Shake 'n Bake (and I helped!)

I decided that tonight would be a good night to tackle some actual "cooking."  The Good Housewife Project had to commence sometime...I couldn't just sit around eating candy while writing about trying harder to do this whole thing and then not follow through.  What would my 5 readers think of my commitment then?  ;)  I pulled 4 chicken breasts out of my freezer to thaw while also running through my morning routine of getting the kids dressed and fed and starting some laundry (after getting Abby ready and to the bus stop, of course).  Laundry, by the way, was not on my docket for today until my husband helpfully informed me that he's been on such a great workout kick lately (good for him!) (that was meant to be sarcastic, but in writing, it looks like I was being supportive--score one point for The Project!) (okay, that last part was sarcasm again...geez) that he was entirely out of shorts to work out in...he did the elliptical in our garage in his pajama pants last night to make a point that I needed to do some laundry.  I hate doing laundry (it's the obnoxious never-ending chore), but what I hate most about laundry is reaching into my hamper and pulling out his soaking wet sweaty socks (among other items) after he works out.  So gross.  Anyway, back to the cooking.

I wasn't sure where to start dinner-wise--I haven't had much time the last few days to get on Pinterest and find some recipes for my new cookware, and I don't know if I would have the ingredients on hand even if I did find some recipes (my general assumption is that if you don't cook, having ingredients on hand to do just that is pretty unlikely).  I remembered seeing a box of Shake 'n Bake that I bought ages ago sitting in my pantry the last time something fell out of there and I had to do some rearranging, so I thought that could be a safe, easy first attempt.  I talked to my mom on the phone during the boys' naptime, shortly before the cooking commenced, and I told her that I was making Shake 'n Bake (which, by the way, was a staple that my mom cooked all the time when I was growing up).  She said, "Well, aren't you Suzy Homemaker."  (Anyone want to guess where I got my sarcastic streak?)  I immediately said, quite defensively, "No, I'm not!"  I stubbornly cling to my anti-housewife ways, which means The Good Housewife Project may be harder than I thought.  My mom was being humorously passive aggressive--clearly, she knows better than to think I'm Suzy Homemaker, nor does she believe for an instant that Shake 'n Bake makes anyone Suzy Homemaker.  I think she has always been slightly shocked and dismayed that this Bad Housewife was born of such a Good Housewife.  I also don't understand how that happened, although I think it was because my mom was so good, she never needed any help, and therefore, I never learned by helping her.  (This irony makes me laugh, because every time my mom made Shake 'n Bake when I was growing up, I always said, "It's Shake 'n Bake--and I helped!" in a really horrible Southern accent like those old Shake 'n Bake commercials...  I, in fact, did not help one bit.)

Random question: Who is Suzy Homemaker?  Oh, Google--how I love you...Suzy Homemaker was a doll from the 1960's, and she "personified the quintessential female American housewife, or a housewife who manages the household with enthusiasm."  Is that who I'm attempting to emulate?  I think I want to be more of a happy, witty, 50/50 partner with my husband who also happens to be a decent cook and have a clean house in addition to well-adjusted children...that's not too much to ask for, I don't think.  ;)

