It's about to get interesting in here

We have recently started watching a show in Hallmark Channel called Mad Hungry with Lucinda Scala Quinn (www.madhungry.com).

Lucinda is not just someone who loves to cook and got a show. Not by any stretch. She is the Executive Editorial Director of Food and Entertaining for Martha Stewart's empire.

We have really gotten into how and what she cooks. Everything in moderation and nothing is off limits. Yet her food is easy, approachable, and can uses ingredients that be found in most (if not all) grocery stores. Seriously. For example. Her Basic Tomato Sauce is:

2 T olive oli

2 cloves garlic, minced

A pinch of red pepper flakes (or more if you like some spice)

1 28-ounce can of low-sodium (or organic) whole plum tomatoes

In a blender (or using a hand blender), puree the tomatoes to the level of chunky or smooth you like. Get the oil hot in a pan and then throw in the garlic and pepper flakes and cook just until you can smell the garlic (about 30 seconds). Pour in the tomatoes and bring up to a boil and then simmer for 30 minutes. Now I add 1 teaspoon sweet basil in the last 5 minutes of cooking and that is it. Now a tip I learned from her is when to add the herb. If you put the herbs in right at the beginning, you will cook out all of the flavor. Instead, add it at the end and then the flavor will perfume throughout the sauce. Huge thing to learn and makes a difference.

Anyway. I was watching her show on DVR, as my wife and I do every day, my 11-year old son came in and sat down about 3/4 of the way through. He was quite intrigued by what was being made. He grabbed the remote to see what the theme was. You can only imagine what his reaction was when he saw that it was an episode on bacon. 

Shortly there after, he restarted the episode and watched it completely. Once the show was done, he went into the kitchen and grabbed my copy of her book (http://amzn.to/hTbkVg).

Studying Lucinda's book quite intently

So when making the grocery list this week, he informed us that he wanted to make everything in that episode. So for breakfast - Bacon, egg, and cheese bagel sandwich (http://bit.ly/gdAaZq). And we are teaching how to properly clean the cast iron - now that we own some.

Making the eggs for the sandwich

The completed product

 Dinner was Pantry Bistro Salad (http://bit.ly/fqGgiJ) and the Spaghetti Carbonara (with whole wheat spaghetti - http://bit.ly/e9dWFA). I believe I could eat this salad with her tomato soup (http://bit.ly/eLdMkV) every day for lunch. Without question! This was a really good dinner. The recipe says that the salad is 4 servings and the pasta is 4-6. For us, the pasta is probably about 8 servings. But I ate quite a bit of the salad (which has a poached egg on it - part of the recipe).

The end results for tonights dinner

Even my 6-year old asked to try the salad and she does not do salads. I now need to get her other two books!

"Oh, that boy" or "You suck Dad!"

So yesterday I took the kids to the new pool here in town.

Going to the pool, I stopped to get drinks and lunch at Sonic. When we got there, I put the food in my gym bag because it was going to make it easier to carry and we carried in our drinks.

Well, Jackson saw on the wall a rules list that had "No outside food or drink" listed on it. When I went to pay our entry fee, the guy didn't say a word even though I had set my drink plainly in front of him. Well, I never saw the sign.

When we got in and got settled, and I started to had out our lunch. Reid munched along happily. But not Jackson.

I asked Jackson what was wrong, and he didn't answer. I asked him if he was going to eat or not because if the answer was no, lunch will not wait long on in the sun (even though it was chicken strips).

Turns out,  Jackson was so conflicted that he didn't want to eat. I mean, he was sitting practically in the fetal position on deck chair. His response "Dad, I don't want to knowingly break the rule and also turn around and do it in their face." I replied "Jackson, the clerk didn't say anything about it when I set down my drink" He fired back, "Just because he didn't enforce the rule doesn't make it right because it is posted." I was 1/2 way through my sandwich by this point and about choked. Nice.

I didn't make him eat. But an hour later, his tune had changed and he was ready to eat the canopy. You have to give the boy his convictions and principles.

More later...

Sorry, long time no post

OK. So I'm not good at doing this regularly. January has not been good and we are not out of the woods yet. Let's just say that homeowners insurance has been used, someone else's auto insurance is getting charged (all in 1 weeks time) and we are thankful for health insurance. I was off 2 days this week for part of the health issues and was able to get Reid's and Jackson's valentines made for school.

