I frequently press my husband into service while I’m making supper – it helps speed along food preparation and I like his company. For instance, last night, I made him dice up some pears, as this Awesome Action Shot will show you:
Slicing Pears ACTION SHOT! We bought the pears in a wee, cunning basket because they were just so cute and then they tasted like wood, of course. Pears are almost never worth eating.
What is wrong with my cutting board? Ick. That’s our fruit-and-vegetable board, and it bears the stains of the glop of a thousand tomatoes. Lovely. Anyhow, while he was slicing the pears on The Nasty Cutting Board, I prepared the rice:
I love my rice cooker – I’m not any good at timing all of my various parts of supper to come out at the same time, and so the rice cooker is great. It cooks the rice and then when it’s done, it politely switches to "warm" and just keeps it perfect until supper is ready. I use it at LEAST four times a week!
I also took some chicken out of a marinade and prepared some vegetables. Raw chicken – I don’t know if you know this – is NOT very photogenic, so instead I prepared this artist’s rendering for you:
Apparently, I need to get out into the sun a BIT MORE OFTEN. My hair was looking unusually terrific, however.
My husband was still slicing pears at this point.
I made a gluten-free version of this Caramel Pear Pudding:
Note the care and attention to pear slicing detail. Awesome work, honey. So I popped that into the oven for an hour, and it cooked alongside the chicken, and when it was done, it looked like this:
Tasty!
The whole meal was good, really, and NO effort at all – turning on the rice cooker, placing some chicken on a baking sheet and preparing a simple batter – and the resulting meal was a real kid-pleaser. I also made enough rice and chicken that I can make a simple soup today for lunch, although my plans to have some leftover dessert for breakfast this morning where thwarted by the whole thing being devoured last night. Whoops.
The chicken/vegetable(generally broccoli)/rice template is always a winner at our house, as is chili/cornbread, spaghetti/salad, and soup/sandwiches. Having a few simple meals that I always have the ingredients for and that the kids will eat is like money in the Bank of Good Cheer. And I’m needing some cheer, because I have one last week before I must face my bete noire, my nemesis: PLANNING HEALTHY SCHOOL LUNCHES. Ugh.
That carmel pear dish looks quite tasty….except that it contains pears – my personal feeling being that they are NEVER worth eating. Ugh.
I love those sorts of comforty food meals. Tonight is homemade, non-dairy tomato soup with biscuits and veggies and lemon souffle (the one in family fun a few issues ago) for dessert. It’s meals like that I can hardly wait until 5pm to start cooking!
It’s amazing how similar we look while cooking!! Your dinner sounds delicious and I love our rice cooker too. Perfect rice every time.
You’re right, pears are just not usually worth it, are they? Such a short window of perfect ripeness, so soon to turn brown and icky, so often woody, and tasting like someone mixed sand in. Blech.
But that dish looks divine if it were only APPLES. The PERFECT FRUIT. Reminds me of a local pair of women who used to run a pie-making business here in Calgary (unfortunately they’re not in biz anymore) but they made all healthy pies with oatmeal crusts, and streusel topping and NO SUGAR ADDED so you didn’t even feel bad giving it to your kids with a dollop of yogurt for breakfast.
Sigh. Maybe I should make one myself! INSPIRATION!
I am banking on the spaghetti/salad combo tonight having used the chicken combo last night!
I am banking on the spaghetti/salad combo tonight having used the chicken combo last night!
Assuming that your cutting board is one of those plastic ones (looks like it), the icky cutting board problem is actually fairly easy to solve. My awesome husband bleaches ours whenever they start looking like that.
I was thinking to myself that you had very, err, manly looking hands when I first looked at this post, then I read the words and noticed, with relief, that they weren’t your hands, but your husband’s. Phew. NOT that there’s anything wrong with Man Hands, mind you. Not at all. But I would forever be distracted by the fact that you had Man Hands. I would have a hard time focusing on your triangular head and kicky purple dress.
One of your readers is called Marmite Breath? Cool. That could be me or my son. He eats marmite every single morning.
oh, a good juicy pear is awesome, but you have to WAIT for them to get ripe. i’m bad at waiting.
get a dark colored cutting board next time around and you will not see the stains. we have a dark blue one. and I rarely cut tomatoes, anyways
I was just asking John what he thought a rice cooker was exactly for, um, besides cooking rice. Was there something I was missing? I saw one at the grocery the other day and considered, but… I couldn’t understand why it would be needed.
