What's that you're cooking?

When I find recipes I like on the internet, I generally scrawl them down on a piece of scrap paper, using whatever writing tool comes to hand: an ink pen, a stubby pencil, a highlighter marker. The other day, I was looking for a recipe for a potato crust (using instant potato flakes) for the tilapia filets we're having for dinner tonight, and I scribbled down this list on a Post-It, using a purple highlighter:

1/2 cup flour

1 egg, beaten

1 cup pot flakes

seasonings

I was going over that recipe just now to get ready to do some cooking when I gave it a second glance and realized that, for anyone who doesn't know what a strait-laced little goody-two-shoes I am, that "1 cup pot flakes" might seem a bit, I don't know, naughty.

And expensive.

Respect thy elders, and I mean NOW

I swim five or six days a week at our local YMCA, appearing poolside in bathing suit and flip flops, toting a towel, a water bottle and some four pound Styrofoam water weights, searching for an open lane. I get there anywhere between six o'clock in the morning and six o'clock in the evening, depending on the day. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are the busiest days, the ones in which the hard-core lap swimmers come and shame me with their flip turns and their butterflies and, apparently, their fully functioning gills.

I combine my laps with water aerobics because there's just no way I can swim laps for an entire hour like some of them do. Because the pool schedule designates the hours I'm there as LAP SWIM, I made sure to check with the aquatics director before just blithely taking up an entire lane so that I can occupy one small part of it with my Aquacise; I don't want to annoy anyone who comes in to swim laps, being one of those people who is hopeful of getting along nicely with others, although sometimes I wonder why I bother.

Today, for instance. Today, I got to the pool at 7:30, which is usually a good time to find an open lane. Unfortunately, every lane was full -- and this pool is enormous -- and some of the lanes had two swimmers. On days like this, there's nothing to do but just take a seat on the bench outside the ladies' locker room door and wait. Which I did. Patiently. Although I have to admit, I wish the YMCA, which has wi-fi, would set up some desks so that people could get some work done while they're waiting. I found myself thinking longingly of my laptop and all I could be getting accomplished instead of staring alternately at the clock and the pool, back and forth, again and again.

It took about fifteen minutes for one of the lanes to open. The lifeguard, who'd come over to sit beside me and chat, said, "Looks like you can go ahead and jump on in. Have a good workout!" The man who was climbing out gave me a nod and said, "Good morning! Feels great in there!" and I swam my first couple of laps with a light heart and a feeling of goodwill for everyone, embarking on my aerobics program with vigor about fifteen minutes later.

Thirty minutes later, I was still flailing away like a little trooper, having moved over to what we all call the "step lane," which, quite simply, is the lane that is shorter than the others because of the set of steps with two handrails that descends into the water to a distance of about four feet from the wall. The lap swimmers don't like to swim in that lane, obviously because it's painful to glide headlong into a set of steps. That kind of thing can really mess with your stroke. I use that lane a lot and have grown to feel that it's my special place in the pool, not only right there by those steps (which I need to get in and out of the pool due to my handicap) but also in easy view of both clocks, the one that marks the hours, and the one that marks the seconds.

So I'm doing my thing, right? And I've been there doing it for about forty-five minutes, having a pretty good workout. Heart rate up, burning fat, taking in air IN through my nose and OUT through my mouth and moving that water, when....

...what? What?

Ladies were starting to gather in the water at the other side of the pool for the nine o'clock water aerobics class and both dedicated lap lanes still had swimmers in them, so there were people around. But out of nowhere, someone's finger tapped me on the shoulder, and not in that "Hey, hi! Remember me from the bank/grocery/post office?" kind of way. It was more of a stabby kind of thing. Startled, I turned my head as I was jogging and saw an elderly lady standing there, far enough away that I wasn't going to nail her with an elbow, but still pretty darned close, considering we had an entire giant pool at our disposal.

I gave her an inquiring look, bemused at the fact that she was scowling at me under her white swim cap like she'd just found out I was a secret pool-pee-er.

"I'M GOING TO SWIM HERE NOW," she shouted at me, indicating the lane I was exercising in.

"Oh?" I replied politely, bringing my jog down to a light bounce.

