Saturday, June 20, 2009

Using What You Have...and other things

Tonight, after catching up on one of my fave blogs, I was encouraged to play raid the pantry, raid the freezer. In the spirit of using what I already had, I had put away in the freezer a casserole gone array in the hopes of getting a second chance. See there is this dish we like to call Texas Hash that I used to have to eat all the time and desperately didn't like it. Well, I'm a grown up now and though that I'd get the recipe from my grandma and try it. So I tried it awhile back but only after it was supposed to be finished cooking did I discover that the rice was supposed to either have been pre-cooked or of the minute/instant variety. So I had this dish that was deliciously flavored with hard rice bits in it. So sad. I froze it and decided I'd thaw it later in a pot of hot beef broth and hope it not only cooked the rice but also made a pretty decent soap of sorts.

Today was that day. I had left over cornbread from the red beans and rice I made. I had sticky white rice that was leftover from the chinese we had eaten earlier. So I pulled out the beef broth and thawed out the existing casserole. I put in the rice and it smelled fantastic! I was the only one brave enough to try it initially. And it was awesome! It was the consistency of gumbo over rice...soupy but chunky...almost stew like. And it tasted great with a nice spicy kick at the end. So I tell this to my hubs and his interest is peaked. He tries a little first and then decides to fix it up the way he does with chili! Fantastic he says! It's like the best chili I've ever had! Haha!

So I feel I have succeeded on two counts or maybe three...not wasting and therefore saving money. Getting my hubs to eat leftovers! And getting a compliment out of it all at the same time!

Now onto the other things...we have been at wits end with mosquitos here. You'd think we'd know a thing or two about all this in that we previously lived in New Orleans, but alas. Nothing we have been doing has worked for very long. Until now! J tried as a last ditch effort to rid our usable outdoor areas of the pest by going to the CVS across the street and getting the only 2 boxes of moth balls they had. He tossed them all around the outside and smelled foul afterwards! But we have been very nearly mosquito free at our door and getting into our cars! It is hard for us to believe. We both had very little faith. And supposedly after the first rain it is really supposed to kick in. So we shall see.

And onto a 4 yr olds discussion in the bathtub...I'm bathing the kids together and I'm cleaning W's essential areas when M says that his private look weird. I say well remember boys and girls have different privates. She said yes but his look weird. I say well his are on the outside and hers are on the inside and then she interrupts me saying, "But what is it called?" And I say it does have a name. it's (the p word which i'll refrain from spelling out lest I get strange lerchers). To which she basically acts as though she hasn't really heard me (and I'm a little relieved) and said I call it a wootie. I'm just guessing that's how you would spell that. Oh! I say, now understanding that she doesn't care about technical terms...I say, hmmm, well I guess sometimes we call it a wee wee. To which she replied, I'll just call it a wootie. But we're not supposed to talk about that. I say, well, you can talk about it with mommy, just not when we are out or at the dinner table. the bathtub is the perfect place to talk about that kind of stuff if you need to.

Oh the entertainment value of kids!

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