And here you are saying you use it 4 times a week! Hm. More consideration is obviously needed. The funny thing is, I am infamous around here for my rice not working. If John is home, that is HIS job. So we’ll see…
I love chicken and rice. It goes well with rainy nights like we’ve had lately. We had our own version last night, too – leftovers in fridge. Yum.
You cute little geometrical thang. It looks like your chicken is on a conveyor belt! What efficiency!
OK, here’s a moronic question…you bake while you cook? I did this once and my dessert tasted like meat. You don’t have this problem, ’cause if you don’t I am so all over this!
I didn’t realize I could leave a whole comment without any information! That last comment was me, sans signature!
I hope planning those school lunches will include a post on the topic. 😉
That dessert looks so good – I must try it!
I had no idea your feet were two such vastly different sizes–that must make shoe-buying very difficult.
My plan is to eat the remnants of my applesauce oatmeal cake for breakfast. There’ll probably be so much left over, I’ll eat it for DAYS. We’ve got some squeamish people over here–they don’t even like to try new desserts!
you’re so triangular!
Look at your nice, rosy cheeks though!
The pear dessert looks yumm-o. I have a pear crisp recipe that I need to break out, now that the farmer’s market is just bursting with the little suckers.
I have to try that pear dish–it looks amazing. And I’ve often pondered the rice cooker–I th ink I might have to get one of those.
Mmmm, the dessert looks wonderful. I like those easy chicken/vegetable/rice dinners, too. This is my first year for packing school lunches. I’m worried about it.
Oh Beck. You look so happy and you do look smashing! Your dinner/dessert description made me hungry.
Pear thingy looks excellent. Must try it for my mom sometime…
You make me want a rice cooker really bad…
Love your hair–and the dress. I love my rice cooker too. So far, I only use it to make plain rice. If you have any other ideas, please let me know.
My nemesis is school lunches too, although I do feel like almost anything I come up with is better than what they could be buying there.
My kids wouldn’t touch chili. The hubs and I love soup and sandwiches, but again, it’s hard to get my kids into it. I know it’s my fault they’re so picky, but I really don’t know where I went wrong. Spaghetti/salad is a big hit here though, as is rice, chicken and broccoli.
Kicky purple dress, indeed.
Beck, that looks amazing. Pear desserts are tasty. I think I may make that when I visit my parents this weekend.
That recipe might be in one of the Taste of Home cookbooks on my kitchen table (my mom’s mail comes to my house, of course). My mother called me very annoyed a while back, demanding to know if I had her magazines. When I told her they were still wrapped in their plastic and I kept forgetting about them whenever I go home, she told me I had to cook something as long as I had possession of them. Silly mothers. I don’t cook.
mmmm that sounds and looks so delicious!
Beck, please eat more. Your arms and legs look a bit twiggy.
PS) I wish my appliances did things politely. Mine are so damn aggressive. For example, my microwave is huffily beeping to remind me that, “Hey Beeyotch, you put a cup of coffee in me one minute ago and then buggered off over to the laptop”
Wow, I wish my arms looked so good in a sleeveless dress!
I just found out there’s a deadly peanut allergy in little d’s preschool (which starts next week). No more p-na burr sammiches, kiddo.
BubTar wants PBJ and cheesy rice cakes for lunch every day. Every day.
“The chicken/vegetable(generally broccoli)/rice template is always a winner at our house, as is chili/cornbread, spaghetti/salad, and soup/sandwiches…” throw in a homemade pizza and that’s pretty much our weekly menu!
I’m dreading the return to school lunches. Our school is starting the two nutrition breaks (vs. one lunch break) schedule, and I’m stumped as to what I should be packing.
I see we have the same nemesis.
And I’m pretty sure I sport the same triangle-inspired purple dress whenever my daughter draws me a picture. Maybe that’s the problem.
(I love easy dinners too. Cooking isn’t as much work as many make it to be.)
I have had my D in camp most of the summer so I never really got a break from lunch making, even so, school lunches are freaking me out. I think it has to do with the fact that my D is a terrible eater (when it comes to lunches) and I can just feel the parent volunteers eyes judging my lunch choices (I really don’t have a choice though UGH).
Let’s see, so much to respond to … but first of all, where did you get that lovely dress? Is it part of being a well-dressed pauper, as you mentioned recently? LOL!
And please keep us posted on ideas for healthy packable lunches. We homeschool, but we still get out frequently, and this task flummoxes me every time!
P.S. Three cheers for rice cookers!
You DID have a good hair day! And I love pears, but only when they’re soft and juicy!
This will be my first year of planning school lunches. I look forward to being inspired by you as you prepare lunches in your fab purple dress.