"THERE AREN'T ANY OTHER LANES OPEN," she trumpeted.

"This lane isn't open," I pointed out.

"WELL, I HAVE TO HAVE SOMEPLACE TO SWIM," she yelled and grimly began to paddle toward the deep end, doing some kind of weird back stroke that involved using her hands like flippers. She lifted her head out of the water and gave me one last glare before making a "Hmmmph!" sound and putting her head defiantly back in the water. She looked like a great big old grouchy manatee.

So what was I supposed to do? She was an elderly lady, and I was brought up to respect my elders, to treat them with courtesy and gentleness, not to shout, "BRING IT ON, MAMAW!" and hold them under water. I mean, I could do that because I was at least thirty years younger than her, plus I was armed with those Styrofoam weights and I could have clocked her right in the side of her old grey head. But I didn't.

I did, however, do the next best thing: I ratted her out to the lifeguard. So ha, ha, HA.

"Oh, that's Madge," sighed Tara, the guard. "She's nasty like that to everyone. Just ignore her."

So we'll see how that goes, won't we? I seriously do not want to start anything with anyone, particularly an elderly woman. On the other hand, I don't think that either the elderly or the very young should be encouraged in their bad behavior because no one is brave enough to confront them. Like the three-year-old whom I observed throwing a huge fit in a restaurant the other day while his hapless mother dithered around saying, "Brandon, stop that. Stop that, honey! Get up off that dirty floor, sweetie, and Mommy will give you a piece of gum," I don't think Madge should be allowed to bully her way into other people's swimming lanes because people, namely me, will allow themselves to be run off from the lane they had to wait fifteen minutes to claim.

It remains to be seen if Madge will allow herself to be ignored.

Menu Plan Monday

I usually write my menu plan for the week on a piece of paper, a hard copy, menu on one side, grocery list on the other. I don't have any kind of fancy plan for either side; if it's a good week, I'll write things down in the order they appear on the shelves at the supermarket as we follow our typical path through the aisles. On bad weeks, I lose the list, either before or after I've done the shopping. Losing it before the groceries have been bought is by far the worst, because then I have no clue what I'm supposed to be shopping for. I may have a vague memory of someone's telling me we need more dental floss. Unfortunately, dental floss is not an ingredient in any of the foods I make, although I suppose you could use it to truss up a chicken for roasting. But if I forget to buy the chicken, where are we then? I'll tell you where we are: We're going through the stack of take-out menus we keep on the side of the fridge, fastened there by a number of magnets. And we argue endlessly over what we want. Pizza? Chinese? Italian? Burgers? Nobody agrees with anyone else and my husband shoots me narrow-eyed looks and mumbles things about "grocery money" and "why bother."

So I try to enter the grocery list into the phone app called Catch, and that would probably work better if I didn't either have to keep expanding the text to make it big enough to read, or taking off and putting on my glasses. Annoying!

By the time I get around to posting my menu plan, I may or may not have a kitchen full of groceries, and if I do, I may or may not have any idea what dishes the various foods are supposed to be assembled into, if you see what I mean.

Happily, this was not one of those weeks, but for all I know, next week might be.
Menu Plan for the Week of October 10, 2011

Monday - Sloppy Joes and potato puffs, at my husband's request

Tuesday - Layered Mexican Casserole, courtesy of my friends Todd and Cecile. Cecile found this recipe on the Weight Watchers site and she and Todd made it and loved it. Todd, knowing that I like t0 try new recipes, sent it to me on Facebook. I made it tonight (because I am actually typing this on Tuesday, not Monday, because I'm a big cheater) and it was fabulous, one of those recipes that makes you say, "This is diet food?"

Wednesday - Italian Wedding Soup and homemade bread

Thursday - Jalapeno cheeseburgers and pan-roasted potatoes

Friday - Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, some kind of veg and cherry cobbler

Lazy Sundays

The best times of the year for Lazy Sundays are in the autumn and the winter. In the spring, you're so sick of the cold and snow - at least you are if you live where I live, and if you live somewhere that has summer-like weather all year 'round, just hush up because no one likes a bragger - that you're itching to get outdoors and just roll around on your back in the grass like a horse. In the summer, it seems like there's always something going on, even if it's something as simple as getting up off the couch to make the hamburger patties and set the pot of water on the stove to boil for the sweet corn.

