually get extra cheese!) So guess what I want? I want cheese. I don’t want whatever they’re cutting the damned cheese to improve the damned bottom line.
I’m not so granola minded that I think everyone should eat whole, unprocessed foods. (And certainly not Whole Foods. I can’t afford to even step on their grounds much less afford their food.) Mind you, I try to eat and feed my family as few processed foods as possible, more out of frugality than anything else. But the realization of how overly processed restaurant food is makes me think twice, if not three or four times, about eating out. If I go through so much effort to avoid processed foods at home, why would I go out to eat it and pay a premium to do so? YUCK!
Menu Mondays – Week of March 9, 2009
The Hubster ™ is approaching an important work deadline which will probably have him working overtime. While this means comped dinners for him, it also means I’m on my own for my dinners. The Little Empress hasn’t been quite so cooperative lately when it comes to getting meals on the table for both of us so let’s hope that we’re able to stay to this week’s meal plan!
Here’s our menu for the coming week:
Breakfast choices: Bagels with salmon cream cheese, yogurt, cereal Lunch choices: Leftovers OR frozen dinners (for The Hubster ™); soup & sandwich (me) Snack choices: Crackers, cheese, fresh fruit, cottage cheese
Dinner (all served with lettuce salad unless otherwise noted) Monday: Omurice Tuesday: Baked chicken with rice Wednesday: Japanese-style beef curry Thursday: Loco Moco Friday: (out with parents) Saturday: (out with friends) Sunday: Leftover bufffet
The Little Empress’ meals:
- Breakfast - fruit yogurt and cheerios / soft scrambled eggs with cheese, whole grain toast
- Lunch – grilled cheese with meat on whole grain / cheese & veggie pancakes, juice + water, fruit
- Snack – cheese and crackers, juice + water, fruit
- Dinner – Modified adult dinner + assorted veggies, juice + water
Menu Plan Monday at OrgJunkie
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Menu Mondays – February 23, 2009
What needs to be used this week?
Eggs We were gifted with about 18 farm fresh eggs by my parents last week. Giving unexpected food to you is an Asian parents’ way of showing you that they love you. And we appreciated them though it would have been nice if they had asked first — we already had over a dozen eggs in the fridge! A few egg salads, baked goods and other egg dishes, we still have over a dozen of those eggs left. Need to use them. Pronto.
Ricotta, veggies I had planned to make a roasted veggie lasagna for my lunch for the week last week. I never got around to it so it will have to be done this week. The Hubster(tm) is not a fan of veggie lasagna so this is all for me. Woohoo! Lunch for a week and less groceries to buy overall.
Various leftovers We have some leftover steamed rice, squid adobo and other stuff from my parents’ visit this evening. The leftover squid will likely be my lunch tomorrow as The Hubster(tm) refuses to eat it.
What do we need to buy?
Rice Like most Asian families, many of our meals are built around rice and not having rice in the house is unheard of. The Hubster(tm) and I try not to eat a lot of rice but there’s no way we could cut it out completely so a 20lb bag lasts us quite awhile. Unfortunately, we’ve run out so I need to make a run to the local Asian market.
Here’s our menu for the coming week. Since I have to hit up the Asian market to replenish our rice supply, I decided to feature an egg-heavy menu centering around Japanese donburi dishes.
Baby’s Menu Yogurt, Cheerios, saltines, banana, carrots & peas, chicken, pork
Breakfast Choices Yogurt, cereal, peanut butter & banana on whole wheat, milk
Lunch Choices Leftovers (for The Hubster(tm)) Roasted veggie lasagna (for me)
Dinner Monday – LEFTOVERS: Beef mechado (Filipino beef stew) OR Meatloaf Tuesday – Omurice Wednesday – Oyakodon (chicken & eggs over rice) Thursday – Nikujaga (Japanese beef & potato stew) Friday – Yakiniku with stir fried veggies Saturday – Stir fried veggies & chicken Sunday – Tofu nabe with veggies
Menu Plan Monday at OrgJunkie
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Menu Mondays – 1/26/09
Here’s our menu for the coming week:
Monday: Baked chicken & salad Tuesday: Pork adobo Wednesday: Baked chicken & salad Thursday: Beef salad Friday: Baked chicken & salad Saturday: Lasagna Sunday: Superbowl Fried Frenzy
Breakfast choices: Cereal, oatmeal, breakfast burritos
Menu Plan Monday at OrgJunkie
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Menu Mondays – 1/19/2009
Here’s our menu for the coming week:
Monday: Spaghetti & meat sauce with green salad Tuesday: Baked chicken & stir fried bok choy, served with rice Wednesday: Sour beef soup with bok choy & daikon, served with rice noodles Thursday: Baked chicken & stir fried bok choy, served with rice Friday: Shaking beef over green salad
Baby menu – yogurt, cheerios, cheese, chicken, banana, peaches, peas
Breakfast options – oatmeal with dried fruit, cereal & milk, yogurt
Lunch options – Leftovers, green salad with baked chicken
Snack options – baby carrots, yogurt, trail mix, fruit
Baked treat of the week: CUPCAKES!! 
