Recipes

Easiest ever recipe for chili
From SL
(More recipes added to this blog via "COMMENTS")

1 can each of:

Black beans (rinse beans, drain and put in pan)

Kidney beans (rinse, drain, put in pan)

Baked beans (do not rinse)

1 can diced tomatoes (I use spicy ones)

1-2 cups frozen corn (I used canned corn and it worked just as well)

1 Pkg taco seasoning (or chili powder and cloves or combo of other spices)

1 large onion chopped (I omitted)

1 green pepper chopped (I omitted)

Put the onion and green pepper in bottom of pan first and cook to carmelize a bit. Then add rest of ingredients

Bring to simmer then turn down heat a bit for at least one hour.

You can add some chicken or turkey sausage (cooked first).

This is an easy recipe to double so you have a lot through the week and some to freeze.

Kids trying to teach ME how to cook

My kids are trying to teach ME how to cook!

Isn't that a hoot?

And who do THEY think taught THEM how to cook?

Here's how it worked at our house:

When life settled down a bit and we moved to the farm I bought a JOY OF COOKING cookbook (the bigmama of all cookbooks). Starting from the beginning, I read about fats and carbohydrates, about the economies of pressure cookers, hot pots, blender breakfasts. Calories and protein was next; what we need to eat and what we don't need to eat in a day. Making healthy snacks seemed important for me to learn. Next was how to construct a menu for a whole week, making sure we got enough protein, salads, fruits and veggies. All of that stuff. The kids already knew how to make cookies and cakes the way Mom had taught them. And I learned how to make shopping lists and how to keep things simple in the kitchen. And there were enough recipes in that book for a couple of lifetimes.

Shifting from a Mom-centered kitchen where she did most of the work was not easy. What's a kitchen without a Mom in it? Each of us had to get over their own kitchen-demons, mentally, physically or emotionally or we would starve to death.

Who is going to do all this cooking?

Everybody. It was well worth the effort of standing over a kid at the stove and reading directions to them from the JOY cookbook. Because soon it became fun to be "COOK OF THE WEEK." The designated "cook" received my undivided attention for that period of duty. They learned things that would serve them in becoming independent persons someday, about foods, nutrition and cooking. And they got happy applause from their family for making a good dish.

Kids and Kitchen chores

Each week, if you were not on duty as Cook, then you had another major responsibility in the kitchen. There was a chart listing each of the kitchen chores. And each week the kids would rotate. So if you were cooking this week, you did not wash dishes. And if you were the set-table and dry-dishes person you didn't do the other stuff.

Cooking duty: this meant you were involved, with me, in making the weekly menu on Sundays. This was followed by grocery shopping, me and the cook, and it was the cook's responsibility (to learn how) to stay within a budgeted amount of money. I didn't hear many complaints about being cook-of-the-week. It was the plum job in the kitchen.

The dreaded job: dishes. Maybe I understand why this was the most despised chore of the week. For one thing, the dishes person was last to leave the kitchen each night. Sure, everyone always helped "clear" the table after meals, so the washing dishes person began their chore when, often, the others were walking out of the room. Bummer! And maybe they also hated this chore because dishes had to be done to MY standards (not theirs). And they knew that if I found dirty dishes, then that person got to sharpen their cleanliness skills for a second week-in-a-row, a much dreaded consequence.

The setup and dry person: While we did not have a lot of visitors at the farm, the kids learned how to dress the table each day as if we were going to entertain company. I'm sure they viewed me, back then, as an unreasonable task master. Forks placed properly on the left, cloth napkins, appropriate table decor in the center, all of that. Today, if you visited one of their homes, you might well feel like honored company. You will find the forks appropriately on the left, cloth napkins, ... ! )))

Problems were not discussed at supper. I read someplace that talking about problems at the table was not good for digestion. And I intended supper time to be when we caught-up on each other's daily happenings. If there were issues to be confronted, supper was not the time to do so, nor were they dealt with soon before bedtime.

Am I sounding like a drill-sergeant to you, dear reader? I admit that I often was a tough parent. Feeling overwhelmed with the responsibility of being The Mom-Dad is an understatement, and there really were many times when I over compensated. Not only had the kids suffered the most traumatic loss anyone ever could, I was barely coping, myself.

For better or worse, the story of their childhoods had a happy ending: we all survived!

