NaNoWriMo

Who is doing it?

Who has already done it and has something to say about it?

November is National Novel Writing Month.  My kids want to try it.  They want me to try it. 

How about you?

Potato salad

I was pondering a side dish for tonight's dinner while  I rinsed out an empty mayo jar to put in the recycling. And right there on the label there was a potato salad recipe that sounded perfect so I decided to make it right then and there.  It is called Bobby Flay's Green Onion Potato Salad and here is the recipe for your dining pleasure.

One note:   I am out of red potatoes so used russets; I prefer the more waxy reds for salad but hey, we must persevere through these trials.  It is still fabulous.  I think I ate my serving just sampling.

One more note: I often come across recipes that call for jalapenos, so now I buy a bag at the produce market and freeze them. I just cut them open, take out the stems and seeds, flatten them out, and put them in a ziplock bag. I pull out what I need when I need them.  Very easy and helpful.

Hey! This worked for me so I'm linking to Works for me Wednesday!

Grocery cart voyeur

Sometimes there's nothing to do in the grocery store line but gaze into the cart ahead.  When the line is long, and the magazines dull (or objectionable), it's the only way to pass the time.   So last week I found myself staring into a heavily-laden Walmart cart the other day, marveling at the contents.

The cart was full of boxes.  Nearly overflowing with packaged and  frozen meals, heavily sweetened dry cereal, boxed seasoned rice mixes and other things I can't remember.  The only "real" food I saw was a carton of eggs.  Maybe there was a carton of milk in there.  Or maybe it was nondairy creamer.

Then I saw the stack of coupons.  There must have been 50 of them!  The cashier just scanned and scanned.  The customer started laughing and exclaiming over her savings.    She was really happy and pleased to be saving a lot of money on her purchase.  I started paying attention to her chatter with the cashier because by now I was wondering if this was her normal grocery shopping.  I couldn't believe the lack of ingredients for cooking in that cart and wondered if she was buying for a food bank or something.  But it sounded like it was her stuff.

After she left I couldn't help wondering if her grocery bill wouldn't have been cheaper if she'd skipped the coupons and bought real food instead.  A bag of plain rice and some spices would be cheaper than boxed mixes.  Throw in a bag of noodles and she could skip the Hamburger and Tuna Helpers.  A box of oatmeal or even Cheerios (or the store brand which are almost as good, at least to my family's taste) would be cheaper and a better breakfast than Cap'n Crunch. (Oh, I do miss Cap'n Crunch.  It was my favorite cereal growing up.  Someday I'm going to buy a box to eat like candy.  But not for breakfast.) 

I don't want to sound like I run a pure, processed-food-free kitchen.  I use canned beans more often than dry; commercial chicken broth more often than homemade stock.   I try to make most of our bread and cookies, but not all.  Cheez-its are not health food, but they often find their way into my cart.

What is my point?  I don't know exactly.  I don't have some great insight to end this post, except maybe to say now I see why I don't use coupons much. I don't see the savings if the coupons are all for packaged foods.  Peering into that woman's cart shook me up a little.  It made me want to find more ways to cut processed convenience food out of our lives, for our health and our food budget.

Yet I know a lot of people use coupons and claim to save a lot of money.  Do you?  I'd love to know your philosophy on groceries and coupons.   I'm not being snarky.  Educate me.  Because I don't get it.

The messy family reforms: Containers!

I have a container problem.

My space isn't big enough to store all my plastic food containers. The cupboard ends up a jumbled mess of mismatched containers and lids. It's a huge hassle for me. It wastes my time and stresses me out.

So I pulled everything out of the cupboard and put it in this bin. As I use a container and lid, I attach them before putting them away.  It's an inefficient way to store, but it's the only way I can keep them together.

At some point I'll get to the containers with no lids, and lids with no containers, and I will throw them out. I used to keep them in yet another cupboard, awaiting the day the missing part would catch up. But it is futile. As futile as packing a duffle bag of unmatched socks into a moving van in Oregon in the hope that the socks were somehow waiting for me in Pennsylvania, like family members gone on ahead.

If you have a similar problem, check out Simple Organized Living's food storage giveaway. I'll be signing up for this one.

A Meme-free week?

Most weeks I participate in several memes.  But I skipped Menu Plan Monday today because, uh, I don't have a menu plan.   No Top Ten Tuesday ideas are rattling around in my brain.  The deadline for the Carnival of Homeschooling (I know, not a meme) just passed and I didn't have anything to say about homeschooling that I haven't already said too many times.  I am not sure I'll get a chance for any photos for Outdoor Wednesday.  Nothing much is working for me again, so that leaves out Works for me Wednesday.   Maybe we'll do something interesting enough for me to participate in the Weekly Wrap-up but if today is any indication, I won't. I had a pretty mundane one last week, and don't want to do two in a row.