Menu Plan Monday at OrgJunkie
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Menu Mondays – 1/12/2009
Here’s our menu for the coming week. The Hubster ™ suggested that we try to eat more vegetables, less meat and starch for our health. Helps our budget, too.
Monday – Taiwanese Ground Pork with rice & sauteed bok choy (L) Tuesday – Thai-style papaya and carrot salad with grilled beef Wednesday – Thai-style ground pork with papaya salad and steamed rice Thursday – Vietnamese shaking beef over green salad Friday – Vietnamese cold noodle bowls with grilled pork Saturday – Japanese yakiniku (tableside grilled beef) with kimchee, rice and nori Sunday – Cold peanut noodles with grilled chicken & Vietnamese salad rolls with pork & shrimp
Breakfast choices for the week – Oatmeal, cereal, tea & toast Lunch for the week – Leftovers from the previous night Snack choices for the week – carrots & hummus, fresh fruit
(L) – Denotes a leftover meal (F) – Denotes a freezer meal
There’s meat in every dish but for most of these dishes, meat is a flavoring rather than a significant part of the dish. I’m lucky that the Asian market has pre-shredded carrots and papaya. That takes most of the work out of papaya salads 
Menu Plan Monday at OrgJunkie
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Accepting my limitations..
Once upon a time, when I only dreamed about being a SAHM, I believed that, were I to become a SAHM, I’d have time to, I don’t know, DO THINGS. Like play a video game or two. Write my novel. Wash the dishes. Sweep the floor. Make and eat lunch.
The reality is that since I’ve been home, I think about the only thing I HAVE been able to do is take care of The Little Empress. Oh and catch up on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit via Netflix during TLE’s seemingly endless nursing sessions and/or naps when she falls asleep on me. Which, as it has been for the past month or so, has been pretty much EVERY nap.
Still, I must have gone either completely insane or had momentary amensia because I rather zealously told my parents that instead of buying the lumpia for The Little Empress’ baptism party on Saturday that my sister and I would make them.
(To be painfully honest, TLE’s baptism is not so much a religious rite as it is an excuse to bring together family and friends and feast upon a slaughtered and roasted to perfection suckling pig and other delicacies. Chinese folks have their Red Egg parties, Koreans have their 100 Days and Filipino Catholics have baptisms. I had an aunt that converted to being Baptist which doesn’t do infant baptisms. My poor, oh-so-Catholic family (including myself) were at a loss for a bit as to how a child dedication differed from a Catholic infant baptism. But then they still had a reception so everything was A-OK after that.)
Lumpia is something that is a must have at any Filipino party worth going to. Lumpia is the great equalizer of dishes. People could argue that pancit is also the great equalizer (after all, it resembles chow mein and who hasn’t had chow mein?) but I say it’s all about lumpia. After all, kids love it, adults love it, your non-Filipino friends that might faint at the thought of eating anything else love it. It’s familiar. Its cute. It’s finger food. You dip it in sweet and sour sauce. And it’s DEEP FRIED! That, more than anything else, secures lumpia as the must have food the party.
Not having lumpia is a failure of epic proportions, surpassed only by the cardinal sin of running out of rice at a party. Which, by the way, once happened at my friends’ 18th birthday debut. While not quite a scandal, the shock was felt around the rented gymnasium. And of course, we still mention it to this day. “OMG remember Joy’s party when they ran out of rice?!”