Now, in my senior years and living alone, there is a strong smell of roll-reversal in the air. They are trying to get me to take better care of myself. So they've teamed up against me again! (joke joke). They are now sending recipes to me, with instructions, that I am instructed to prepare on Sundays and then nibble-on through the following week! And even though I grump about it (just for effect), it does make me feel loved and cared for.

xoxo
Dad

Santa Claus Truth or Lie?

Oh you better watch out
You better not cry
You better not pout
I'm telling you why:
Santa Claus is coming to town

Truth or Lie?

Okay, we all know Santa Claus is not True. Like not really true. Like, --not really, really, actually true. But it is a symbol of something else, isn't that right?

So, let's see now. You clearly admit that you lie (or lied) to your children about Santa Claus.

But you never admit to them that you lie. Correct?

Yet YOU expect them to always tell you the truth, right?

Does this actually make sense to you?

We start them young, don't we?
We teach them that the easter bunny hid the eggs. Truth or Lie?
Or we tell them that the tooth fairy came. True?

Our kids, when very, very young, believe everything we tell them.
Yet, clearly, we have lied to them over and over.

But these were just little white lies, isn't that so? --another lie.

And then we wonder why they have problems believing adults at school.
For example, is doing homework necessary, as the teacher says, truth or lie?
"You should respect others." Truth or lie?

Do your kids know, from experience at home, that the rules at school are fact (truth)? Or fiction (a lie)?

Isn't it interesting what we do to our kids?

We teach them that truth is true only part of the time:
"You'll be grounded for a week if you don't eat every bite of dinner...."
"Okay, alright, you can just finish your vegetables and leave the meat...."
"Okay, okay, just eat a few bites. Eat at least two bites...."
"Look, you didn't eat a bite of your supper. I don't know what I'm going to do with you!"

If you've ever said those kinds of things to your child, you have unwittingly taught them that what you say to people doesn't really matter, that truth is optional and lies are okay under certain circumstances. They learn that stretching the truth is normal and threatening people is acceptable behavior. And then later in their teens, you wonder why they don't trust you anymore.

Many of us lie when telling the truth would be easier to do! And when we say anything less than the truth to our kids, they learn to do the same. Who taught YOU to lie like you do? Are you going to continue the family-chain of speaking untruths to your children and others? Will your actions today affect your child's future? Yours?

Consider how we adults lie to each other:
"Yes, dear, I'll only play cards with the boys until eleven."
"Okay boss, I'll try harder from now on."
"Officer, I will never break the speed limit again."
"Yes, Judge, I promise to stop drinking."

Some of us lie more than do others. But I'm not making a moral judgment here. I am simply pointing out that we seem to have a double standard, when it comes to our children, about telling the truth. Maybe we should recognize that this is simply another human weakness and try, daily, to do better. And that we ourselves have taught this behavior to our children. So when we catch our kids in a lie we will, hopefully, be quick to forgive, knowing that we, too, have the same difficulty with telling the truth 100% of the time.

Bottom line:
MY ADVICE is to teach the little ones early about honesty and integrity by your example; go back to the kids, as often as necessary, and admit that that you did not tell them the truth about it (whatever it is) and that you will work on telling the truth better each day.

xoxo
Dad

Kids smoking marijuana

Don't do drugs if you don't want your kids to do drugs. Simple!

It really is that simple, Mom. Kids tend to imitate their parents. Is that true? "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," someone said.

Here is my experience with my kids around the subject of marijuana:
One summer evening when the windows were all open I was finishing up in the kitchen when I smelled something different coming from outside. We had just finished supper and it was my turn on dishes so the kids had all gone outdoors. They were mostly young teens at the time.

We lived in the country then, and I was very accustomed to noticing the smells of rural living. The different types of farm animals were recognized by their particular odors; the smell of honeysuckles came early in May; the smell of newly mown hay meant it must be June. This smell coming in through the screen door was different from any of those that I was used to.

How strange an odor, I thought, as I walked to the door and sniffed the air.

Then it suddenly dawned on me: the smell was unmistably marijuana. This was the seventies, and I wasn't born yesterday))). Perhaps a car had driven past with someone smoking a joint, I thought. I stepped out into the evening light. All was quiet except for an early cricket or two testing their signals. The smell of marijuana was stronger. Could it be coming from the barn, I wondered? Where were the kids? I stepped off the porch and walked toward the barn, fifty yards away.

