A Real Mom

This week, I've had a bit of excess energy and have been 'sort of' putting it to good use. I've gotten quite a few things accomplished, and yet, if looked around my house, you would probably disagree. I love to cook, and I get excited to try new recipes and master them. I get pretty disappointed when my skills don't match my ambitions, but it's a work in progress, and my family is pretty easy going. All my life, I've thought that to be a 'real mom' I would need to know how to make Sunday dinners. Roast, Turkey, etc. I've never attempted them, because the task seemed to be to great, and I wasn't sure if I could handle it. Well, I'm pregnant with my third child now, so it's time to become a real mom who can cook real food for her family. I was in the grocery store on monday and saw a roast in the meat department and thought, "what the heck" so I bought it. I called my own real mom that night and asked her how to do it. Her nonchalant description of how to make a roast did not put my heart at ease as I figured, "Of course SHE thinks it's easy...she's been a real mom for years!" But I listened and took down the instructions and determined to cook pot roast the next night. Tuesday came, I woke up, got all my ingredients together and stuck the thing in the crock pot around 9:45am, as it was supposed to take about 8 hours to cook on low, and it was still partially frozen (that's a refrigerator story for another blog), and we wanted to eat around 6pm. Pot roast ready, and dinner on the move and it wasn't even 10am. Nice. All I had left to do was make some yorkshires later in the day. Of course, I kept walking over to the crock pot every once in a while to check things out, not sure what I was supposed to be seeing, and not sure what I was looking at was edible. By about 4pm the house was smelling like Sunday and I went to go check my roast again. It was done...2 hours early! eeek. I guess I didn't account for the fact that the roast I bought to feed my family of 4 is probably not the same size as the one my mom buys to feed a family 10. Something to learn. Oh well, I left it for a bit and got started on my other preparations. We ended up eating around 5:15 as I just couldn't leave that thing in there for much longer. I pulled the roast out and let it sit for a few minutes while I got table laid, etc, and then it was time to carve (more of a real dad kind of job, but Tyler wasn't home yet). I sunk my knife into it, preparing for some nice thinly sliced roast, but all I got was a big pile of shaved meat. Oh well (again), it was still presentable enough for a 2 and 4 year old. I decided I had better sample, before I served, so I grabbed a shaving and popped it in my mouth and...drrrrrrrrrrrrrr (drum roll)...it tasted great! PHEW! A little home made gravy, potatoes and carrots and some nearly too-hard-to-eat yorkshires and we were ready for dinner (again, another blog...oh that oven!) I am convinced I would be a much better cook if I could change a few of my appliances.
I was so pleased with my work, which was really a lot simpler than I thought, that I took a picture of our meal and my family enjoying it. We ended up having some food left over as the previously mentioned 2 and 4 year old don't really eat a proper share of roast, so we invited Tyler's family down to finish it off, as they had all gotten home late from work. I didn't expect much comment from Tyler (as he already thinks I'm a good cook...thanks sweetie), his sister, or his dad...but I sat waiting for my other real mom (in-law), as she is my other measuring stick. As we casually sat while they ate and watched "So you think you can dance Canada", she commented, "This is really good roast Heather". I casually said thank you...but inside I was beaming. Thanks to my real mom's, I'm on my way, and feel a little better about welcoming a 3rd child into our family. I guess my next task will be to become a better housekeeper...that doesn't thrill me at all.