My question exactly

Anyway, I started the Shake 'n Bake effort with the goal to have the chicken in the oven by 4:30pm tonight, because Abby had dance class at 5:30pm...I wanted dinner on the table by 5pm so that we could all eat together (my first Good Housewife effort!) before her class.  I read the directions on the box--seemed straightforward.  I had seen my mom Shake 'n Bake many times, usually while I was sitting on the kitchen counter regaling her with the most recent gossip from school instead of helping, so I thought I knew what to expect.  I pulled out two little bags and two packets of coating...  I was confused--I didn't know it came with 2 kits, so that was kind of an exciting bonus.  I unfolded one of the bags and was thoroughly confused...the box said that I should be making 6-8 boneless skinless chicken breasts, and I was only making 4, but there was no way my 4 pieces of chicken were going to fit in that tiny bag.  Where was the huge bag I remember my mom shaking the daylights out of??  I read the instructions again, and this time noted that they want you to put one or two pieces in the bag at a time--totally not what I was envisioning, but whatever.  I wet the chicken pieces and bagged/shook them one by one in a very messy process--I don't like messing with raw chicken, and this process somehow seemed very contaminating of everything in my kitchen.  Maybe I just need to get a better system down now that I know what I'm doing.  I don't know what took me so long, but I didn't get the chicken in the oven until 4:40pm, and at 5pm, it wasn't done...  Grrr.  The smaller chicken breast was done, so I cut the end off, cut it up for Abby, and put it on her plate with corn and some green beans and peppers that Dan had stir fried for us.  I put her hair in a bun while she scarfed down her dinner (the rest of the chicken still in the oven), and I sent Dan out the door with her to get her to dance class.  Urgh...not quite what I had in mind.  I pulled the rest of the chicken out after 10 extra minutes, cut up pieces for the boys, got them some Steamfresh corn and some canned Bruce's Sweet Potatoes that I warmed up, and sat down at the table to eat with them.  Here's my plate--not too shabby:

Lookin' good!

Jake loves chicken, so I gave him a healthy serving of chicken, along with the sweet potatoes.  When he was little, he would eat corn like there was no tomorrow...until one day when he wouldn't touch it.  Fast forward to today, and he still won't eat corn, nor will he eat peppers or green beans.  So it was just chicken and sweet potatoes for him, plus some mandarin oranges.  He did eat the chicken and the sweet potatoes with some coaxing--the oranges were gone in 2 seconds.  Alex is tougher--I gave him a few pieces of chicken because he typically does not eat meat...it's a constant struggle.  My parents watched the kids for us in October and fed them dinner, and my mom made Shake 'n Bake--when we picked the kids up, she went on and on about how Alex ate tons of the chicken and kept asking for more!  I was hopeful that he would do the same with my Shake 'n Bake effort.  He did not.  He ate a little sweet potato, none of the corn, and none of the chicken--but he did eat the apple slices I gave him.  Grrr...now I'm remembering yet another reason why I hate cooking--kids who don't eat the food you spent all that time to make.  I have one straight carnivore and one vegetarian making my life difficult.  Here are the boys...not eating their dinner:

Don't ask what happened to Jake's shirt...my kids don't usually eat naked!

I didn't get any pictures of Dan eating, because he wasn't here until after I was done eating and already cleaning up!  So much for our family dinner, although I made so much chicken that I now have leftovers for tomorrow night (when Abby has gymnastics class...probably another scrambled attempt at eating together), so that's nice for me.  For reference, my husband hates leftovers.

Today's cooking effort certainly wasn't perfect, but I feel like a Not-So-Bad-Housewife for trying!  The Shake 'n Bake really couldn't have been easier (if a little messy), so it will probably be something I make frequently (just call me Suzy Homemaker!).  I need to learn better time management when it comes to putting meals on the table--I heated the corn up too early, so it was cold by the time the chicken was done (although in my defense, if the chicken had been done in 20 minutes like it was supposed to be, everything should have still been warm at the same time!).  And, of course, I should probably plan family "home cooked" meals for when everyone can eat together and we're not so rushed!

15 Days of Post-Halloween Binge

Having the kids' leftover Halloween candy in the house is an absolute disaster for me.  I was doing really well watching my calorie intake in early October--and calorie counting is totally foreign to me...as well as something I said I would never do.  I love food, I love eating, and I love having a treat after the kids go to bed when I've had a long day.  I don't want to let my weight dictate my enjoyment of life, which sometimes for me correlates directly with my enjoyment of food.  I want to learn how to be happy just the way I am, happy with how I look no matter what my weight, but then I feel like that might be a bad excuse to overeat?  I'm pretty fed up with my current weight plateau (and that's being generous--this current trend is only a plateau if it's a mirage of flat terrain masking a sizable hill), so I decided that I could stand to try the calorie counting thing.  I discovered that you can google "how many calories are in _____?" and get an answer--something I never thought to do before.  Most of my favorite restaurants have nutritional information on their websites, too, and I was able to tailor my usual meals when we ate out to cut back on the calories.  I was writing down everything I ate in a food log and constantly calculating what was going in my mouth for 10 straight days.