"Hi fellas," I said to my son and his pal who lived down the road. If you, dear reader, know only one thing about farm life you need to know that any type of fire in a country barn is --and always has been absolutely ver boten. This is true in every country in the world. And every child who ever lived on a farm knows this. So when these two farm boys saw me staring at them, caught not only holding a lighted joint in hand, but holding a lighted joint in their hand in the barn, their eyes almost bugged out of their heads and they gasped in unison. One threw the marijuana cigarette onto the dirt floor and ground it out vigorously with his shoe.

"Dad!" my son gurgled,"it's not what you think!" he said. "We were not smoking it. We were just trying it out!"

"John," I said, calmly, to the neighbor boy, you can go home now. He glanced quickly at ST and ran out.

"Let's go," I nodded my head toward the house.

"I didn't ---,"

"Be quiet," I said, now pointing to the kitchen chair. "Sit there." My brain was spinning. What should I do? I knew that this was another crucial point in my son's life. Like the "kids smoking" incident before (see archives) I would have to handle this in a way that would, hopefully, teach him that smoking marijuana was not okay. My thinking was that if he could learn a hard lesson now it might save him from a future of addiction to drugs later.

HERE IS HOW I HANDLED IT

I called the other kids to the kitchen and we all sat down at the table. No doubt they could sense an air of trouble in the room. I nodded toward ST and said, "He has decided that he wants to smoke marijuana, what do you think of that?"

All eyes were big and round.
You could have heard a pin drop!
Nobody moved.

"It's against the law to smoke marijuana, as you know," I began my speech. "ST here, is trying to get into trouble with the Law. But because we are in this particular family, our rule is that when one of us gets into trouble we are all in trouble together. Because not one of us will ever have to be in trouble by ourselves. We'll always stand with each other."

Heads nodded their understanding of our unwritten family "constitution."

"So if ST wants to smoke marijuana, we are all going to smoke marijuana!" I turned and walked out of the silent kitchen and came back right away with a small baggie, my own personal stash.

I sat down and silently rolled a joint. The kids looked at each other in dismay. I lit it and took a little drag.

"So here is the deal," I announced, "from now on it is okay for all of us to smoke marijuana! What do you think of that?"

"I'm not going to," said CL, the oldest.
"Me neither," said SL.
All heads were nodding in agreement with the older sister.

"Oh yes we will," I assured them. "Because if one of us gets in trouble for smoking marijuana we allll get in trouble for it," I repeated. "And here is the deal," I continued. "Any time one of you wants to smoke marijuana, it is going to be okay from now on, --but the deal is that we will all smoke it TOGETHER right here at the kitchen table.

"You can't smoke it with your friends and you can't smoke it away from this kitchen table. And if any one of you ever tells a teacher at school or ANYONE ELSE that I let you smoke marijuana, I will deny it completely. And who do you think they will believe? You or me?

"And furthermore, if anyone ever tells another human person about this deal we have in our family, you will alllll be grounded from everything except going to school, --until you are eighteen years old.

"That means grounded from visiting friends.
"Grounded from movies.
"Grounded from friends coming here.
"Grounded from EVERYTHING FOREVER
"until you are eighteen years old and you move out."

The youngest started to cry.
"Hush that!" I ordered. "ST is in trouble here and we're not going to have him be in trouble alone." She stopped.

I handed the joint toward the first one on my right.

She pulled back. "I don't want it."

"You are going to take a puff on it. We are not going to have ST get into trouble by himself. We are all in this together." I offered it again.

She put it to her lips and gingerly drew in some smoke and instantly coughed it back out.

I handed the joint to the next one. She took it. "I am NOT going to do this," she said.

"You ARE going to do this," I said. "We can't have ONE of us in this family to be in trouble by himself!"

She looked at the joint, then at me, then back at the joint. She took a light puff and blew it out.

The marijuana made its way around the members of the family. When it came back to me I blunted it out in a saucer and went over to the sink and sent it down the disposal.

"That's all," I said to them.

Getting up from the table silently some giving me a look of disgust and they went to their rooms. I never heard another word about it.

