I was attempting to comb Monkey2's hair at 7:20 in an effort to get to the 7:30 a.m. Mass because the later ones have the bell choir during the Easter season, subtracting three pews from general use and adding fifteen to twenty minutes to the Monkeys' weekly be-quiet endurance test.
My voice hit the necessary panic note summoning my husband to examine Monkey2's head, pale blonde with a dark bug stuck in her head. A tick. Now there's a four-letter word of worry. He carefully removed it with tweezers, getting the head and pinchers out. "Not a deer tick," he announced, and burned the tick in the gas flame of our range. But that was not all in her hair... "What is that?" "A leg?" "No, these specs." "Dried blood? Did she bump her head?"
We were only five minutes late for church.
At home again, I kept the Monkeys busy with books so my husband could do some research, and he came back with another four-letter word: lice.
Stripped down both Monkeys and put them in the bathtub, doused their heads with olive oil, and let them play while we assessed the cleaning needs for the entire house! Where had her head touched? Lice crawl, not jump, so we did not immediately think of torching the house. We started with their bedroom, stripping the beds, taking down the curtains, separating toys into washable and needing quarantine, taking all the clothes out of the closet (because they use the closet as a clubhouse and their heads get all in the clothes), and then we started moving furniture and found yet another four-letter bane of sanity: mice. By their leavings, that is, not a nest!
All Monkey1's comments previously dismissed, where noises were just the neighbors and monsters meant she needed to turn on the night light, came back to me. Some time ago I had ripped up the carpet in the Monkey's bedroom, revealing hardwood floor and leaving a gap between the floor and the molding that had previously come flush down to the carpet. Since I had heard an odd scrabbling in the wall just recently, we guessed that mice were in the walls and coming out to dance in the Monkeys' room at night!
My husband promptly went to Home Depot, got the miter saw he had been thinking about, 40 feet of wood trim, and a box of nails, and covered the gap all the way around the room. I emptied closets, stripped beds, vacuumed, did laundry, and quarantined all toys with fur, hair, or cloth bodies into air-tight bags for the next month. Lice eggs hatch in 7 to 10 days, and adult lice can live without a host for up to 10 days. I have to treat the Monkeys' heads with olive oil every other day for ten days, wash the bed sheets every other day, and vacuum every day.
At the end of the first day I felt like I had been on the Stairmaster all day. At the end of the second day I felt like I had done a Stairmaster marathon. At the end of the third day I was still struggling to get all the fabric in the house washed: clothes, towels, sheets, even things that had been drawers or closets because of the Monkeys' tendency to make forts or tents in all sorts of places with whatever materials are available. At the end of the forth day, I'm contemplating buying a vacuum cleaner for every floor so I don't have to carry it upstairs downstairs and into the basement. I also noticed the Monkeys' do not need overflowing T-shirt drawers, and I wished for not only a laundry chute, but a clothes folder, elevator, or to live among natives who wear only loin clothes and check each other for nits every afternoon.
It has been going around at school. I had the Monkeys' checked by the school nurse on day two, she noted them clean of lice, and sent to their classrooms (where Monkey2 promptly announced "No one touch my head! I had a bug!") But, the nurse told me, keep checking them, and keep vacuuming and washing things. It's that one missed egg that can cause it all to come back again.
Tick, tock,
lice come
on mice,
and my house is SO clean now!
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Kitchen News
The pork dishes, from the same coupon that brought the uninspiring steak and chicken dishes into my kitchen, were much better. I also never cook pork, so since I did not burn it or undercook it, those meals tasted great!
The scones, a extra freebie, were okay. I'm not much on scones. My apologies to my great-grandmother, who earned the eternal scorn of all the women in the family she married into on accounts of being an immigrant, Irish, Catholic, and not making biscuits properly! Because any Irish girl doesn't make biscuits, she makes scones!
Over a month ago I tried a recipe for cream cheese pound cake. (Wait - "recipe" is really spelled like that? Re-ci-pe... the "e" at the end says its name instead of being silent? Here I was struggling with cei or cie and finally my spellcheck came up with this, which I then had to look up in a proper dictionary because I just couldn't believe it! How did I not know how to spell this word? Oh... I read a lot of books as a child, but scorned the cookbooks.) So, back to the cream cheese pound cake: I baked it in my favorite pan, a bee hive shape, which simply did not work for this recipe. I kept checking on it, but it would not even come close to cooking in the center of the pan, while the edges curled up and burned, badly. The cake was simply too moist for that pan shape. I actually had to throw out the cake! It was only a test bake, and then life intervened, and the bake sale I had intended to donate a cake to had to do without me. However, in time for Mother's Day, a friend gave me a awesome Nordic Ware bundt pan, and this proved perfect for my second try at the cream cheese pound cake. Plus, since the pan came in its manufacturer's box, I had the perfect sized cake carrying box for it!
And what possessed me to make shortbread?!
Monkey1 wanted to try out the Christmas rolling pin. For some reason it was in my head that shortbread was the cookie dough used. I was surprised at the easy ingredients: flour, sugar, butter. No chilling in the fridge either, which often happens when using a rolling pin. We mixed up the dough and patted it out and gave the rolling pin a once-over-the-dough, leaving a base relief of strange shapes on the top of the dough, and popped it in the oven. Came out as short bread should, very crumbly. Monkey1 said it didn't taste very good. I should have stuck with my gingerbread recipe that uses honey instead of molasses because I know that would work with a rolling pin!