I record my daily food intake in Microsoft Word and do the calorie calculations myself, but there are a lot of apps out there that will do the work for you!  I'm not super app savvy, so doing it myself is the easiest for me.

 
I have a bit of an obsessive personality, and this calorie-counting thing was starting to overtake my thoughts--I wasn't necessarily opposed to that happening because I was seeing some results on the scale after even a short period of time, but I was trying to be aware and not let it become something dangerous.  Before danger could even become a possibility, I had a coupon for Halloween candy and bought some to pass out on Halloween.  Two nights after stashing it out of sight in a low cabinet in my kitchen, I ate an entire bag of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups because I just wanted one or two before the trick-or-treaters made off with the best candy life has to offer.  I have a major binging problem when it comes to sweets--my rationale (if you can even call it rational) hinges back and forth between wanting to eat none of it, and wanting to eat all of it in one sitting just to get it out of my house and be done with the temptation.  Eating all of it usually wins out, which is why I try really hard not to buy candy/chocolate/ice cream/anything else remotely tasty and bad for you...once it's in my house, I inhale it.  I opted not to write my calories in my log that day...or the next day, when I broke into the Kit Kats.  Urgh.

I wish this was an accurate representation of the amount I ate...sadly, I had the massive bags!

After the festivities on Halloween, the kids and I all partook of the booty (sadly for me, the kids didn't get many Reese's Cups, but they did get a decent number of Snickers!)--even Dan helped himself to all their non-cherry-flavored Twizzlers.  But now it's mid-November, and all the good candy is gone from their communal bucket.  I sat down and ate an apple at lunch today--I find that foods requiring multiple steps keep me busy and manage to keep me from overeating, as odd as that may sound.  I had to wash the apple, cut it into slices, and then eat each slice--multiple steps that sidetrack me from mindlessly eating and eating and eating whatever is in front of me.  Anyway, I was considering cracking the food log open again (for the first time since the unfortunate night of the peanut butter cup demise) because I had done well so far today--I ate a banana for breakfast, and was eating an apple for lunch (dinner tends to be our largest meal, so I try to conserve calories for that and have a daily intake total around 1200 calories)--when the communal candy bucket caught my eye.  I wandered over, rifled through it, and confirmed what I already knew...the good stuff is gone.  I did find a mini Snickers I had somehow missed on previous passes, so I snatched that up and was still feeling pretty good about myself--a little treat isn't something to punish yourself or feel bad about, right?  I deserved that little treat because I was being so good, and also because the MSN homepage that I was reading while eating my apple told me that eating a piece of chocolate could boost my mood.  My mood could always use some boosting.  A piece of chocolate...that reminded me of Hershey Kisses.  Some of those were still at the bottom of the bucket--I hadn't eaten them yet because we tend to keep Kisses in the house regularly (Abby likes them as a treat in her lunch on Fridays), so the temptation wasn't as great...but they are the definition of a piece of chocolate.  I found 3 regular Kisses and one Kiss with almonds (jackpot!), and ate those for good mood-boosting measure.  Still, not that bad--it could have been way worse.

Ugh...I don't want to see anything like this again...until next Halloween, of course.

