Weird, annoying homeschooled kids

Well, I was ready to be really irritated when I read an article with the title, "Why are homeschooled kids so annoying?"
And then I read the article, and they're right.
I spend a lot of time trying to "sell" homeschooling to my family and some skeptical friends.
I emphasize the freedom, the opportunity to explore passions, the ability to go deeper into learning with each child, and how much my kids are thriving.
And I play up how wonderful my kids are. And they *are* wonderful: Bright, funny, well-behaved (most of the time,) cheerful, helpful, kind. My 11-year-old son changes diapers, empties the dishwasher, cooks dinner, does laundry and begs for more history lessons.
My 7-year-old son loves to play with his sister, is charming, engaging, crazy about his pets and can be reluctantly talked into doing occasional chores.
But you know what?
Homeschooled kids, including my own, can also be annoying. And weird.
And instead of denying it and saying, "But homeschoolers aren't weird! They're normal!," I might as well embrace it.
We've been homeschooling since Sawyer was born; we've never done a single day of "regular" school.
And, despite the fact that people worry about "socialization," we know a ton of kids. And many, if not all of them, are either weird, annoying, or both.
There are kids who never, every shut up. Mine is one of them. Sawyer wants to talk to you. About Dr. Who, about Minecraft, about World of Warcraft, about the Peloponnesian War and why it was important. He wants to discuss politics, science fiction, and Calvin and Hobbes. Mostly, though, he just wants to talk.
Which is why I'm glad there are other, equally weird kids, sprinkled throughout our homeschool group. He can go to Park Day and find someone who will listen, and they can chatter away, non-stop, about which one of them is Sparta.
That's how he describes a girl in one of his classes: "She's Sparta, and I'm Athens, and that's why we don't get along."
As if I'm supposed to know what that means; I'm not the one who just studied the Greeks, and I have no idea what the hell he's talking about.
But the kids he's friends with do. They have games that involve vampires, Dr. Who, the Greeks and Spiderman all rolled into one. His friends are just as quirky, just as passionate. Some about skating, some about math, some about game playing. But if you ask any of them what they're interested in, what their hobbies and likes are, you'll never, ever get a shrug or an "I dunno." You'll get a torrent of information that you have to back away from slowly.
Then, of course, we have Platypus Boy.
Sander's been obsessed with platypuses since he was three. I know that the plural of platypus is either platypus or platypuses because I've looked them up so often. I know that they make Vitamin C in their liver, not in their kidneys, unlike other mammals, or maybe it's the other way around. In fact, that's all I hear about. That and poop. That's his other favorite word.
And Sander can go hang out with his friends and talk and play and he's not "the weird kid." He's just Sander. And everyone knows that if you want to find Sander, you have to look up. He's in the tallest tree, barefoot, hanging out, talking to people about animals.
And Scout, our almost-two-year-old, now says, "poop," and "platypus," and fits right in.
My kids are not the only weird homeschoolers.
They have friends who are obsessed with Legos, or Minecraft, or dragons, and some who have no manners at all, and some who obviously have a screw slightly loose and might be more than just a little bit weird.
But you know what? Good for them.
Good for them for following their passions, exploring what interests them and finding people who have similar interests.
Because you know what my kids don't talk about? Justin Bieber.
Kim Kardashian.
Keisha.
What they wear.
What's "cool."
What "everybody else does."
What "they have to have, right now, because otherwise everyone will think they can't afford it."
And I'm good with that.
They don't know what the cool haircuts are, and neither do I, though I ask the lady at the haircutting place to give them a "normal kid's" haircut.
They have no idea what their "style" is. They have never read a fashion magazine, seen a show about Snooki or listened to pop music.
I just looked up the top ten songs this week.
I think I've heard the first one, "Somebody That I Used to Know," and so my kids might have heard it. I don't know any of the others, though I've heard of Justin Bieber and Kelly Clarkson, and I read about someone making fun of Niki Minaj.
My kids have no clue who any of them are. They will soon, I'm sure; Sawyer's turning 12 this summer and in the next year or so he'll discover music and I'll be an old person who doesn't know anything.
I hope he discovers some great bands, some new, and some old. I hope he loves Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin and at least gives the Beatles a chance. And I hope for my own sake that he hates hip-hop, so I don't have to hear it.
But Sawyer will choose his own style, and if his friends don't like his music, and he doesn't like theirs, it won't be a big deal -- they've all grown up knowing that they have different interests and different taste.
I'm sure if Sawyer had to walk into a sixth-grade classroom tomorrow and start school, he'd be considered a weird kid.
He thinks he knows everything. He likes to tell you you're wrong, and that he knows more about it than you do. He likes to use the word, "expert" about himself, no matter how many times I tell him that he's not, really, an expert, not even a little (although I'd say Sander is close to being a platypus expert among 7-year-olds.)
And yeah, it's kind of annoying.
But I will take annoying and weird over mainstream and dumbed-down any day.
Sawyer will learn to temper his tongue. He will. He will learn that no matter how exciting it is to share his thoughts with other people, it's exciting to hear what others think, too.
But you can't learn enthusiasm, eagerness, and passion by following the crowd.
And a kid who thinks the platypus represents everything about him isn't ever going to blend in with the crowd anyway. He's going to be a little weird, no matter what.
I might as well embrace it and go along for the ride.
Sure, my kids are weird and annoying. But that's the least of their traits. And honestly, if that's the worst thing you can say about my kids? I'll take it as a compliment.

