Salad

We're having salad for lunch since we plan on filling our bellies with rhubarb cobbler. :-)

Daughter wanted chicken soup, but we didn't have any but I found canned spaghetti and meatballs from when I could not chew. Gave her a side of romaine with cowgirl ranch dressing and my rye croutons, but she didn't like the dressing.

Husband and I are having big salads with croutons, sunflower seeds, broccoli and hot bacon dressing from his mom that I had in the freezer.

Cornbake

I have tried unsuccessfully over the years to make my mother-in-law's cornbake. I don't know where she got the recipe from but it's a family favorite and chock full of comfort food-ness. I'm sure over the years I've failed at it because of my tendency not to follow a recipe so today I tried extra hard AND I called my mother-in-law to verify the size of the pan.

Esther's Corn Bake

• 8.5 ounces Jiffy cornbread/muffin mix (yeah, something out of a box!)
• 1 can whole corn, undrained
• 1 can creamed corn
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 stick butter, melted
• 2 eggs beaten

Mix and pour into large casserole or 9 x 13 cake pan. Bake at 350 for 1 hour. Should not be as dry as cornbread, but should set more than a pudding.

Chicken and Dumplings

My dad occasionally talks about chicken and dumplings... He gets hungry for them, but can never find anyone to make them the way he remembers his mother making them. So, he asked me if my mother-in-law had a recipe. Of course, the Pennsylvania Dutch call it Chicken Pot Pie.

My mother and law made the soup. I brought it to my dad's, added the milk to the dumpling ingredients, boiled the soup and cooked the dumplings. I didn't get a picture. It was yummy and she even made a molasses cake for dessert.

Morning snacks: Cottage cheese with apple butter

In this house, breakfast usually comes around two or three times a day. My daughter starts her day with about 4 ounces of chocolate soy milk (more if it's one of those Horizon organic milk boxes) and a small meal, today a New York gala apple. (Which while leaving me relieved that it wasn't shipped from outside the country, I still had to ponder the relativity of shopping local.)

Then, at 8 a.m. she made "blueberry muffins" in her Easy Bake oven (which did not include blueberry just imitation blueberry). Around 9 a.m., I needed to eat and I didn't feel like it so I had a couple fig newtons. Yeah, bad Mommy. But then it became apparent that I needed real food and at 10 a.m., I had apple butter and cottage cheese.

Now, apple butter is a very Pennsylvania Dutch condiment. I've only seen it used for two things, even in my Pennsylvania Dutch in-law's house: cottage cheese and scrapple. I find scrapple unappealing. But apple butter and cottage cheese is a nice mix of carbs and protein to keep me stable from a food perspective. And the calcium benefits me too.

My daughter and I both had a serving (hers with more apple butter than mine). Then, my inlaws showed up with watermelon. She ate that too.

Standard American Diet, SAD indeed

Once upon a time, I liked my mother-in-law's hot bacon dressing. She's very Pennsylvania Dutch, and she makes a nice hot bacon dressing. But since she knows I like it, she makes it EVERY time she cooks dinner. Which is about once a month. I can tolerate hot bacon dressing once every six months. Or, say Thanksgiving and Easter. And I'm not a fan of meat, so to come home to a meaty smelling house is gross. 

My mother-in-law babysat my daughter from 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in my house. They made cupcakes. And apparently, my mother-in-law cannot be bothered cooking for my daughter. Because she brought Martin's Wheat Potato bread, yeah, that's whole grain, and I'm sure she brought the cheapest possible cold cuts, pickles and chips for lunch. (That's why I pumped my kid full of broccoli before I left. AND a banana.) And this is dinner.

A pre-cooked chicken from Sam's Club yesterday. Mashed potatoes. And carrots drowned in butter. And iceburg lettuce with hot bacon dressing. Iceberg lettuce, empty calories. Nothing green. Plain potatoes, with nothing to jazz them up. Overcooked carrots. And that chicken. Also bland. Now, I might have been able to eat it had I not seen the leftover plate which my husband informs me she ripped to shreds with her bare hands. (WTF am I supposed to do with a plate of shredded chicken? Don't tell me soup. I HATE chicken broth. Maybe broccoli-chicken-cheddar pot pie. But I didn't buy the ingredients for pot pie.) It just looks gross.

So my husband obviously picked the nicest piece to offer to me, but I still can't bring myself to eat it. I'm tempted to take a flute of chartreuse instead. My husband says the liquor might make the dinner palatable.