How to Feed a Houseful of Dudes in 30 Minutes

As summer s’mores melt into back-to-school prep, seismic shifts occur in homes with school-age kids. Though this annual evolution is not unexpected, drastic changes occur on a daily basis, like kids reacclimating to wearing socks again after a summer of flip-flop fun, and eating normal meals again, rather than shoehorning an apple and string cheese into 8 hours of playing outside, becomes a necessity.

With school back in session, one thing I know for sure is that the minute the Junior dudes get home, they are ready to eat. That means dinner must be quick and easy to prepare while three kids simultaneously ask for snacks.

That’s why my famous Turkey Pasta Bake is a ‘Dude Family classic’.

My boys love pasta (who doesn’t?), and would be happy to eat it 8 days out of 7, but variety is important, as are incorporating protein and vegetables into their diets.  So when the Little Dude was even littler, Mrs. Dude and I started making this tasty recipe that is also fast and easy, because when hunger hits, the food is never ready fast enough. But in as many years, I’ve learned that I can boil some water, put an episode of their favorite show on the DVR and when that 30 minute show ends, voila, dinner is served.

One of the trickiest parts of dinner is choosing everyone’s favorite pasta cut, and Barilla® offers 38 different options, so you could eat a different one every day of the month without repeats. For this recipe, I used two of my boys’ favorites: Barilla Blue Box Penne and Rigatoni.

While the pasta cooks to a perfect al dente, in about 12 minutes, I brown a pound of ground turkey meat on the adjacent burner. Once the pasta is finished, I drain it and add Barilla Mushroom Sauce (my favorite!) to the fully-cooked turkey meat, along with garlic, oregano and a few other seasonings.

Then, I mix the pasta into the sauce and pour the combination into a glass baking pan, with a layer of shredded mozzarella cheese on the bottom and provolone slices on top. Last, I put the combined dish into the oven, which had already been preheated to 350°F, and bake for 15 minutes, or until the top layer of cheese is lightly browned.

To balance the meal, we mix a nice green salad, garlic bread and some fruit while we all talk about highlights and lowlights of our days.

Once the pasta masterpiece is served, it’s only a matter of minutes before my hungry kids are not only no longer hungry, but asking for seconds. And after they clear their plates, hopefully there is still enough daylight remaining for them to play outside for a bit before the school night bedtime activities begin, and we start everything all over again the next day.

Disclosure: I have partnered with Life of Dad and Barilla Pasta for this promotion. Though I have been compensated for my participation, all ideas, thoughts and tasty treats are my own, for better or worse.

Why You Should Have Another Kid, Even If You Think You Shouldn't

When you first get together with a romantic partner, after you’ve introduced them to family or friends, the first question from everyone you encounter becomes “when are you getting married?” After you’re married, the first question becomes when are you having kids? After your first child is born, shortly after the placenta is delivered, the big question evolves into “when are you having another one?” This process seems to continue until you eventually become a grandparent.

Asking about someone’s potential reproductive plans is not only nosy, it’s not a simple question as there are always myriad factors that go into these decisions. When Mrs. Dude and I began talking about starting a family, I wanted 3 kids (because I came from a family with 3 kids) and she wanted 2 kids (you can probably guess why). We got married in our early 30s, became parents a couple years later, and then again 3 years later, so time was not working in our favor. But thoughts of “what if?” lingered in both my wife’s and my mind after the Littler Dude was no longer so, um, little.

 

As our 40^th birthdays approached, the conversation continued, and we went back and forth on how we could potentially add another child into the mix, if we could even get pregnant again, that is. Then one day, I read something that helped solidify the plan for me. In a Facebook group I belong to, someone mentioned that you don’t only have kids for yourselves as parents, but it’s important to consider having kids for them to have each other, as time passes and life evolves. Nine months later, give or take, Little Miss Dude was born. 

Beyond my prognostication that we were only ever going to have boys, having baby #3 changed my mindset toward parenting. We were never the type to sterilize the baby if they encountered a speck of dirt, so laid-back parenting has always been our M.O. But it’s the knowledge gained via almost 7 years of parenting experience when she was born that has made my daughter a different type of gift. She was a gift for my wife and for me, but also for her brothers, who at almost 7 and 4 when she was born couldn’t believe how lucky they were to have another life to help shape.

From day one, which began early one Friday morning at 4:15am with Mrs. Dude’s water breaking three weeks before her scheduled C-Section date, Little Miss Dude has made the perfect punctuation for our family. Unlike after our boys’ births, I was able to take paid paternity leave after she was born, and the almost 10 weeks we spent together day in and out, helped lay the foundation for our now complete quintet.