Now, fast-forward to 2008.
I do not know if this was the right way to handle the problem, of course. I was secretly praying for a solution to the immediate problem that night.
Right or wrong back then, the fact is that none of my kids has ever gotten into trouble over marijuana.
Of course, I do not know everything they have ever done while they were away from my eyes, but the fact is, --we have no drug addiction in the family. Except for me --later.

But that's another story for another day.

Bottom line
DAD'S ADVICE: Don't do drugs.
xoxo
Dad

There's some pretty good information about kids and drugs at
http://www.talkingwithkids.org/drugs.html

Spanking: Don't !

Hurt people hurt people.

Back when my kids were small I spanked them.

Today, I know that hitting little people shows a parent's ignorance, --even stupidity. Spanking a child says more about the parent's problem than it does about the kid's behavior.

My own inner anger was expressed by hitting them. How stupid is that?

I was angry about my job.
Angry about my poor communication with my mate.
Angry about my tight finances. All of that stuff.

Further, I know now, that I still held old anger and resentments inside of me from the way my parents had treated me! My parents had been spanked and even beaten when they were children. That is how all Neanderthal parents like mine treated kids in those days. They just repeated what their parents had done to them. How many centuries has this gone on? Long enough?

What did Forrest Gump say, "Stupid is as stupid does?" Yep.

So there I was with a house full of little people doing what little kids do, and I was taking MY ANGER out on them! Counseling helped me get rid of my anger. Stopping alcohol made me more even-tempered. 12-step groups like Al-anon and AA helped me learn how to deal with problems better.

Today I know there are zillions of ways to deal with children's misbehavior BESIDES HITTING THEM. Consider reading the book called Redirecting Children's Behavior, or even better would be taking some evening classes (see my FAV Links on the right side of this page).

IF YOU HAVE ANGER PROBLEMS you could start by reading an interesting page on the web: http://www.drheller.com/tbppangr.html

MY ADVICE ABOUT SPANKING: DON'T ! Get help for yourself.

XOXO
Dad

Fart Friendly Family

My Chicago grandchildren live in a very healthy and happy home with their mother and father. And these three little boys, ages 5, 7 and 9 have a beautiful way of teaching "Grampy" some important lessons about life.

They live in a fart-friendly family.

NOT SO in the house where my kids grew up. If you had been present in the room when my kids were small and one would pass gas with a noise, you would have seen me frown at her, wrinkle my brow and shake my head from side to side. My action gave her the message, "THAT was NAUGHTY."

Same with bowel movements when they were being potty trained. While I do not recall what I actually did at the time, my guess is that I taught my kids that their bodily functions, even in the bathroom were NOT OKAY. I probably made unpleasant faces or pinched my fingers over my nose when they were "doing their business" as I called it.

We used code words to describe needing to go to the bathroom. While my grand children in the fart-friendly family might say, "I have to poop," and "I need to pee," my own kids were taught corney code words, such as: "I have to do number two." Or, "I have to GO BIG." Etc.

And just today, in a conversation about these little grandsons this very subject came up. And my attorney daughter confided that even at 44 years old, she has such a hang-up about her bodily functions that she "never-never-never passes gas if anyone is within a hundred yards." She laughed and blushed as she said this.

So I asked my son about his childhood recollections of "bathroom stuff."

"Dad, when I was a teen ager I thought that girls never even needed to go to the bathroom. Maybe they just combed their hair in there. I kindof knew that my sisters pee'd because I could hear them once in awhile. I really wondered about it. And I decided that females just never did things that boys did, like farting or defacating."

I was astonished. I suddenly got-it that I had taught my kids that their bodily functions were something to be ashamed of. Shaming them had not been a conscious intention but that was the message they got from me, one way or another. I had inadvertently taught them that their bodies were shameful, that their humanness was somehow flawed, that there was something wrong with them. I felt sick at this realization.

So today I am wondering what YOU teach YOUR KIDS about their bodies. About bodily functions. Are YOU inadvertently SHAMING YOUR KIDS the way I did? Do you use code words? Do you want them to grow up ashamed of part of their bodies? HOW DO YOU HANDLE IT?

xoxo Dad

Kids smoking

HE NEVER SMOKED (tobacco) AGAIN!

When ST was 10 years old I saw him come strutting up the driveway with a CIGARETTE IN HIS MOUTH. He looked at me, grinned and shrugged his shoulders as I watched, aghast, from the kitchen window.

