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Posts Tagged ‘Nutella’

  1. My Pantry is Bare, and I’m Happy

    August 16, 2013 by admin

    Right now, I’m sitting in my kitchen in the quiet of the early morning, enjoying a cup of coffee and admiring my bare pantry.

    I know. Totally weird, right?

    But you have to understand. Just two weeks ago, there was disorder and chaos. Among other unsightly things, there were half-full bags of chips, crackers and pretzels, small-house-sized boxes of Goldfish wedged between shelves, bags of awful leftover birthday party favor candy that I felt too guilty to throw away (I ate all the chocolate), 4 half-boxes of lasagna noodles (WTF?) and six cans of expired evaporated milk. (I mean 1. who has that much evaporated milk? and 2. who lets it go bad? That stuff lasts forever!)

    I mean it was bad. My pantry was the Sanford and Son of pantries.

    Sanford

    But where there was mayhem before, I now see organization and clean lines. Jarred things are grouped together by type like high school cliques. Boxes are aligned by size. It’s a beautiful thing.

    And just how have we reached such a food storage nirvana, you ask.

    We stopped buying snacks.

    Fig Newtons. Pirate’s Booty. Potato chips. Even the Goldfish, my children’s crack. We stopped buying them all.

    The Martha Stewartization of my little pantry is just a pleasant bi-product of a decision that was made because 1) my husband and I were getting too fat and 2) my kids spent most of their waking hours asking for snacks. Snacks to go to the grocery store. Snacks for the park. Snacks to drive to hockey practice. Snacks to eat at the dojo. Snacks because they hadn’t snacked in the last 45 minutes. Snacks, snacks, snacks, snacks and more freakin’ snacks. And I gave in. All. The. Time.

    And then I’d yell at them when they wouldn’t eat dinner. (Mealtimes could be a shit show.) Or get frustrated when they balked at my suggestions of fresh fruit or veggies. We don’t want THAT!

    So we stopped buying the admittedly delicious snack-y foods. (And I stopped making those “special” weekly trips to Dunkin’ Donuts for munchkins too.) Not because of High Fructose Corn Syrup or Gluten or GMO’s or Monsanto. Not that I don’t care about those things. It’s just that I can’t keep up or keep track. Not with three kids. I have a hard enough time just making sure my toddler is not eating sand or Legos.

    We stopped buying the snacks just because we wanted all of us to eat a little better. A little fresher. I wanted my kids not to gag when I tried to feed them zucchini and summer squash. I wanted them to know that a snack or a treat doesn’t have to come out of a box or a Dunkin’ Donuts bag. That it can come from a tree at our local farm. And we started to feel like all these foods we were giving them were getting in the way of that.

    It’s been a couple of weeks and so far so good. Actually, it’s more than good. I’ve already lost a couple of pounds (God only knows how much I was consuming with the handfuls of potato chips snatched during frequent pantry flybys or the spoonfuls of Nutella inhaled before bed.) My husband – damn him – has lost even more. And while I expected a Linda Blair-type reaction from my kids (Wow, that picture really freaks me out), it only took a couple of days before the kids stopped whining about what we didn’t have, and instead started reaching into the refrigerator for a healthier alternative. Even if they are doing it out of spite or to halt starvation, I figure we’re still winning.

    I’m not saying I’m never going to buy Goldfish crackers again. I’m not going to start sending anonymous crazy-lady posts to message boards lecturing other moms about the dangers of high fructose corn syrup or about the necessity to buy organic. I’m not going to tell my kids that they are banned from eating Doritos or potato chips on playdates. I’m just going to try and be better about what we eat as a family at home. And if that means no more Nutella, well, I’ll just have to eat it behind closed doors. Kidding! (Kind of.)


  2. It’s Bloody Vacation Week!

    February 19, 2013 by admin

    So it’s school vacation week and I’m supposed to be all “Ugh. Vacation week. What am I supposed to do with three kids and a whole week off of school?” But I’m not. Well, maybe just a wee bit.

    But considering today was a holiday and I was off experiencing the glamorous life of a freelance writer while Mr. PBJ was home with the kids, I really have nothing to complain about. After all, if you had some child-free hours to kick off SCHOOL! VACATION! WEEK!, wouldn’t you spend it at the BOSTON CHILDREN’S MUSEUM, the mecca of every. single. vacation-crazed. child in Eastern Massachusetts? I mean school vacation week and the Boston Children’s Museum? What could be more utterly relaxing than that? No. But seriously. I am writing an article about the Museum’s Centennial for the Boston Parents Paper and they are gearing up for some pretty cool stuff in the coming year. It was crowded. Yes. But I didn’t get sneezed on or kicked in the shins and there was an odd orderliness to the chaos. Plus, it was kind of funny to watch some other mom running after her toddler who was tearing shit up in the gift shop. Not funny in a ha-ha way, of course. The poor thing.

    Come to think of it, I had a pretty good vacation week kick-off. Saturday, I went to a great wine-tasting at Sweet Baby Vineyard in East Kingston, NH. If you haven’t been there and you’re local, you should check it out. They have some pretty decent reds and whites and a big selection of fruit wines if you are into that sort of thing. Personally, I like to stick with grapes, but I heard the raspberry wine was delicious. Anyway, it was a great afternoon with good company and some damn tasty cheese. Added bonus: The “I’ll-just-be gone-for-a-couple-of-hours-for-a-little-wine-tasting” affair ended up turning into an evening of margaritas, chicken nachos and interesting conversation. (Thanks again to Mr. PBJ who was home with a cold and three rambunctious children. I owe you one.) To top off the evening were late-night viewings of Rocky IV and V. (Yo Adrian, more on this latest obsession later.)

    Then tonight, we capped off tonight’s President’s Day festivities with a round of my son’s Countries of the World trivia game, which involves asking trivia questions about… countries of the world. Weird, huh? Anyway, to make it even more interesting, we attempted to ask each question using an accent that might be associated with each different country. But YOU try conjuring accents from Tanzania, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. In the end, we just ended up shouting bad British accents at each other and using the word “bloody” a lot. But it was funny none-the-less and really great to hear my son’s belly laugh.

    The rest of the week we plan to bowl, watch movies, play in the snow, eat junk, stay up late, see my middle baby get his Kempo yellow belt and go to the Cape for a three-day hockey tournament. (Go Clippers!) And I plan to drink some more wine. Should be a good week and I’m looking forward to it.

    But right now – and I mean right this very instant – I need to go to bed because I keep getting up, opening the cupboard, taking out the jar of Nutella, removing the cap, sniffing and hastily screwing it back on. It’s torture. If eating a whole jar of Nutella with a butter knife is bad, I don’t wanna be good.