A long story about the name Eva

Published June 1, 2010

This is a story. I have no idea if it’s true. I doubt anyone does at this point, because it happened 98 years ago and everyone involved is dead.

My mother told me this story when I was little, and I loved it. 

I love family history, family heritage and family lore. My mother couldn’t stand her actual life in the present tense, and so she told stories about the past, where everything was happy and wonderful.

I listened to a lot of stories about people I’d never met and would never know, but over the years, as I visited cemeteries and heard more pieces of stories, and got to know cousins who were so-and-so’s grandchildren, I was hooked.

At one point, my mother could name all 11 (or 12?) of Aunt Hazel’s siblings, and what happened to each of them. It made it much more interesting to visit Aunt Hazel, who was in her late 80s when I was a teenager. Visiting Aunt Polly was a lot more fun when I realized she was the one who stole the blueberries, or swam across Lake Champlain because she didn’t want to pay the dollar for the toll bridge.

 So my mother and aunts might quibble with this version. It’s all sort of jumbled together in my head. I never met my great-grandparents, and I don’t know if I spelled their names right. I don’t know if they met here, or in Poland. I don’t know if my great-grandmother was born here or in Poland. I guess I’ll have to start asking questions and actually writing it down -- I used to know some of this, but it’s been forgotten.

And so, since this a story, there might be poetic license involved. And it might be 100 percent true.

My grandmother's name was Eva Golembesky, daughter of Waclawa and Wladyslaw Golembiewski, who were of course known as Nellie and Walter.

Nellie and Walter lived in Mineville, New York, deep in the heart of the Adirondack Mountains, across Lake Champlain from Vermont. They call it the North Country, or God's Country. They still hunt bear up there. It's one of the most beautiful places I've ever been, in the summer and fall. In the winter, the average high temperature is 26 degrees. The average low is 7.

And Walter went to work for the Witherbee iron mine.

I don't know how they got from Poland to Mineville, and I don't know if they met in New York or in Poland.

But by 1912, they were married and lived in a tiny house in Mineville, rented from Mr. Witherbee, who owned everything. 

He owned the mine, and the houses in town, and the mining equipment you needed to go get ore. If you wanted to be a miner, you had to buy your equipment at the company store, and then they'd take the cost out of your paycheck.

Next door to Walter and Nellie lived Margaret and Victor Smith. Victor Smith was also a miner. Everyone was. But they were born and raised in the Adirondacks. 

By 1912, their families had been here 200 years and had fought in the American Revolution, and the Civil War. It must have been interesting living and working next to newly immigrated Poles.

It's 1912. Victor and Maggie have settled in to mining life, and they have a bunch of children. Next door, Nellie and Walter settle in, too, and have a baby. Within a month, the baby has died.

And then another baby is born, less than a year later. And two weeks later, she, too, is dead.

At Victor and Maggie's house, they end up with four living children, and three more who die young, but they can't feel anything but sorry for the Polish couple next door. No living children yet. They try again, and this time the baby lives three months.

Meanwhile, Maggie takes in boarders. They have a tiny house, just three bedrooms and less than 900 sq. feet, but they pack the miners in like sardines. Every night before she goes to bed, Maggie makes the dough for 20 or 30 pot pies for the miners to take for their lunch. She bakes them in the morning, wraps each one tightly to keep them warm until lunch, then makes breakfast for at least ten men. Pancakes, sausage, biscuits. She sends them off with two or three pies each, then spends the rest of the day making beds, cleaning and making dinner for ten very hungry men.

 Victor goes to the mines every day with them. He asks every few months if Mr. Witherbee will let him buy his house instead of rent, but is turned down.

The Polish couple have another baby, their fourth. Within a month, this baby is gone, too.

Desperate, they finally consult with a doctor. It takes all of their savings, but this is what savings are for. The doctor does an examination and tells Nellie to come back when she's pregnant again.

She does, and he says, "There is a reason for this, and God has given us a way to make sure that you will have a baby that lives, as long as you honor him and the Bible. When this baby is born, if it's a boy, name him Adam. If it's a girl, name her Eve. This will please God, and the baby will live."

And so Nellie had a girl, and they named her Eva, and they waited. She made it to the six-month mark, and they started to breathe a little easier. And then, for the first time, they had a baby make it to one year old. And then two. And then another baby came along, and she lived, too.

And they had four babies in a row who lived and thrived.

When Eva was 12, her father, Walter, went into the mines one day with his pies wrapped up warmly. Finally, Mr. Witherbee was putting electricity into the mines, so there would light, and clean air would be pumped into the shafts. This was an exciting time for the mine.

