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August 2008
How do you deal with Friday night football feeding challenges?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
With high school football starting, many of us will find ourselves sitting on the stadium sidelines cheering our local team on upcoming Friday nights.
For most families, getting to the stadium in time for kick-off requires a quick turnaround as parents fight Friday night traffic from work and kids return late from after-school activities. And to top it all off, there’s that pesky issue of how to get everyone fed.
After reading the responses to my last blog which looked at favorite fast food destinations I began wondering. When you head out to an evening sports event with your family do you plan on eating before you go or do you plan on making a “drive-though detour” to pick up something.
It takes a pretty organized person to have food ready to go when there’s barely an hour to spare. But, since most families plan their football outings in advance theoretically you have several days to think about it, which is as we know, very different than actually getting it done.
When you have to eat in a jiffy, what are your make-ahead strategies to get your family fed and out the door quickly. Or, is that too much of a challenge to even contemplate?
If you are a big high school football fan, you can follow your team. on our High School Sports page. Check our Football Tailgating Food page for ideas on what to pack for your pre-game dining.
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Have your fast food destinations changed?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This past weekend was my son’s first soccer tournament of the fall. We found ourselves heading up to Marietta every day right after breakfast and heading back right around lunch time.
While we formerly would have stopped at a traditional “fast food” restaurant for burgers and fries, this time we didn’t. As I looked around while driving, I realized there are so many new options for healthier and more interesting dining on the road. I was able to bypass the usual joints to have something healthier and more filling for post-athletic fueling. They might be slightly more expensive, but at least I feel better feeding it to my kids. When I checked with my husband, he too had chosen a non-burger lunch while on an outing with my other son.
Do you deviate from the typical drive-in route to take advantage of healthier options while you are on the road or is the “golden” standard still your fast-food place of choice?
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Drinks before dinner?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Often when dining out with friends we’ll meet at one of our homes first for a beverage and a chance to catch up, especially if we have a late reservation.
While I love having the quiet time to converse before we have to compete with the near-deafening restaurant noise, sometimes I find that the “little noshes” some friends serve are bigger than many meals. This happened a couple of times over the summer. Before heading out for dinner they served a giant antipasti with cheeses, meats and olives. I was ready to call that dinner and head back home after a half an hour. By the time we got to the restaurant people barely touched their meal.
While I don’t like to drink “alone”, i.e. without having something to eat, it is hard to find a nibble that isn’t overwhelming. One of my favorite solutions is to serve spiced nuts. I find them to be the perfect light snack to munch while imbibing. Here’s one of my favorite recipes.
Spiced Nuts
1 (11.5-ounce) can assorted unsalted nuts
1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary
1 teaspoon dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 teaspoons butter, melted
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Bake nuts for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, in a bowl, combine the rosemary, brown sugar, salt and cayenne. Add the butter. Thoroughly toss the warm nuts with the spiced butter and serve warm.
What is your favorite light food to serve with drinks before dinner?
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Does that buzz drive you mad?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
As much as I love grilling and the reduced kitchen cleanup it allows, the mosquitoes make outdoor cooking a type of guerrilla warfare. I can barely open the grill lid without being attacked by a swarming mob!
It seems like the mosquitoes at my house get worse as the summer goes on, and by late August and September they’re actually following me inside if I leave the door open for more than a second or two.
I hate to cover myself in bug spray just to throw some “shrimp on the barbie” (as they say down under), but I am not sure of any other way to protect myself from becoming their meal.
Even if I do manage to get my meal cooked with only a few welts, I long for the days when I can actually dine alfresco in my own backyard. I write off July and early August as opportunities to enjoy outside dining because of the sweltering heat. But as the evenings begin to cool off a bit, I wish I could actually use that expensive outdoor furniture I got as an anniversary present.
What are your secrets to being outdoors when you’re the prey? Have you found any secrets to being able to cook and dine without mosquitoes making you their dinner?