Now that her first year is 3 quarters over, I can’t imagine life without this little girl, whose infectious smile helps her makes friends in every grocery store line, restaurant and little league game she attends. I know how lucky I am to have three wonderful children, even if they usually wake up too early and are sometimes too picky with food. They are happy and healthy, which helps me feel confident that they will live long healthy lives, as wonderful children, siblings and hopefully parents themselves.

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We usually think about all that we are thankful for later in the year, with turkey and pumpkin pie, but with Father’s Day upon us, I’ve partnered with Life of Dad and Pampers to say #ThanksBaby for helping complete my family.

I’m sure you have stories about your kids and what you are thankful for, so please use the #ThanksBaby hashtag on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook with a picture and a few words about what your little ones have done for you.

Also, take a moment to check out this great video that Pampers put together to honor all kinds of fathers on Father’s Day:

My First Day as a Father

What am I going to do with a baby?

I always knew I’d wanted to have kids, and had been a very experienced uncle for years, but when the moment of truth was upon us, what would I do with my own child? How would I take care of him? Would he be OK? Would I be OK?

After 9 months of waiting eagerly, suddenly I found myself nervously observing in the operating/delivery room, sitting behind a draped cloth with my wife’s upper body, while doctors and nurses worked their magic scalpels and tools on her midsection. In 10 minutes, the anesthesiologist announced, “it’s a boy”, but I’d never considered otherwise. He was here, I had to be ready. Even if I didn’t think I was.

Are you ready to cut the cord?

I tend to overthink things, especially all of the possibilities of everything that could go wrong. What if I cut the cord too long or too short? What if I couldn’t even cut all the way through it? At that moment, as I watched my son on the table, just minutes old, I knew I had to jump in with both feet. I grabbed the scissors from the nurse and cut the cord swiftly, which freed my son from his only source of life up to that point and suddenly gave me a new one of my own.

We headed to the recovery room where my wife was able to rest for a bit. As adrenaline pumped through my body like a gallon of espresso, I watched this little miracle lay swaddled snugly and started to feel inklings of confidence return despite the enormous uncertainty squarely before me.     

After a while, we were given a room. My wife was understandably exhausted when the nurse came and examined my hours-old son. She asked if I wanted to give him a bath. As I pondered the joyous task, the feelings of doubt returned? How do I even give him a bath? He’s so little; I don’t want to break him.

She reassured me: “They’re hard to break”.  Whether that was true or not, who knows. But she seemed to know what she was doing, and mentioned that she’d been doing it for 20-something years, so I had to let go of my fear once again and literally get my hands dirty to clean my still somewhat goopy child. With each soft swab of the washcloth, he amazed me even more. Before I knew it, he was clean. What now?

“Are you ready to put on his diaper?”

Well, I’d attended the pregnancy class before he was born and strapped one on a plastic baby, knowing it was foolproof. Guess what: so is diapering a real baby. Sure, I may have ripped a couple straps pulling too hard, but my boy was fine. His scrawny little legs dangled out of the Pampers Newborn, a size he fit in for exactly one day. As I watched his body temperature even out after the bath as he lay upon the warming table, I knew he’d be OK. And so would I.

Later that night, as I watched my wife and son sleep in our hospital room, one day in the books, it finally occurred to me, as obvious as it had been all day to our gathered family and friends. I was a father. And had to be ready for whatever was coming next. Looking back, I’d read the baby books before he arrived but there is no parenting book as real, as honest and as true as the one you start to create upon becoming a father. It’s not an easy job and the benefits are crap, literally, but there is nothing better, nor more sleep depriving in life. Seven years, another child and yet another en route later, I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Note: I have partnered with Life of Dad and Pampers for this promotion, but all ideas expressed above are mine and mine alone, for better or worse. I was compensated for this post, but I can assure you it was much less than I’ve spent on Pampers over the last almost-seven years.

Note 2.0: Pampers put together an amazing Father’s Day video, which I know you will want to check out. Spoiler alert: tears are looming that you may not anticipate.

Turning Mozzarella Sticks into Merry Poopins

When I was new to LA after matriculating in Ohio, going out was a way of life. I was young and naïve and the Sunset Strip was just a few blocks away. Going out on the town was the best, and the worst. And being a young single guy, the winter holiday season was always filled with festive nights out filled with no shortage of flowing beverages and hors d’oeuvres. I remember one particular New Years Eve spent with a group of pals at a spicy cantina called Senorita’s. Back then my patience for crowds was thick and my stomach was eager to sample my newly discovered passion for Mexican cuisine. Those nights, and their subsequent mornings after, weren’t as painless as in college, but were still manageable for a youngish dude. Perhaps that’s because that era, around the turn of the millennium, was when I began seeking comfort with a tasty little pink darling who was always ready and waiting for my call, morning, noon or night.