But it won't stop me from dropping by those places to find some new recipes, read about homeschooling, and all the rest.  You can too!

My day with the combat robots

If someone had told me 5 years ago that I'd happily spend a Saturday watching robot battles, I'd have laughed and laughed.

It's all because of the kids, of course.  My children have exposed me to so many experiences I'd never have had without them.  The boy's robotics club was entering a robot in the local competition; he wanted us to go.  I went, somewhat reluctantly.  That's such a guy thing; I had better things to do, like watch "Pride and Prejudice" with my girlie.

But we went and boy was it fun.  And what a homeschooler's dream experience.

Combat robots come in many different sizes or weight classes.  There are cute little "ant weight" bots weighing less than a pound, and big ones (like ours) that weigh 30 pounds.  They have hammers, saws, and spikes.  The drivers stand outside a plexiglass box with their remote controls and set their 'bots to the task of destroying the opponent.

It's an electronic demolition derby.

This isn't one of our matches, just one that was short and active.

Parts fly. Sparks fly! Contestants are given instructions on what to do if their robot catches fire.That is not an outlandish concern. 

But here's the best part for the homeschool mom: the learning. They are learning so much! About electronics, of course. And materials: what kind of steel is best for this? Stronger but more brittle? Or a more malleable type so we can bend it a little and it won't shatter when hit?  

They're solving problems on the spot:  In their first match, our robot (a wedge-shape) got its front edge stuck under the bottom of the plexiglass box.  It couldn't move, and so ended their match.  But they had a second chance, so they used their waiting time to bend up the edge of that piece of steel ever so slightly, so it couldn't get stuck again.  They lost that second match anyway, after taking a hit so hard it shook the batteries loose. Another opportunity for improvement.

They are learning to use power tools. How to program. They're working in a team with a common goal. These are all  practical skills that translate into the real world, not just the world of combat robots.  And there's one more thing, related to the S word.

Combat robotics is a male world, to be sure.  Young adult male, mostly, but there were some middle-aged dads working their 'bots, too. No matter the age of the competitors, they compete as equals.  Each team has a table with all their stuff all over it.  It's a mess of screws, metal, batteries, fuses.  They walk around and talk, give advice, loan parts as needed.  It's competition at its friendliest. I suspect that the older gentlemen were particularly pleased to advise our team - the youngest of the bunch.

Also not our robot. We didn't get all those sparks.

We left our boy with his team after the second match, thinking that was the end for them. But they got a third try, which they also lost.  They came in third place... out of three contestants in their class.  But they were happy; they did better than last year - that robot never even moved.

I don't have many photos and I don't have permission to share them.   But imagine my favorite: our team standing with the team that beat them in their last match.  They are holding a mangled piece of metal; the opposing robot had "shredded it off," as my boy said.  Our team signed it and gave it to the victors for a souvenir.  They hope to meet again in the spring.  You can believe our boys will be working hard to improve their robot so they can have a better showing next time.

Would you have counted this as a school day?  I did.

What activities that you're involved in with your kids make you shake your head in disbelief?

Saturday morning journal: What's Mom up to?

The alarm went off at 5:30 am.  Actually, two alarms went off, so we'd be sure to wake up.

My boy has a robotics competition today at a science museum downtown. His ride came by at 6:30!  They have to be there early to set up. We're going down at a more civilized hour to watch the competition.  They're "battlebots" so I'm picturing a robot demolition derby.  I hope I can get some pictures.

Yesterday while reading the Weekly Wrap-ups I was amazed, as usual, at all the cool stuff homeschooling families are doing.   But I started wondering about the moms.  Are they pouring all their creative energy into their homeschools, or do they have some left over for themselves?   What about moms of schoolkids?

What are the moms doing apart from their kids?

It's that "mother culture" idea again.   I know I was just talking about this the other day but I can't stop thinking about it.  Well, I can, and do, stop thinking about it for large chunks of time.  But I come back to it, often.

So tell me about your Saturday plans and (or?) tell me what you are doing when you are not fulfilling mom duties.  A Mom's weekly wrap-up, you might say.   I know Kerri paints and draws.  Some of you do a lot of reading.  There are great knitters out there, and seamstresses, artists, builders.

Of course if planning cool homeschooling projects is your thing, I'd love to hear about that too.  Leave a comment with a link to your own post, if you like.

Now, while the rest of the family is still asleep, I'm going to read my Bible a bit (I'm in the book of Isaiah) and then some more of Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.  After they are up and I can make some noise, I might work a little on a quilted wall hanging that's been kicking around for about a year.  It's fall fabrics and I'd like to get it done and up before it's time to decorate for Christmas! 

Later I might mess around with the Facebook page a little.  Oh, and that book review I mentioned the other day? Well, turns out the book and I were mismatched.  It was sort of a review/promotion idea and I found I couldn't promote the book.  So my career as a book reviewer is over, at least for now.  It was fun while it lasted!