The scones, a extra freebie, were okay. I'm not much on scones. My apologies to my great-grandmother, who earned the eternal scorn of all the women in the family she married into on accounts of being an immigrant, Irish, Catholic, and not making biscuits properly! Because any Irish girl doesn't make biscuits, she makes scones!
Over a month ago I tried a recipe for cream cheese pound cake. (Wait - "recipe" is really spelled like that? Re-ci-pe... the "e" at the end says its name instead of being silent? Here I was struggling with cei or cie and finally my spellcheck came up with this, which I then had to look up in a proper dictionary because I just couldn't believe it! How did I not know how to spell this word? Oh... I read a lot of books as a child, but scorned the cookbooks.) So, back to the cream cheese pound cake: I baked it in my favorite pan, a bee hive shape, which simply did not work for this recipe. I kept checking on it, but it would not even come close to cooking in the center of the pan, while the edges curled up and burned, badly. The cake was simply too moist for that pan shape. I actually had to throw out the cake! It was only a test bake, and then life intervened, and the bake sale I had intended to donate a cake to had to do without me. However, in time for Mother's Day, a friend gave me a awesome Nordic Ware bundt pan, and this proved perfect for my second try at the cream cheese pound cake. Plus, since the pan came in its manufacturer's box, I had the perfect sized cake carrying box for it!
And what possessed me to make shortbread?!
Monkey1 wanted to try out the Christmas rolling pin. For some reason it was in my head that shortbread was the cookie dough used. I was surprised at the easy ingredients: flour, sugar, butter. No chilling in the fridge either, which often happens when using a rolling pin. We mixed up the dough and patted it out and gave the rolling pin a once-over-the-dough, leaving a base relief of strange shapes on the top of the dough, and popped it in the oven. Came out as short bread should, very crumbly. Monkey1 said it didn't taste very good. I should have stuck with my gingerbread recipe that uses honey instead of molasses because I know that would work with a rolling pin!
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Disappointing Dishes
When a friend posted a 50% off coupon to a meal prep business I had bought some meals from during early Monkey2 pregnancy, I jumped for it. This time not only did I chose from their delicious menu, there were some extra sides thrown in, and delivery to my door! I just unpacked the box, confiscated the crumbly packing material the Monkeys, and put everything in the freezer.
The meals were all assembled in ziplock bags, frozen, ready anytime I wanted to unthaw and cook them up. The experience several years ago was so good I got into making my own freezer ready assembled meals for awhile.
First meal: marinated steak. It was huge! It filled my family sized Foreman Grill. When I checked on the steak, to my dismay I discovered after a year and a half of use, this grill has developed a cold spot on one side. Part of the steak was cooking merrily along, while the other part was as pink as when I plunked it onto the grill! So after cutting, rotating, and otherwise working around the nonworking part of kitchen equipment, I had two steaks done to family specs: done for the kids, less done for my husband and myself. The potato fries, sliced in large thin coins, cooked in the oven in about eight minutes. The fries were great! The seasoning was delicious, so whether crispy or slightly wiggly (since some slices lay on top of each other during cooking), they were all eaten up. The steak however was disappointing. The tough veins of fat ran through it parallel to the plate, so they were in every bite, plus I found the marinade did nothing particular to the meat. Definitely sticking to the grass-fed and my own marinade, found in the starter recipes that came with a little outdoor Weber grill purchased some years ago.
Meal two: cheddar cheese chicken fingers. Chicken, cut in tenders, and breaded in ... cheez-its crackers? All I could taste were chemicals! The Monkeys were not crazy about them either. From now on, I'm so sticking with a recipe out of Real Simple magazine where I bread the chicken in multigrain crackers and sharp cheese.
I have two more meals, which I'm scheduling this week, and I hope they go a little better. Or maybe not, because I do want the Monkeys' preferring Mom's cooking more than a franchise assembled meal.
The meals were all assembled in ziplock bags, frozen, ready anytime I wanted to unthaw and cook them up. The experience several years ago was so good I got into making my own freezer ready assembled meals for awhile.
First meal: marinated steak. It was huge! It filled my family sized Foreman Grill. When I checked on the steak, to my dismay I discovered after a year and a half of use, this grill has developed a cold spot on one side. Part of the steak was cooking merrily along, while the other part was as pink as when I plunked it onto the grill! So after cutting, rotating, and otherwise working around the nonworking part of kitchen equipment, I had two steaks done to family specs: done for the kids, less done for my husband and myself. The potato fries, sliced in large thin coins, cooked in the oven in about eight minutes. The fries were great! The seasoning was delicious, so whether crispy or slightly wiggly (since some slices lay on top of each other during cooking), they were all eaten up. The steak however was disappointing. The tough veins of fat ran through it parallel to the plate, so they were in every bite, plus I found the marinade did nothing particular to the meat. Definitely sticking to the grass-fed and my own marinade, found in the starter recipes that came with a little outdoor Weber grill purchased some years ago.
Meal two: cheddar cheese chicken fingers. Chicken, cut in tenders, and breaded in ... cheez-its crackers? All I could taste were chemicals! The Monkeys were not crazy about them either. From now on, I'm so sticking with a recipe out of Real Simple magazine where I bread the chicken in multigrain crackers and sharp cheese.
I have two more meals, which I'm scheduling this week, and I hope they go a little better. Or maybe not, because I do want the Monkeys' preferring Mom's cooking more than a franchise assembled meal.
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