OK...

...now the kids are all playing and I have a moment to myself. The house isn’t too messy yet, but then again, I haven’t even begun to make dinner. That should trash the house pretty well.

I was out there trying to trim the hedges a bit. I have no business doing that. I just whacked away at a few things that were sticking up out of the bushes. Then, I got annoyed and quit. I don’t know why anyone would enjoy doing that. Why do some people enjoy working in the yard? I guess it’s better than being inside of some of the houses but still, I’d look for something a little less strenuous.

I prefer cooking. I’m doing that now. I’m making a big pot of spaghetti sauce. That’ll be fine for everybody. I usually don’t have to worry about someone saying....”I don't like that."

Spaghetti is all in one bowl so the kids can’t eat all of the mashed potatoes and leave all of the peas. I hate that. I used to tell my kids that they couldn’t have anymore of ANYTHING until they’ve eaten one serving of EVERYTHING. That saved a lot of French fries from being devoured by kids who didn’t really want to eat fish sticks or carrots. Yeah, you can’t go wrong with spaghetti.

I haven’t decided what type of pasta to use. I like those seashells but I don’t think I have any. Rick didn’t like them. Can you imagine not liking any one type of pasta? It’s all the same stuff. Not only does it end up in the same place, it starts off in the same place, getting chewed up before your tongue can tell what shape of pasta it is. It was odd what that man didn’t like. He didn’t like onions. And...if he could SEE them, they gave him heartburn. If he didn’t know they were there, they didn’t seem to bother him.

So, I usually just grated the onions if I had to. Like with potato soup, you only have four basic ingredients that combine to make the basic soup...milk, butter, onions and potatoes. After that, everything is optional. But up to that point, it isn’t potato soup unless it has certain ingredients.

There wasn’t much that Rick liked and at first, I just made two of everything. I would make the basic recipe, then take some out for myself and add the good stuff. It wasn’t so tough, I’d just split the recipe at some point and I had two bowls of chili or two bowls of spaghetti sauce.

After a while, I got sick of doing that so I pretty much just made stuff that he liked. It’s nice to be able to cook freely. Everybody has their own little food things, I do as well. But I’ve never met anyone as restricted in their intake as he was.

That’s what happens when you give in to the kid who will only eat cheese sandwiches or some stupid thing like that. Some kids truly have problems but most are just a tad on the spoiled side. If you make the kid TASTE everything once, and ask no more, he will eventually learn to enjoy different things. It takes a little effort but it’s worth it to have a kid who can sit down and eat anywhere without being argumentative. They don’t have to finish everything, just taste it.

I had one kid who would only eat eggs at breakfast and one who would only eat bacon. So, I made them each taste the thing they didn’t like each time we had it and they eventually became normal people. Pretty much so, anyway.

Now I’m Grandma and I don’t care what they eat. I just make something that I think they’ll all like and make sure that there’s ice cream. I think I’ll make scones in the morning...I bought a bag of blueberry scone mix. I don’t know why, I had them once in England and they weren’t particularly good, but I had a coupon. So, now I have a good reason to make the scones.

There’s been a lot of shopping going on this weekend. I’ve gone shopping, my daughter has gone shopping, I’ve gone shopping with my daughter, my daughter has taken my granddaughter shopping and right now I have to go out quickly for some eggs. I used the last eggs making the scones. (It’s now a few hours later than when I wrote about the scones in the future tense, now they are done.) The scones are pretty good, they taste like a combination of a day old blueberry muffin and a dry biscuit...if memory serves, that’s about right.

I have some blintz batter and some of the cheese mixture so I think I’ll make the rest of that tonight for a snack. Those cheese blintzes with blueberries are pretty derned good. I dated a Jewish guy for a couple of years and his family used to have them all the time. I had never heard of them. But they were very good and I’ve ordered them in nicer restaurants over the years and then this past Easter, because of airport drop-offs and things like that, I decided to have an Easter brunch instead of an Easter dinner. So, I made a really, really nice Easter Brunch and we had the blintzes that morning/afternoon.

So, the kids have been asking for them ever since. I love making something really good. These suckers are really pretty damned good. I don’t know if it was the Jewish in that man or the Russian, but somewhere in his family tree, they had someone with superb taste.

OK...I keep falling asleep at the keyboard which is a sign that I should probably go and get myself all horizontal sometime soon. So, before I drift off again, I should say good evening.

Meg