So - I made the broth, pulled off most of, but not all of the chicken, roasted and scooped out an entire pumpkin, made a huge mess of my oven, but that's another matter, made barley in the rice cooker (this was my first attempt at cooking barley in my whole life, with barley having been the poster-child for gross '70-era health food. My mother never cooked it but I had a distasted for it anyway, just from growing up near it), sauteed the mushrooms and other veggies for the soup, sauteed the peppers and onions for the sausage dinner, and ended up with almost nothing to actually eat. I couldn't finish the mushroom soup as I wanted to skim the fat off the top and I was waiting for it to solidify in the fridge, but that took too long. Eventually I poured the broth, fat and all, over the veggies as I couldn't fit everything in the fridge in separate bowls (and I have a big fridge), and I hoped the fat would rise to the top and not soak into the veggies. Remains to be see what happened - will report back later. Pumpkin waffles will have to be made as a dinner treat, maybe tomorrow night. But I did discover that there truly is a blog for everything.
Sausage, burgers and sautéed pepper/onion mixture got eaten for dinner (my husband really does eat a lot - easily ate 2 burgers and 3 sausages), as well as some past-prime plain steamed broccoli, which the kids preferred to the sweet, oily, gooey, caramelized pepper strips. What is wrong with them?? Natasha started to complain about the burgers too but Dave let her have it before the whining really got under way and she actually stopped - nothing like throwing in a mild swear word at the table to startle kids into behaving. Anyone see this? Perhaps the closest the NYT will get to writing an article about me.
As for the pumpkin soup, I decided to make this recipe, offered by Elissa, but first I have to run out and get Thai red curry paste and cornstarch. Unfortunately I just went to the incredibly busy and inconveniently located Asian market to get rice and I'm not going back - so I'll try something like Whole Foods first.
Currently I have a big soup pot in the fridge with some untested soup, as well as a huge bowl of pumpkin, and medium sized bowls of barley and soft boiled chicken, and still not much to eat in the way of a proper dinner. In theory, dinners will be sort of fast this week, with my prepared staples, but we'll see.
I can see the point of the NY Times article, but I try to make the not as rare as I'd like yelling connote a sense of them disappointing me (have you noticed how Natasha and Alex are very in tune with the tone of my voice and saying things like "daddy, the way you answered that sounds like I hurt your feelings) and I think that is why it is somewhat effective. Although I freely admit that my yell sometimes connotes EXTREMELY PISSED AND ANNOYED.
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