But in the autumn...and the winter...things are delightfully different, aren't they? It feels like a duty, almost, to put something on the stove, or in the oven or the slow-cooker, that will have to simmer and fill the house full of savory smells. And then, naturally, once that business is seen to, you proceed directly to the couch with a book, preferably wearing, if not your actual bathrobe, clothing that is more suited to indoor warmth and comfy-ness, like fleece apparel. You never see anyone doing her Sunday lounging while wearing a J.C. Penney power suit, do you? If you ever do see such a thing, please tell her to get up and go change and stop being such an uptight dork.

Slippers are a requirement, an absolute must. There will be no arguing this point: Slippers. On your feet. All afternoon. Wear socks with them so they won't get stinky.

I put a pot of chili on the stove today, somewhere around noon. While it was doing its thing, I threw a package of shredded cheddar on the kitchen table, got out the jalapeno peppers and stuck a fork in the open jar (because honestly, you wouldn't believe some of the barbaric behavior I've seen around here, such as licking off a fork that has already been used to eat taco casserole and sticking it back into that jar to spear a few pepper slices), some mini-packages of goldfish crackers and a stack of saltines. I filled my great-grandmother's burl bowl with a couple of handfuls of snack-sized candy bars. Bowls, napkins, spoons. I went to the kitchen doorway and stood there overlooking the dining room and living room and said to the assembled family members and a friend of my husband's who was here helping us solve some IT issues with our Netflix video streaming queue, "Chili's ready on the stove, so go grab a bowl and help yourselves."

Everyone wandered in as the mood struck them, and it was very pleasant hearing the fridge open and close, spoons clinking against bowls, and an occasional howl of either rage or joy from the men, depending on which way the football game was going. I sank into my seat on the couch and looked at my be-slippered toes, contemplating the fact that it's really a bit too warm on this particular Sunday for socks and slippers, but knowing I'd regret it if I took off the socks.

One 45-minute nap later, I woke to find the whole rest of the long, slow happy day stretching in front of me; Sunday bliss.

How I know it's fall

I always know when fall arrives because, first of all, my husband insists that we no longer need the central air to cool the house. Generally, he's right about this, but there are those times when an Indian summer day sneaks in and I find myself gasping and sweating while engaging in a strenuous activity like typing a handout on the life of George Orwell. I have no qualms about turning the AC back on, because I've managed to convince him that a Cool Wife is a Happy Wife. Being too hot makes me mean.

The other way I know it's fall is because we sleep with the bedroom windows open at night, just a crack. This is my favorite way to sleep, in a slightly chilly room with the sound of the wind rustling the leaves in the tree right outside our west window, and the milk truck going by early in the morning. Occasionally, I can hear the train whistle from ten blocks up the street, and that is my favorite middle-of-the-night sound ever.

As much as I like sleeping with the bedroom windows open, I have to be very wary of my husband, keeping a watchful eye on both him and the overnight weather forecast. Comes a day when he says, "I opened the windows and, hey - we don't really need this big blanket on the bed, do we?"

I sighed and carried on slathering moisturizer onto my face. We go through this same conversation at least three times a week during early-to-mid October, and it always happens in the evening when my defenses are down and my last available nerve has been worn down to a nubbin by the events of the day. "I think we need to close the windows a little bit because they're both wide open and it's supposed to get down in the low forties tonight. And yes, we will need that blanket."

"You may need it on you," he said, kicking vigorously at the blanket in a manner that always makes me want to clock him - I prefer to have the blanket neatly folded, accordion-style, at the foot of the bed, not thrashed down there in an untidy heap - "but I don't need it on me. I'm too warm."

"You won't be later," I remarked, putting the lid back onto my bottle of moisturizer. I went to the south window, which is nine feet tall, sash-style, and opens up to half that length, which exposes us to almost as much night air as a sleeping bag placed on the lawn under the stars would. I pulled it down to a height of about two inches and went to the other window, identical in height, and closed it altogether.

