Instructions for My Husband: While delicious, bacon does not need to be included in every single dish you make.

I love bacon.

You love bacon.

And yet...

We don't need to include bacon in every meal, let alone every dish.

For example, when you cooked a delicious meal on Saturday night it was great that you included bacon in the home fried potatoes. It was a nice touch to wrap the steaks in bacon. But really, did you have to put bacon in the asparagus? Couldn't one dish be bacon-free?

As you know, I love bacon as much as the next person, but at least one dish in every meal should be bacon-free. One dish should also be low in sodium, but that is an instruction for another day.

Photo from the very awesome The Baconcyclopedia: The Ultimate Bacon Reference of Baconic Proportions.

This is my twenty-third instruction for my husband in the ongoing series Instructions for My Husband.

How My Husband Writes a Grocery List

On Monday, I knew snow was being forecasted for Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. So, being the organized and slightly crowd-averse suburban mom that I am, I went to the grocery store on Monday afternoon.

That night, my husband says to me, "You really should go to the store tomorrow.  In case we get snowed-in."

"Oh, I don't have to!" I replied enthusiastically, "I went today!" I have never felt more on-top-of things in my life. For once, I was the ant and not the grasshopper.

"Listen to all the stuff I got - salmon, and rice, for dinner. Clementines and honey for desert. The kids love dipping them. For breakfast we have oatmeal. Or I can make eggs. And chicken and red pepper sausage. With basil! Tons of snack food -  blueberries, a few mangoes, the strawberries looked good, so I got two containers of those, pop corn, those pistachios you like, a bunch of yogurt, and those baby cheeses that Ziggy loves. We're all good. Oh! And I almost forgot - maple syrup to make sno-cones!"

He looked back at me, blankly. Paused a moment and then says:

"I don't want any of that. You know I don't want any of that."

And he continued: "You need to go to the store tomorrow and get stuff for me."

My husband likes to eat junk food I barely even consider to be food at all, they are so processed and manufactured. So, I refuse to buy it in my super-supportive wifely way. I shop for the family during the week and he shops for himself on Saturdays (and puts the food in his specially designated "Daddy drawer").  I really wanted to argue I was not going back to the store on the stupid-busy-day-before-the-snow-comes-day, but then I figured, I'll just go. It won't kill me to be nice just this once. But it's still really irritating.

I got to the store, opened the email he had sent me with the innocuous Subject line: Tuesday Grocery List

And this it what it said:

thanks for doing this honey!
i would like for wednesday snow day:

Breakfast:
white bread -- i dont care if there is hfcs or not

sausage -- MOTHERFUCKING BROWN N SERVE REGULAR FLAVOR FULL STRENGTH FUCKIN PIG NO-FRUIT SAUSAGE. links or patties.

microwave bacon -- oscar meyer is good.

some kind of hash browns / potatoes to make with french toast. they could be toaster hash brown patties, or it could be something you could make in a pan.

Lunch:

get a couple packages of tuna in a pouch for me and kay for lunch.

can you get a bag of potato chips please. low-sodium if you have to. but otherwise REGULAR FUCKING FULL STRENGTH POTATO CHIPS. NONE OF THIS GREEN, PURPLE SHIT. REGULAR FUCKING POTATO CHIPS OF SOME BRAND IVE HEARD OF BEFORE PLEASE.

i would take some new england clam chowder from somewhere if we dont have some already.

Dinner:

Chicken breasts (THIN SLICED), or ground beef (80-20; ALL BEEF NONE OF THIS SICKO VEAL AND PORK SHIT PLEASE).

If you want to make pretzel crusted chicken, then pick up some pretzels too. REAL PRETZELS. WITH SALT ON THEM. MOTHERFUCKER.

Vegetable to eat with the chicken?
Dessert: Could you please pick up a package of the pre-cut toll house or nestle choc chip cookies in the flat dough that i like to make?

THANK YOU FOR FOLLOWING EVERY SPECIFICATION ABOVE TO THE LETTER!!!!

love
m

______

Thanks to everyone who is here via Pinterest, hello and welcome!

For more funny stuff, be sure to check out my full list of Instructions for My Husband.

And for even more funny stuff, be sure and like Random Handprints on Facebook, and follow me @Anna_Sandler on Twitter. Because my husband is a constant source or new material.

My Twitter-Inspired New Year's Resolutions for 2011



Image from The Graphics Fairy

I think we all know anything worth saying can be said in 140 characters or less, so in keeping with this, I'm relying on tweets by strangers to bring me to a healthier, more prosperous, and happier new me in the New Year.