WHAT SHOULD I DO?

Whack him a good one on his butt?

Scream and yell at him?

Ground him for a month?

NONE OF THE ABOVE. HERE IS WHAT I DID.

BUT YOU MAY NOT L I K E how I handled this:

I stopped to think of my options. I was shocked, angry and disappointed to see this behavior. My first thoughts (the list above) seemed like the wrong ways to deal with this. I knew I had to nip this in the bud. Yet, I had already learned from previous experience with him that the most successful “discipline” would need to be something that would impress upon him a lasting lesson. If I handled it right, I hoped that he would decide for himself that smoking cigarettes was not a good thing. So, I wondered, what might be a creative way I could demonstrate this to him?

Trying to make my voice sound normal I called out, “I want to talk to you. Will you come in for a few minutes?” He threw the cigarette on the ground and mashed his shoe on it.

HERE IS WHAT I DID

I was a smoker myself, back then, and I took a fresh pack of Pall Malls (yes, I’m THAT old) from the cupboard and invited him into the bedroom. “You want to learn how to smoke cigarettes?”

He shrugged sheepishly.

“Okay, let’s learn how to inhale! That’s the way to smoke. You take a puff on the cigarette and you kindof suck in the smoke down your lungs.” I opened the pack, tapped out one and lit it in my mouth. “Like this.” I took a deep drag and gently blew it out, making a wobbly ring of smoke. I pointed one finger through the smoke ring and gave a jolly chuckle (for his benefit) at my cleverness. I handed him the lit cigarette, “Here, your turn. You try it. Take a big drag and suck it in,” I said, smiling happily.

“Nah, Dad, I don’t want to smoke anymore. I was just doing it with John out there.”

“Aw, c’mon,” I urged, “If you ever do want to smoke again you want to do it right, don’t you?”

“Nah, Dad,” he said, fingering the cigarette in his hand.

“Yeah, I’m gonna show you how to do it. Go ahead, take a puff, I won’t get mad.” Watching my eyes, he slowly lifted the cigarette up to his lips. “Go ahead,” I urged.

He took a light puff and swallowed the smoke then gagged, “Arrrugg,” he sputtered, (gag gag cough cough) “I don’t want it,” he said, handing it toward me.

“Opps,” I said, “you swallowed the smoke instead of inhaling it. You’re supposed to draw in the smoke gradually, into your lungs, you don’t swallow it. Try it again. This time, inhale the smoke. Inhale like when you walk outdoors on a cool morning and take-in a deep breath.”

He slowly lifted the cigarette to his lips. He inhaled and gently exhaled the smoke. He grinned.

“That’s it. You’ve got it, by george! Now do it like that again.”

He took another drag inhaling it without difficulty. He handed it back toward me.

“No, you keep it. This is how you learn to smoke. You inhale it.”

He took another drag. Soon the cigarette had burned down half way and I offered him an ashtray. He blunted it out in the ashtray. I tapped another cigarette out of the pack and lit it for him and handed it over.

“I don’t want another.”

“Sure, sure you do. Have another one,” I handed it to him.

After 30 minutes he asked to please not have any more.

The fun of smoking cigarettes with Dad was over long before. After 45 minutes the smoke in the room was horribly thick but there were more Pall Malls in the pack. He was beginning to look pale.

When the pack was empty I threw it in the waste basket and we both stood and walked out of the room.

Now in his forties, St says he never smoked tobacco again. (Our marijuana adventure is another story for another day.)

xoxo Dad

Dad's straight-forward advice

August 12, 2008 by fatherknowsbestadvice

Their mother died when we were both 35 so I raised my kids alone. And I learned some valuable lessons that may HELP YOU.

Today the one who was 7 is a prominent attorney. The 9 y.o. (then) is now an advisor to highest level government officials and corporate giants and is on a first-name basis with prime ministers, presidents and generals. The 12 y.o. is today a chamber of commerce executive for one of the most affluent cities in America. And my youngest is now a nurse.

My kids are successful and happy today because they worked hard, are smart, –and they had pretty good upbringing. Each one, today, says I was a GREAT DAD.

I’ll help YOU by telling you how I solved kid-problems. What worked. And I’ll also tell you what DID NOT work. YOU can learn from both.

So fire away with your questions and comments.

xoxo
Dad