That was my thinking when I went back to the bowl and found a 100 Grand bar--I'd never had one of those, and was curious, so I ate that (and hey, it was good!).  I found a few Starburst (I thought I had decimated those a few nights ago--they are small, so they obviously can't contain any calories...what are they even made out of??  Dan just freaked me out by saying colored tar...that can't possibly be true, but I'm going to have to google now to be sure...thanks, honey), and I stooped pretty low by stealing one of the Crunch bars I had been purposefully leaving for the kids, since they like them and Crunch bars aren't my favorite.  I don't really like Whoppers, but they have chocolate on them, so I went ahead and ate a package.  Finally, I saw a mini Butterfinger.  I know from previous Halloweens that I am not a fan of Butterfingers.  But I was swayed by the "crispy, peanut buttery" description (and of course, the chocolate), so I thought I would give it another try--one bite, and I remembered why I don't like them.  But perhaps the mini version wasn't giving it a fair shake--I should at least eat the snack size version also in the bucket...nope, not any better.  Five minutes after finishing my healthy apple, I had a disgusting pile of empty candy wrappers on the counter by the bowl, and I balled them all up in my hand to throw them away--how could I have eaten so much so quickly?  I was feeling sick about my caloric intake today (I can start the log again tomorrow...) as I hid the evidence in the trash can.  Then I turned around and saw the original 6 wrappers that started today's binge on the table by my apple slice plate...ooooh, that hurt.

Yeah...this has been the scene in my trash can the last 15 days...

Writing it all down, I can totally see how I reasoned my way into ingesting a crapload of candy.  It's clearly faulty logic, but I truly think there's nothing I love more than a good self-sabotage (and, quite possibly, candy).

Meet the Housewife

My name is Jill, and I'm 32 years old.  I'm short, about 30 pounds overweight (thanks, kids...ha ha!), and I have blondish hair that never does what I want it to do.  I have a degree in psychology from the University of Virginia (one of my most favorite places in the world!), and I previously worked as an intern at a national non-profit, at a small environmental consulting firm, at Hewlett-Packard, and at Hallmark.  :)  My full-time job now is staying at home with my three outstanding kiddos--Abby, Jake, and Alex.  I'm married to Dan, a military JAG officer (aka, military lawyer), and we are working together to build a really great life.  Sounds like I've got it all together, right?

I read a lot of blogs about folks who knock my socks off with their crafts, their togetherness, their energy, their ability to get everything done and still have time for baking cookies...this will not be one of those blogs!  I strongly dislike crafting, I don't like to shop (especially for clothes!), I don't do much baking (pies are my forte/only thing I can bake, weirdly), I don't enjoy cooking in the slightest, I love to go out to eat (this goes along well with not cooking), I don't go to church, I'm liberal, and I'm kind of a mess on a daily basis.  :)

My husband tells me that I have an unfortunate habit of providing ridiculous amounts of detail when asked a simple question, like when I attempt to write an "About Me" blog.  :)  I just wrote a very detailed chronicle for this blog entry about my first 32 years of life, then deleted it and decided that bullets are the best way to go...trust me, I would have bored you to sleep (and may still...even with bullets!): 

• I grew up in a military family as the youngest of three kids, and my mom was the best stay-at-home mom who ever existed (still is!).
• I wanted to be a famous singer when I was little (okay, even now...but at least now, I don't harbor illusions that I'll be randomly discovered on the street and rocketed to stardom like I hoped I would be when I was 7 years old). 

Yep, I dressed up as Debbie Gibson in 4th grade...totally wanted to be her!

• I went to the University of Virginia, where I majored in psychology and wanted to focus my career after college on substance abuse issues.  I spent a lot of time volunteering with Mothers Against Drunk Driving after my brother was hit by a drunk driver when I was 15 years old--and I also worked at MADD's National office while I was in college.
• I met Dan, the guy who would eventually become my husband, when we were 15 years old in the same sophomore gym and English classes--we dated off and on for years (mostly off!), but have been best friends since day one.
• After college graduation, I got jobs that paid bills...not ones that utilized my passion and degree.  I figured there would be time for that later?
• Dan and I were married in July 2004, on one of the happiest days I've ever had--he had just returned from a year-long deployment in Iraq, and our wedding felt like a fairy tale come true for me after all the stops and starts our relationship endured, and after the really scary year of his deployment.  We spent our first year of married life in Colorado, where Dan was stationed at the time.

Our wedding day

• Our first child, a daughter we named Abby, was born in 2006, while Dan was in law school in Ohio.  I always wanted to be a mom, and am fortunate to have been able to stay at home since Abby was born--she's now 6 years old and an amazing little girl in first grade.  I discovered with her birth that being a mom is a lot more isolating than I ever would have imagined, especially with a hard-studying husband in law school, so I joined a moms' group and really found my niche as a parent...until we moved after Dan graduated in 2008.

