Jenyfer Matthews

A watched pot never boils – but walk away and you’d be surprised by how fast the water boils off! My poor tea kettle…it’ll never be the same…

I enjoy working at the library, but of course when I am there a whole lot of stuff is not getting done here at home. Also, I know that there are a few things I’m going to be busy doing at the school later in the week (more on that later) so I got busy doing things bright and early this morning.

You just never know when the phone might ring and it will be the library asking me to come in and substitute.

So this morning, in addition to all the usual things like dishes and laundry, I’ve been busy. It’s only 10AM and I’ve already made a batch of salsa and two pillow cases. The salsa will accompany dinner tonight (baked burritos) and the pillowcases are part of a Valentine’s present for my children (Scooby Doo for my son and a soccer ball print for my daughter). Even though it’s a week away, I feel better having them done now because you just never know what will come up.

What have you been up to lately? Any special plans for Valentine’s Day? I’ll be attempting to make truffles for my honey later in the week. Stay tuned for how that comes out!

Some people make their resolutions in the New Year. My husband works for a university so the rhythm of our home more closely follows the academic calendar. This is the time of year I get the urge to do a “spring clean”, make lifestyle changes, and generally just start anew.

One of the leaves that regularly gets turned over at this time of year is the resolution to Eat Better. It’s no wonder coming off a summer of indulging in all of our favorite treats. More meal planning, less fat, more protein – all the usual stuff. And stir fries.

One meal my husband keeps trying to convince me is the solution to all our meal woes is stir fries. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good Asian stir fry – when it is delivered to my home in a tidy cardboard carton. It’s creating it myself that I’m not so enthusiastic about.

Hubby argues that it doesn’t have to complicated, that the problem is we try to put in too many ingredients. We just need to focus on simplicity. I know from past experience he’s wrong, but sometimes it’s just too much trouble to argue. So we made stir fry last night.

We picked just a few ingredients. Broccoli, asparagus, and an onion. And a few shrimp because if it’s only vegetables then hubby is hungry again immediately. I made a garlic sauce and got the veggies washed ahead of time and then made the rice while hubby cut up the veggies and got out the wok.

The cooking part was quick, I’ll give him that. And the sauce was tasty. But that meal used up two cutting boards, two saucepans and a wok and it there wasn’t even enough for the children to have any, even if they’d wanted it. I ended up having to make (homemade) mac-n-cheese for them with a side of steamed broccoli (three more pots).

Have I ever mentioned that I don’t have a dishwasher? I *am* the dishwasher! Whatever time was saved in actual cooking was definitely consumed in the cleanup.

I am going to quietly rotate stir-fries out of the lineup…

One of the things I think is an important part of motherhood is teaching your children the skills they will need to be independent, well-adjusted, functional adults one day. You know, little things like how to do laundry and basic cooking skills. My daughter is only just shy of 8 and my son is 5 but you can never start too early with these things – especially since they still think this stuff is fun.

(And if I get a little cheap domestic help during the course of their training, who can blame me? They are legal citizens and besides — I MADE them.)

I recently started paying my daughter to do a few simple things : make her bed in the morning, put her dirty clothes in the hamper and put her shoes away. Some may call the allowance she earns a bribe, but I prefer to think of it as part two of the life lesson – money management. With the pittance she makes she’s getting a bonus lesson of delayed gratification in the process.

She should be thanking me for all this wisdom.

My son has more of an affinity for the kitchen. I think it’s all the buttons and knobs and potential for noise. What is it about men and gadgets? Even at his tender age, he’s mastered the microwave and likes to turn the knob on the food processor (with proper supervision of course!).

One lesson that has been difficult for the little man to grasp is that he doesn’t actually need to take a new cup every time he wants a drink of water. I’ve tried to explain to him that he can simply keep the same cup and use it again and he looks at me in puzzlement and says, “huh?” Maybe if I told him he could store it in the microwave between uses it would sink in better?

Neither one of them can seem to remember to flush the toilet consistently either, but I digress…

The other lesson my son found a bit above his head was making ice. What is it about ice that confounds so many people? It’s a simple recipe : fill tray with water and put in freezer. I’m going to keep working on that one though. Honestly, how many of you out there wish your mother-in-law had driven that (or any of these) lesson(s) home?

Stop by over the weekend and say hello to fellow author Candace Sams, here with an excerpt of her book Satyr. I’m going to sneak away on Saturday to embark on my summer “vacation” (truly, I won’t get any rest until school starts again!), but never fear! I’ll be popping in from time to time and the Friday Features will continue all summer.

Have a wonderful weekend!

