Weekend update, January 18, 2014

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me "Look for the helpers.

 You will always find people who are helping.” 

Fred Rogers

Days and weeks are filled with themes and thoughts, and there's nothing unusual about that. What makes one week different from another though, are the themes themselves- and the themes that have paraded through this week are as different from my norm as cotton candy is from cauliflower.
 and by cotton candy I mean

pink airy sweet stuff sprinkled with
edible sparkles that looks like some
sort of intergalactic fairy nebula.

and by cauliflower I mean

boiled cauliflower.

For instance, I can now recognize at least four My Little Pony ponies. I can name them on sight, describe their cutie marks and enumerate their particular magic powers. This will come in extremely handy 

the next time I am mugged by a plastic pony
and have to describe it to the police.

And there have been princesses. Lots and lots of princesses. All of whom, if you tip the story a certain way, have a helper- an invariably something not quite human, usually small, often goofy, always loyal helper. Whom no one aspires to be.

Sigh. Everyone wants to be the princess. No one wants to be the resourceful, diplomatic and musically gifted crustacean.

well, okay.
Almost no one.

The thing is, in most of the old stories, the Princess graduated to let's-pick-out-curtains-for-the-castle princesshood only after she'd earned an A in a long course of gracious and goodnatured helpering. Without ever knowing it was a prerequisite for princessness, these hard-working girls learned how to give and receive help.

This one did                                       and this one                                            and this one.

As well as the princess in training who has been helping me all week,

this one.

We started with the always phenomenal, super versatile red sauce. 

Here it is on night one as spaghetti sauce, served up for the pure food aficionados without any of its molecules doing any icky mingling with any other food molecules. 

sauce, meat, cheese and pasta in
separate compartments.
and yes, as a matter of fact, I did teach them to
test for pasta doneness by throwing a noodle against a wall.

On night two, it turned into pizza sauce

We used  this so-easy-an-actual-child-can-actually-do-it  no knead bread for a crust, and since we had a jar of basil pesto in the fridge, she also added pesto, chicken broth and half and half to some red sauce so she could offer her mother some tomato-basil soup. She assured me her mom would love it, and she was right.

The useful thing I learned this week, besides important and interesting facts about ponies and princesses, was that you really can make stellar butternut squash soup out of canned pumpkin.

here, we are learning that sometimes you just
have to let your hands get ookey.

Half of that butternut squash was sliced for roasting, leaving only half for the soup. So with my daughter's past experience to assure me, we spooned a can of pumpkin puree into this really great Apple and Butternut soup recipe. (We were a little too focused on it's warming soupy goodness to remember to take pictures.)

The only not so great dish of the week was, ironically, the one we picked from a list for picky eaters, this cheesy corn casserole. Not quite cornbread, not quite corn pudding, neither grownups nor children wanted more.

But if you have 15 minutes, a box of broth, about 3 other things, and a hungry tummy,  try stirring up this easy taco soup. 

it's this easy,

and this good.

We used broth instead of water and leftover cooked ground beef, but with leftover or canned chicken or no meat at all, this is still an amazing recipe thanks to the crazy secret surprise ingredient, a packet of ranch dressing mix. There, I've linked it twice, so you know I mean it.

And here's another thing I mean-

I mean it when I say that it matters.

What you do, what you have done,

to help the people you love with the 

hard work of living.

It matters.

And this week

though it may come in unexpected forms

and from unexpected places,

I hope that you receive in return

all the help you need.