Reid's are flowers.

I figured out how to use Heather's Cricut to cut out the flowers. The pattern from the design has a hole in the center so we put a Dum Dum through the center. Pretty cute and goes pretty quick.

Jackson's were a little more intensive.

Heather has this pattern that will cut out a little popcorn box. So I cut out 26 of these. Heather felt good enough to glue them together. So this is what he is giving out. Thought it all worked out.

More later. Promise

Kids say and relate the funniest things

So the other day Reid was getting out of the new car. As she is crawling down, she sees the door scuff plate.



She states, "Oh, Cheez-it's"



Look closely at the little items on the packge. How can you not laugh?

There is still nothing like Mom

So Jackson asks me for a hug. He says that he likes my hugs. But then he says he likes Mom's hugs; they're comfortable.

I agree.

A dizzying day

6:30 A.M.

Heather nudges (more like slugs; that's what it can take) me awake from my slumber. She says that she is sure that we need to go to the hospital. What she thought were Braxton-Hicks that had been going on since midnight-30 she is now convinced that they are so NOT. We laughed. This is August 1. Jackson could not really come on his due date. That is just rarely heard of.

So we get up and get dressed and head over to the hospital prepared to turn around and come home. We'll sure enough they say Heather is not in labor; she hasn't even dialated. But they want her to hang around a little while to watch her. OK, done this too.

We'll then shortly after that Heather says that she feels like she is going to be sick. The nurse turns and says "Oh, honey. your not going to be sick."Silly nurse. When Heather says that she is going to be sick, believe her. Sure enough Heather begins to get sick. That's when we knew we were not going home and back to bed. She went from 0 to a 3 like that.

Forward a while later and Heather is all happy with her epidural. I notice her lips are blue and her hands are cold. She is having issues from the epidural. Nice. So she in given drugs to increase her blood pressure. One problem. They cross over. So Jackson's pulse goes up higher than they want. They wait; we wait. They watch; we watch; Repeat. They come in and say "You're going to have a c-section." Heather was so happy; she was done with the whole labor thing. They go to page her doctor. No answer. They page again. No answer. They call his house. No answer. They call his cell. No answer. Turns out he went out of town for the weekend and did not check out. Nice. They take Heather in at 4 and 8 years ago at the time this posts, Jackson was out and making his presence known.

8 years later and the trials of asthema and allergies (and how many prescriptions along the way) and the the fun orWii and baseball/t-ball. Growing up, lost teeth, starting school and now in third grade (we'll just chalk 2nd grade up as a trial), getting up in front of the whole church and declaring your faith and being baptised. Many happy times.

Happy birthday little buddy. Happy birthday indeed.

Jackson update

Heather took Jackson back to the infectious disease (ID) specialist today and almost all of immune system tests came back normal! Two weeks ago they went for initial visit and they did a blood draw on him--6 vials of blood. That is not a blood draw, that is a full-fledged donation. The kid didn't even get juice and cookies after that!

The one test that came back abnormal was one that we expected - the one part of the immune system that reacts to allergens. His level ere very high (930 and normal is 0-60), which was expected with his history of allergies/asthma/ezcema.

But the immune system tests that analyzed his ability to fight infection all came back normal!! "The soldiers are there and on duty," according to the doctor. In other words, his immune system is healthy and functioning as it should.

The doctor's explanation for Jackson's recurring infections is simply, if his skin has breaks in it, skin infections will follow. We must keep his skin healthy if we want to stop the cycle. The ID doctor said that he was glad we were are going to National Jewish Medical in September. He said the team at NJ can help us find strategies to keep Jackson's skin as healthy as possible.

Off and running...

OK. So I have practically driven myself nuts (and Heather in the process) of trying to get a blog going and get her to start as well. So she posted on her Xanga site to get me off of her back; I had not. Oops. Bad me.

I've been trying to decide what service to use. I'd really like to use Typepad because there are some things about it that Vox has that I liked (book and music linking with pictures) but didn't like all the ads and limited header options) But I'll save my pennies for that.

So, I was looking at Tara's blog. Damn. Even her picture of a dog is cool.I really want to spend more time in Photoshop and figure out how to do the shading so that it looks, you know, cool.

I guess I try to come up with something far more interesting next time around.

For those that I know who did not see this, The video below is Jackson's baptism. Happened on easter. Very cool. So proud of that bugger.