September 11th: pancakes, ribs, beets, cookies - it must be Saturday!

Early morning rush. You know the type. Need to get the kid somewhere early, awake, fed, dressed and with hair brushed. Oh, and you need to be all those things too. Well, I don't know about these mornings. My workday mornings are all about me getting me ready while G&O snooze til all hours. Yes, I can get myself out the door with relative ease, but ask me to get O ready too? Oh dear.

Olivia started gymnastics this morning. Every Saturday, 8:30 a.m., from now til Christmas. And I am on my own since Greg runs Saturday mornings with the Running Room. On the plus side, if there is one thing I am good at, it is meal forethought. So back in August, I cooked up a big batch of pancakes, froze the leftovers, and now O's meal-in-the-car-on-the-way-to-gymnastics is one Banana Oatmeal Pancake warmed up in the toaster. She loves it and it is the only pancake recipe I have that is both delicious and relatively healthy. This one has been in our keeper book for awhile, and comes from a 2008 Holiday Chatelaine. (Sorry, no picture.)

Tonight's dinner came from September 2010's Today's Parent: Oven-Braised Short Ribs with Cinnamon and Molasses and from September 2010's Chatelaine: Roasted Beets and their Greens. The ribs I am not recommending, as the sweet potatoes did not cook, although I cut them to the size suggested, and cooked them as directed, and then longer. When my kid is waiting til 7:00 p.m. to eat supper, we both want the sweet potatoes done NOW, not in another ten minutes' time. So, gone. The beets were fantastic. I made a discovery a few years ago, which is: I LOVE BEETS. Not pickled beets, which is where I had gone wrong for 28 years. Fresh beets, roasted, topped with a balsamic vinegar-olive oil dressing are amazing! My favourite beets recipe comes from Eat, Shrink and Be Merry, but I can't find it online, and I'm sorry but I'm tired and don't feel like typing it out tonight. For a back up plan, try this recipe from Chatelaine; it was good! Even better, Olivia likes beets too, which makes it 2-1 for wanting beets in the house. Yay!

I had promised O we could make cookies today, but we ditched that plan and went to watch G play baseball instead. Tonight I had to make the cookies on my own, as the butter I had put out to soften was melting in the heat of my kitchen since I had my oven on for hours roasting ribs and beets. From September 2009's Chatelaine: The ultimate chocolate-chip cookie. I made it with one cup chocolate chips and one cup walnuts and now that I've eaten five and feel slightly ill I can tell you they are delish and will be going in the keeper book. Yay for keepers!

But the real highlight of my day was that O and I spent the whole day together, had some awesome bonding time, she was an amazingly polite and well-behaved 2 year old and I didn't lose my patience even once. Yay for both of us. Now, bed, zzzzz.....