What's for Dinner?

I'm just now trying to get back into the swing of cooking real meals with real food after the strike I was on during/following this last pregnancy. My goal is to do this six times a week, but right now I'll settle for five. And when I say "real meals with real food" I mean very few shortcuts (processed)--preferably zero, but let's be realisitic. The few cookbooks I own tend to be loaded with shortcuts, and I just reorganized the Hoosier and left very little room for new cookbooks. So, that leaves me surfing for ideas...

There's tons of places for ideas, but this one appeals to me: Meals for You. One problem I've been having is the inability to make decisions; no time is this more evident than when I'm trying to plan meals. So, the folks at Meals for You have done the planning for me. At the top of the homepage, I just click "meals", select my "meal plan" on the left, and viola! a whole list of meals appears for me to browse. When I select a meal, I get the recipes for all the courses. I can add it to my "cookbook", add it to my "shopping list", etc....it's a miracle, I tell ya. (Yes, I know...sites like this have probably been around forever, but it's pretty new to me.) You can print them right there, but I had problems getting some of the meals on one page. So I copy and paste the recipes into a Word file and fix it so it all fits on one page, print it off, hole-punch and stick it in my kitchen binder. Genius, I know. Oh yeah--the coolest part is this: you pick the number of servings and the recipe automatically adjusts itself. Amazing.

This has been a great tool for me. I've done three meals this past week from the low-carb/low-sugar category and they've all been very good. The best was tonight's meal: Easy chicken with vegetables (delicious & VERY easy), Pasta with lemon butter (I used couscous), and Mediterranian corn salad (excellent!). Everything went so well together and it received our highest rating. (I should note that I'm not afraid to tweak recipes to my liking, and I have no issue with using real butter, salt and pepper.) I know a lot of husbands aren't usually game for trying out new fare too many times in one week, but when you've gone as long as Brewmaster without regular real-food meals, they'll be up for anything!

In the News Today…

WTHR out of Indianapolis reports:

Indianapolis - The Warren Township school district is gaining national attention after a 13 Investigates report confirmed young students engaging in sexual activity during class time.School officials are refusing to comment publicly, prompting concern and outrage among township parents.

Two days after 13 Investigates uncovered hidden facts about two Raymond Park Middle School students engaging in sexual activity during shop class, Warren Township School administrators still aren't talking.

[…]

Associate School Superintendent Dr. Jeff Swensson confirmed the incident happened almost four months ago in an Industrial Arts lab with the teacher present. He told 13 Investigates another child acted as a "look-out," disputing an insider's claim that as many as ten children may have witnessed the act.

Should it bother us that our first reaction to this is probably, “Yeah, what else is new”? We’re pretty numb to stories like this out of public schools making national headlines. And the following quotes certainly reflect a big part of why we are so numb to middle-schoolers—what are they, 11? 12?—engaging in sex-acts during class with the teacher present:

"This doesn't pose any danger to the other students even if they did see it," Kevin McDowell, the attorney for the Indiana Department of Education.

When asked for claification, McDowell repeated his stance.

"All right, so they may have witnessed this. While this is an activity you certainly don't see in a school and it's something that would be certainly unusual, I don't feel - I don't know where it posed any immediate danger to those children who saw it," McDowell said.

Now, to give Mr. McDowell a little credit, he did at least undermine the manner in which school administrators have handled the situation. I mean, hey—it’s not like a kid was gunning them down during class or anything, so what’s the big deal? They’re middle-schoolers; they’ve already learned about sex and condoms in sex ed. Witnessing something as beautiful as the intimacy between two adolescents is necessary for their social development, right?

Here’s what Honorable Thomas Zampino said:

In this day and age where we seek to protect children from harm and sexual predators, so many children are left unsupervised.

Oh wait…I’m getting my stories confused. That’s what he said about a homeschooler. A completely unrelated story out of New Jersey that many of us homeschoolers have been keeping an eye on:

Honorable Thomas Zampino of the Family Division of the New Jersey Superior Court has ordered penal charges against a home-schooling mother of seven. According to a report by Matt Bowman on the website constitutionallycorrect.com, the mother's supposed infraction is home-schooling her children without supervision from the local school board - a right explicitly upheld in New Jersey law.

According to the court's opinion, Tara Hamilton is the defendant in a suit brought against her by her recently estranged husband, Stephen Hamilton. Stephen brought the suit in an attempt to force Tara to enroll their school-age children, aged 12 to 4 years, in parochial school because he believes that they are not receiving an adequate education while being home-schooled. All seven children currently reside with Tara.

I hope Judge Zampino’s opinion of homeschoolers isn’t widespread, because if it is and if we keep letting these judges play legislator (without votes, of course), we’ll be looking a lot like Germany. He went on:

In today's threatening world, where we seek to protect children from abuse, not just physical, but also educational abuse, how can we not monitor the educational welfare of all our children?"

Hence nearly every homeschooler’s decision to keep their kids out of your schools, Your Honor.

Thanks to Drudge Report and Why Homeschool for these stories.