We are parents!

• Our second child, a son we named Jake, was born in 2009--sweetest, most chill baby ever, which totally lulled us into a false sense of security because he is now the wildest, orneriest 3-year-old with the biggest heart...his saving grace that helps us forgive him for all his craziness!  We lived in Texas for 1.5 years, and even though I really didn't like it there (okay, that's an understatement--I hated it there), those sweet days with my happy baby and my super helpful big girl were really great ones.  We lived in Texas until Dan deployed for the second time to Iraq.

Our family of four

• During Dan's 2nd deployment, I gave birth to our 3rd child, a son we named Alex...one of the most difficult experiences of my life.  Alex was a surprise (only 17 months after Jake), and knowing that Dan was going to be deployed for the last three months of what was probably my last pregnancy, Alex's birth, and most of his first year of life broke my heart and threw me into a pretty dark place.  I moved to Virginia and lived at my parents' house with the kids for the duration of the deployment, which was a tremendous help--I couldn't have made it through that year without them.  Alex was also The Worst Baby in History--absolutely adorable, but constantly screaming!  Even my mother, the best mom and grandma ever, was totally at her wits end with that baby.  Thankfully, he has mostly outgrown the screaming, and is a very sweet, still adorable 2-year-old.

Family of Five, together on Daddy's R&R from Iraq

• The deployment was hard on everyone--watching our kids miss their Daddy was the worst feeling for me, even worse than feeling so lonely myself.  Dan missed out on a lot of bonding with our sons (Jake was only 14 months old when he deployed, and Dan didn't even meet Alex in person until Alex was 4 months old...and then didn't live with us full time again until Alex was almost 1), and Abby was old enough to really hurt over his absence.  Maintaining a marriage via Skype while living at my parents' house with a screaming, exhausting newborn was also quite difficult--Dan and I did the best we could, but it was just plain hard.  He came home after a year with no kids and no family responsibilities to a life with three needy kids and an equally needy wife...the adjustment for all of us was monumental (and still ongoing, 1.5 years after his return).
• We were very fortunate to get stationed in Virginia near both our families after Dan's deployment, in a job that won't deploy Dan and that has very family-friendly hours...hard to come by in the military.  That's where we are today, living on the military installation five minutes from Dan's office.

It's not lost on me that this was supposed to be an "About Me" post, and I eventually fell into describing life events and my kids...my role as a mom is my most cherished role, and clearly it defines me and makes it hard for me to distinguish who I am apart from my husband and kids and our family.  I had goals and dreams before embarking on this military life, and yes, one of those dreams was to be a stay-at-home mom...so I'm living my dream!  It just doesn't always feel that way when I find myself at a loss to describe who I am as a person, what I like to do in my non-existent free time (of which I will have tons more and need to find ways to fill it once all the kids are in school full-time in 3 short years...), and what I want for me out of my life.  I could rattle on and on about what I want for my husband and my kids, but it's much harder when I try to think about what I want for me--the dilemma of most moms, I think.  So my current existential crisis that spurred my creation of The Good Housewife Project is hardly unique to me, nor is it catastrophic...it's just where I am right now in what has been an extraordinarily blessed life.

Starting the Project

I'm a pretty bad housewife--let's just get that out of the way right now.  I'd like to say that before I had kids, I rocked it on the whole cooking/cleaning/making-some-effort-to-appear-put-together front, but that wouldn't be true, either.  I view myself as a liberal feminist, and I've never attempted to be a 1950's housewife (or a carbon copy of my amazing housewife mother)...or even a mid-2000's housewife (whatever that woman looked like--I don't really know, but she sure wasn't me).  Three kids later, it's 2012, and I'm no closer to knowing what goes into being a good housewife/stay-at-home mom/wife in general.