My husband immediately began gasping. "It is SO HOT in here," he complained. "No air at ALL." (This, in spite of the fact that a pedestal floor fan was on the medium setting and pointed straight at him.) "I feel like I'm going to suffocate." He slapped his paperback novel onto his bedside table and grumpily fell back onto his pillows, huffing.

"You won't think that later when it gets really cold in here, somewhere around four o'clock this morning."

"I don't think I'm going to last that long. It feels like a sauna in here."

I sighed again and switched out my lamp, settling myself back onto my own pillows and silently complimenting myself on my virtuous restraint from holding one over his face.

Later on that night, I woke up shivering, so cold that it was hard to bend my fingers. I was curled into shrimp-shape, huddled up with a light Arctic breeze ruffling the exposed right sleeve of my nightgown. I turned over in bed to find an edge of the sheet to pull over myself so that I could ward off hypothermia, and as I did so, the expected sight met my eyes through the darkness: that of my husband rolled snugly in ALL the sheet and ALL the thick, fleecy blanket, peacefully snoring his head off while I chipped ice particles off my eyelashes.

Three seconds later, he came back to consciousness with a yelp of surprise and surrendered my share of the bedding. See, one of the reasons why I like having long fingernails is because you can use one of them to make a swift, silent point and make it seem like an accident.

"Sorry, honey," I murmured, turning back over in the bed and pulling the warm covers up to my ears. "Sleep tight."

Menu Plan Monday (on Tuesday, but it's already been a long week)

You know those Thursday mornings when you wake up and open your eyes and then realize that it's really only Tuesday? You know how you DON'T just leap out of bed with your arms in the air shouting, "Yippee!!! I thought this week was almost over, but I've actually still got more than half of it yet to go!"

Yeah.

So times like these make me really happy to be participating with a whole bunch of other mommy bloggers in Laura's Menu Plan Monday feature at her blog, I'm An Organizing Junkie.com. Because all that you see below was planned out last Thursday and purchased last Friday, back in the good old days when I still had my wits about me. Because if I were trying to plan menus, say, yesterday? We'd be out in the front yard eating the fallen leaves off the tree.

MENU PLAN FOR WEEK OF OCTOBER 3, 2011

Monday - I looked in the refrigerators -- both refrigerators, the one in the kitchen and the one in the utility room that is generally known as the Beer Fridge -- on Sunday afternoon and realized that we had enough leftovers from last week to create a perfectly respectable sort of buffet dinner. We had a bowl of brown rice left from the stir-fry, some spaghetti sauce from Friday's jaunt to New Castle, meatloaf from last Monday and lentil soup from whatever day we ate that. I made a baked spaghetti casserole with the rice, the spaghetti sauce and some mozzarella and turkey pepperoni I found in the fridge, heated up the meatloaf, sliced thin, topped it with a slice of cheddar and plunked it on squares of homemade bread, added a little cubed ham to the lentil soup and told everybody to jump right in.

They told me it was the best meal they'd had in weeks.

I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Tuesday - Aisling's dinner request for tonight was homemade biscuits and gravy with scrambled eggs, so I made that for her and my husband. Meelyn and I, however, have reached that point in life where we don't feel called upon to consume vast amounts of calories, fat and carbs that we really don't enjoy all that much, so we each had a Weight Watchers Smart Ones microwaveable meal, both of which were very good.

Wednesday - Roasted chicken breast with balsamic vinegar glaze, sweet potatoes and one of those yummy Green Giant Steamers veggies, although I can't quite remember which variety I chose.

Thursday - Meelyn and I are experimenting with a breakfast casserole, trying to see how much of the fat and cholesterol we can remove before all the taste goes along with it. I haven't decided if I'm going to go the route of my mother's Christmas Day Breakfast Casserole (although it really frosts her doughnuts when I make this out-of-season) or a crustless quiche. If the recipe I choose is successful, I'll post it. All I know right now is that it will include some nice lean ham instead of sausage, have some egg whites substituted for at least half the amount of whole egg called for, and also....

Also.

Fat-free cheese.

Heaven help me.

Friday - I think I'm going to have to go to a restaurant. I can just feel it. It may be Wendy's, for all I know, but I am deeply hoping for Chili's.

