So, continuing the cooking theme, tonight I made oven roast chicken with gravy, buttered carrots, and mashed potatoes. This is the first time I’ve ever attempted to cook a whole chicken and make real gravy from meat drippings.

Let me tell you what I learned:

DON’T COOK THE CHICKEN UPSIDE DOWN.

Oh, there’s a right-side up?

Yes, it turns out that the chicken should cook breast-side up. In my defense, I was just following the recipe that said to “place the chicken in the pan” without indicating HOW to place it.

I should have referred to the picture of the finished chicken in the cookbook, maybe.

Anyway. It took 2 hours to cook instead of 1.25-1.5 hours, and when the temperature finally registered in the right range and I pulled it out and started carving, I couldn’t figure out where the meat was. I kept cutting into bone. As I verbally expressed my frustration for the leanness of the poultry my brother suggested that maybe I got a defective chicken.

Finally, finally the lightbulb turned on and I realized my mistake. Flipped the bird over and voila! Perfectly cooked breast meat.

I took pictures, but I will spare you. My first attempt at gravy turned out good, I think, and I had no complaints on the mashed potatoes or buttered carrots (which were baked in the oven an hour, then dotted with butter and sprinkled with sugar, salt, and pepper).

Lesson learned.

After attending the Food Nanny cooking workshop last weekend, I made a point to cook dinner for my family this week (not every night, mind you, but about four nights out of seven) and for our family to sit and eat together at the table each of those nights.

I’m using the Food Nanny’s cookbook as my helper.

It’s truly fantastic. Last Saturday I wrote out my menu plan for one week (nothing too ambitious) and went grocery shopping. The plan involves picking a theme for each night and using recipes to fit that theme. I took all my recipes this week from the cookbook.

Sunday (Family Traditions): Slow-Cooked Chicken Noodle Soup with homemade egg noodles, salad on the side
Monday (Comfort Food): Homestyle Mac and Cheese, green beans and bacon on the side, apple pie for dessert
Tuesday (Breakfast for Dinner): French Toast (made with homemade French baguettes), strawberries on the side
Wednesday (Mexican): Navajo Tacos with homemade Three-Bean Chili with Sausage

Success! It was intensely satisfying to cook food for my family and have us sit together to eat each night. The kids at least tried most things, and some things they really liked.

The chicken soup on Sunday turned out pretty good, although I think I made the egg noodles too floury, and they turned out a little tough.

On Monday the mac n’ cheese was good, but homestyle isn’t my favorite way to eat it. I’ll try a different style next time.

On Monday I also made an apple pie, maybe my first ever? The Food Nanny demonstrated making pie crust at her class, and it looked and tasted amazing. When I made my own I got interrupted about a zillion times and it took me about three hours with all the breaks. By the time I put the top crust on, the dough was too warm and fell apart. It’s not a lovely pie, but it tasted good. Next time I’ll use a less tart apple than Granny Smith.

On Tuesday I made homemade French baguettes. The Food Nanny demonstrated these as well at her class. The bread is quick, taking only about an hour from start to finish. And it turned out delicious. I used the bread at night to make french toast, and Wes LOVED this. He ate them with his fingers and dipped them in maple syrup. My next goal is to buy a baguette pan, which will shape the loaves so they don’t spread and flatten as they rise.

Wednesday was Navajo Tacos, which I’ve never made before. I fried thawed Rhodes white Texas rolls in hot oil to make scones (or Navajo fried bread). The Food Nanny suggests in her book using her Three Bean Chili with Sausage on the tacos (although you could use canned chili). Since I don’t love canned chili, I made her suggested recipe. And it was delicious! It really made the tacos extra tasty. Wes really liked this dish, but I think it was mostly the fried bread he liked, since he ate a couple extra.

We had leftover chili on Thursday for lunch, and later in the week I made the Food Nanny’s Buttermilk Corn Bread with honey butter. Delish. Her honey butter is the best I’ve had. It’s equal parts butter and honey, with a half-teaspoon of vanilla.

In addition, for breakfast yesterday I made her German Pancakes with Strawberries. It’s an oven pancake that you eat with sweetened sour cream and strawberries. I never would have thought of sweetening sour cream with brown sugar, but it was delicious with the pancake and strawberries.

All in all–a successful first week. I have my menu ready for this week. We’re having roast chicken tomorrow, chicken pot pie on Monday, Fettuccine Alfredo Tuesday, French toast Wednesday, and taco salad on Thursday if I make it that far. We’ll see how it goes.

