One of our favorite meals around here is some sort of chicken in a pot. Lately I’ve been using a variation of Dorie Greenspan’s aptly titled Chicken-In-A-Pot. (I absolutely loved her cookbook Around My French Table last year – I kept renewing it from the library as long as they would let me!). Roasted chickens are deceptively sly – the look and taste of a well seasoned bird is so gourmet, and yet the hardest part of the whole cooking process is waiting to eat it while the house smells so tantalizingly good.
Have I told you how much I love my Staub? My friend Ansley successfully upsold me on the next size up from what I was originally thinking , wisely telling me that with my growing family, a small pot just wouldn’t cut it – and this was last winter before we knew a 6th person would be added to our family! It’s just perfect for a bunch of vegetables with a chicken nestled on top, and some white wine, broth and olive oil poured over.
Fall nights as we wait for dinner find us all puttering around the house. Keith is usually home by now, and it officially becomes family time.
We’re trying some new nightly rhythms to settle the girls in earlier, including a bath before supper, leading into eating together, then family worship and story time and then a few minutes of quiet time before the ‘blue moon’ comes on for the night. The blue moon is a type of alarm clock in their room – when the moon lights up, it’s supposed to signal time for sleep, and when the orange sun lights up in the morning, they can come on out for the day. It is hard to keep three little girls in the same room from naturally having a slumber party, though, and for the better part of this past year, we were allowing the girls to keep talking and laughing and playing until 10, sometimes 11:00. But even though they were always ‘good’, Keith and I never really had any quiet in the house to just relax from the rest of the loud day. So we’ve been attempting to capitalize on the time change and use it as a catapult to get on a better rhythm for our evenings. So far, so good, for the most part..
And as a side note, the iPad has become my new favorite learning tool for the kids. I never thought I’d say that, but the phonics apps have become a fun way for these littles to keep learning (even more fun if Daddy is right there) while I’m counting the days to delivering this new baby!
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Do you have a link to where the blue moon alarm clock is from. I was just talking about it with a friend the other day! Sounds fab! X
Yes! It’s called the Good Nite Lite – here’s a link from Amazon – The Good Nite Lite
So fun seeing your girls grow! I want to try the chicken and what phonics apps do u recommend?