NUNDAY: Picky, picky, picky

I love this picture of Benedictine nuns picking apples. They all look so happy, and there was probably no complaining about who was going to climb the ladder and no speculation as to whether Sister Scholastica intends to let that branch go on purpose and Sister Mary is not groaning, "Mother Abbess says we have to fill another bushel." We hope.

Menu Plan Monday

This week, I'm debuting a new fall soup. It sounds delicious and I hope I'm not wrong! To see more Monday menu plans from around the country, visit Laura at her blog, I'm an Organizing Junkie.com.

Menu Plan for the Week of September 26, 2011

Monday - Mom's Best Easy Meatloaf, garlic mashed potatoes and steamed vegetables (baby carrots, zucchini, butternut squash)

Tuesday - Chicken quesadillas (made with whole-wheat tortillas, chicken, refried beans and reduced-calorie cheddar-jack cheese, plus spicy seasonings galore) and Green Giant Steamers Buttery Rice and Vegetables

Wednesday - Chunky Split Pea Soup, homemade honey-whole wheat bread

Thursday - Thai Broccoli-Chicken Stir fry with brown rice

Friday - My husband and I are going to Beth and Jim's house to meet them and Jeff and Julie for dinner. Helen (Beth's mother-in-law, Jeff's mother-in-law and Jim and Julie's mother) will also be there, and various friends and family members will undoubtedly be in and out. To that end, Beth, Julie and I are collaborating on a spaghetti dinner, to which I am contributing a big pot of Ragù Americana to go with Beth's homemade meatballs and Julie's garlic bread, which she always butters lovingly on both sides.

Creepy old perv or innocent grandpa?

I was at the grocery store with Meelyn on Friday and we'd filled our cart and finally made our way to the check-out. We had to wait just a little bit, but when it was our turn to start unloading all our food onto the conveyor belt, we did so with great dexterity, having practiced this maneuver many, many times before.

I was unloading the small part, the part where a child can sit, so my back was to the people in line behind me. Ordinarily, this wouldn't be a problem at all -- I am not noted for my paranoia -- but there was a problem. With "but" being the operative word, only add another "t" to the end of it.

As I was removing items from the cart and placing them on the belt, I couldn't help but feel something? someone? touch my bottom. I sort of froze for a split second, evaluating the situation. I mean, I've been to Italy before and I don't know if things have changed over there in the past thirty years, but my bottom got touched, like, all the time. It was great. I'm kidding. Sort of. Anyway, I was only fifteen at the time and my bottom was, well....different than it is now. I glanced quickly back over my shoulder and noticed that the old gent who was behind us in the line was actually BEHIND us. It was his behind touching my bottom.

I murmured, "Excuse me," and pushed our cart a little bit forward so that I'd be out of his way and continued piling groceries on the belt. A few seconds later, there it was again: a gentle but insistent pressure on my backside. Another quick glance confirmed that it was that man again, standing back to back with me, pressing his rear against mine.

Flustered, I moved the cart a bit forward again, deciding not to say "excuse me" again because it was just kind of embarrassing, you know? I mean, the dude was old, right? And because he was so old, it just didn't right to imply that he was engaged in some kind of pervy shenanigans that might have gotten his face slapped if he'd done such a thing forty years previously.

Because old men don't think nasty thoughts, do they?

So, back to the groceries. Back to the unloading. We were almost finished, and Meelyn, oblivious to my plight, was standing in such a manner that I couldn't push the cart forward any further without mowing her down. Which is why, when the elderly man pushed his keister into my derriere for the THIRD TIME and just left it there, touching me, I had no good way to escape.

Let me just go off on a rabbit trail here. American women, for all our Virginia Slims and equality and freedom and such, are often just too freaking nice. We are so nice that we let people get away with doing stuff that they shouldn't ought to be doing because we don't want to make a fuss, don't want to cause a commotion, don't want to embarrass anyone or draw undue attention to ourselves or whatever. So we let people carry on doing something that is clearly wrong - or perhaps maybe....not so clear? When you're in a situation that's hard to define, what exactly can you do to define it?

