Mothering Many

Welcome to Mount Vesuvius, where we have unscheduled hot eruptions from various orifices. We hope you enjoy your visit. Have a good day.

Today I feel much like the squished up pop-tart I peeled off the living room carpet not to long ago. If you were expecting wit and intelligence today, you’ll need to check out the blog roll over there and find someone who is on their game.

This is Batman. This guy has a smile that will melt my sternest disciplinarian heart. He also has a penchant for wandering around the house consuming other people’s food and drinks. The running joke around here when something good comes up missing is “Batman ate it.”

Since several of you asked for my cheesy brat stew recipe, I thought you might enjoy the CookingSpot. They have thousands of free recipes, and they are searchable by title or ingredient. You can also submit recipes to the site once you have registered. Registration if free, and also enables you to build shopping lists and and save recipes to your recipe box. Enjoy!

We had something for dinner last night that was so good, I have to share. While I was doing the grocery shopping, I bought 3 of the 16 inch pizzas from the deli area in Wal-Mart. Those things are huge, and they are good. And they are inexpensive! I think I paid about 10 bucks for a meat one, and it had plenty of toppings, and yet the pizzas were not greasy.

My kids love to eat “out food”, but it can easily cost $50 bucks for us to get dominoes. This is a quite reasonable alternative. And 16 inches is a ton of pizza. Admittedly, we’ve been off our feed lately, but the 9 of us could not finish 2 of these.

Technorati Tags: pizza, Wal-Mart

Monday: ravioli fom freezer, fried green tomoatoes
Tuesday: bbq sandwiches, potato salad, pickles
Wednesday: chicken of some sort, maybe fried, green lima beans
Thursday: reruns
Friday: shrimp scampi which we did not have last week because we all got sick

“Do not thump my breasts. These are the breasts of life.” Spoken to Batman on April 30, 2007

Today I am blessed because I have healthy children who love me and a husband who loves me, too. I am blessed by my own wonderful mother. I could wax poetic about her, but I am sick. I have been out procuring the necessary food stuffs to feed this household of 9 for 3ish weeks, and I am exhausted, without audible voice and I must go to bed.

You know that there is no way on earth a woman can have as many children as I do and not be fascinated with baby products. I love the little clothes, the little shoes, the soft blankets, the cool diaper bags. I love all that stuff that comes with babies. Even when I don’t have a tiny one, I am inexplicably compelled to look at the STUFF. I just can’t walk by the baby section of a store without at least peeking in, and usually walking through it. And I confess: I do the same thing on-line. When I saw WithCharacterKids come up for review, I had to head on over and check them out. The site is pleasing to the eye, and easy to navigate, and the array of products is great.

Today, I was looking at diaper bags, and this Eddie Bauer Backpack Diaper Bag caught my eye. I like the fact that it’s not overly cutesy, because that means anyone in the house will be willing to carry it, not just ME. And since it’s a backpack, it can be carried hands-free, which means I can hold on to both my little ones even if I’m the one left holding the bag (haha, pun intended). I also like the fact that while it has the changing pad and bottle pockets that I need for babies, it’s a bag I can carry well after I don’t need a diaper bag per se. Because, yeah, even moms of eight sometimes want to look cool, ykwim?

In addition to the diaper bags, they also carry room decor and bedding with characters you and your kids both will love. They are about way more than the babies, though. they have stuff for toddlers, kids, tweens and teens, too!

Ok, here is the recipe so many of you asked for. It’s quite a bit different from the original, but we love it. It feeds 10, so you may need to cut back on some of the ingredients.

• 2 lb kielbasa, sliced about 1/2 inch thick
• one family sized can Cream of Mushroom soup
• one jar ragu cheese sauce
• cooked potatoes, either fresh or canned or frozen, half a pound to a pound
• one to two pounds frozen vegetables—green beans, broccoli, mixed– whatever you like

Mix it all together and bake at 350 for about an hour. Serve with salad and/or bread. Yeah, I know that’s pretty simple. I am all about the easy.