Happy National Waffle Day

This week on August 24th, Mackenzie informed me it was National Waffle Day and therefore he absolutely HAD to eat large piles of waffles. Of course, this kid would use any excuse to eat large piles of waffles, but this was a good one. In the U.S., National Waffle Day is the anniversary of the first U.S. patent for a waffle iron. Cornelius Swarthout of Troy, New York received his patent for a "device to bake waffles" in 1869. 

Mackenzie can, and has in fact easily put away four waffles at a sitting. I make a huge recipe up at one time, modifying my basic Betty Crocker recipe by substituting coconut flour, almond meal, flax meal, and hemp seeds for about half of the flour. Then I bake waffles for an hour or two, and put whatever he doesn't eat into the freezer in gallon freezer bags. That way at least he's got a several day supply of frozen waffles for whenever he needs some. They're far healthier and more cost-efficient than the Eggo-style waffles, but they're just as easy once they're made up and frozen.

If those don't sound appealing, here's a great listing of over 100 waffle recipes, including bacon cheddar waffles, blue corn waffles, and Belgian coconut waffles. Sounds like I might need to try some of these out and get creative!

After I watched my once-sturdy, now-skinny almost 14 year old (2 days and counting!) devour platefuls of waffles, I logged onto Facebook to find that friend Laura posted this adorable photo of our two kiddos at about age three. As you can see, Mackenzie's pastime of food obsession has a long history. But man, isn't this the cutest picture ever? It's hard to believe they're both teenagers now.

I'll have to end this food-based post with a funny quote from Mackenzie. We were in the store the other day and he asked me to buy him two corn dogs. After handing him the corn dogs, I turned back to the cashier to pay for them. 30 seconds later I turned back to Mackenzie to see his hands completely empty. "Where did you put the corn dogs?" I asked, thinking he had set them down on the counter.

"Well," he replied "I was holding them in my hand. Then I heard this suctioning noise, and when I looked down there was a corndog-shaped hole in the universe where they'd been a moment before."

"Ah," I said, "was that suctioning noise perhaps you inhaling two corndogs?"

"That's within the realms of possibility" he admitted.

Life with a teenage boy. Never a dull moment, and never enough money for food!

If the Shoe Doesn't Fit...

Here's a great visual for you of the generation gap. In the middle are my mom's shoes which she wore when she dated my dad. They're about a size five I think. I couldn't squeeze half of my big flippers into them. Even Asa at age ten can't get her feet into them (she's now into a ladies' size 7). Then comes my feet, at size eleven they are not dainty. But hey, I'm a swimmer and they make great flippers. My dad (size 12) always said he gave me a good foundation in life, and he was right! On the outside are Mackenzie's shoes. Size 13: same as his age. I sure hope they don't go up in size as he gets older! As it is, he looks so much like Jeremy from Zits it's scary. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the creators of Zits are parked across the street from my house with binoculars gathering source material on a daily basis.

Last week Mackenzie and I went camping together for a few days. I packed an enormous amount of food, in quantities that could've seen Hannibal and his elephants safely over the Alps. I'm not kidding:

One package of hot dogs
Two pounds of hamburger
Two quarts of pasta sauce
Two packages of pasta
One can of refried beans
One loaf of bread
One bag of tortillas
One brick of cheese
A gallon of milk
A half gallon of pancake batter, pre-made and ready to go
A jar of peanut butter and one of jelly
A container of hummous
A dozen eggs
Carrots, celery, grapes, watermelon, salad, snap peas, apples, bananas
4 Clif Bars
Two containers of nuts
One baggie of raisins
One box of graham crackers
Two bars of chocolate
One bag of marshmallows

AND.... you guessed it, I had to go to a grocery store three days into the camping trip to resupply. No, I am not making this up. The kid has grown four inches this year and somehow managed to lose five pounds in the process, despite eating us into the poorhouse.

Flotsam and Jetsam

It's almost summer and around here everyone has been busy with a variety of activities. Asa just finished up her big end-of-year dance recitals, although their dance team will be competing at the "Dance Magic Grand Champions" this summer since they won 1st place in their division. So the excitement of dance team is not quite over for the year, which cheered her up immensely when she was feeling sad over dance being over for the season. She also just finished up with performances of Little Shop of Horrors a couple of weeks ago, which was a very fun production (and their theatre company has just been outdoing itself in every production, this was very good!). Now she's heading down to my mom's house for her annual week of Missoula Children's Theatre. She'll audition on Monday and hopefully will get a part again, so then it will be full-day rehearsals for a week and a performance the following weekend.

In the meantime, Mackenzie and I will take that week and go on another camping excursion like we did last year. This year instead of the high desert, we'll be heading to the coastal redwoods, taking both kayaks and both dogs. That should be exciting! Last year on our trip Mackenzie plowed his way through the first few books in the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy series (this photo is of him celebrating Towel Day 2010). This year he's taking a book called Going Bovine that looked funny enough that I have even started reading it and now can't put it down. He just finished up with his computer science classes (where he was very excited to have earned an A in his first graded class ever), and has also been building computers with a friend.

Everyone is looking forward to some warmer weather after the unceasing rains of May and June. Asa optimistically made these wonderful popsicles this week, yet another hit recipe from the DK Children's Cookbook that she has checked out from the library enough times that I really ought to buy a copy! I got lucky last Saturday and hit the sunshine jackpot, squeezing my first triathlon of the season in between a rainy Friday and an absolutely torrential Sunday. I left the kids with Wayne (who had the unenviable job of getting Asa's hair, make-up, and costumes all ready for the first of the big dance recitals) and took off with some friends for the outskirts of Portland and the Blue Lake triathlon. As you can see, we really enjoyed ourselves! I always feel like such a big girl when I travel without the kids. It's so different to have them at these ages now where for large chunks of the day, or even for a weekend, I am not with them. Motherhood was so all-enveloping for so many years, but now suddenly it's not anymore. I'm going to have to adjust to this new phase of existence.

Young Chefs

Remember those corny "Happiness Is...." cards and posters from the 1980's? Well, I think happiness might just be a kid who is starting to enjoy cooking. Mackenzie wanted to make his own cornbread to go with the chili I was making for dinner. I wrote out a recipe card for him that was much more legible than my regular handwritten one. He has always been very sensitive to sensations and sounds, so a few years back we replaced all of our wood-handled spoons and rubber scrapers with plastic-handled ones that don't bother his sense of touch. Likewise, I bought some plastic measuring spoons because the tinny metal spoons scraping together drove him nuts. He told me that he used some rubber gloves when he cracked the eggs, just so no egg slime got onto his hands, too. I remember all of these kinds of things being a roadblock to me when I was learning to cook. My mom never quite understood why the sound of a knife on a wood chopping block just set my teeth on edge, or the feel of the wooden stirring spoons really bugged me. Luckily these days there are alternatives available so he can enjoy cooking much more!















He had a few mishaps with flour and other ingredients, but in the end he turned out a very nice tasting cornbread. And of course, to ensure his little sister would want to eat it, he dyed it green (her favorite color). Yummm!