For instance, should I have turned around and said to the old codger, "Sir, I can't help but notice that you've pressed your backside rather firmly against mine three different times now and I'd like to know just what you're doing? I mean, are you just in a hurry and needing to get your groceries unloaded quickly and are therefore being heedless of my personal space? Or do you have some other intent? I need to know so that I can decide whether I should hit you with my purse, or threaten to have my husband hunt you down or just give you the Miss Manners patented glacial stare-and-thin-lipped-smile combo."

Instead, I just turned all the way around so that I was facing him. He must have sensed my breath on the back of his neck, because all of a sudden, he pulled his bum in and, casting a furtive look over his shoulder, suddenly busied himself with re-arranging all the boxes and cans in his own cart.

He wouldn't look me in the face, wouldn't meet my eyes.

I didn't say anything. How could I? I mean, maybe he was mortified that he'd run into me three different times. Sadly, my bottom does stick out a good bit. On the other hand, if you were an elderly clandestine bottom-rubber, mine does make an easy and visible target. It's just all RIGHT THERE, hard to miss.

I didn't want to hurt his feelings. I didn't want to call him out in front of all those people. I was second-guessing myself like crazy by that point, anyway. Surely it was just my imagination that led me to think that my rear end was not only being touched, but pressed against?

No. It wasn't my imagination. I felt all weird and twitchy about that incident for the rest of the afternoon, wondering what I would have done and how I would have felt if it had been Meelyn's bottom he'd touched. Because I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt when it came to my hiney, but discovered that I was totally and completely unable to summon any feelings of "Aw, the poor old thing...he probably didn't even realize," when it came to Meelyn's hiney.

I would have jumped over the cart full of groceries and gone all Matrix on him.

Later that evening, when my husband and I were at dinner, I recounted my touchy tale to him. When I explained the first incident, he just nodded his head to acknowledge his agreement that it was probably nothing, but raised his eyebrows when I got to the second episode. By the time I was getting to the third moment of the old man pressing against me, my husband laid down his fork.

"Did you say something to him?" my husband asked.

I shrugged and swallowed a bite of salad. "What could I say that wouldn't make me look like some freakishly high-strung individual?"

My husband gave me a long look and then replied, "A lot of the time, that's probably what people like him count on. That no woman is going to want to accuse some nice old fart in a Mister Rogers cardigan of touching her for fear that she's going to seem hysterical and bizarre. Because what could be more harmless-looking than a guy who looks like he could be your granddad? That just gives men like that a green light to go ahead and touch a few more ladies. Never in a way that seems on purpose, like just reaching out and grabbing. But in a more subtle way, pressing against a butt in a grocery check-out line, 'accidentally' getting some side-boob action with his elbow when he reaches across you as we pass the collection plate at church...."

I gulped and glanced around nervously, doing a quick Spot-the-Pervert check amongst my fellow diners. "You're freaking me out. Like there's this whole world of dirty old men out there, prowling around trying to cop a feel."

It was his turn to shrug. "Well, that stereotype got started somehow. We can't blame it all on Benny Hill." He picked his fork back up and speared some lettuce on it.

"So, if this sort of thing should happen again? I should?...."

My husband smiled his lop-sided smile, the same one that melted my heart when we first met. "You look at him and say, in a very quiet voice, 'If you don't stop touching me, I am going to break you in half, motherfu.....'"

"Okay. Gotcha," I interrupted hastily.

Next time....

Observations (admittedly mundane)

I think it's a real shame, here in my city, that none of the plumbing companies -- and I just Googled eight of them -- saw fit to locate their businesses on John Street. That seems like a regrettable oversight.

If you're at the doctor's office and you're sitting there in an exam room waiting, bored, and decide to sneak your book out of your handbag to read a bit and then the doctor comes in right afterwards and says, "Oh! What are you reading?" why is it always some book like a Sookie Stackhouse novel instead of, say, A History of Western Philosophy?

Life would be so much easier if butter tasted like castor oil.

A dog who just came in from the rain is exponentially more likely to want to sit on your lap than a dog who just got home from a good, long spell at the groomer's.

