Super Bowl Recipes and Bribe Your Athletes

First, try my Brunswick Stew recipe under the Recipe tab here on my website. This is cooking in quantity. It's best cooked the day before, fish out the chicken, cut up the chicken, put back in your slow cooker and it's ready for your family and friends the next day. Next, go to the Helpful Resources tab on this website. Follow these clicks: youvegotsupper/ Browse Recipes/ Turkey/ Double Decker Turkey, Bacon and Havarti Sandwiches. This draws rave reviews from husbands and teenage sons. Just find a round loaf of bread- Montana Gold in Richmond, VA makes delicious round loaves- cut a wide hole in the top, tear out the bread inside and layer the ingredients. And food can be a great bribe. To add a focus factor to our son's rec league basketball game today, we promised him pizza if he had a good game. Well, he really had a "goal" to shoot for- he made 20 points and his team won by 3 points against a top team. Incentives work!

"Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior"

This article was in the Wall Street Journal this week-end. If you are interested in better parenting skills, this article will give you "food" for thought. Chinese mothers believe "academic achievement reflects successful parenting" and if children do not do well in school, the parents "were not doing their job." Chinese parents believe "nothing is fun until you're good at it." To do well, it takes work and practice, practice, practice. I very much believe a vital part of successful parenting is regularly having family meals in your own home with TV, phone, video games off. And the discipline of planning, shopping and cooking your dinners exhibits to your children a degree of discipline you also expect of them. The Chinese think "rote repetition is underrated in America." The rote repetition of dinnertime is a start. Did anybody watch college basketball this week-end? Under Dean Smith, UNC players were expected to always make their free throws. Today, there is no one in the ACC with a worse free throw % than UNC. No one wants to practice. And free throws, dinnertime, and absolutely nothing is fun until you are good at it. Parents- practice starts with us. Let's do our job!

Try Adventure in the New Year

A couple of definitions for adventure: A thrilling experience; to run risks. Our family did that over the Christmas break. Our oldest daughter went down-hill skiing for the first time and loved it despite frigid temps. The rest of us went 8 hours away to Georgia to visit a family we had never met. Our daughters are great friends that met at camp and we loved their daughter. So off we go to a family farm to deer hunt, enjoy picnics and all sorts of delicious food, sift through dirt to find Indian pottery, see and learn history and be blessed with wonderful fellowship. The original part of the house dates back to the late 1700's and this farm has been in the family since the 1800's. I have never been deer hunting but I took my camera and a book and climbed up a deer stand for 2 hours and enjoyed the beauty and fresh air. I didn't see a deer but my son did! We took a risk this family might not like us but what a thrilling experience we had enjoying the outdoors, new experiences and especially making new friends. So why not run a risk that your cooking might not always be perfect, but try a cooking co-op adventure, make new friends and have a weekly plan for making dinner more than mealtime.