Mashups

 Music is a huge part of Tommy and I's relationship. Its something we bonded over in the beginning and still connect with now.  I will be posting the lyrics to a song and what it means to me every Monday (hopefully). At least until I run out of interesting things to say (Or I forget). Make sense? Feel free to do your own but please link back to me and add your site to the comments below!


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United State of Pop 2009 (Blame It on the Pop) by DJ Earworm




(Ready to experience my dork side?) I love me a good music mashup. Who doesn't? This year though, I am excited about Earworm's mashup the most. Every year for the last several, he creates a mashup of the year's top 25 pop songs. Last year's was really catchy. The year before? Not so much. Trial and error I suppose. I am still ready to hear what he comes up with this year. 

The Chicken Challenge

I walked into the grocery store yesterday and the smell of rotisserie chicken hit me like a brick wall. It smell so good and I was already so hungry that I could not resist getting a chicken of my own to roast. While I was standing there trying to find the best chicken they had that would feed us all, another woman walked up and started looking through them too. She commented on how good it smelled at the front door and how she couldn't resist wanting a chicken but she liked making it herself so she could get a big one and use the whole thing for several meals.

Not a particularly riveting conversation, I know, but it got me thinking. I have always used most of a chicken. Then the question: How many meals can I get out of one chicken? Kind of like a turkey but smaller and cheaper.

Now, keep in mind that my boys both eat like ravenous wild animals so some people could possible get more than me but I made it a mission to make as many as I could. If your kids have more reasonable appetites, or you are vegetarian, you can get more than I did. In fact, if you are a vegetarian, you could probably stop reading right about now.

First, I roasted the chicken in the oven. You could boil it and skip a stock making step later but I prefer the taste of roast chicken.

Out of the oven, the boys ate the drumsticks and T and I ate the breasts.

Then I picked the thighs clean and used half in quesadillas for dinner and the other half in a chicken casserole for another day.

The bones and skin, I boiled with an onion, some carrots and cumin to make an awesome stock. I used some of the stock to make homemade chicken and rice soup to freeze, froze some stock alone, and the rest of the broth and a few of the random bits of chicken left to make some chicken tortilla soup for today.

So, out of one mediumish sized, whole chicken, I made five big meals. Plus some stock for later. Not bad, right? I think next time, I may go for the big chicken and see if I can squeeze a few more meals out of it.

Do you have any ideas for me? Something I missed or forgot? How many meals can you think of to get out of one chicken? I challenge you to find out and then let me know!

Mommy Confessions

Ok, so we all have them. I have decided its time to stop keeping them to myself in hopes that other mommies will realize that none of us are perfect. Here are my dirty little secrets for the week in hopes it will encourage me to be better. What are yours?

~ Totally slacked off all morning yesterday morning. I needed it though. Just a few hours to do what I wanted to do. I got a little work done around the bloggys, got my emails caught up before bedtime, spent some time fuming about other people's attitude toward the stay at home mom.

~ Saturday, we tried to decorate our tree. Tried. Ten minutes after we started, six ornaments were broken, I was in tears and we were throwing everything back into the box. Not pretty. The plan was to put all of the non breakable ornaments on the bottom of the tree and the others at the top, so the boys couldn't reach them. Which we did pretty well. Until a box of those glass balls got into the hands of the small terrorist I gave birth to (Ok, terrorist may be harsh but still). K started breaking and throwing the little balls and when we wouldn't let him do that, he started trying to swallow them whole. Not kidding. Kid is going to be a circus performer. You would think we would just move the balls where he couldn't reach them right? We did. Then they fell off the table and he was into them again like a rabid bunny at a feeding frenzy. Good news is, we tried again later and got some really cute pictures.

~ I wear men's socks. White, plain crew socks. My point of view is that its saves time on laundry by not having his and hers socks. Plus, no one sees my socks. When was the last time you judged a mother of two young boys who wasn't wearing makeup and had greasy hair by her socks? My mother on the other hand thinks I have become too lazy to live. I say, if she wants to do my laundry then she can complain but otherwise she needs to shut up and focus her concern elsewhere. Like my unshaven-since-September legs.

~ I gave K a sucker. Organic but still more sugar than I usually give him. It was well worth it too. He enjoyed the heck out of it. All wild eyed and licking it like his big brother and "mmmmm"ing and smiling the whole time. It took him quite a while to eat it too so I got a few things done while he was confined to his high chair. The best part though was when he got done with the sucker but realized he couldn't put the stick down. He was so sticky from the sucker, the stick was glued to his fat little hand. That occupied him for at least another five minutes until he started screaming and grunting hulk baby style and I had to stop laughing and rescue him from the evil sticky stick. Truth be told? I'd do it again.