How Much I Spend on Alcohol & Bars

I got this analysis of my spending today:

Historically I have spent $3 a month on alcohol and bars, but the program helpfully suggested that I budget $10 a month. 

I presume that Foodgoat is more than making up the difference between my spending and the U.S. average of about $90 a month.

Fortunately there was no analysis of my monthly expenditure on juice boxes, because I suspect that would be mortifying.  

Football Started!

Football season has started! 

The dish of the season is nachos, and so far one big bag of tortilla chips from Costco has lasted three games.  But I have yet to try and make the cheese sauce from scratch.  So yes, I bought canned cheese sauce.  Because that is exactly what they serve at the stadium.   I was trying to be authentic, you see. 

The four year old did not believe me, though, and insisted that we had to go buy, you know, real cheese.  When I didn't listen she yelled, "Daddy, Mommy thinks cheese comes from a can!"

Well, kid, you are not going to like this, but Mommy also thinks corned beef, ham, and tiny sausages from a can. 

The canned cheese sauce turned out to be fine.  Although yesterday we went with jarred cheese sauce instead.  So real homemade cheese sauce may be coming up soon.  Especially since we are still working on that one bag of tortilla chips.

By the way, DJroomba made Game of Thrones sigils for all the NFL teams, and I have to say, I love the ones for the Browns and the 49ers:

 

One of My Favorite Thing to Freeze: Bananas

Sometimes there is just one last banana is left, rapidly approaching over ripeness. Sometimes your kid says she wants a banana, then changes her mind after you've already peeled it. Or she changes her mind after one bite, leaving you with an impulse to talk to your toddler about the lifelong importance of FOLLOW THROUGH as well as an almost whole banana.  A banana that seems too much to throw away, but not enough to make banana bread out of.

I like to eat bananas, but I do not like to eat them under duress.  I do not want to feel forced to eat a banana just to avoid fruit flies and wasting $0.59 a pound.

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So it was a revelation to find out you can freeze bananas.  You can freeze them sliced (like if you use them for smoothies), but I just like to freeze them whole so you know exactly how many bananas I have.  You can freeze them with the peel still on, but I found it gross and slimy to try to peel it once it starts to thaw, so I freeze it peeled.  I don't even label it in the freezer bag, because it's pretty obvious that it's a frozen banana.  

Then when two or three have accumulated, I make banana muffins.  I take them out, leave them out for a few minutes, then mash them out.  When they thaw, they get mushy all by themselves, so the longer you let them thaw, the easier it is.  They also turn a weird and unappetizing brown, but it doesn't seem to make any difference in the muffins, taste-wise.

And so now, bananas are not wasted nearly as much as before, so I can buy bananas with abandon.  

I will still have that talk about follow-through with the kids though.  

Richard Simmons

I saved this screenshot of last week's New York Times so that any time I want to look at Richond Simmons in drag wearing a Medusa wig, I can.

I started to look up recipes by Richard Simmons, since he has had a few cookbooks out, but food isn't really his thing, and besides, in the recent Grantland profile I found this quote:

Winifred Morice, a nutritionist who worked for Simmons for 16 years, said, "The first cookbook I gave to Richard to look at just before it went to press, and he made one change. I'd written, 'Recipes developed by Winifred Morice.' He put, 'Recipes developed by Richard Simmons and Winifred Morice.'"

As Morice admits, Simmons made up for it with unrestrained benevolence.

In any case, let's all be thankful that Richard Simmons does not have a show on the Food Network.  That would just be too much. 

How Kids Eat Lucky Charms

I realize now that sometimes you just shouldn't ask kids for their opinion.  For example, "What cereal do you want?" is a poorly constructed question.  Because the answer I got was "This one!  It has RAINBOWS!!"

I love sweet cereal but Lucky Charms has always seemed completely unappealing because marshmallows should not be shaped and colored to look like anything.  Marshmallows exists only to be melted with butter and used to bind Rice Krispies together.  Oh, and that Lucky Charms leprechaun guy was super annoying in the commercials.  But having offered to get them the cereal of their choice, I was bound to the Lucky Charms.

And here is what happened:

They ate ONLY the fake colored marshmallow rainbows.  The part that actually looked like cereal is the part they left behind.