Walter reached back behind him into his sack to get his pie and touched a live wire. He was dead when they brought him to the surface. Eva went to work cleaning houses. Now they had no income, but four children to feed.

Less than a year later, Mr. Witherbee offered to sell all of the houses to the miners. He'd give them a mortgage himself, and offered to take the payments right out of their checks. About half the miners in town took him up on it, and were amazed at the possibly of owning a home on a miner's salary. They figured that perhaps Mr. Witherbee had finally made enough money that he would make some changes to safety in the mine, and wanted to build the town up by having everyone own their own home.

This is where Mr. Witherbee lived:

http://www.century21adirondacks.net/listings/13100-sq-ft-Mansion-on-over-5-Acres.html

My grandfather, Bernard Smith, Maggie and Victor's oldest son, was 14, and had grown up next to Nellie and Walter and was already in love with Eva. He knew he'd have to support her, fatherless as she was, but he had a bout of polio which crippled and deformed his foot. He tried to work in the mine, but he lasted two days and had enough.  

He knew someone who knew someone who'd gone to sea, and that was good enough for him. He went and became a Merchant Marine, and shipped out by the time he was 18, taking his new bride, Eva, with him, away from mining, away from the Adirondacks.  

His parents and her mother, though, stayed in Mineville.

They'd bought their houses, you see. And three months after Mr. Witherbee sold everyone their new homes, he closed the mine and put everyone out of work, and the homes were now worthless. 

So Eva and Bernie sent money home, and their parents lived out their lives in the tiny red wooden houses in Mineville.

My grandparents did come back, though, to visit, and every summer my mother played in the yards of the tiny red houses where her parents had grown up.

I have stories in my head of Tongue Mountain, and of wild blueberries, and grandma’s house where you took a bath in the living room once a week in an iron tub because there was no plumbing. And of dogs living under the front porch, and a train trip that came to an end when the conductor yelled, “Next stop, TI-CON-DER-OGA!”

There are stories about Leo’s wife, Larry, who was beautiful, and stories of the Smith brothers and the trouble they got into, and a story about Uncle Hank getting hit by a train when he was a baby and living through it. Those days are very real to me, stories or not.

The houses are still there, more than 100 years old, and still have families living in them.

And while all of Eva's siblings left the Adirondacks for warmer climates, most ending up in San Diego, Bernie's family still lives there, running hotels, working in restaurants, hunting and trapping and getting by as they have for the past 300 years.

And that, in a very long-winded way, is why my grandmother was named Eva. And why, in some fashion or form, I’m going to give my daughter that name.

When she’s born, it will be 98 years since her great-granmother was born, and 72 years since her grandmother was born. But in some way, she’ll be connected to those memories, and to those people, and will know where she came from, this little Eve or Evie or Eva or Evangeline. And I’ll feel good about having a daughter who knows the stories. 

On being pregnant and 40

November 15, 2009

When the Gods want to punish you, they answer your prayers. Or so says an old adage.

And here I am, with the teenager I raised off to the Navy and about to turn 20, my oldest son turning 10 next summer, and newly-five-year-old son.

And, apparently, if all goes well, a new baby in June.

Oy.

Yes, I wanted another baby. Specifically, a girl.

But I had just gotten to the point where I was accepting, slowly, that it just wasn’t going to happen.

We’ve had two babies and two miscarriages. As Mark said, we’re two for two. Let’s appreciate what we have, that we have two beautiful boys, and that we’ve figured out how to keep them healthy and happy.

And, frankly, the first three years of Sander’s life nearly killed us. If we had another baby with autism, it would pretty much finish us off.

Plus, he said, I’m always sick and miserable and unable to function for the first four or five months of pregnancy, and he doesn’t know if he can pick up the slack.

And yet, here we are.

When I told Mark, he was quite literally stunned. You could see him doing the math in his head -- “I’ll be 47 when the baby is born, and I’ll be HOW OLD with a teenager???!”
Yeah.

Well, it’s too late now.

And I’m sick and miserable and unable to function. And Mark has to pick up the slack.

When I was young, at least 100 years ago, I was a true feminist. I believed that women are the same as men, can do anything that men can do, and that I would never need a man in my life.

Why would I? I remember having to answer questions about my future career in college. One guy in the class asked how I’d be an archeologist if I had kids -- what would I do with them?

I almost laughed, the question was so foreign. Kids? Me? Right. I don’t think so. And if I did have kids, I’d put them in a backpack and take them with me -- they’d get a great education on the dig site.

I guess I knew that I’d homeschool even then, at least.

Kids were portable, and easy, right? You just make them adapt to your lifestyle -- it’s not like they have any choice in the matter.

Well.

I’m working on baby number three. Pregnancy number five. And this will be the fourth kid I’m raising.

I am still a feminist. I still believe women deserve equal rights. I do not believe men and women are the same. I don’t believe they can do anything men can do, and I don’t believe men can do anything women can do. And frankly, if you’re going to have sex and get pregnant, you’re going to need a man in your life.

I think the choices now are: Skip men altogether, including sex, or accept that fact that if you get pregnant, you’re going to need help. Lots of it. Moral support, emotional support, physical support, monetary support. Pregnancy is not for sissies.

