Captain's Log, Star Date December 26, 2009:
Just kidding, we watched the new Star Trek prequel movie on a recent date night. It was on my mind while I was prepping dinner. I'm not much of a Trekkie, but I highly recommend it. It makes sense if you don't know the difference between Captain Kirk and Captain Crunch, and it is also accurate enough for those who've actually strapped on a set of pointed ears and headed out to the convention center. These segues will probably happen a lot as movies are a big part of our life. On to Date Night...
I've spent the past two days eating and playing with all the kids' new toys. They pooled their savings and Christmas money from relatives to buy a Wii. I'm thinking of joining the Pro Bowlers Tour as I rolled a 233 on my second game. I rock in the two-dimensional world. I'd settle for half that in real life.
Anyway, Christmas activities delayed my Date Night planning until this afternoon. I discovered a great website, http://www.allrecipes.com/, today. They have thousands of recipes on file, daily and weekly new recipes, and best of all it's free. You can even create your own online recipe box. I found a tasty looking option right away. Roasted Pork Loin. It is spiced with rosemary, garlic and white wine. I'm going to pimp it out by adding celery, carrots, and new potatoes and then serve it over herbed rice with gravy made from the drippings and white wine. We'll start everything off with a spinach and tomato salad. Heather asked for no dessert tonight. Get yourself right with Jesus because that has to be the first sign of the Apocolypse.
4:00: Lily joined me on my quest for the right ingredients. Who knew it would be so hard to find an unflavored center cut pork loin roast. Our journey took us to three different grocery stores. Frodo and Sam would have been so proud.
6:00: I mixed up the dry ingredients, added the wet ones, pierced and basted the roast and threw it in the oven. I then cut up the carrots, celery and potatoes so they'd be ready to dump in 50 minutes before the roast was done. That was easy! Too easy it turns out...a minute or two later I glanced ahead in the directions and discovered the wine didn't go in until the roast was done. *$#@! I took the roast out of the oven, rinsed it and started over.
7:04: As I type this I'm periodically basting the roast while Heather and Jack are watching Planes, Trains & Automobiles (the edited version!) I just poured some Gatorade for the girls and am watching them carpet bomb the table and floor with Saltine crumbs. I know Sydney (the dog) has to be thinking "Katching!" every time she sees Sofie getting ready to eat. Christmas comes 3 or 4 times a day for her.
7:30: Basting again. From the other room I hear Heather asking Lily (who has joined them in front of the movie), "you've been talking all day...aren't you out of words yet?" Lily responds with "I'll stop talking when I go to bed tonight." That pretty much sums up Lily.
7:45: Contrary to my expectations, we don't have a herbed rice mix. I manage to dig up a box of rice pilaf. That'll work. It's amazing the things you find when you dig DEEP into your pantry. What exactly is satay, and what possessed me to buy it??? That's number one on the list the next time a kid comes to our door for the food pantry.
8:00: The movie is over and Jeff Foxworthy is on. The roast is done, so I remove it to make gravy with the drippings. I had bought a new container of corn starch during my shopping trip with Lily. I was excited to find a new resealable plastic container instead of the traditional, leaky cardboard box and made sure I showed off my discovery to Heather upon returning home earlier. I peel off the "adult-proof" safety seal and the can explodes like the ink bomb in the bag full of money from a bank robbery. I'm betting that the image of consumers opening those things is what gets bored factory workers through their days on the line. After cleaning up the shrapnel, instead of measuring the corn starch I figure I'll just shake a little out directly from the container. About half of the contents plop into the pan. Who needs gravy anyway?
8:15: Dinner is ready. We send the kids up to their rooms for some quiet time before bed. We sit down and enjoy dinner. The roast is succulent, falling apart with a mild nudge of a fork. I've never used fresh rosemary before...it actually makes a difference. The flavor is penetrating withouth being overpowering. The vegetables taste great but were a bit overdone. I now know exactly how long to cook them when I'm eighty and have no teeth.
9:00: Dinner is over and we have had a nice talk... What's your favorite Christmas memory this year? Isn't cute how Bug always hops and then shakes her bootie when Wii bowling? Don't you love it how we don't have to go to three different Christmases like everyone else we know? We hit the trifecta...all three kids come down at some point for our help with some sort of Def Con 5 problem to work through. Jack Ryan has nothing on us. He may have vanquished terrorists in "Clear & Present Danger" and "Air Force One", but can he convince a hypochondriac six year old that she really doesn't need any medicine without triggering the nuclear warhead that is her temper? I think not.
Intermission: We head upstairs to sing the kids "The Moon Song", pray together and tuck them in. Another successful day. No trips to the emergency room and despite the day's bickering our kids still seem to love each other.
9:35: Actual time with just grown-ups begins. Pure romance is just around the corner as Bill Envall will continue to regale us with stories that hit a little too close to home. I guess you can take the redneck out of Iowa...
9:45: Heather reads the above and declares she is not a redneck...she is a pinkneck. I'm going to leave that one alone. We plop down on the couch.
The Verdict: Especially kid-heavy tonight, but all-in-all successful. New flavors, a smattering of nice conversation and an hour or two of snuggle-time. Exciting? No. But sometimes the opportunity to just "be still" together is exactly what we need.
By the way, tonight's recipe can be found at http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Roasted-Pork-Loin/Detail.aspx.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Why am I blogging?
I hold no illusions of being a gifted writer. My English professors and an ex-boss with a god-complex made that clear. Whenever I write I have to bust out the thesaurus to find new ways to express "great" without actually using the word seven times in the same paragraph.
I also know that I am not channeling Solomon as I don't possess infinite volumes of wisdom that I must share with the world. Anything of value that I'm currently spewing likely came from the Bible or is inadvertently being borrowed from others.
