A watched pot...

You know the old saying, " A watched pot never boils"? Well, that may be true, but so is this: If you watch the pot until you think it SHOULD be boiling, then look away for about 15 seconds, that pot WILL boil, and boil over. This is especially true if you are boiling something

potentially messy, stinky, or otherwise not fun to clean up. And you have a glass top stove. And you just spent a great deal of time the previous day giving the kitchen a major overhaul.

Thank goodness it was just yogurt and water at the time!

Now the pot is full of Organic Cheddar-Parmesan Polenta with Fresh Herbs. Sounds fancy, huh? Not really.

My mission for this morning was to make breakfast, a contributory potluck lunch dish, AND something for dinner tonight since I have a meeting to go to as soon as my man gets home from work. All of that before 9 am, so we have time to get ourselves motivated to leave in time to do all the errands we have on the to-do list.

So of course, as soon as I got up today, I prioritized by checking my email, facebook, and now that I tweet, twitter. Yeah, I know, I know. I saw a tweet from Foodimentary that said today is "Grits for Breakfast" day, and the light bulb above my head appeared: My (still sleeping at 9am) children will have "cheese grits"(read polenta) for breakfast, potluck will be cheesy

polenta(since my kids rarely eat my food at potlucks anymore anyway), and dinner will be fresh salad and maybe some homemade ravioli from last weeks pasta day with Cheri (we'll post on that soon, I promise!). Mission accomplished!

Now I can just add scour the stovetop to the list of things to do!

Thankfully polenta is a magic food that is quick, yum, super easy and cheap! All the qualities we love over here at Eat @ Mom's! Yessiree!

Here's this mornings version...

Bring to a boil:

4 cups water

2 cups plain yogurt

a pinch of salt

Wisk in:

2 cups yellow corn meal (ours is non-GMO organic that we get in bulk from our dry goods co-op, and tastes so good!)

Once it begins to thicken, which is always faster than I expect, reduce heat to low and stir in a couple tablespoons of butter, then grate in cheese to taste. You can grate first then measure, but I usually just do it right over the pot until it looks like enough. Today I used raw organic sharp cheddar (also from our co-op and also SO good!) and organic parmesan that I found by accident at BJ's! (I was pretty stoked about it actually). I probably used about a half to 3/4 cup of cheddar and 1/4 cup of the parm.

My garden is ready to be planted next week (remember I'm WAY down south so, fall is our spring) which means hardly anything is out there. Surprisingly I scrounged up enough thyme and plenty of garlic chives to make the polenta extra tasty, which was about a tablespoon of them combined. You can use whatever herbs you grow or can otherwise get a hold of.

Then give your polenta a fancy name based on what cheese and herbs or other secret ingredients you stirred in , and you have yourself a very impressive dish to share with friends!

So now, kids are up, day is started, we're ready to tackle the to-do list, I still have a stove to clean (blog = procrastination), and I'm ready to watch my pot again, but this time I hope what's in it disappears!

::kristin::

As predicted on the LIST, tonight is lentil soup night.  Opened bag of leftover ham from (honestly) too long ago to find that ham had suspicious smell to it.  Oh well, lentils alone are packed with goodness anyway.  Lentil soup is ridiculously easy to make.  Mine tonight has 1 bag of lentils, 8 cups of water, 1/4 cup olive oil, 2 carrots shredded, 1/2 an onion finely chopped, a bunch of salt and pepper, some thyme, and probably about 1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar. Towards the end I throw in some minced garlic.

Simmer all of this for about 30-45 minutes or so until your lentils reach your desired softness.  I like them a little more creamy, so sometimes I let them go a bit longer then stir them up really well.  You can't believe how filling lentils are.  I like to serve mine with some fresh bread, but alas, time ran away on me so I am making some drop biscuits instead.  Super yummy and simple, here's the recipe:

Easy drop biscuits

1 2/3 cup flour (you can substitute 1/3 to 2/3 cup wheat flour if you like)

1 Tbs baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

2/3 cup milk

1/3 cup oil (veg or olive oil, your choice)

Preheat your oven to 475.  Mix the dry ingredients and then make a little well and pour in the milk and oil.  Stir up the milk and oil a bit and then mix the dough up until the dough just starts to pull away from the sides.  It is a really wet and sticky dough.  Use a teaspoon or your hands and pull out little blobs and drop them on an ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake for about 8 minutes until they are light brown on the bottom.  Serve with copious amounts of butter...drool.....

Cheap and easy.  Hey, who are you calling cheap and easy!?