The first thing I learned, with the first pregnancy, is that we’re animals, whether we like it or not. Once the pregnancy hits, you’re part of a larger biological process than just you. Unless you step in with modern technology to halt the process, which is an option our grandmothers didn’t have, then you’re in for a ride. There’s no turning back, no other options. 

If you get pregnant, you will have a baby, want one or not. Ready or not. In love with the father or not. Rich or not. Single or not.

You are no longer in control of your body at all. Your boobs start to hurt. You slobber all the time. You snore when you sleep. You’re grumpy and mean. 

And, at least for me, there’s vomit involved. Lots of it.

Currently, it’s at 7 every evening. Whether I have dinner plans, or a movie to watch, or someone to impress. Off I go, out to the back porch, heaving away. And there’s nothing ladylike about it -- I’m barfing so hard that my eyeballs hurt and start to tear up, the retching noise is so loud that the kids and the dog run away from me, and, I’m sorry to say, the heaving is so strong that I pee my pants every time. Lovely image, isn’t it?

And it’s not just the barfing. There’s also the fact that I FEEL like I’m going to throw up every minute of every day, unless I’m horizontal. 

And the exhaustion, which conveniently can be taken care of by lying down.

Currently, I’m sleeping 10 hours at night and still need a two-hour nap.

Sander informed me yesterday that I’m going to win a prize for world champion sleeper. Apparently, I’m NOT up for mother of the year this time.

And then, at the end of this whole miserable process, there’s a birth involved. And that’s when I first realized the usefulness of a man.

When I was pregnant with Sander, very far along and already wobbling, Mark and I took Matthew and Sawyer to the mountains of Virginia for a weekend. We stayed in a cute cabin and went for a walk in the woods. Matthew was 14 and wanted to do the “extreme trail” hike; since Sawyer was four and I was about as mobile as a beached Orca, we opted for the “stroller/wheelchair friendly” trail.

It was a beautiful fall day, and the place was empty.

We walked about a quarter of a mile, and then, right in front of us, a baby bear crossed the trail. It was gorgeous, and we all stood in awe, watching it. 

And then saw the mother bear, on the other side of the trail, and realized we were in between the baby and the mother.

So. Matthew, smart boy that he is, walked backward about twenty feet, slowly, and took off running. The mother bear came a little closer, probably 15 feet away by this point.

Mark picked up Sawyer. And tried to put Sawyer on his head, as high up as possible.

And then I saw him look at me, waddling backwards, and saw him trying to decide whether to go and bring Sawyer to safety or stay with me.

Yeah. There was no way I could fight the bear, unless I could manage to sit on it. And I couldn’t outrun a sloth.

That was when I realized why men as partners are useful. Mark has an interest in protecting me, and Sawyer, and the baby. And he’s physically able to do it when I’m nine months pregnant. All I’m able to do is obsess about nursery colors and baby names.

Thankfully, after we backed up, the bear had enough room to cross the trail after her cub, and after glaring at us, she lumbered off and away from us.

With all my self-reliance ideas shattered, I was still unprepared for childbirth. Sawyer had been a C-section. No big deal -- just a minor surgery. You’re out of commission for an hour or two, tops, and you could still hobble away later if you had to, baby in tow.

Sander was a natural birth. And was nine and a half pounds. And was two weeks late. And the epidural didn’t work.

Nothing, but nothing, ever, in my life, prepared me for labor.

I thought it would hurt. I took a delightful class on hypnobirthing, that taught me to ride the waves. I was ready for anything, and figured if it was THAT big a deal, no one would ever have two kids.

Wrong.

Perhaps my problem is that I wasn’t abused enough as a child. I’ve never been hit. Never been in a fist fight. Never been beaten, or had a black eye. Never broke a bone. I’ve really never had to deal with physical pain.

Until the day Sander was born.

I had a fantasy of walking the halls, breathing deeply, riding the waves. I asked not to be hooked up to a monitor, so I could walk around and take a shower. No catheters or bed pans for me, thanks -- I was going to be fully mobile.

And the first labor pain hit. The doctor had come in and said we had to start things moving, so he broke my water and said to see if that did the trick.

Within about ten minutes, I was convinced I was dying. There had to be something wrong. No one, ever, could have ever felt this way.

And then, crawled up in bed in the best fetal position I could manage, I screamed, and moaned, and yelled, for eight hours. You know it hurts when you have a sliver under your fingernail? Yeah. That kind of pain.

The kind of cramps you had when you had the worst flu of your life, and you were shaky and sweaty on the toilet from the pain? Double that.

And then, imagine having the worst flu possible, vomiting and shitting all over the place, unable to speak because of the pain, and someone comes up to ask you to make important, potentially life-altering decisions.

Do you want ice chips? Do you want a monitor? Are you sure you don’t want a C-section? Do you want to try the epidural again? Can you hold completely still for five minutes?

And then, at the end, the baby wouldn’t come out.