Certainly, I am not blazing the trail to perfect-husband status. I mess up a LOT! When our kids make mistakes, Heather always says "Oh well...we're not raising Jesus..." She's definitely not married to Him either.
So if I don't have a lot to share and my choices are as much "warning label" as they are "instruction manual", why am I blogging? The long version...
Monday through Friday I get up, spend a little time with God, go to work, come home, eat, spend time with the kids and their activities, and after they're finally in bed...plop down and share an hour or so of "quality" time with my wife. Sound familiar?
I've gotten much better about starting my day with God. I need to get up earlier and extend that time, but I'm making progress. However, pretty much out of necessity, the time Heather and I have together during the week seems to come last and is hardly "USDA Grade A Prime". About a year ago I realized Heather was settling for the stuff on the sale rack, fast approaching its expiration date.
There's wasn't much I could do about the week, but I could set aside some special time for her during the weekend. What to do? We've never had much success growing a money tree. Even when one starts to grow, we somehow manage to kill it. So it had to be relatively cheap. We also have three young children...the first ingredient in romance right? Scooby Doo moment, "I'd have made it, too...if it wasn't for those meddling kids!"
Tight budget...a weekly babysitter was not an option. Kids...limited privacy. I was going to have to be creative. Friday night became "Family Night". The kids could stay up late. Saturday night became "Date Night". The kids would go to bed early.
Each Saturday I'd ask Heather what she wanted for dinner and I'd make whatever she wanted. We'd then share a dessert and watch a favorite show or movie, or just talk. We've had a year or so of wonderful dates, which have really strengthened our marriage.
I've mastered her favorite two or three meals, which is great...but it's also bad. Those dramatic drops and loops on the roller coaster that at first are so thrilling tend to lose their effect after a dozen laps around the course. I've created a whole new cycle of monotany. What once was special now has now become mundane.
Last week Heather convinced me to watch "Julie & Julia" with her. I tucked my tail between my legs, turned in my "man card", and hit the Red Box. My expectations were low, but I was surprised as the movie was a revelation. In the movie, Julie feels trapped in a job that at first seemed to present the opportunity to save the world, but over time proved to be held in check by bureaucracy. Then Julie discovered Julia Child's cookbook. She decided to cook all the recipes in the period of one year, all the while blogging about it.
As the movie progressed, scenes from Julie's life were interspersed with those from Julia's nearly half a century before. I won't spoil the ending as the movie is definitely worth watching, but ultimately Julie found her purpose and rescued her marriage, largely as a result of the introspection she gained during her blogs.
So as usual, I am going to borrow a good idea. Date Night will continue. But it will gain new life as I will be cooking something different each week. Perhaps Heather has not yet tasted her favorite meal. And, I hope to become a better husband as I blog about our Date Nights going forward.
I also know that I am not channeling Solomon as I don't possess infinite volumes of wisdom that I must share with the world. Anything of value that I'm currently spewing likely came from the Bible or is inadvertently being borrowed from others.
Certainly, I am not blazing the trail to perfect-husband status. I mess up a LOT! When our kids make mistakes, Heather always says "Oh well...we're not raising Jesus..." She's definitely not married to Him either.
So if I don't have a lot to share and my choices are as much "warning label" as they are "instruction manual", why am I blogging? The long version...
Monday through Friday I get up, spend a little time with God, go to work, come home, eat, spend time with the kids and their activities, and after they're finally in bed...plop down and share an hour or so of "quality" time with my wife. Sound familiar?
I've gotten much better about starting my day with God. I need to get up earlier and extend that time, but I'm making progress. However, pretty much out of necessity, the time Heather and I have together during the week seems to come last and is hardly "USDA Grade A Prime". About a year ago I realized Heather was settling for the stuff on the sale rack, fast approaching its expiration date.
There's wasn't much I could do about the week, but I could set aside some special time for her during the weekend. What to do? We've never had much success growing a money tree. Even when one starts to grow, we somehow manage to kill it. So it had to be relatively cheap. We also have three young children...the first ingredient in romance right? Scooby Doo moment, "I'd have made it, too...if it wasn't for those meddling kids!"
Tight budget...a weekly babysitter was not an option. Kids...limited privacy. I was going to have to be creative. Friday night became "Family Night". The kids could stay up late. Saturday night became "Date Night". The kids would go to bed early.
Each Saturday I'd ask Heather what she wanted for dinner and I'd make whatever she wanted. We'd then share a dessert and watch a favorite show or movie, or just talk. We've had a year or so of wonderful dates, which have really strengthened our marriage.
I've mastered her favorite two or three meals, which is great...but it's also bad. Those dramatic drops and loops on the roller coaster that at first are so thrilling tend to lose their effect after a dozen laps around the course. I've created a whole new cycle of monotany. What once was special now has now become mundane.
Last week Heather convinced me to watch "Julie & Julia" with her. I tucked my tail between my legs, turned in my "man card", and hit the Red Box. My expectations were low, but I was surprised as the movie was a revelation. In the movie, Julie feels trapped in a job that at first seemed to present the opportunity to save the world, but over time proved to be held in check by bureaucracy. Then Julie discovered Julia Child's cookbook. She decided to cook all the recipes in the period of one year, all the while blogging about it.
As the movie progressed, scenes from Julie's life were interspersed with those from Julia's nearly half a century before. I won't spoil the ending as the movie is definitely worth watching, but ultimately Julie found her purpose and rescued her marriage, largely as a result of the introspection she gained during her blogs.
So as usual, I am going to borrow a good idea. Date Night will continue. But it will gain new life as I will be cooking something different each week. Perhaps Heather has not yet tasted her favorite meal. And, I hope to become a better husband as I blog about our Date Nights going forward.
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