My neighbor told me months ago that she traded in her old Calphalon cookware set for a brand new one, according to their lifetime warranty.  It took me two months to gather my own set up, put them all in a plastic bag (which ripped on the way to the car...it was just that kind of day today), and take them to the store to trade mine in.  The customer service lady took my 11-piece set, a wedding present that has lived through 8 years of marriage, 4 moves (plus over a year in storage!), and my husband's knack for burning his stir fry, and I walked out of the store with a brand-new 12-piece set.

 
It sat in the box on my kitchen floor tonight until I decided to put off going to bed by googling "Calphalon Use and Care Instructions."  I don't think I did this with my first set 8 years ago, but I want to get off to a good start with this shiny new one--so I pulled them all out of the box, soaked them all in warm soapy water, and washed each piece with a soft rag...until 1am.  Once they were all washed, I took stock of my new cookware--I got a dutch oven with this set that I didn't have with my first set.  I don't know what a dutch oven is.  I'm not sure if that's a shocking admission...am I supposed to know what a dutch oven is?  The fact that I don't know what to do with most of my new pots and pans (and didn't do much of anything with my old ones, either--thank goodness my husband does some cooking) may actually be a shocking admission.  Looking at these fresh, clean pots and pans drying on my counter makes me kind of want to know what to do with them.  I do not enjoy cooking in any form, but it feels a little pathetic and cop-out of me to not even know what I could do with them if I wanted.  I'm a really smart girl who once prided myself on my ambition and independence...yet I can't follow a recipe.  My neighbors and friends are constantly posting Facebook status updates on their gourmet dinners, and the best meal I make might very well be pancakes, especially if you ask my kids--they aren't huge fans of the one "real" meal I taught myself how to make, Pecan-Crusted Chicken from the Biggest Loser cookbook.  For reference, my husband hates pancakes.

This brand new set of pots and pans is somehow calling to me, begging me to put them to good use and at least attempt to be something better than I have been the last 8 years--a Good Housewife.  This won't be a blog all about the joys of cooking, and I definitely won't become Julia Childs (I saw that Julie/Julia movie and thought the Julie girl was out of her mind), but maybe I can discover some things about myself if I at least try?  I've been feeling out of sorts about the state of my life, my parenting, my marriage, my weight, my general purpose...and it hit me tonight looking at this gleaming cookware that I might be able to claw out of this rut by forcing myself out of my comfort zone.  I work well when I have a project, so I've created The Good Housewife Project.  Here are my haphazard, middle-of-the-night (and hopefully not abandoned-in-the-morning) goals for becoming a Good Housewife: 

• Get on Pinterest and figure out what to do with a dutch oven (and all my other cookware), and start experimenting with recipes.
• Figure out how to keep my house clean and clutter-free without neglecting my kids (and the fun things we do together that keep us away from the house and my chores).
• Eat healthier and make time to exercise...I want to finally lose the baby weight from my last baby, who is now 2.5 years old (and no longer a baby or an excuse).
• Have a more positive attitude toward my husband--I know I won't greet him at the door after work with dinner on the table while wearing a dress and heels, but I want to put in more effort to be less sarcastic, more supportive, and generally more pleasant with him.
• Spend more time with my kids.  This one is hard because I'm a stay-at-home mom...by definition, I spend ALL my time with my kids.  Somehow, that doesn't seem to accurately reflect how I feel about my parenting--I want to spend more time WITH them, not just in the same house (unloading the dishwasher, checking Facebook or my favorite blogs, talking on the phone to my mom...etc, etc, etc).
• Find a balance that includes some time for me and what I want to do...even though I have no idea what that is right now.

I'm sure I have more goals, but those are the ones that stuck out in my mind when I sat down to write this.  I'm hoping that by giving this attempt at improvement a name and an audience, I might actually be able to accomplish some (or all?) of my list.  I'm not big into the self-help genre (and I hate talking about myself, which would make a blog dedicated to only me fairly sparse and boring), so this blog will probably chronicle our daily ridiculous adventures that go along with my attitude and behavior adjustment.  How long before a Bad Housewife trying really hard can call herself a Good Housewife?