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How do you feed a friend in need?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
At back-to-school registration I noticed that a favorite teacher was missing. When I asked around, I learned her husband was in surgery for a torn ACL, a tennis casualty. The timing couldn’t be worse! For a teacher, the week before school is one of the busiest times. Not only did she have two kids home waiting for school to start, she now had to act as nurse for her hubby until he was “back on his feet” - quite literally. While we are not close friends, both of my kids had this teacher and we run into her family in the neighborhood. I wanted to do something for her family without feeling like I’ve overstepped boundaries.
No matter what the situation is, it seems when time is limited due to illness or unusual circumstances, not having to deal with making a meal is a good thing. But because it’s not being served right way, I feel like I need to prepare something that can withstand travel and can be either reheated or eaten chilled as well.
I usually go with a roast chicken or sliced flank steak. Both of those appeal to most palates and even better, usually yield enough for leftovers as well, which helps out for lunches too.
What are your go-to meals when you are helping a friend in need? Do you go the casserole route or do you prefer something more along the lines of a meat and three? (Click the link for some sympathy food ideas)
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Do you believe in adult-only dinners?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
With our kids at overnight camp, my husband, Rich, and I have been enjoying Atlanta’s fabulous dining scene while catching up with friends for quiet adult dinners. Our son Jack’s non-stop spring and summer baseball season ate up almost every weekend and we haven’t been able to socialize with our friends in ages.
We moved to Atlanta with young children, so many of our friends are people we met through our kids. But as siblings age, or new siblings arrive, we sometime reach that moment of family inequitably, where the kids don’t really mesh either because of gender or age differences. Since there’s that awkwardness of incompatibility, we often try to schedule adult dinners out with those friends when we really want to be able to connect in a stress-free environment.
We have some friends who don’t believe in going out without their kids and always insist on a family-oriented event, even though our kids don’t match on gender, age or interests.
Do you believe in going out without your children? How do you handle it when families don’t fit when it comes to socializing?
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How do you handle restaurant mishaps?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Let me just say this now. I am not a spiller. My kids are spillers, my husband is a spiller. There’s not a week that goes by where some drink doesn’t get knocked over, leaking all over the tablecloth and floor. But I luckily, have been spared. Until last week that is.
While my kids are enjoying cool days and even cooler nights in the mountains of their overnight camp, my husband, Rich, and I have been hitting the town, trying new restaurants without the added cost of babysitting.
We were at Holeman & Finch, a truly yummy place, catching up with a friend and enjoying small plates and excellent wine. There is a sort of communal table placed in the middle of the restaurant, which leaves about 2 inches between you and your neighbor. It’s not a sardine situation, but it’s “intimate”.
During an animated conversation my hand gesture aligned exactly with my wine glass, causing the red wine (of course) to act as a projectile, splattering not only Rich across from me, but the two people to his right.
Needless to say, I was mortified as I watched red wine spray the pale pink sweater on a beautiful Carolyn Bissette Kennedy look-alike and dot the shirt of the handsome young husband sitting next to her. Who knew wine could fly that high?
It was one of those humiliating moments when there is nothing you can do but apologize profusely and offer to pay for their dry cleaning (which they refused). I have to say, they couldn’t have been more gracious about it, waving off the incident as a minor bump in between courses. It was a lesson in courtesy, one that I hope I remember if I am ever on the other end of a rogue wine glass.
We told the waitress to buy their table a round of drinks and apologized again when we left, but I still was absolutely mortified. Have you had an embarrassing moment in a restaurant? How did you make amends?
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Are you ready for school to start back?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s funny. Even though it doesn’t seem to really bother me during the year, when school lets out in the spring, I find I am so ready to throw structure out the window. I love not planning every meal and only shopping when I need to instead of doing the massive Sunday binge to buy enough to get me through packed lunches and dinners for most of the week.
In the summer I love the freedom to go with the flow, ordering pizza if we’re at the pool too late or stopping by the store after work to pick up something to throw on the grill. It seems so easy without a steadfast schedule.
But now it’s back to reality. I’ve spent the last weeks coordinating carpools and after school activities, which will allow very little time to “wing it” anymore. It’s now a lot of go, go, go leaving me little, if any, time to be spontaneous when everyone has someplace to be and needs to be fed. I know in time there will be a comfort to the routine and to being more organized. I think it’s the sadness of saying goodbye to the freedom of coming and going and the reduced stress of no meetings, sports schedules and homework.