I spent much of yesterday reading and cooking. Not such a bad way to spend a day really.

I’ve been reading Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert – another book I’d heard too much about to think that I’d actually like it. Again, I was pleasantly surprised. I didn’t just like it – I loved it. I’m biased though – not only is it written in first person but it’s about travel and has a happy ending besides – all things I love in a book. I finished it last night and promptly ordered my own copy. It’s a keeper.

When I could tear myself away from reading, I got busy cooking. Earlier in the week I’d purchases a bunch of celery because my daughter mentioned that she liked to eat celery sticks. I’m not such a big fan of celery myself but when a child asks for celery, how can I to say no? However, there is a limit to how many celery sticks a child will eat (1) so I was left with a bunch of celery.

Celery is cheap enough, but here I will admit to being neurotic about wasting food. Who knows? Maybe I lived a former life in the Depression. But I was determined not to let that celery go to waste. So I made cream of celery soup. All those leafy tops looked like seaweed in the pot as they cooked but it wasn’t half bad when it was all pureed. I won’t go so far as to say I loved it – it is still celery after all.

Today, I’m getting back to work. I have a self-imposed deadline to finish my WIP. I want to be done by the beginning of June. It’s a doable deadline and I’m sure that I’ll make that. Part of that deadline includes writing a synopsis though and that part I dread. What is it about writing a synopsis? Having already written an entire novel, you’d think writing up a few page summary would be a cake walk. All I can say is that it’s not.

But once again my character Aurora – who insisted on dictating her story through me is also now making noises about writing her own synopsis. I think I’m going to let her have a go. If she can do it, more power to her.

Little league season has started in Cairo. And as much as I love watching the children play baseball, signing two children up means two more evenings a week of scheduled activities (they have tennis three other evenings) Five evenings a week when I’m not home when I would ordinarily be cooking dinner. Five evenings a week when we all come home ravenous and in no mood to wait more than a nanosecond before dinner is served.

I’m sure there are people out there who love to cook. Myself, I love to eat good food – I cook only out of necessity. All of these activities have forced me to become very organized and meal-plan focused – lest we fall into a rut of eating a rotation of my favorite fall back meals.

When I’m pressed for time / creatively tapped / brain dead / lazy, I have a few easy fall back meals that I can make in a pinch. Pizza made with pita bread as a crust is one of them. It’s great – just spread sauce, toss on a few pepper strips (if you can be bothered to wash and cut them up!), sprinkle on cheese and voila! Ten minutes later you have a meal.

Burritos is another favorite. I almost always have tortillas in the freezer and what’s easier than opening and warming up a can of beans? It feels almost gourmet if we happen to have any sour cream around or the fresh salsa I’ve been making with our homegrown cherry tomatoes. Bliss.

Frozen food is the last resort.

Since little league only started this week, so far I’m still on top of things. I made a pot of chili yesterday afternoon which we ate when we arrived home. They have tennis for the next three evenings. It’s only 8:30am Cairo time and I’m already thinking about what to make for dinner. I’m considering macaroni for the children. It’s Chinese takeout night for hubby and me.

What are your favorite go-to meals? Little league lasts eight weeks – I need all the help I can get!

As anxious as I was for the holidays to be over and the children to go back to school, there is one thing I didn’t miss while they were off: packing school lunches.

The school they attend does not have a cafeteria so I have to send lunches. In theory, I don’t mind so much since I’m a bit of a granola mom and packing their lunch myself means I get to stick my oar in and give them what I want them to have. (And I might as well take advantage of that as long as I can!) In reality it’s not always easy to think up things to pack five days a week.

They get bored with the same old sandwiches day in and day out. Who can blame them? But my choices are limited when there are no facilities for warming up food in their classroom. I have to pack things that taste good either cold or room temperature, travel well and can be consumed in fifteen minutes or less (calling it a “lunch hour” is a misleading to say the least). Add to that the complication that my children have very different preferences.

My daughter is a protein hound. She’s on a peanut butter kick at present (not yet outlawed in their school, thank goodness!), but I know one day, just as I’m getting in a groove, the tide will turn and she’ll suddenly start rejecting what she loved the day before. Her other love is junk food – too bad for her I rarely indulge it.

My son is a fruit bat – the sweeter the better. He also likes pb&j or cheese sandwiches, but I could pack him a fruit salad every day and he’d be happy. Unfortunately, the time I tried that, the bananas disintegrated and the kiwi turned to mush. Pots of yogurt are hit and miss.