My sister told me about a cooking class she was going to hosted by the Food Nanny (a.k.a. Liz Edmunds). She’s a local chef who has a TV show on the BYU channel (“The Food Nanny”; you can watch full episodes here) where she helps families establish family dinnertime as a regular and important part of their routine. My sister said there was a discount deal for the class, so I signed up too and we went together.

The cooking class I took with John a few weeks ago was fun and educational. But this cooking class with the Food Nanny was not only fun and educational, it was also kind of life changing.

Cooking for my family has never been my strength. My usual routine: pull open the cupboard and pantry around the time we’re hungry and stand in stupor, wishing dinner was already made, and by somebody else. We’ve never had a regular mealtime at night, but I know it’s important. At our house, where John works from home, we’re essentially all home together all day long, every day. We have a lot less structure than other families who expect dad to come home from work around mealtime, and then it’s time to eat! We just kind of do our own thing. Since we haven’t had structured dinner time, I would let Wes snack whenever, and John and I would eat whenever.

After taking Liz’s class I decided I wanted to make dinnertime an important, established part of our daily family routine. And going to her class (and getting her cookbook, which was included) made me believe I could do it.

Wow. That’s miracle #1, believing I could plan and prepare dinner for my family.

Meeting Liz, the Food Nanny, in person was awesome. I’ve seen her show, and she’s just as likeable and adorable in person as she is on TV. We drove through some gorgeous (although treacherous) snow on the way to her house.

(Bridal Veil Falls on the left.)

This is Liz’s house. Isn’t it gorgeous? It was a family cabin that they eventually built onto to make their home.

Liz made us feel so welcome, like we were part of her (very large) family. She let us roam around her house and take pictures. We felt right at home.

This is the kitchen where all the magic happened.

To give you an idea of what kind of hostess she is, when you went to dry your hands in the guest bathroom, this is the surprise you get when you reach for the hand towel.

Liz spent some time explaining why family dinnertime is so important. She also told us about her background, and how family mealtime really kept her and her family grounded while her husband was a pilot and gone a lot. She’s been following the basic guidelines shared in her cookbook for nearly 40 years. I think it’s a good measure of her success that her grown kids’ families all have routine family dinnertimes, too.

She had a lot of good points, and she truly is right: family dinnertime is a lost art and really important to establish and maintain in your family.

Liz’s rule of thumb is to plan your meals one to two weeks in advance (two is better), and to aim to prepare meals at least five days a week (everyone deserves a night or two off, she says). She suggests having a theme for each night, and that makes it easy to pick food to prepare. Her basic guideline is:

Sunday: Family Traditions
Monday: Comfort Food
Tuesday: Italian
Wednesday: Meatless or Breakfast for Dinner
Thursday: Mexican
Friday: Pizza
Saturday: Grill Night

I think it’s kind of brilliant, simple as it is. It makes it easy. And even easier is that you can go to her website and use this tool to create your themed menu for up to two weeks. And you can even print your grocery list from it.

Liz made an ambitious amount of food for us. It was so helpful to watch her demonstrate and share tips and information as she worked. It was a great experience, in part because she made it look so easy, like even I could do it!

First up, pie crust.

She made apple pie, apple crisp, and then used the leftover pie crust to make jelly rolls. The pie actually burned, but it was still delicious.

In the first picture, the apple crisp is on the bottom, pie on top.

Next was french baguettes. They’re simple to make (surprise!). Liz calls them her go-to bread because they only take about an hour from start to finish, including rising.

Liz is holding up a double baguette pan, which I am definitely investing in. Because now I, too, am One Who Bakes Baguettes.

She used some of the baguettes to make fried bruschetta. It was actually the first thing we were given to taste. It was delicious. A little heavy on oil, but great in small quantities.

Then it was pizza. She uses a pizza peel to make the pizza on, and then she bakes it on ceramic tiles in her oven (bottom picture). She used to use a pizza stone a lot (which I use at home), but in her more recent travels to Italy she’s discovered that they used tiles in their ovens. She bakes the pizza directly on them.

She made us arugula and tomato pizza. She said she got the idea for it when she was in Italy and asked a chef to bring her his healthiest pizza, and this was it. She didn’t even know what arugula was at the time. It’s a very strong-tasting, almost bitter, lettuce. The pizza was good, but definitely for grown-up palates.

Lastly, she made us two pasta dishes: chicken marsala and spaghetti carbonara.

The chicken marsala was AMAZING, and I hope to recreate it in my own kitchen sometime. The carbonara was the only dish she made that I wouldn’t try making at home. It was too spicy for me. She said some chefs make carbonara with cream, and others with water. She uses water, but I think I would prefer cream.