And so, the flipping begins. The midwives turned me like a pancake. On my back. On my knees. On all fours. Over a giant rubber ball, ass end up, almost naked. All done with monitor wires and an oxygen mask and an IV and a fetal probe attached.

I have vague memories of the worst of it -- I was quite literally unable to think. I was panting and gasping and completely unaware of what was going on around me.

If I had been a cavewoman, unattended by my mate, or perhaps a peasant girl who’d been thrown out of the house because she was pregnant, I would have had no protection. None.

Lions, come get me. Bears, have at it. Bad guys, take what you can get. I’m not going anywhere.

But there is a beauty in the whole thing, knowing that your mother did this. And her mother, did, too. And her mother did, and without painkillers. And her mother, probably at home. And knowing that many of them lost children because they didn’t have the resources we do.

It’s a wild, savage beauty, though. It’s not pretty. Neither are babies.

I’ve never talked about poop and vomit and blood and snot more in my life than the first month after Sawyer was born.

In my twenties, picking up cat vomit made me sick.

Now I can wipe a nose, a bottom, clean up barf and a dog mess before breakfast without batting an eye.

And here I am, again.

Hoping this baby is healthy. I’m only eight weeks along. A lot could go wrong. I’m optimistic, though -- the two pregnancies I lost were both times of immense stress in my life, and both times I never felt sick. This time, I’m making up for those -- I’m sicker than I’ve ever been. Although Mark swears I say that every time, and I was just as sick and tired with Sander and Sawyer.

Which is why he was hesitant.

Humph.

Oh, and the worst bit? I’m trying to avoid food issues with this kid. We’ve already got one with celiac disease and one recovered from autism, so I’m being careful and following suggestions from great doctors. 

Unfortunately, those suggestions are:

No gluten

No dairy

No sugar

No caffeine

No alcohol, obviously

No meat with hormones or antibiotics (so no eating out, unless it’s vegetarian.)

No produce with chemicals or pesticides (so all organic, at least at home.)

Yeah.

Doesn’t leave much that I like.

And it means that my newest craving, for a turkey and bacon foot-long sub from Subway with lots of hot peppers and Italian dressing, just isn’t going to happen.

Sigh.

So, wish me luck the next four weeks. I have an ultrasound on Nov. 23, and we’ll see then if everything looks good. If we see a heartbeat and baby’s the right size, I’ll be a lot happier.

If not, I’ve been doing a LOT of puking for nothing!

The best meal ideas ever!

Sander, Sawyer and a friend. Sander didn't like the friend. Can you tell?

Published July 21, 2009

You know, every time I think I’m getting the hang of cooking, I’m knocked on my ass.

This article from The New York Times, which is just a bunch of salad ideas, knocked me out.

Why, oh why, aren’t I eating like this every day?

Why have I ever eaten beans and rice when I can have this:

“Cereal for grown-ups: Start with puffed brown rice; toss with chopped tomatoes, scallions, a minced chili, cooked or canned chickpeas and toasted unsweetened coconut. Dress with coconut milk and lime juice.”

I had bean soup for dinner last night. Why didn’t I do this:

“Cook short-grain white rice in watered-down coconut milk (be careful that it doesn’t burn) and a few cardamom pods. While warm, toss with peas (they can be raw if they’re fresh and tender), chopped cashews or pistachios, a pinch of chili flakes and chopped raw spinach.”

Or this:

“Sear tuna until rare (for that matter, you could leave it raw) and cut it into small cubes. Toss with shredded jicama or radish and shredded Napa cabbage; season with mirin, soy sauce and cilantro. Avocado and/or wasabi paste are great with this, too.”

I thought I was fancy and uber-urban with my walnut-dried-cranberry-feta salad.

Apparently, that’s SO last century.

This is the salad of today:

“Grate carrots, toast some sunflower seeds, and toss with blueberries, olive oil, lemon juice and plenty of black pepper. Sweet, sour, crunchy, soft.”

Yeah. That’s the New York Times talking.

I’m off to go buy me some modern vegetables.

I had a meatloaf defrosting. Silly, silly me.

Perhaps I’ll buy some arugula. Or maybe some raw spinach.

My kids can eat the meatloaf.

The article, because I know you’ll be wanting to read it and eat it, is here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/22/dining/22mlist.html?pagewanted=1&em

Questions I've been asked today

Published June 20, 2009

If you were Oliver Wood, and you had to kick one person off the quidditch team, but not Harry, obviously, because he’s famous and people come to see him play, who would you kick off and who would you replace him with?

What is the worst thing in the newspaper?

Would you rather be a cyclop’s eye or Anubis’ guts? Why?

Would you rather be trapped in a car at the bottom of a lake, with a hammer to get out, or be trapped on an ice floe, in a stagecoach, before cell phones were invented?

What’s your favorite character in any book, and what book would you move them to if you could?

What’s the best book you ever read?

What’s your favorite character in Star Wars the Clone Wars?

Why can’t we get another dog?

Why can’t we let our dog have puppies?

Can we get a horse?

What’s the most disturbing thing you ever saw?

What’s your worst fear?

Why does everyone have to die and what would happen if everyone came back to life at once?