I’m not at my most creative in the mornings and having to pack for two different tastes isn’t always easy. Now multiply my pain by two: they have a “snack” period and a “lunch” period. My children are good eaters so they end up bringing quite a lot of food with them each day. Their lunch bags are heavier than their school bags by far.

I’ve been trying to come up with some easy solutions to keep things fresh and exciting and so far the only things that I’ve come up with are packing the same old cheese sandwiches on buns instead of sandwich bread (surprisingly simple but thrilling for them). Even if I wanted to fall back on more convenience packaged food, outside of chips, snack cakes, and juice boxes that sort of food doesn’t really exist here in Cairo. And until Luncheables starts marketing a vegetarian option, it wouldn’t do me much good anyway. I am thinking of ordering a pizza once in a while, just so I can send the cold slices in their lunch the next day.

They’d love pasta salad or hummus or veggies and dip but who has time to go to such lengths in the flurry of the morning rush? As much as I resist the notion, I know what’s coming next : I’ll have to start preparing their lunches the night before.

Like thinking up what to cook for dinner every night wasn’t challenge enough!

Having some external deadlines has forced me to be even more organized than usual. Today I:

1) Went grocery shopping

2) Worked on the edits for ALL THE WAY HOME

3) Pieced much of two baby quilts for the bazaar next week

4) Helped both children with their homework

5) Made a totally killer homemade tomato sauce and lasagna

I was feeling pretty on top of things. Then my daughter asked me why it was that I don’t work.

Sigh… See who gets cookies tomorrow and who DOES NOT!!!
Mwhahahaha!!!!

I had a very good day yesterday. Not only did I do my dishes and multiple loads of laundry, but I sat down and wrote. And wrote and wrote. Phew – did it feel good to get that part of the story out of my head.

After I wrote, I worked for a couple of hours on a quilt that my neighbor has commissioned me to make. It’s going well – only one more corner to go. Before I have to sew all the blocks together and get busy on the hand-quilting that is.

I admit that I fell down on the job when it came to dinner however. I used up all my creativity writing and quilting so in the end I fell back on pizza for dinner. Oh well – it was at least homemade. And better yet, my husband made it.

One thing I really have wanted to do this year is write a couple of children’s stories. Not for publication but for my own children, as a Christmas gift. You might think it would be easy. They aren’t long after all. But somehow I’m having trouble getting in the proper mindset and finding a hook.

I really admire people who can write *good* children’s stories. Personally, there are very few contemporary stories that I enjoy reading to my daughter. Most of the books she brings home from the library or that I peruse in the book stores strike me as too pedantic, too obnoxious or just flat out boring. Don’t get me wrong, I like a story with a moral – I just don’t like to be hit over the head with it or for the lesson to be so obviously the whole reason for the story.

I can live with Junie B. Jones, but keep Captain Underpants away from me. Same goes for Horrid Henry (I live for the day when he gets his comeuppance!) The Magic Treehouse has a good premise but disappoints me over all. They lack any real drama and there are a few questions I have: why can’t Jordan the magic librarian go get the books herself if she’s so great? Why does Jake carry around a notebook and take notes if the notebook doesn’t really serve any other purpose other than to break up the text with glimpses of his handwriting? How do these kids speak every known language through space and time yet no one is every overly concerned about where it is they magically appeared from?

I could be over-analyzing though.

My husband suggested that I didn’t need to think of a lesson to teach and build a story around it, instead I just needed to think of a conflict. Like a little girl who is afraid of dogs…and then??? That’s just an example but it has got my brain working. I only have a little over a month to come up with something passable. Somehow I think I’ll just be cruising Amazon again.

I cook because I have to. I enjoy eating tasty, healthy meals but I don’t always enjoy being the creator of said meals. I do it from necessity. If not me, who? Because I’m hyper-organized but also looking for the easy way out, I usually try to come up with three nice meals a week. The other days are covered by leftovers, take out, and a few in-a-pinch sort of meals (burritos and pizza in our house)

I’ve done my three nice meals this week (Thai inspired peanut sauce pasta, stir fry green beans with garlic sauce, and cheese and broccoli quesadillas if you are curious) and I’m happy to say that tonight is leftover night. Tomorrow we do Chinese take-out (it’s a Thursday night tradition) I’m going to try and get hubby to cook one night over the weekend so I won’t have to actually come up with anything of my own creation until Sunday if I play my cards right.

Nope, not in the mood to cook.

I am however in the mood to bake – carrot cake to be exact. I went out this morning for bread and came back with carrots and cream cheese too. It’s really the only thing that could tempt me into kitchen right now.

Just so you know, I have been writing and am happy to report that I’m keeping up with my own personal goals, modest though they are. Can’t complain about that.