I spend four nights a week with my oldest granddaughter.....(I finally looked it up, it's one word....no hyphen).
That being said, it's deserving of a word or two of expansion.
My daughter is currently working second shift at an out-patient clinic, so I meet Cheyenne at the bus stop, have supper with her, help her with her homework, and put her to bed Monday through Thursday. Fridays she is picked up by one or another of the assorted grandmothers and I have the day off. There are, of course, occasional variations, but that is the general scheme of things. We have developed some routines that take us sailing through the week without getting into a tedious rut but that still preserve a structure. Some are, I think, worthy of note.
The classrooms I attended as a school-kid usually had one wall that was nothing but windows. Designed before air conditioning and in the dawn years of wide scale electrification, this let in natural light on even the gloomiest of days and fresh air on the most stifling.....made sense. One wall was dominated by the chalkboard and usually was the wall most often occupied by the teacher. The other two walls were generally covered with educational materials of every imaginable stripe and variety. If a kids attention wandered, he had a two out of three shot at still being exposed to some type of education..........the teacher's job was made easier in that he or she only had to monitor one wall to catch the irredeemable day-dreamer.
It is in this spirit that I handle the subject of the television. I put it on the history channel and there it stays.......if it is on at all. It goes off at dinner time, during homework time and during reading time, all of which are nightly occurances. The exception being Thursday night. Thursday is library day. After we leave the library, we eat at McDonalds or Taco Bell and come home and watch a movie together.
We always eat at the dinner table and I cook actual meals. We have one pizza night a week. Every other Tuesday, we go to see Uncle Casey, Aunt Diane, Hallie Bear and Baby Colton, and eat supper there.
As I mentioned, the television goes off at mealtimes......and we take turns choosing "dinner music". As you can well imagine we get a pretty eclectic mix of music. To my relief, Cheyenne likes the Beatles really well, is starting to turn into a Grateful Dead fan, and likes Eric Clapton. Every once in a while I have to listen to the "hokey pokey" and such like......but not so often as to drive me postal or anything.
Beyonce is about as treacly as it gets otherwise.
...........But, you know, Disney's "Princess" Album isn't a bad choice of dinner music as it turns out.
At meals, I almost always lay out a plate of fresh veggies........cauliflower, broccoli, green pepper, baby carrots, and tomatoes (in season).
Cheyenne is a picky eater, to a degree, but in my experience a five year old will eat almost anything dipped in either ketchup or ranch dressing (or both).
This kind of put me in a quandary, insofar as pounding a gob of fat-filled salad dressing is probably not the healthiest of choices to offer a child night after night.
So, I trotted out something I picked up from one of Graham Kerr's cooking shows...........(after he became a born again advocate of healthy eating).
Empty about a pint of plain yogurt into a medium sized tea strainer lined with a coffee filter...........set the strainer on a container deep enough so that the bottom won't touch the liquid that drains off. Use a yogurt that has active cultures and no gelatin added to keep it from separating.
Like so...............
Put the whole affair in the fridge and let it drain at least overnight........(ideally for 24 hours).
What is left in the strainer has a spreadable consistency somewhere between cream cheese and sour cream and can be used as a no fat substitute for both of those products in many recipes. Some clever-dick who was obviously pitiably under qualified to write for Hallmark named it "Yocheese"..(Yo, cheese,wuzzup?).....but that is one of those things that is just too stupid sounding to actually say in a public forum.
Mix in a package of ranch dip mix (or any kind of instant soup mix) put it in an airtight container and refrigerate for four or more hours to blend the flavors and reconstitute any solids....(like bits of dried onion and what have you).
You now have a zero fat, high protein dip that is great for veggies, chips, pizza, fried foods or those nasty, amorphous, breaded, soy bean/petro-chemical, mystery meat-like things you heat up in the microwave. Mix in some pickle relish and you've got a tartar sauce........spice it up with some dried pepper flakes..........use your imagination (and the internet). Now the health benefits of the veggies and the baked chips are not negated by the salad dressing............and the psuedo-food washed down with diet soda makes a little more sense.
Mix in fruit or a nice marmalade or jam and you have a bagel spread or crepe filler.
To make a bigger batch, so as to make it more economically, or make different things from it or simply to keep it on hand, simply use a bigger strainer and line with cheese cloth or a square cut out of a old, white cotton tee-shirt or wife-beater (laundered in an unscented detergent, bleached and dried without a fabric softener).
You can discard the cup or so of liquid (whey) that drained from the yogurt......but you know me better than to think that I would suggest such a shameful waste. The whey is a source of protein and other nutrients. It can be frozen and added to soup stock, gravy, simmering liquids, broth that you simmer or parboil meat roasts in or make stews from.
In addition, my sources inform me that these things can be ingested without suffering by the lactose intolerant..........but if you are one of those unfortunates, let discretion and your own experience be your guide.
Having done my bit for the betterment of the human race and the planet we live on, I'll cut this off for now....there is an inexhaustable store of drivel where that came from.
Thus endeth the entry...........
