flakymom-blog

[flakymom-blog]

It’s Soup!

I have created a lovely, yummy, tummy-warming soup for my family tonight. Well, okay, no, I didn’t actually CREATE it. I used recipes, several of them in fact, to meld and tweak and use to make my own soup. Sausage, potato, and kale soup, ho!!! So creamy. So garlicky. So satisfying. And I haven’t even had supper yet! I just formed my opinion from taste testing. I was at Costco a few days ago and they offered a taste of a “mild” sausage, which I tasted but did not anticipate that it would be great. Well, it was really, really yummy. Not too hot, but so much flavor! So, I bought it, and now it’s simmering on the stove with its fellow soup ingredients, making a delicious hot supper for me and my fambly.

Does anybody else have a problem making sure all the Costco huge-sized meats are properly bagged, labeled, and frozen BEFORE they get a bit smelly? I have lost way too much lovely meat by forgetting to freeze the parts I can’t use in a few days. Sad face. But last night, I corralled my DD to assist me in the kitchen and get that stuff stowed. That’s where the menu-planning comes in: I divide the meals according to which need to be cooked and eaten right away (usually sorted by what fresh fruits/veg must be eaten) and which will need to be frozen to stay good until they get cooked, later. I do NOT like to freeze fresh fish, so that usually gets chosen for day-of-shopping dinner. After that, whatever produce needs eating soon gets paired with an appropriate meat, and a menu and freezing schedule is begun. Another thing I don’t like doing and therefore end up not doing (and perforce having meats get nasty), is sorting through the food in the freezer and getting rid of the stupid stuff that should never have been frozen in the first place. Like a baggie of the delicious, nutritious fresh fruit-and-protein-powder smoothie I made but couldn’t finish. So I froze the rest. And never, ever looked at it again. Well, out it went last night, along with little bits and pieces that should have been used long ago. If any of it is still decent then I will use it in a big pot to make broth, but most is not usable.

Anyway. My DD and I sorted, cut up, divided, bagged, labeled, and appropriately situated the meats in the newly re-organized and slimmed-down freezer. Mission accomplished, without any meat casualties! (We won’t count losing the entire box of mushrooms...that’s not meat. And I wouldn’t have frozen them anyway. But I did hate throwing them all away.)

Thus has my second day of planned dinners been carried out. And boy, does that sausage/potato/kale soup smell delicious! Can’t wait to eat.

À la prochaine! 

Flaky Mom

[flakymom-blog]

This is so me. I have to hyper-focus at work to do the job right, and it exhausts me. I do not discuss my ADD. I think it would cause more problems than it might solve. This lady tells it like it is.

[flakymom-blog]

An Experiment in Modern Social Networking

Welcome to my blog! I’ve started this because I’d love to meet other people out there who share some of my varied and random interests. I’ve lived an interesting (says my daughter) and eventful life, and I thought I might write here about it and about what’s going on with me and my family these days. Just in case someone out there finds it mildly amusing...or even just to use it as a distraction from doing what you’re supposed to be doing. Oh, have I mentioned that I have ADD? Distractions are a way of life for me. :^) I won’t judge. 

Let’s see, who is this strange Flaky Mom? I am a near-to-retiring psych RN; I love to cook and plan menus (I am easily amused) while trying to accommodate the varied dietary needs of my family; I have a daughter who’s starting college and am helping her deal with the inherent challenges and excitement associated with that pursuit; my DH is a classic computer geek and gamer so there’s that; I have a son with a chromosomal disorder so have lots of things going on with that on a daily basis; I am a pago-Christian (my word)--or perhaps a better description is “an open-minded Christian who is interested in the spirituality of pagan ways and doesn’t see any conflict between them” (but “pago-Christian is a lot shorter, n’est-ce pas?); I have a high IQ and the cliche “absent-minded professor” tendencies that go with it; I have recently discovered a larval talent for painting and am about to take classes in it for the first time and am beside myself with excitement about it; I pretend to write romance novels (and have 7 or 8 unfinished manuscripts as evidence) and I love to read good, sophisticated, intelligent romances; I have a BA from the American University of Paris and worked as an au pair during my years there (incidentally learning to cook gourmet French food from one of my employers who was trained at the Cordon Bleu right there in Paris); raised my kids in a lovely house for many years but had to do a short sale on it to keep us from going into foreclosure and am still working with my husband to get out of debt hell; am actively trying to deal with the weirdness of ADD (okay, it’s formally “ADHD, inattentive type”...but for the sake of brevity I will call call it ADD in this blog, okay?)...and I could put much, much more down but gosh then what would I write about in future posts? Don’t want to run out of strange and curious things to write to you about. Um, that’s a joke...I could write for days and never run out of stuff. Yep, like I said, my life is full and eventful! But also filled with wonder and love.

I’m just going to post stuff here and open it up to the world. So, world, please don’t be too harsh on me, I’m just a beginner at this blogging stuff. And be ready, because I am far from perfect and am likely to make errors in some of my facts, perhaps one or two errors in grammar or syntax (I hope only occasionally, I’m a grammar nerd), and who knows what else I might do that will tempt some of you to flame me. Please don’t! Be kind! If you see anything I post that you can relate to in your world, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just comments on anything I post, then I invite you to jump in and do so. I’m open to conversation and commiseration!! And words of encouragement. Or adulation. Adulation would be especially welcome. ;^)

Bye for now, dear readers, I have to go cook dinner from the menu plan I made two days ago after a wild and crazy (and expensive) trip to Costco...gotta use up all that fresh food before it goes icky. Er, full disclosure: I lost an entire box of mushrooms because I left it out in a warm, moist spot, still packaged in their plastic-covered box. Sigh. Can you say “moldy slimy gross”? But, I will do my best NOT to lose anything else, okay? So, off to the kitchen to feed my family. 

À la prochaine!

Flaky Mom