Menu Plan Monday

Ah, a rainy Monday. Although I've always been very fond of Karen Carpenter (a secret I guarded close to me during my teenage years, when my friends had no idea that I was singing "Superstar" and "Close to You" into my hairbrush in front of my vanity mirror in my bedroom), I've always liked rainy days, although I am as meh about Mondays as she was. Since rainy days are okay but Mondays are less so, it's always nice to have the week's menu planned out ahead of time.

I have Laura over at her blog, I'm an Organizing Junkie, to thank for this weekly kick in the hiney. It makes everything so much easier when Wednesday rolls around and my wits are totally scattered because of a million things going on and the last thing I want to be thinking is, "Oh, noooo, I forgot about dinnerrrrrrrrrrrr!" Because believe me, I used to try that on my husband in a bid to get a mid-week Applebee's outing, but now that we're in this recession, it would be more like a mid-week fast food drive-thru run, and frankly, I'd just rather cook.

Menu Plan for the Week of September 18, 2011

Monday - This meal has come up more than several time in the past couple of months because we all love it: Jalapeno Cheeseburgers made with Morningstar Farms Grillers, grilled onions, sliced jalapeno peppers, pepper-jack cheese and that Onion Blossom Sauce you can find right here on InsomniMom. I like to pair it with skillet-roasted potatoes and a simple veg like seasoned green beans.

Tuesday - Broccoli-Chicken Thai Stir-Fry, which is actually a "diet" recipe, but so help me, if anyone eating this concoction can tell that it is low-calorie and low-fat, they've got more evolved taste buds than I do. I should put that recipe up on the site. It's so good and fresh and easy.

Wednesday - Gorton's Grilled Tilapia filets, baked sweet potatoes, Green Giant Healthy Colors veggie blend

Thursday - a good, old-fashioned taste of fall: Chicken Pot Pie, that delicious recipe from, I believe, the 1950s? With the Bisquick crust that just melts in your mouth? It is fabulous and easy, made these days with reduced-fat Bisquick and (don't look, Kayte) the same old cream of chicken soup it's always been made with. Comfort food supreme, crammed with vegetables and delicious chunks of chicken breast.

If you're interested, we had that Game Day Taco Dip (recipe here at the site under Recipes for Appetizers) on Sunday, which was a fun dinner, and on Saturday, my husband, who is a big poophead, ordered himself a pizza from a local pizza place, while I made a delicious homemade deep dish pizza with a yeasty whole wheat crust for me and the girls. It was absolutely loaded with turkey pepperoni, mozzarella, mushrooms, onions and green pepper and it was fabulous. His greasy pizza later gave him indigestion. Not that I thought it served him right or anything.

A serving of thoughts on the side

Around here, because we generally go to church on Saturday evening, Sundays aren't the organized days they were when I was a child and we had to be sitting in Sunday School, turned out in our best and in a Jesus state of mind by nine-flipping-thirty a.m., despite the fact that my dad was grumpy because he hadn't had a second cup of coffee and the chance to read the sports section of the Sunday Indianapolis Star as thoroughly as he wished, and my brother was grumpy because he had to stop running little cars down that orange Hotwheels track laid across the living room furniture so that the cars could crash into the fireplace hearth and I was grumpy because that's just who I've always been.

My mother was grumpy because it was her job to make sure we were all ready to head out the door by nine-twenty, plus put a roast covered with Lipton onion soup mix into the Crock-Pot, and we all fought her every inch of the way, including the meat and the little foil packet the soup mix came in.

So these days, things are much calmer and there's plenty of coffee and no one cares about the Sunday newspaper and dinner is a much more laid-back affair notable for its lack of silver flatware, good dishes and nice glasses, which all sensibly stay where they're supposed to, which is in the china cabinet. They make grudging cameo appearances on Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter because they can't be put in the dishwasher.

Here are some of the thoughts swirling around in the calm of the day:

1. The annual argument that pits my husband against me and the girls began today, with opposing sides voicing strident opinions on on whether or not the furnace should be turned on. My husband contends that it is mid-September and mid-September is too early to have the heat on. The girls and I offer rebuttal by pointing out that it is rainy and chilly outside, a weather pattern more common to mid-October, which is a perfectly reasonable time to employ the use of central heating.

