Easy, Creamy Polenta (Oven or Instant Pot)
Plus, 5 Dinners in Real Life
Hi!
At my house, we’ve been back to school for almost two months now, so routines are clicking into place. We’re building and flexing those executive function muscles that help get homework done and backpacks packed and a newly acquired violin to school on the right day for orchestra practice.
The executive function “skill” that’s lagging behind the others is the ability to get up on time. Although is getting up in the morning really a skill that kids can be taught?
I’d argue that dragging our kids out of bed is something that parents just have to endure until our kids start experiencing real world consequences that motivate them.
When I was a kid, my real world consequence had a name: Sharon.
Sharon the Bus Driver was not to be messed with. She had a short, tight perm and a satin bowling jacket and raspy smoker’s voice. If you missed the regular bus stop and had to be picked up on the last corner out of the neighborhood, you were shamed briefly and curtly when she had to stop and pull open the door just for you.
Not only that, but all of your schoolmates witnessed the shaming. They watched silently as you bumped down the bus aisle, desperately looking for seat, sweating and panting because you had just sprinted through the neighborhood. You did not want to be that kid.
My kids don’t have a Sharon in their life because we’ve either driven or walked them to school every day since preschool. My experience is that without a school bus to catch, kids don’t really care about getting to school on time - at least until middle school, when tardiness starts to have real consequences. I’m seeing this in my 8th grader, who is much better about getting out of bed than she was last year and is definitely better at it than my 4th grader.
For the first few weeks of school, waking the kids was a real point of irritation in my morning. I would get more and more annoyed every time I had to go into their rooms. Yelling at them definitely wasn’t working, so I changed my tactic. Now, on the mornings when the kids aren’t budging out of bed, I send in my husband, who approaches the situation with a lighter hand. He cues up the bluetooth speaker and blasts them out of bed with something annoyingly motivational (the theme song to Rocky is a favorite).
It has helped immensely to approach the issue with humor instead of annoyance. What about you? What is your pain point in the morning? Have you found a solution yet?
Recipe of the Week: Easy Creamy Polenta
As we shift into cooler weather, it’s a good time for a polenta refresher. If you like the mildly sweet and earthy flavor of cornmeal, then polenta can be an easy side dish or part of main dish. It’s filling and comforting and has the texture of a thick savory porridge that’s especially good with cheese and sour cream mixed in.
There are two ways to serve polenta: creamy and firm. Creamy polenta is served in a bowl and eaten with a spoon. When creamy polenta is poured into a square dish and cooled, it becomes firm and sliceable. You can also buy tubes of firm polenta at the grocery store (I’ll send a recipe for firm polenta next week).
This polenta recipe shows you how to make creamy polenta, either in the oven or in your Instant Pot. Both are hands-off cooking methods that are easier than stirring polenta on the stove. They aren’t necessarily faster though - both methods take about 40 minutes to cook (plus, I recommend soaking the polenta grains for 1 hour in water before baking).
Even though it’s not faster, I really like a hands-off method (especially the Instant Pot) because you don’t have to babysit the polenta. While it cooks, you can do something else.
The other night, I used that time to help with homework, grate a pile of Cheddar cheese and slow roast tomato slices to serve on the polenta. Sour cream, chives, roasted mushrooms and roasted squash are all delicious with polenta. So is sausage of any type and heavier meat dishes like pot roast, spare ribs, pork chops, meatballs, or Instant Pot pork shoulder.
Find the full recipe here → HERE (the recipe card in the blog post has instructions for both oven baked and Instant Pot polenta)
5 Dinners in Real Life
I’m always curious about what other families are eating. Aren’t you? I hope that my week of real life dinners will provide helpful recipes & cooking ideas for your family. Here’s what my crew ate last week:
Monday: Without really planning it, I’ve noticed a pattern of “bowls” showing up on my weekly meal plans. By “bowls” I mean any type of dinner that can be prepped ahead of time and then eaten in a bowl: taco bowls, hummus bowls, tofu bowls, noodle bowls, etc.. Bowl dinners have been great for weeknights when the kids have sports practice and either we’re eating late or everyone is eating at different times. I prep all of the ingredients the night before or early in the day and everyone can assemble their own bowl for dinner.
On this Monday we had hummus bowls with cucumbers and tomatoes, feta cheese, olives, roasted zucchini, farro and pita bread.
Tuesday: We had rice noodles with broccoli and mushrooms, an old recipe on my blog that I just updated. You roast the veggies in the oven then toss rice noodles (I like brown rice noodles for this recipe) with the veggies and a mild stir-fry sauce.
Wednesday: I’m in the process of updating/improving a meatball recipe on my blog so we had turkey meatballs for dinner with ravioli and jarred red sauce. The meatballs were okay, but not nearly flavorful enough, so I made some recipe notes and will be trying them again this week. I’m not a fan of ground turkey so I don’t really enjoy testing turkey recipes, but it must be done!
For dessert, I remembered that I had extra pie dough in the freezer from the previous week when I baked an apple pie for Sorin’s birthday. I also happened to have a can of condensed milk in my pantry and all of the other ingredients needed to make chocolate pie. It seemed like the universe was telling me to make a chocolate pie, so I listened.
Thursday: Leftovers! I’m finding that during the busy school year, one night of leftovers or “find your own dinner” is essential to my sanity. I simply cannot cook dinner five nights in a row. You too?
Friday: The blog updating continues, this time I improved a recipe for Instant Pot sweet potato & black bean chili. It’s easy to make and you might just have leftovers for lunch on Saturday. Bonus! I like to serve this chili over a bowl of brown rice with LOTS of toppings: cilantro, green onion, sour cream, grated cheese, crumbled tortilla chips, etc..
Cookbooks
Start Here by Shola El-Waylly is like a cooking encyclopedia in both looks and content. It’s big and heavy and 555 pages long. The pages are filled with foundational cooking skills, a touch of food science and recipes that teach basic techniques to help turn you into a confident cook who doesn’t need recipes. The first half of the book covers savory recipes and the second half is baking and pastry.
There is a wide variety of savory recipes in this book - everything from perfect scrambled eggs to grated beet & chickpea salad to seared scallops and broiled turkey meatballs. I was happy to find that most of the recipes are very simple and straightforward and perfect for busy home cooks. Interspersed with the recipes are lessons that teach you the “why” behind the techniques.
This is the type of cookbook you’ll either want to buy or renew from the library several times. There’s a lot of information to absorb and I found myself immediately engrossed. Shola El-Waylly’s style is reassuring and conversational. She makes cooking feel like a fun and creative activity that anyone can master.
That’s it for this week! I’ll be spending Saturday at a swim meet and hopefully an hour or so on Sunday drinking coffee and catching up on my reading. Here’s what I’ve been reading lately - what’s on your bookshelf?
Jenny
Margo’s Got Money Troubles - Rufi Thorpe
Long Island - Colm Toibin
The Round House - Louise Erdrich