What about you? Are you ready for back to school? Does the structure help you plan and get meals on the table easier or do you miss the carefree ways of summer?
RELATED: Back-to-school photos | Submit your pictures
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Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment | Categories: Family foibles
Are your kids peanut butter purists
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When it comes to certain foods, my kids don’t like to mess around with what works. One example is peanut butter. For them, it belongs either on a sandwich smeared with jam (or marshmallow fluff on a special occasion) or in a candy covered with chocolate.
It appears they aren’t the only ones who find this a winning combination. The Nielson Company, a marketing and media information company, predicts consumers will spend more than $87 million on peanut butter and nearly $13 million on jelly during the four-week period surrounding the first day of school. That’s a lot of PB and J.
EveningEdge has just published a PB&J package with recipes for a wide variety of variations on the traditional crunchy PB and Concord grape jelly. There’s even a recipe using pita bread. I have tried to get my kids to think more creatively about the combo, pairing frozen waffles with the combination or substituting jelly with drizzled honey and fresh banana or strawberry slices. I also tried a grilled peanut butter and chocolate chip sandwich, heating the chips until they got melted and gooey (or substituting nutella, the chocolate-hazelnut spread). While they were willing to “humor me” with a bite or two, there was no way that these combinations were going to displace “the usual” from their lunchboxes.
What about your kids? Are they willing to experiment with favorite foods or do they like to stay with what works? Would they be willing to swap out their favorite combination for one mentioned here?
Permalink | Comments (21) | Post your comment | Categories: Favorite recipes, Home cooking
In case you were wondering, that’s a napkin
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We recently hosted the son of a friend who lives in Seattle for a week while he attended a CDC summer camp.
We had not seen Ben, now 16, since he was a baby. He grew up to be a super sweet kid, who I am sure was ordered to be on his best behavior during his visit. And he was - he couldn’t have been more polite or thoughtful.
Having someone else join your family for an extended period of time is always an eye-opening experience. There are certain idiosyncrasies that get your attention. With Ben, it was that he never used his napkin. Throughout the meal, it remained pristinely folded on the side of his plate. Even when we reminded our son, Jack, to place his napkin on his lap, Ben’s hand didn’t make a move towards his.
My husband and I became fixated on it, not knowing whether to say something. It became our thing to watch him through the meal to see whether he would reach for it at any point, but every day it went untouched, even when we took him out for sushi.
Have you ever had a houseguest with a less than hygienic habit? Would you say something to a teenager about table manners or just let it slide, as we did?
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What’s your favorite vacation food?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For my family, nothing says “vacation eating” more than freshly caught shellfish. For the last ten summers, we have headed north to Long Beach Island, a small spit of land off New Jersey to visit my in-laws. Their house faces west on a bay, so we are treated not only to magnificent sunsets but to shallow waters filled with shellfish to forage.
Many mornings we head out to try our luck crabbing. We motor to a shallow spot (dropping off a trap on the way as a precautionary measure) near a grassy inlet. Using jury-rigged apparatuses, we lower our bait to the ocean floor and wait for the tug of a hungry crab. On a good day, we have been known to pull in more than two dozen “keepers.”
Once we catch enough for a meal, we return home to cook them with a simple coating of salt and Old Bay seasoning and devour them on a newspaper-covered table.
After a couple of days, when we have had our fill of crabs, we head for another spot in the bay where clams live just under the surface. There we bounce around, looking as if we were crushing grapes for wine, digging our toes deep into the mucky sand to feel the subtle nudge of a hard shell. This year we managed to find 43 clams in less than an hour, thanks to my husband’s size 13 feet and my son’s simian-like toes. After a good rinsing, we prepare a glorious clam sauce to serve over pasta.
By the time our trip comes to a close, we have eaten enough crabs and clams to sustain us until our next visit.
Did you eat something on your summer vacation that was “essay-worthy”? Do you return to a special place or restaurant for a symbolic summer meal - one that you dream of all winter?
Permalink | Comments (31) | Post your comment | Categories: Family foibles, Favorite recipes
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