Making lumpia is something best done in a group — after all, many hands make for little work. Lumpia rolling isn’t difficult so much as tedious. Back in the days, I could have easily tackled a mountain of yummy pork and shrimp filling in front of a DVD, making perfectly stacked rows of neatly wrapped lumpia to stow away in the freezer until they were needed. Since I knew TLE would make it more difficult for me to accomplish this, I enlisted the help of my sister. I thought that between the two of us, we could make short work of the task with no problem.
Oh how wrong I was.
Long story short, I will never, EVER again underestimate just how much time TLE can demand. Whether I was trying to prep ingredients or roll lumpia, TLE refused to cooperate. She didn’t want to sit in her high chair, play in her playard or even sleep on my back in a carrier to let me work. As a result, my sister ended up doing mostly everything. While I got to wrap a few myself, it was apparent that while delicious tasting, the resulting lumpia wasn’t something we’d feel comfortable serving at TLE’s baptism party.
So now, I get to swallow my pride and eat the $13.99/package for frozen lumpia from the local Asian megamart which, quite honestly, wounds my inner culinarian and is causing my inner cheapskate miser frugal conscience to have to go into therapy. (For the same in ingredients, I can easily make 200+ lumpia rather than the 40 or so you get per package.) Worse, I have to tell my dad that he was right (okay, this wounds me more than either of the previous two combined) because he totally pushed for buying frozen lumpia in the first place.
In the long run, I know it’s more important to tend to The Little Empress than to be able to boast that I made the lumpia for her baptism reception or that I kept an immaculate house. It drives me insane but as long as The Little Empress is happy, that’s all that matters.
Whatcha eating, mommy?
While I look forward to the day that The Little Empress utters her first words, I DREAD the day that she’ll realize that her mommy is a big, fat hypocrite. If I’m lucky, she’ll just realize that I’m big and fat and, being my daughter, she’ll love me anyway because a Big Fat Mommy ™ means big squishy hugs forever and ever.
But I digress.
As I was wandering the aisles of the grocery store today — something I try not to do without a list, or at the very least a gameplan, for both sanity and budget sake — a few things found their way into my cart without my realizing it until I found myself at the check out. One of my rules of thumb when it comes to shopping frugally is to never buy anything that I can make myself. This usually saves me from most prepackaged food although it was designed to keep me away from my best friend/nemesis: cookies. I can make most any cookie that I desire with the notable exception of graham crackers, Oreos and Pims. Graham crackers I consider to be a healthful (although not as satisfying) subsitute for a chocolate chip cookie while I falt out believe that Oreos and Pims are food groups in an of themselves.
What my “not buy anything I can make myself” does not save me from are things like potato chips. I tend not to buy salty snacks as a rule because like that commercial says, once I pop, I can’t stop. I’ve made entire cans of Pringles go missing in a matter of moments.
So there I was at the check out aisle, congratulating myself on a shopping trip well done when I spied quite a few things that weren’t on the list including Pringles and a bunch of sugary drinks. I’d gotten used to drinking non-sugared beverages while I was pregnant thanks to gestational diabetes and had told myself that I’d keep drinking them after I gave birth. Of course, the first thing I asked for after TLE made her appearance was a Frapuccino. Resolve? I have none.
But today, I saw my shopping cart in a new light. It was a shopping cart filled with hypocrisy. Here I am, busting my ass to give my daughter the best start in life by breastfeeding on demand and by making her baby food. And while I refuse to give her formula (and she refuses it as well; she doesn’t like the taste), I’ll gladly stuff myself full of artificially sweetened god knows what.
There will come a time when she’s no longer nursing and I’m no longer hovering over her with a spoon full of freshly made by mama baby food. And when that time comes, she’s going to be looking to ME as her example. Baby see, baby do. And if Mommy is stuffing herself full of Taco Bell and Pepsi, why can’t she?
I realized that I have to be the good example. All the fresh food, fresh lunch programs at school aren’t going to do a damn if I feed her good food while Mommy eats the Bad Stuff ™. Because kids always want to imitate their parents and right now, I’m not the best parent to imitate. 
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My name is Michelle. I write, I shoot and I mom, not necessarily in that order. I'm aware that 'mom' isn't widely accepted as a verb but I think it should be.I'm a self-professed geek and caffeine addict. (Some may argue that the latter is a requirement of the former.) I live with my husband and our daughter in the California Delta.
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