Here, I present, my twitter-inspired New Year's Resolutions.

1. Just because it made it to a grocery store shelf doesn’t mean we should feed it to our children. (Retweeted by @TimeOutMom, Tweeted by @NourishMD)

I hear this tweet in my head now when I go to the grocery store and I'm about to buy some packaged garbage - even when it's garbage trying to masquerade as health food. So 2011, this is the year I start eating better myself, and feeding my kids better. I've wanted to do this for a long time, and this is the year my family really does get serious about eating better. Top of my list, to stop eating processed food made in a factory. I'm going to be that mom who makes homemade granola bars, applesauce, even dried fruit bars.

2. Two years ago on The Happiness Project: Make your bed. Surprisingly powerful.
(Tweeted by @gretchenrubin)

I proclaim 2011 Make Your Bed year in our household. So far in my life, I have never been a bed-maker.  Surprisingly (or not surprisingly) my husband and I are in total agreement that making the bed is a total waste of time - it's just going to get messed-up again! We never make our kids make their beds, either. But for this year, I'll give it a try. And I'll ask my kids to give it a try, too. We'll make our beds every day, not just when company's coming over. Let's see if it has a profound impact on our lives.... or not.

3. The average American loses 1 hour per day searching for misplaced objects.
(Tweeted by @JulieMorgenstrn)

Oh my. If this average American spends an hour a day looking for stuff, how much time must I be spending, when I am a total slob? And have three kids- with lots of stuff they are always asking me to find. So this year, I'm cleaning-up the house. I'm throwing the backlog of stuff out. And moving forward, I'm going to be one of those people who adheres strictly to the one-thing-in, one-thing-out rule. For real. Oh yeah, and kids, you're following the rule, too. If you want a new Barbie, stuffed animal, puzzle or other consumery item you already have twenty of, one of 'em is gonna go....

And my final resolution.,..
4. Tweet less. This last resolution wasn't inspired by a specific tweet, but by the beast that is Twitter itself. I just started using Twitter two months ago, and already I have succumbed to its evil powers. Before Twitter, I never worried how much time I spent online. Now, I do.  I sneak Tweet-peeks here and there, whereas prior to Twitter-oholism, I kept a strict no phone/computer/TV rule when I was with my kids. But I'm reinstating the rule. Twitter, you'll have to find a way to live without me most of the time. But don't worry, I'll be back as always after the kids are asleep. And New Year's Eve, we'll always have that.

Happy New Year everyone! What are your resolutions?

Me and my anti-salt agenda

I am, and have always been, anti-salt. It's an easy position for me to uphold because I have no taste for salt. Having been raised in a super-anti-salt house, I am not accustomed to salted food, and so I never feel like I'm missing anything.

But I still eat a lot of salt. And, my kids still eat a lot of salt. At home, I virtually don't use salt at all when I cook. But we eat out in restaurants, which are usually super-salty. And we eat a variety of pre-made foods, all salt mines. But I'm trying to be better, for the sake of my health and their health.

So I've started reading all the labels, and have decided to curb my salt consumption to... 100% of the daily maximum recommended amount. And even with just trying to reduce it to this, about 2,300 milligrams a day, is really, really hard. (It's about a teaspoon.) Most Americans consume over one-and-a-half teaspoons, about 4,000 milligrams. Of our many gross American habits, this is one of the grossest.

Kids ages 4 to 8 should consume no more then 1,200 milligrams of salt daily, and 9 to 18 year olds should consume 1,500 milligrams of salt max. Which of course, is plenty of salt. But I am guessing your kids, and mine, consume way more. If your kids eat any of the regular kid processed foods from graham crackers to goldfish to granola bars, they are eating a lot of salt. Even worse, even if you are eating the reduced-sodium versions of foods, they are still full of salt.

I try as hard as I can to never give processed food to my kids, but they eat tons of it. At every lunchtime I'm told their friends are nice enough to share theirs, and at just about every group activity from sports to parties, it's more of the same. Salted crackers. Processed cheese sticks. Fruit snacks. They're all completely full of salt, not to mention their other artificial ingredients.

I challenge us all - lets' start reading the nutrition labels on the foods we're eating, and let's see how much salt we are all eating. I think you'll be shocked. Just don't say I didn't warn you first.

Find a terrible salt offender? Leave a comment here.