Saag Paneer

My husband is very interested in learning how to make lots of different kinds of foods.  One of his current favorites is Indian food.  One dish that he has made, and that we have had at some Indian restuants that we have tried is saag paneer

It is a spinach curry, with paneer, an Indian cheese.  He has tried making this a few times but hasn't been satisfied with the results.

Last week for dinner I made a lentil spinach soup.  It called for 6 1/2 cups fresh spinach.  However fresh spinach isn't in season right now, and what I could find at the grocery store was expensive and very sad looking.  I couldn't bring myself to buy it.  So I bought frozen spinach.  Well when spinach is frozen it becomes more compact, so I knew I needed to put in less frozen spinach than I would fresh.  So I put in about 3 cups.  Well that was still too much.  The soup has you remove half of it and put it in a blender, after doing this what I ended up with looked a lot like saag paneer, without the paneer (so I guess that would just be saag).

Well that was Guy's opinion too.  As soon as I set it on the table he looked at it, and said, "That's like Saag Paneer."

To serve it, the recipe recommend garnishing with plain Greek yogurt, which did make it taste a lot like Saag Paneer.  In fact my husband said it was very close to the flavor he has been trying to achieve.

The Immodest Donkey

My husband took our three oldest children out to a local Indian restaurant for lunch one day.  While they were sitting there eating, Cinderella pointed to a picture of a belly dancer on the wall, and said, "there is an immodest girl in that picture."
Guy then pointed to a different picture on the wall and said, "There is an immodest donkey in that picture."
My husband looked at the picture, and replied, "that's not a donkey, Guy, it's a camel."
"Well, I'm calling it an immodest donkey."

More funny things Guy has said

So Guy often says things that make us laugh.  And when he does so, we will often write it down on our white board, so that I can blog about it.  However I haven't been as on top of blogging, as I would like to be, and so we have quite the list.  I thought I'd share it with you.

• Hot cereal hurts my feelings.
• This doesn't burn me, so it's not hot cereal.
• Vegetables are bad for your body.
• When I'm big, I'm going to make Macaroni and Cheese for lunch, every day!
• I wish I had chains, so when my parents tell me to go to bed, I would wrap them in chains.

Spike's Milk

One day while we were eating muffins for breakfast, Aurora asked for some milk.  But she didn't want her milk (her milk is whole milk, because the Dr recommends it for children who are one-year-old).  So then someone asked if she wanted Mama's milk.  She said no, then Guy asked if she wanted Spike's milk.  So then my husband asked him where Spike's milk is.  His response was, "In Mom's tummy.  Spike's milk is the muffins."

The car in my dreams

This morning, Guy came upstairs and told me, "One day I want to get a car like the one in my dream."  So I asked him what the car in his dream was like. "Like a train, but without an engine."  

"If it doesn't have an engine, how does it go?"

"It goes on the street, really really fast!  And then I fell off it, and there was fire on the street."

So where am I supposed to get a car like that?

Some Pants and a Shirt

This morning when I was nursing Spike, Aurora came into the room, and tried to take off her nightgown.  I asked her if she wanted to get dressed, to which she replied, "Yeah!"

So I told her to go and get some pants and a shirt.  Well that is just what she did.

The red and white striped item is a shirt.  The other 3 are pants.

Little Miss Muffet

Last month, Cinderella was learning a lot about Nursery Rhymes in school.  So we heard a lot of them here at home.
One of these was "Little Miss Muffet".  For those of you not familiar with this rhyme, here is how it goes.

Little Miss Muffet, sat on a tuffet, eating her curds and whey.  When along came a spider, who sat down beside her, and frightened Miss Muffet away.

Then Guy asked us "Why would a spider come down and freak out someone who is eating?"

What is a tissue?

When my husband was a little boy, he hurt his mouth enough times that he damaged one of his front teeth, and ever since then he wears a fake one, on a flipper.  (A retainer type thing that he can remove when he is eating.)  However the flipper breaks every few years, and then he is without a tooth until we can get it fixed, or a new one made.  He finally got tired of this and decided to get an implant.

The first step to getting this implant was to get a bone graft.  Which meant he needed to have an oral surgery.  After this surgery, one of the words that he would use often, when talking about it was gum tissue.  

Well one day, Guy asked me, "What is a tissue?"  Not thinking about my husband's recent surgery I responded with "Something you use to blow your nose."  

He then replied, "why do you have tissue in your mouth?"
"You don't have tissue in your mouth."
"yes you do.  Gum tissue."

Do they freak you out?

So, Cinderella picked up on the saying, "freak out" lately, due to some of the kids at school.  We hear that phrase a lot.  One day Guy told my husband,  "Skeletons don't freak me out, cause they are just bones."

