Baseball Season Family Dinners Come From Bottles

This year, both my boys are playing Little League.  This is the boys' only extracurricular activity.  Bubs has been waiting for his turn and is SO. VERY. HAPPY. to be playing T-ball, especially since Husband is coaching.  Big leveled up so he has more practices and games, which means in order for us to still have family dinners requires creativity in execution.  (PS: Sitting in the car waiting for one's progeny to finish practice is boring AF and I had to pee really bad.)

Thursdays are particularly rough, because they practice at the same time, right at our geriatric dinner hour of 5 pm, so we have to prep food beforehand and eat at lightening speed at 6:45.  Behold, a dinner unbottled!

Thai-ish Chicken Noodle Soup

Trader Joe's to the Rescue!

1 bottle TJ's Thai Red Curry Sauce
1 qt TJ's chicken stock (free range, low sodium, you decide) 
1 pack rice noodles (we used pho noodles from the Chinese market)
1 chicken breast, cooked and shredded (hello, Costco)
1 bag TJ's fresh sugar snap peas, ends snipped
1 Tb fish sauce (or more, if you do the funk)
cilantro, finely or coarsely chopped, as much as you want
TJ's honey-roasted peanuts, coarsely chopped
1 red onion, thinly sliced (optional)
juice of 1 lime (optional)

1. The noodles we used require soaking in warm water for an hour. Cook noodles according to the package.  Drain and rinse in cold water so they don't get mushy, which is gross. Baseball timing: We did the soak, drained them, left for practice, and came back to boil them for 2-3 minutes.  More prepared people could've done the boil before going to practice, but 60 minutes of soaking is a longass time!

2. Bring curry sauce, chicken stock and the onion if you have it to a boil.  Add as much fish sauce as you can stand and lime juice if you want it. Once it boils, simmer for about 10 minutes to cook the onions and blanch the sugar snap peas for an additional minute if you want them a little softer. Baseball timing: Turn off heat and go to practice.  Reheat and add peas then.

3.  Assemble your noodle bowl with noodles and chicken.  Sprinkle with chopped peanuts and cilantro to your heart's delight.  Pour soup with peas on top.  Baseball timing: Stuff your face and then start screaming at the children to get ready for bed.

It's not mind-blowing or authentic, but it was pretty good and it was a welcome change from Thursday spaghetti. I love meals where there is flexibility for people to choose disparate components.  There's less murder at the dinner table that way.  You can add more coconut milk to make it creamier, and do note the sauce is quite spicy so the littles opted to eat theirs soupless.
  

No, seriously, YOU?

Girl Scout troop leaders fall into one of two categories.  One -- they are insanely creative Michael's crafters who spend endless hours with their Cricuts and sparkle paper to make lovely projects with the girls.  Or, two -- they are seriously outdoorsy, can fling a 10-man tent into existence instantaneously, and can skin squirrels for food so the girls can survive in a snowstorm.

I be neither of those things. 

I became a Girl Scout troop leader because my only daughter is a complete mystery to me and I wanted something just for the two of us to bond over.   I became a Girl Scout troop leader because I do not want Bear and her squad to become bitches to each other.  I became a Girl Scout troop leader because my hope is that when Bear makes the bad choice to get shitfaced at a party, she will have the wherewithal to call another troop mom to come pick her up instead of getting behind the wheel.  I am planning for the future.

The Scouts are a slippery slope.  One minute, you're signed up for the summer day camp because it is a major Chinese deal ($99 for 4 full days whut!) and then it's Mommy N Me camp for a weekend because summer camp was "SO FUN, MAMA" and all of a sudden, you are on your computer for fucking hours and hours watching one million videos and taking all the damn quizzes to get all your virtual badges so you can be a Real Troop Leader.  Did you know that you cannot have alcohol or firearms at your troop meetings?  I do now!

And then you have to recruit five other crazed little humans to join your Real Troop and convince their exhausted, overscheduled moms that volunteering for just one more thing is a fabulous idea!  (For the record, I recommend recruitment over swirls at Aqui.  Tipsy moms say yes.  The ones who had agua frescas and guac escaped with their smell of fire on their clothes and their sanity intact.)

And then ... poof!  Holy shit!  You got so many people drunk you have a maxed out troop of 12 first grade Daisies! And suddenly you find yourself back in the bad place of lesson planning for days and weeks for one measly 1-hour "lesson."  You agonize over the best deal on pony beads at Joann's and you make backup crafts in case your primary one fails because you suck ass at crafts and Pinteresting more overwhelmed you.  You haul your shitty old guitar out to sing "Make New Friends" because Girl Scouts sing songs!  And small girls, they are so very wild!  There's a lot of blurting and inability to control their limbs and hysterical laughing for no reason at all.  And then you go home, broken and sweaty, and it takes you two weeks to recover.  Right in time for you to spend the next two weeks to plan the next meeting.

And then all your friends are laughing their asses off at you, because they know you swear too much and dislike leaving the house.  They know you are a pessimist by nature and cranky AF and they think it is SO! VERY! HILARIOUS! that *YOU* of all people ... you are the most unlikely candidate for Girl Scout Troop leader.  

And then my little Bear squeezes me so very hard and smiles at me with her Precious Moments eyes.  And right when I am gently trying to pry her tentacles off me because personal space, she tells me: "Thank you so much for being my troop leader, mama.  I love it.  I love it so much."

Shit.