Thursday, October 10, 2013

All Day Chicken Soup

Ok, if your family is anything like mine, then they like to eat, and they'd like the food to taste pretty good too.  

Well, that's true for the boys in my house anyway.  Mama Bear is just glad that I usually have some sort of food ready when she gets home, and she doesn't have to cook it.  I'm sure glad she's not picky.

So, in theory, making dinner should not be too big an order right?

I mean, it's only a matter of not screwing it all up, so it is totally inedible.  Should be easy peasy, and it usually is...for people who know what they are doing, which ain't me.

People, like me just tend to toss stuff together and hope for the best.  Sure, I can follow a recipe and I do when I am trying something new for a specific occasion, but most days all I do is open the fridge, rummage around a little bit, and try to combine whatever left overs I have laying about.

I have to tell you, some of my concoctions turn out pretty scary, which is a total bummer, but that's what take-out is for.

After all, it's not like I plan on succeeding every time.  Utilizing left overs in such a way that your toddler won't know it's the same thing he's been eating for three or four days already is tricky.

For instance, yesterday the Pizzmeister asked me what we were going to have for dinner, and I replied "chicken" because we still had almost half a bird in the fridge from our roast chicken we had the day before.  

Let's just say, Mr. Pizzly wasn't delighted with the idea, which left me with two options.

One, I could tell him to deal with it, and listen to him whining and moaning about how tired of chicken he was.

Or, two, I could get creative and trick him into eating it.

I chose to get creative.  I told him we were going to have a pizza party then instead, and each of us were going to make our own pizzas.  

Instant success!

Before long I had him whipping up some home made pizza dough with me, and I chopped up some of the chicken we had in the fridge and mixed it with ranch dressing and whatever the boys wanted in the sauce. We spread it on the dough, covered it with cheese, and baked it.

It was magical! Instantly, I went from boring old dad, to super cool dad, and everyone was happy.

And, then I looked at the chicken carcass. 

There was still almost half a bird left, which automatically got me wondering what I was going to do today to make it seem like we weren't just eating the same old chicken we have been eating.

Luckily, both boys woke up this morning with the snuffles, and the decision was made for me.  

We are going to have chicken soup, and I was even going to use the crock pot to save time.

***Insane Laughter***

I took me three hours to get all the crap in the crock pot!  

What chicken soup, in the history of chicken soup, takes three hours to prepare before it even touches the heat?!

Ridiculous, right?

Well, it is until you look at the monsters I live with.  

Two-zy decided that he was going to help and kept running off with my potatoes, the Pizzmeister insisted on tossig bones in the pot every time I turned around to grab a tater from Two-zy, and I had to towel up a crap load of water because, like a dolt, I left the sink running as I was hunting down my rapidly disappearing potatoes that needed washing.

I also had to pull the meat from the carcass and chop it into small enough pieces for little mouths, and I had to do the same for the taters and carrots and onions.  

Before I knew it, what I started at 9 a.m. as a half hour project was just finishing around noon, and left me wondering, "How do families with two working parents, or single parent families ever have time to prepare meals?"  

My hat is off to them.

I can barely get chicken soup together, and I'm home all day!


P.s.  Before you hammer on me because I am spoiling the brats, let me just say that I am not a fan of having the same old left-overs over and over again either, so I use the boys as an excuse to change it up a bit. If it really mattered what we were going to eat, I wouldn't ask the brats if they wanted it.  They wouldn't have a choice.

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