What if all people were turned into big rubber balls?

What if we all could breathe under water?

What gives you nightmares?

Which one of us do you love better and why?

Why won’t you tell me what the most disturbing thing you ever saw was? 

Why won’t you tell me what gives you nightmares?

How old do I have to be to have a cell phone? Girlfriend? Video game?

Sigh.

My brain hurts.

A month's worth of gluten-free meals, made easy!

Originally published July 19, 2009

OK, this isn’t really EASY. But it’s a lot easier to do all the cooking at once and get it over with.

I’m SO tired of trying to figure out what to have for dinner.

So I thought I’d list the meals we eat over and over again, and how I make a lot of them ahead of time so they’re ready to cook.

Below are 30 meals, in no particular order, that we eat in a given month.

Some are vegan -- some can be made vegetarian. Others are heavy on the meat. It all depends on what’s on sale and what I have in the freezer.

Below the list, I’ll line out how to cook the bulk of this in one day and have it ready to go the rest of the month.

Really.

Beef or bean tacos with corn tortillas (meat from the make-ahead night)

Bean soup -- lots of extra veggies

Corn chowder -- made with coconut milk for creaminess

Pasta with sun-dried tomatoes, capers, pecans and olive oil

Meatloaf (from the make-ahead night)

Chicken enchiladas (from the make-ahead night)

Lentil soup (crockpot)

King Ranch chicken (from the make-ahead night)

Fajitas (storebought -- make sure seasonings are GF and use corn tortillas)

French onion soup

Pizza  -- BBQ sauce and chicken

Sausage and peppers

Fish tacos (from the make-ahead night)

Potato soup

Grilled chicken with Thai peanut sauce (from the make-ahead night)

Shrimp marinated in Italian dressing (from the make-ahead night)

Chili

Beef stew (crockpot)

Pizza -- whatever meats and sauce you have on hand

Pasta with meatballs (meatballs made ahead)

Sander’s chicken (from the make-ahead night)

Pork tenderloin (from the make-ahead night)

Hamburgers

Taco soup

Thai chicken curry over rice

Stir fry veggies over rice

Grilled salmon with rice and veggies

Sausage skewers on the the grill

Pasta with leftover sausage

Egg frittata with whatever leftovers you have

Scrounge night

Chicken cacciatore (from the make-ahead night)

So. 

Everything that isn’t made ahead is easy to make on the day of, or to plan ahead that week and have it ready.

If you want to do just a couple of meals, that works, too. If you want to do chicken one day and beef another, fine.

Do what works for you. This is, obviously, a general overview of how to do it. I can’t tell you quantities, because I don’t use them. I can’t tell what kinds of spices, because I change them every time according to what I have on hand.

But if you really need recipes, or this isn’t clear, just let me know and I’ll try to be more specific.

On the day you’re going to cook everything ahead of time, have ready:

Shrimp

Fish

Sausage

Pork tenderloin

Beef stew meat

Ruffles potato chips (trust me on this)

Ground beef

Chicken breasts and thighs

Corn tortillas

Taco seasoning

Enchilada sauce

Peanut butter

GF soy sauce

Coconut milk

GF Italian dressing

Mustard

Brown sugar

Chopped pecans if you like them

BBQ sauce

Lots and lots of gallon-sized ziploc freezer bags

Regular cooking stuff: Eggs, seasonings you like, canned tomatoes if you like them, carrots and onions, salt and pepper -- whatever you like to cook with. These are, after all, your meals.

I can’t tell you quantities. It’s your family. Do you want to make up six bags of taco meat and that will last your family a month, or will that be a year’s worth and it’s way too much? I do know that if you wrap this stuff well it really won’t go bad for at least two to three months and you probably won’t regret having good meals ready to go.

And you don’t have to do this all on one day -- you could do chicken one weekend, and beef another. But that kind of negates the never having to cook thing, so I do it all at once.

First, the ground beef.

With it, you can make:
Meatballs

Meatloaf

Meat for tacos and taco soup

Meat for pizza

Divide into how many portions you want. Make the meatballs and meatloaf the same way: Mix ground beef (and turkey or pork if you like,) with lots of crushed Ruffles potato chips, Italian seasonings, eggs and ketchup until it looks like meatloaf. Make balls out of some, loaves out of some, and freeze in pie pans or on paper plates in ziploc bags uncooked.

When the time comes to eat them, thaw the night before and cook ‘em up.

Take the rest of the ground beef and mix it with taco seasoning (check seasonings to make sure they’re GF.)

It’s your call whether to cook the meat first or freeze it raw. I think it tastes better if you cook it the night you eat it. But it sure is nice to have a couple of bags of taco meat ready to go when your family is hungry.

If you cook it first, leave a bag or two marked for pizza so you’ll have a quick topping.

For tacos, cook the meat and serve in corn tortillas with beans, rice, lettuce and lots of good salsa.

For taco soup, saute the meat, add chicken broth, add frozen or canned corn and a can of tomatoes to the broth, and serve with tortilla chips and salsa.

Next, the chicken, fish, shrimp and pork tenderloins.