By the time we finished, the weather had cleared into a beautiful day.

So, miracle #1 was that I believed I could do this for my family. Miracle #2 is that I actually am!

Wes, Carissa, and I made an outing to the Children’s Discovery Museum. We went with our friends, but naturally I forgot to take any pictures that included all of us together. It was fun to carpool up together.

The very first attraction inside the museum is a giant ball garden. Kids can push balls into vacuum tubes that suck the balls up overhead and spit them out in various places. There are all sorts of activities kids can can do with the balls, and I can tell you that once Wes entered the ball garden, he did not want to leave. Ever.

Eventually I pushed him out and we saw the rest of the place. There’s a mini grocery store, which was mostly filled with cute little girls wearing aprons, filling their shopping baskets with pretend food and checking out at the cash register. Wes zeroed in right away on the plastic fruit shaped like balls. So I had to get him out of there quickly, as the girls didn’t like having produce thrown at them.

The great thing about this place is that all the kids, no matter how young, can feel like they belong there. Everything is meant to be played with. Even Carissa was right at home, finding plenty to stay busy with. She had fun exploring the child-sized house.

The other favorite activity was the water station. Wes and Carissa could have stayed there for a long time.

Carissa liked to drink from the boats.

We had a good time, and I’m sure we’ll be back sometime.

Wes turned four in September, but I was a little slow getting him in to the doctor for his well-child check and just went last week.

Wes weighs 32.8 lbs and is 37 inches tall. He’s grown about 6 inches in the last year. On the “typical” child chart he’s in the about 1.3 percentile for height and weight. On the Down syndrome chart he’s closer to 60 or 70 percentile. His BMI is actually in the 70 or 80 percentile. So he’s doing fine.

I read an article recently that said that about 92% of pregnancies that test positive for Down syndrome are aborted. I have a really hard time understanding why any person would want to remove life from her body. I find it especially sad to think that parents who could potentially love and find joy in their child deny their child life because they’re afraid and ignorant about what it’s like to raise a child with a condition like Down syndrome.

I’ve talked with a lot of moms in my county who have children with Down syndrome. All of our kids have unique challenges associated with the extra chromosome. Many kids have more severe medical concerns than Wes has experienced. But even parents who have dealt with heart surgeries, sleep apnea, leukemia (and the list could go on) love their kids and think their kids have worth, regardless of the challenges involved with caring for them.

If people could just understand what they’re giving up when they either abort their baby or give it up for adoption (which is common in other countries; children with disabilities are considered undesirable).

I don’t understand it. John says it’s because I have a good heart, and that maybe it’s better that I don’t always understand why other people do what they do.

I think it’s just because every day I get to watch Wes live and see how much he loves to live. I don’t worry about Wesley’s happiness. I don’t worry about his success. I only worry that he’ll find as much love and acceptance from others as he has for everyone else. It makes me think that kids who are as innocent and full of love as Wes are really made for a better kind of world than we can offer them.

In October I held my annual chocolate tasting party. It’s an excuse to get girlfriends together for good company and good chocolate.

I prepared 18 samples of chocolate–milk, dark, spicy, and fruity–for us to taste and rate.

We had water to and unsalted crackers to help cleanse the palate between tastings.

And, because we are nerds like this, we used scorecards with “Chocabulary” ideas to keep track of our opinions.

The clear winners:

MILK CHOCOLATE
Godiva Milk Chocolate Salted Caramel 31%

DARK CHOCOLATE
Dove Silky Smooth Dark Chocolate

SPICY CHOCOLATE
Lindt Dark Chocolate with Chili

FRUITY CHOCOLATE
Dove Silky Smooth Raspberry with Dark Chocolate Swirl
Ritter Sport Milk Chocolate with Strawberry Creme

And the #1 loser:

DARK CHOCOLATE
Godiva 85% Extra Dark Santo Domingo Chocolate

Ironic that one of our favorite brands (Godiva) also made our least favorite chocolate of all. The milk with salted caramel was sweet and salty and delicious. The extra dark was bitter and sour, and no one liked it. Another unfavorite chocolate was in the spicy category: Sunflower Market Dark Chocolate with Chili Chipotle. People thought it was too spicy.

After the chocolate was tasted and rated, can you believe we ate more chocolate? My table was spread with delectable chocolate desserts that people brought to share.

Oh, boy. We had a good time.

And when it was time to go home, there was more chocolate to take home and share–or not–with the family.

Only one more year until the next one!