Please eat the flowers

This is DEFINITELY NOT on the diet… BUT…

Sam brought home a jar of homemade, unpasteurized honey a coworker of his made. Wow. I guess because it’s unpasteurized, retained in the flavor are all these faint tastes from the actual flowers. I’m sure eating flowers doesn’t taste good, but if it did… this is what it would taste like. Just Wow. I don’t want to know how many calories this stuff is. Denial denial denial. I’m.. uhm… eating it to reduce my sensitivity to the local pollen to lessen my allergies. Yup. That’s what I’m doing.

Before I forget…

Finally tracked down our elusive babysitter so that Sam and I can escape tonight for some alone time. There’s been about a million things I keep meaning to tell him, but someone always interrupts, the phone rings… something happens and I never get to finish my thought. But finally, tonight, there won’t be anyone else to bother us. It will just be him and me. And I can sit across the dinner table from him, peacefully without any interruptions … and completely forget all the things I had meant to tell him throughout the week. =sigh=

Seriously, with mommy brain, how am I supposed remember these things until date night??

Rollercoaster of a week

What a week it has been. My parents were originally planning on coming out to visit us late next week. Then my mom did something to her shoulder and she was writhing in pain. It was looking like she would have to go in for surgery to repair whatever was going on. That would have sucked on several levels. Obviously anytime you have to go under the knife is just not a fun time. My mom has had shoulder surgery before and I have a recollection of it being months before she was feeling better from it all. On a totally selfish level, it meant I wasn’t going to get to see my mommy!! We just recently joined a new synagogue (an hour away (ugh) but we’ve, thus far, been really happy with the community there) and for the first time in… possibly ever, I was really looking forward to going to Rosh Hashanah services because my parents would be here and I was going to show them how cool this place was. My birthday is in a few weeks and I was really looking forward to being able to spend that with them. Zachary’s birthday is coming up even sooner, and I was looking forward to having them here for that.

Math and Word Games for Kids for the iPhone

We tried a bunch of new games recently. Anusen (itunes link) is a small family run company that makes a very nice selection of word and math type games for kids, including a few in Spanish. Their QA team is made up of a selection of preschoolers. 🙂 Our test team here (a 4 year old and 9 year old) really enjoyed playing them. As of this writing, the games are pretty reasonably priced, at just $.99/each. Definitely worth picking up a few to try.

Here are the ones we tried:

Word Magic
A game that helps teach spelling. You can have the game leave the first letter of the word open or a letter in the middle of the word.

Math Magic
Tests your skills at basic math equations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) and rewards your little mathematician with stickers when they get a handful right. With Rachel’s class reviewing math facts at the start of school this year, this was a great way for her to get back up to speed.

Match Magic
“Draw” lines to connect matching pictures, shapes, numbers or colors. Zachary particularly liked playing this one.

Count Magic
In this game you have to catch falling items until you catch the correct number, and then the scene changes and you can play again. The game counts the items as you catch them. This was another one Zachary really enjoyed playing.

Math Series
This game has you fill in the missing number in the series. You can set the level of difficulty from simple to more complex. ie. [1 2 3 _ 5] or something a little trickier [3 6 9 _ 15]

Match ’em up Math
Another game where you draw lines to connect one side to the other – but in this case, it’s math problems to their solution. Equations can be in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. So the age range on this is pretty big.

Spaghetti Squash, You FAKE!

Maybe it’s not really Spaghetti Squash’s fault. We don’t normally give ourselves our own name. But to whoever gave Spaghetti Squash it’s name has misled an army of dieters.

I dare you to go on a diet forum and make a post that says something like “I know I could do a better job sticking to my diet if I could just eat more pasta!” You will, I can almost guarantee it, bring out some well-meaning but misinformed person who will happily give you this golden piece of advice “Have you tried Spaghetti Squash!” 😀

I have desperately tried to embrace Spaghetti Squash, and I have desperately tried to fool myself into believing that it could replace spaghetti, and coming to the cold hard conclusion that no matter how hard I try – Spaghetti Squash is as far from it’s pasta namesake as green beans is from chocolate. Really. When someone pipes in and says “Have you tried Spaghetti Squash?!” I feel like responding “No. I haven’t eaten poop yet either, but I’m pretty sure it’s not spaghetti either!” (No, I don’t say that but I think it really loud)

Maybe it’s my fault too. I’m such a horrible cook. If I could make delicious homemade healthy dinners, deiting and healthy living would be so much easier. Instead, I grab a recipe for Spaghetti Squash off the internet. And I dress up the VEGETABLE (It IS a vegetable. Vegetable != Pasta!!!! M’kay?) like it’s a drag queen pasta dish, and it tastes simply awful.

So my final conclusion. Spaghetti Squash: You only vaguely resemble spaghetti in shape, but you are nothing like the goodness that is carb-filled pasta. You don’t taste like spaghetti. You don’t smell like spaghetti. If you cook just a minute too long you become a mushy mess and then you don’t even come close to looking like spaghetti. YOU, my fine veggie friend, are an imposter of the worst kind. You make people think they can eat a spaghetti dish that has next to no calories. You fill my dinner with dreams and promises and then you don’t deliver. You are a charlatan. A fraud!!

I dare any of you to come up with a recipe using spaghetti squash that 1) I can make without screwing up, 2) I can make quickly because not only do I suck at cooking, I hate doing it too, so the sooner I’m out of the kitchen and into the dinning room the better, and 3) that doesn’t taste like poo. I dare you. Because I know it can’t be done. HA!