Some will be raw and some cooked.

Start a pot of plain rice. You just need a little.

Start some chicken cooking for King Ranch and enchiladas.

Just simmer it in water on the stove until it’s done -- use what you like to eat -- boneless thighs are good, or breasts, or even tenderloins. Use what you like.

While that’s cooking, make up a bunch of quick dinners.

These are EASY.

Take as many pieces of chicken as you need for one meal for your family and put them in a ziploc.

Add a sauce.

You’re done.

Sauces:
Teriyaki: GF soy sauce, honey,  a little lemon juice

Italian: Pour GF Italian dressing over it

Thai peanut: Mix some peanut butter, coconut milk, soy sauce and a splash of hot sauce. Add a little sugar or honey, too. Use as much as you need to make it taste good, or look up a good recipe -- I just make it up as I go.

Any of the expensive sweet/hot sauces they sell at Whole Foods and HEB: Mango/Habanero or Apricot Brandy, etc. 

Barbecue sauce (Make sure it’s GF)

Label them and freeze as is.

Do the same with the shrimp and the pork tenderloin.

The pork is good with herbs and honey and mustard, or with the teriyaki or Italian sauces.

The shrimp is amazing with the Italian dressing. Or do two and do one with herbs, lemon juice and fake butter or some olive oil.

For the fish: You’re going to use it for fish tacos. Rub taco seasoning on it, put it in a ziploc and freeze. Do a salmon with herbs on top, and maybe honey or a teriyaki marinade, if you like.

Freeze them all uncooked.

When you’re ready to eat, thaw the night before.

All of these are good on the grill or in the oven -- the shrimp can go on the stovetop in a skillet.

For the fish, cook in a skillet or in the oven, flake and serve in corn tortillas with cabbage and salsa, or with a homemade tartar sauce -- use GF mayo and pickles.

For the salmon, simply cook the way you normally would: Under the broiler or in a pan.

Serve everything else with rice, potatoes or GF pasta. If you want to save the sauce when you cook it, make sure to heat the sauce with the chicken so it’s cooked through.

Sander’s chicken:

Take as many breasts as you have people in your family. Pound them flat with a mallet, a tin can, or whatever you have that will work and not damage the breast.

Wrap a little of the rice you just made (season it first,) inside the breast.

Roll it up, and sprinkle on mustard, brown sugar and some pecans if you like them.

Put as many as you like in one pie pan for one meal, and make as many meals as you like.

Put in a ziploc and freeze, uncooked.

Simply thaw and bake when ready to serve.

Chicken enchiladas:

Use the cooked chicken (if  you’re really lazy or in a time crunch, use a roasted chicken from the market. Just make sure it’s GF.)

Shred it, mix with GF enchilada sauce -- easy to make your own, or use store-bought. The best brand is at Sun Harvest, by Frontera. Really good!

Take the saucy chicken, roll it up in corn tortillas that you’ve warmed in the microwave a few seconds to soften, and put in a pan. Pour more sauce over the top.

Freeze a whole set for dinner. We put 12 in a pan for four people.

Really good with beans, rice, salsa and fake sour cream.

King Ranch chicken:

Basically, you’re making a lasagna with corn tortillas and salsa.

The hard part is that you need a GF white sauce.

Here’s how to do it:

In a large skillet, melt some oil or shortening. Mix in a couple tablespoons of rice flour or any GF flour blend. Stir until all the flour is absorbed -- add more oil if you need it.

Slowly add in some chicken stock, stirring the entire time, until you have a thick sauce. Salt and pepper liberally, or it won’t taste good.

In a casserole dish that can freeze: Make a layered dish with tortillas on the bottom, then some chicken, some white sauce, and some salsa or Rotel.

More corn tortillas, and repeat.

Finish with corn tortillas, a little white sauce and Rotel or salsa on top.

Make three or four of these. It’s a pain in the neck to make, and it’s silly to make just one.

And let me tell you: If you can have cheese, this is one of those dishes where it makes a difference. Add it, liberally.

If, like us, you can’t have it: Add salsa and fake sour cream when you eat it and pretend it’s nice and cheesy.

So, that takes care of beef or bean tacos, meatloaf, King Ranch chicken, fish tacos, chicken cacciatore, chicken with Thai sauce (or whatever sauce,) marinated shrimp, taco soup, pork tenderloin, Sander’s chicken and meatballs. 

The rest is stuff that’s crockpot or easy to make in one night:

Soups: 

Corn chowder -- made with coconut milk for creaminess

French onion soup

Potato soup

Chili

Pastas:

Pasta with sun-dried tomatoes, capers, pecans and olive oil

Pasta with leftover sausage

Pizzas:

Pizza  -- BBQ sauce and chicken

Pizza -- whatever meats and sauce you have on hand

Crockpot:

Beef stew

Bean soup -- lots of extra veggies

Lentil soup

Sausage and other quick meals:

Sausage and peppers

Hamburgers

Thai chicken curry over rice (just chicken and store-bought curry paste, with veggies and coconut milk)

Stir fry veggies over rice (just a GF teriyaki sauce, veggies and rice)

Sausage skewers on the the grill

Fajitas (storebought -- make sure seasonings are GF and use corn tortillas)

Egg frittata with whatever leftovers you have

Scrounge night

Do you need recipes for these? I mostly wing it, but I’ve been cooking GF a long time.