2. Today is the first Sunday for making a snack to accompany the afternoon's football, so we are having Game Day Taco Dip with tortilla chips. I really like this dip because it's easy to throw together, can be served warm or cold, and it a relatively sensible snack if you make it with neufchatel cream cheese, nonfat refried beans and reduced-calorie shredded cheese - and these little fixes happily are unnoticeable and the dip tastes the same as it does when all the fattening stuff is used. SCORE!

3. I bought a new top yesterday because the hanger on the store's rack had one of those little plastic bead-type things with my size printed on it, but when I got the blouse home, it turned out that it was a size smaller than the size noted on the hanger. Thankfully, I still have the receipt, but wouldn't you know that the store is one out-of-town?

4. Aisling found a piece of piano sheet music in the piano bench today, a copy of Simon and Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water," and said, "Where did you get this?" I sat for a moment, looking at the music, bemused. That sheet music brought back one of my worst memories, a memory of the night when my friend Lori was being installed as the leader of the Rainbow Girls in New Castle's Masonic lodge. She'd asked me to play this music, which had great personal meaning to her, to accompany another friend of ours, Dave, who had a gorgeous tenor voice.

It was a very dressy affair and I was wearing an outfit of my mother's, one in the late-seventies peasant style, but made with a gorgeous satiny blouse in watercolored lavender, turquoise and lapis, slightly off-the-shoulder and paired with a long, gauzy tiered cream skirt, the tiers banded with the same satiny fabric as the blouse. It was very, very Stevie Nicks. I felt like a fairy princess in that outfit and my mom even let me wear her little diamond stud earrings.

I had practiced on that music for weeks and weeks, both with my piano teacher and with Dave and everything went really well until that night, when even the confidence I'd gained from wearing that beautiful outfit leaked out through my toes once I saw the lodge's ballroom, with chandeliers and lots of chairs set up and a grand piano, all surrounding a highly polished dance floor.

I had a moment of choking stage-fright, worsened by the fact that, in a moment of pee pee-nerves, I somehow managed to flush the entire back of that gauzy skirt down the toilet. I hauled it, hand-over-hand, out of the potty, frantically picking pieces of wet toilet paper out of the hem. There was no time to take a breath and regain my composure because I was due to be sitting on that piano bench in about half a minute. So I wrung out the skirt, which then showed a distressing tendency to cling to the backs of my legs, and tearfully exited the bathroom, only to find that in my absence, all the seats had filled up. I had to walk across that entire huge room under the inquisitive gaze of a big herd of people, all by myself, the heels of my taupe suede Candie's mules click-clacking on the dance floor and my skirt billowing gracefully in the front, but stuck to me in the back from my bottom down to my ankles.

Do I even need to tell you how "Bridge Over Troubled Water" went?

Let's just say that Dave intrepidly sang "Bridge Over Troubled Water," but I was playing something totally different, like maybe a tuneless rendition of "Cecilia" or even "Scarborough Fair." It should have been more along the lines of "The Sound of Silence." Huh.

I was utterly mortified, Dave was nonplussed, and poor Lori. Poor Lori. Here was her shining moment of becoming the rainbowiest Rainbow Girl of them all and there I was, a piano student of TEN YEARS, whacking and thumping desperately around on the keyboard like a possum trying to get out of a cage.

That was in 1978 and here today, thirty-three years later, I still felt a miserable sense of "Dear God, if you love me, please kill me right now," only this time, my undies weren't wet.

What a terrible memory. I wish I'd never brought it up.

5. If you are a lady who goes to a gym to work out, and if you shower there after you work out, but haven't yet taken that small moment of time required to stop at the front desk and rent a locker, be aware that there is going to come a reckoning, a time not specified, when either your shampoo, conditioner or body wash will come open in your gym bag and make a hellish mess that will convince you that it might just be better to pitch the whole mess into the garbage bin and start over, with new sneakers and everything.

6. I love Sundays when you can do things just because you want to, rather than because you have to. Which is why I just put together a loaf of oatmeal bread with sunflower seeds and diced apricots (excellent for ham sandwiches) and am sitting here typing a blog post....instead of working on lesson plans for my Shakespeare and Brit Lit classes. Which I have to do. Right now. So goodbye, and enjoy the rest of your day.