havocandmayhem.com

We live in the boonies. In a low density rural area. Town is 17 miles away.  So it has been 10 long long years since I have had hot food arrive at my front door, let alone have someone other than my husband be the bearer of this lukewarm food. But all that is about to change... The somewhat nearby 'general store' has begun making and delivering pizza!  And subs!  And, according to the flyer, they will also deliver GROCERIES!, including wine and beer!  Be still my beating heart!  Pizza AND beer!  Brought to my door! Even subs and a gallon of milk!  MILK, delivered!  Sure they don't sell produce and meat but they have the general bread, soup, chips, dairy things and they will BRING IT TO MY HOUSE!!  Can you feel my glee?!  I called when I got the flyer, before I let myself get all gleeful, just to check on the delivery radius and they deliver in a 9 mile radius.  We live 7.6 miles away.  I know because the very next morning I drove there & measured. (its on the way to m

let alone alive? I don't wipe every surface in my house down with Clorox.  I've never, not once, sanitized their toys.  We've had other children over to play and I've never even sprayed Lysol around the play area when they left.  There isn't a single bottle of Purell in the house.  Why hasn't CPS arrived yet? The only thing, and I mean seriously, the ONLY THING, being marketed to me on TV currently is cleaning supplies.  No one is trying to sell me a mini van, (going by the soundtracks they are aiming toward moms 10 years younger than me) or investment advice (geared toward women with kids about to go to college), or even a burger.  Possibly they are trying to sell me Nutrisystem but that commercial featuring the woman who went from a size 8 to a size 2 just pisses me off (I've forced my body into unhealthy weight loss and so can you!), so it doesn't count. Which leaves Clorox, and Lysol and the billions upon billions of germs that I am wantonly and n

The younger of the little demons, er, angels, loves spicy food. Where did that come from. DH & I are not spicy food eaters. I like flavorful stuff but heat turns me off. I am a bland eater. I'm not fond of mexican due to the peppers & I like mild forms of Indian & Thai food. I love the flavors in Japanese food & non-hot Chinese food. I like unusual spices but not heat. DH like thigs a bit hoter than me but even then he is an American Hot sort of eater (as opposed to Mexican Hot or Thai Hot, the grades that appear in several of our local ethnic restuarants). DS2 however likes it HOT. He likes spicy curry. He'll eat Wasabi ranch dip with a fork. He loves spicy taco meat. I am a bland cook & I have joked that I need to just start shaking Tabasco sauce on his food to get him to eat it. Turns out it really isn't a joke. I bought chicken taquitos because the store was out of the usual beef & cheese ones. The chicken ones are bland, even to me (and that is

The mental & emotional kind, not the kind that gets x-rayed at airport security. I have baggage. Everyone I know has baggage of some sort. Among my friends it is religious or cultural mostly, but educational, athletic and economic bags also sit on the luggage cart was well. We all have things that our family made us do, or wouldn't let us do, or were inflicted upon us by our peers. We swear these things will not happen to our children. We will do it differently. We will do it right . My baggage is food related (with a carry on of organized sports issues). There was little variety in the meals in our house. I was labeled a picky eater at an early age, but never really encouraged to try new things. No one in my family ate new things either, at least not in front of me. I assume when my parents were in Japan and the Philippines my dad, at least, tried new foods. My mom I know existed on Mc D's french fries & milkshakes. It was a case of the pot calling the kettle black. B

I have found about parenting is this: They do not make choices based on what they want to have, but rather on what they want to deny their brother. They insist on watching something nor because they want to watch a particular show, they just don't want their brother to watch what he wants. They scream bloody murder because their brother took a specific toy. Not because they really want to play with the toy, they just don't want their brother to play with it. When told it is their turn to choose the shared snack, they don't choose what they like to eat, they choose what their brother dislikes. it's not about making your own happiness. Its about making others unhappy. I'm hoping they outgrow it, because that is no way to live.

I read blogs. I have dozens of them in my bloglines - digiscrapping, challenges, food & parenting. I don't read them every day because I don't have time, but I catch up with them when I can. I love the food blogs! They are a mix of news, stories and recipes. My favorites are ruhlman.com, Slashfood, Simply Recipes, The Great Big Vegetable Challenge and the Food Whore. I keep changing out my digi blogs, adding & subtracting as I find new blog or other blogs go a long time without new posts. My favorite parenting blog is Motherhood Uncensored (she really is not kidding about that, so don't read it if you have issues with language or raunchy behavior). Most of the parenting blogs I read are of the venting & humor variety. I'm not looking for advice just entertainment & the welcome knowledge that mine are not the .only occasionally badly behaved kids in restaurants

I've had a run of bad luck with baking lately. My second to last loaf of sandwich bread did not go over too well with the demons. I have to tread a careful edge on the whole wheat to white flour percentage with them. I thought I had found a good balance but then I tried with this loaf to add some oat bran to it. Apparently it added a barely noticeable density to the bread, which was just too much for them. Their basis for comparison is Wonder bread, which admittedly I love too, so I know I am fighting an uphill battle on the texture front. And I must admit, peanut butter on a slice of dense wheat bread is like eating spackle in my opinion (which i have not voiced to the demons, they arrived a similar conclusion completely on their own). So I decided to make a different loaf of bread, a 'fluffy sandwich loaf' it claimed and it used a similar proportion of wheat to white that had been working ok for me. This loaf had 3 rising periods, which is a pain if you are not around all

We all know what road is paved with those.... I was really going to try this year to branch out on side dishes; do something more than just microwave some frozen veggie mix - MAKE THINGS! I was going to make things, to serve something more than steamed broccoli with a bit of garlic butter. I was even going to make a few veggie meals. But it's September & it just hasn't happened. I still make the plans to cook these things, but by 6pm most nights just grabbing a bag of frozen peas & tossing them in the microwave seems an effort, especially since no one will eat them anyway. Peas coated in butter, peas with garlic, peas in ginger sauce, pea soup, peas with bacon. The boys will not touch them. It's draining - mentally & emotionally. It's not just the peas or the veggies in general, it's everything. Just getting them to taste things is a miserable experience. One bite. That all I ask. Before you turn your nose up and announce "That's yuck!" to