If you need recipes, let me know and I’ll post them later this week -- this is just to everyone started with some ideas, so we’re not all stuck in a rut over what to eat!

Gluten-free dinners

Originally published February 9, 2009

Our weird dietary restrictions, this week:

Sawyer’s celiac. Can’t have gluten, ever. Not even a crumb. No dairy, either, and yeah, no soy. 

I cheat and let him have fries and such that are fried with soybean oil once in a while or we’d never be able to eat out. But “real” soy, like tofu or fake sour cream, is off the menu. It does disturbing, odd things to him, best saved for a later story.

Sander’s gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free, too. He’s not celiac. Don’t know what he is. He was autistic, now he isn’t. But if you take him off of this diet, he starts getting all weird again. Not going to do a trial and error thing with him -- my kids are not something where I want the word “error” to be applied...

So, for now, no gluten, dairy, or soy.

Mark wants to stay away from nightshades and sugar, too.

I love Mark, but screw any new dietary restrictions right now. I’m sorry, but I’m going to eat tomatoes and sugar. He can deal.

This, in no particular order, is the kind of stuff we have for dinner on a regular basis.

Keep in mind that we don't eat a lot of meat.  So I've had to get very creative. 

Here goes: I'm trying to have a soup, a pizza and a pasta each week. This covers a lot and prevents me from having to constantly worry about what's for dinner. It's also NOT boring.

Soups can be lentil, bean, gumbo, tomato, chicken tortilla (one of our favorites) or 

French onion (without cheese... Sigh.) 

Vegetable soup (no noodles or barley -- we substitute rice, rice noodles or just put in lots of corn and potatoes.) And corn chowder. Yum. Add coconut milk to make it creamy.

Oh, and potato soup, if you make it without cream. You can use coconut milk here, too.

Pasta -- try Tinkyada or Mrs. Leeper's. It's really not bad -- we like Mrs. Leeper's corn pasta. We don't use a lot of meat, so we just do chopped up tomatoes, summer squash, onions and peppers, but you can do meatballs, sausage, whatever you like. Pasta can be elbows or spaghetti or spirals, with all sorts of sauces and meats.

Pizza is, well, pizza, and it's pretty good. Not as good as "real" pizza, but my kids like it and it's easy. If you’re in Austin, you can buy a good one from Gluten-Free Kneads at Whole Foods. Gluten-free, dairy-free and it tastes good! You can make it with Chebe bread or a store-bought GF crust, topped with tomato sauce and veggies. My son likes the fake cheese sauce that I make on top of it -- you can put on soy cheese if you like it. I think it's pretty disgusting, and the pizza tastes pretty good without it.

So, that's three nights down.

Then there's meat one night, fish one night, sausage one night: For meat, there's hamburgers or veggie burgers (hard to find GF veggie burgers, but they're out there, or make your own), steak, pork loin, BBQ pork chops, and every kind of chicken you can imagine. The only thing you can't do is open a can of soup and dump it over the top.

And, of course, there's sausage. My son loves it, so we have it about once a week. We get soy-free "clean" sausage from Whole Foods, with no nitrites or garbage in it. Cut it up and sauteed with veggies over rice, make jambalaya, have kebabs on the grill, cut it up and mix with peppers and onions on chebe bread rolls. That's four dinners from sausage right there!

Chili. Straight from the package, it's gluten-free. Just make it yourself and read the ingredients. At least two or three brands are gluten-free, and it's an EASY dinner.

Leftovers can include Frito Pie, chili in a baked potato, chili omelettes and chili dogs. OK, I actually try to eat a lot healthier than that, and my kids have no idea what a Frito Pie is, but it's an option if you like stuff like that.

Other than that, meat night is easy. Make the same things you've always made, just modify them a little to be GF, and forget the bread. Have rice instead of pasta, and add lots of veggies.

Fish night's the same. Salmon, any kind of white fish -- make a quick sauce from wheat-free soy sauce, if you can have soy, and from soy-free mayo if you can't, and you're set. But PLEASE buy "clean" fish. There's all sorts of garbage our kids shouldn't be eating in most fish. Buy from Whole Foods, know what you're buying, or skip the fish altogether.

Some nights we do breakfast for dinner: Scrambled eggs, waffles, pancakes.

Some nights we do leftovers.

And some nights we just have almond butter and jelly sandwiches.

This doesn't have to be as complicated as it sounds! If you need more specifics on any of the above, just email me - that's what I’m here for!

Oh, other things I just remembered that we like: Fish tacos, chicken or veggie enchiladas (most canned sauce is GF, but check), and King Ranch chicken (but it's hard to make without dairy... maybe just a chicken and tortilla casserole, if you're new to this.) Barbecue pork chops, Rudy's barbecue... The list goes on!