What do you think?

Why does the big monkey think that I should come up with her spelling sentences? And decide whether her writing is neat. It's constantly "what do you think"? I guess I should be lucky that she's asking my opinion at all. It's just that suddenly -I'm in 1st grade. I don't remember my parents ever helping me come up with sentences - heck their English was pretty darn poor only 2 years after coming to America.

So how did I survive??

Either kids were more resourceful back then or the kids today are just plain dumber (I'm only partially kidding). We've made it so easy for them to get help on the answers that they don't need to think too hard about anything. We are making "survival of the fittest" a crap shoot for their generation.

It's not just me either - there are plenty of articles that talk about parents enabling kids to the point of writing notes to their work excusing "Billy" from work due to illness or just being tired!! As I have stated before, my parents are immigrants. We are used to hard work! My parents stood in lines for hours for bread and then trudged home in the snow! No excuses for them!

Maybe that's why I am struggling to draw a fine line with helping my children with whatever I can (each generation has to do better than the previous) and teaching them how to be independent.

In regard to my goal of health and money savings, I've realized that I need to plan for bringing lunches - otherwise I'm more tempted to go out and spend money. I've been taking whatever is available. Some examples:

* Two garden burger patties (taken from home) covered with salsa and queso cheese dip (found in the work kitchen).
* Lean Cuisine Ravioli (that I brought to work about 1 year ago)
* Leftover Waffles

It dawned on me - if make a crock pot meal once a week I will be able to have at least 3 no-brainer, healthy lunches. Apparently I'm a slow learner ;)

Last night I decided to make a meal I have been eyeing for a while.

Crock pot Thai Chicken
Bettycrocker.com



8 chicken thighs (I use 3 lbs chicken legs)
3/4 cup salsa (I should have used 1.5 cups or whole jar)
1/4 cup peanut butter
2 Tablespoons lime juice
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon grated ginger root
1/4 cup chopped peanuts (didn’t added – I had walnuts, pine nuts and macadamia nuts, but no peanuts)
2 tablespoons fresh cilantro (I forgot to add)

Place chicken in crock pot. Mix other ingredients except peanuts and cilantro. Pour over chicken. Cook for 8 hours on low. (4 HOURS ON LOW FOR BONELESS BREASTS)

Save the peanuts for garnish, along with the cilantro.

Posted by Claire 797 from the Cooking Light Bulletin Board


WARNING - don't do what I did!!! Don't layer each ingredient separately in to the crock pot. If you do layer each ingredient in to the crock pot, mix around before cooking, if you don't mix before cooking, mix about 1 hour before taking out of crock pot.

If not - the top pieces will have chunks of creamy peanut butter on them - BLECH!!! Then, you will have to re-heat in a frying pan (see above) to mix up all the ingredients sufficiently.

So - I think that this could be really good if it wasn't for user error - and a little bit of tweaking on my part.