Aprons

Mornings are kind of hard for me lately.  Because I have to nurse Spike, and he eats at various different times, I sometimes am needing to feed him at the same time, I am trying to get my other kids ready so we can take Cinderella to school.  I have tried to talk the kids into getting dressed before breakfast, but other than Aurora, I get a lot of slack from them.  Cinderella's biggest complaint was that she might spill some of her breakfast onto her clothes.  So I decided to make them aprons.  I got them done for them by Valentine's Day, and gave them to the kids for Valentines.  Well, Aurora's was a day late, but close.

Counting

One night, my husband and I were going to go out on a date, so we were having a baby-sitter.  Cinderella was very excited, and couldn't wait until the baby-sitter got there.  She asked me when the baby-sitter was coming.  I told her in an hour.  She asked how many seconds that was.  My husband replied that it is 3,600 seconds.  

Cinderella then started counting.  1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, three-thousand-six-hundred, OK, she's here! 

 

Ready for Spring

So the last few days have been quite warm for this time of year in our climate.  It has been in the 50's.  Ever since Spike was born in December, we haven't gone much of anywhere, and it is driving Aurora crazy.  With the warmer weather, she has wanted to go out side and play, and I have let her.  Yesterday morning when we were getting ready to take Cinderella to school, I was getting the kids coats and shoes on.  Aurora insisted that she wear her jacket, not her coat, and then she went to the sliding glass door, and started pulling on it, saying "side, side"  She wanted to go play.  She is definitely ready for the warmer weather to be here all the time.  Unfortunately, I don't think it will stay around for long, but it will come back, in a while.

Guy's first talk

In our church we have a children's class called Primary.  In this children's class the children all meet together for an hour, where there is a lesson taught, gospel songs are taught, and children are given turns to give talks.

Guy was asked to give his first talk this last Sunday.  We were given a few choices of what he could talk about, and when I asked him which one he wanted to talk about  he choice, "Why am I here?"  Or why are we here on Earth.

So I asked him, "Why are you here on earth?"
"Because Jesus made the Earth."
"Did we come here to get a body."
"yeah"
"Did we come here to learn how to make good choices?"
"Some people make bad choices. They didn't get a body."
"Your right the people who made the bad choice to follow Satan didn't get a body, but we made a good choice huh?  So we have a body."
"yeah"
"Are you glad you have a body?"
"yeah"
"Are you glad you are here on Earth?"
"yeah"


So I combined the information from that conversation into a talk for him.  When I wrote it he wanted to make sure I put "Why am I here?" on it. So I wrote it at the top.
 Then on Sunday, he couldn't wait to give his talk.  Before the meeting was even started he was out of his seat, and climbing the steps behind the podium.

When it came time to give his talk, I went up to help him.  He climbed the steps, and stood behind the microphone.  He is so short his head was barely visible above the top.  And he was a good 5 inches away from the microphone.

He started his talk by yelling, "Why am I here?"  Which gave my husband the impression that he was wondering why he was up there giving the talk.  The rest of the talk, he had a hard time being loud enough for, but he said it, and did a good job.

Agency

One of the things I have heard people have the biggest problem with, when trying to accept that there is a God, is the question "If there is a God, why does he let people do bad things?"

The church I belong to, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, teaches that we are all given agency.  The ability to choose.  If we want to choose to drive 90 miles an hour down the freeway, that is our choice, we can do that.  If we want to take someones life, that is our choice, we can do that.  However that doesn't make these things right choices, nor does it take away the consequences of our actions.  If you speed, you are more likely to get in an accident, and some one is more likely to get hurt.  You are also more likely to get pulled over and get a ticket.  If you take someones life, you make it so they don't have the choice to live any more.  And you are also increasing the likelihood of you spending the rest of your life in prison, or on death row, and if you "get away with it" you still have to live knowing you did that.

If you run out in front of a car, you are going to get hit.  Do you get the idea?

Anyway, this agency, is something that I struggle with, as being a parent.  Because, I can't take away my children's agency, although I can try.
No matter how hard I try, I can not force Guy to use the potty.  I can't force him to not soil his clothes.  He is going to do it if he wants to.  I can encourage, I can scream, I can yell, I can take away his toys, I can hurt him (that one I try really hard to not do), but through it all, I can't MAKE him use the potty.  And that is so frustrating to me, because his choice doesn't just affect him, it affects me too.  I'm the one who has to clean him up, or help him clean him up, or live with a house that stinks if he doesn't do it, or at least do a good job.

Now in reality I don't want to take away his agency, but I would like it if he would do what I ask him to, and if he would care if he was clean or not.  But he doesn't.  So I just keep encouraging, and if nothing else, maybe Aurora will get potty trained.  

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Cooking with Aurora

So I just heard a crash from upstairs.  I knew it had to be Aurora so I went to make sure she was OK.  Here is what I found.  Her trying to put the pitcher from the blender on the counter next to a can of soup that she got from the pantry.    I asked her if she wanted to go downstairs with me and she said, "poop"(meaning soup).  I asked her if she was trying to make soup, and she said, "yeah!"