Now, years later, I’m older and wiser. There’s no chance I’d go to a Hollywood joint like Senorita’s (RIP) on New Years Eve. Clubs, lines and unnecessary crowds are as foreign to me now as babysitters, Nick Jr. and the Valley were to me then. Hell, there’s minimal chance I’d go anywhere on NYE without a great reason, like being invited to drop the ball at midnight from Mars.

As of a few years ago, likely coinciding with becoming parents, Mrs. Dude and I adopted a low-key approach to the New Years holiday. We usually have a family activity during the day (i.e. something that will wear the kids out and make them want to go to bed early) followed by Mrs. Dude’s famous Appetizer Dinner as our oxymoronic main course.

Every December 31st now, as our oven readies an array of bubbling oozy mozzarella sticks, fried mushrooms that erupt like a volcano when you bite into them, crunchy chewy taquitos AND my wife’s famous homemade pigs in blankets, I can feel my stomach percolating in eager anticipation of the fiesta it’s about to ingest-a. And with each passing year, I tell myself that I can still down this stuff like I did 20 years ago in my off-campus apartment on any given Tuesday night a mere 6 hours before a big exam. The truth is I realize that I need a head exam to think I can make it through this big tasty night without a wingman by my side. So I look back to that little pink lady who’s always been there for me through both good times and stuffed crust pizza: Pepto-Bismol.

Unlike the comparative ease of my college and mid-20’s adventures, I now face New Years with a new crew and my Little Dudes don’t show the same mercy my professors usually did. I have to be up and ready to move on January 1^st long before noon, sadly, on some family adventure or another. That means I don’t have time for my digestive tract to go on strike from our previous night’s holiday excess, relatively low key as it may have been. So I keep a bottle of the classic pink tummy-fixer elixir chilling’ in the fridge, ensuring that I’m always ready to counterattack my intestinal distress, call it Mozzarella’s Revenge, caused by my exposure to a few of my favorite things*, head on. Plus, if I’m not home, I can carry chewables in my pocket, making it even easier to stop the need to go when I’m on the go.

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*Speaking of my favorite things, unlike virtually every third other person in LA, I don’t fancy myself a songwriter, but the memories conjured while writing this post and some seasonal movie watching inspired me to pen some alternate lyrics to a classic tune from one of my wife's favorite movies about singing Austrian families. Thanks to Pepto-Bismol whose #PinkRelief helps me avoid being a self-induced member of the Von Crapp family, and for more Merry Poopins.

Here's a little poem I wrote, to the tune of one of my favorite songs: 

Fresh fried veg-tables with dips straight from Ranches

Taste great but cause me belly ava-lanches

Bubbling hot pizza dripping with oil

Makes my chest feel like it’s going to boil

Buttered hot pretzels are a wonderful lot

But usually tie my gut in a big salty knot

Holidays lead to delicious binges

Rescued by Pepto with its bright pink tinges…

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I was compensated for this post, but all opinions contained within are entirely mine, for better or worse, like the fact that mozzarella sticks might be the greatest food ever invented. 

How to Stay Cool During Summer (Through Your Mouth)

Living in Southern California, in an area where summer means you could vacation on the Equator to cool off, we’ve made it a family tradition to take a trip to Northern CA every June to visit Mrs. Dude’s sister and her family. The sisters have fun, the cousins get to play and we all cool off. This summer, however, things were a tad different.

Sure, we made the trek and everyone had a good time, but this visit was as hot and humid as a bonfire in a sauna. And they don’t have air-conditioning, like most homes in the area, because it never gets hot up there. (Except when it does.) So I took it upon myself to figure out alternative method for cooling the gang off.

California is in a drought so running through the sprinkler is off-limits.

Taking an ice bath sounds cool, but I imagine hypothermia isn’t too much fun either.

Creating a vision board with images of igloos and glaciers could help with mind over matter, but I 

doubt that would satisfy my scorching inner core. 

As I sat there contemplating options, I heard an alarm go off in my brain with the perfect solution. Well, actually it wasn’t an alarm as much as a cacophony of annoying rhythmic earworms designed to draw children out of their homes by that fellow every parent hates, AKA the Ice Cream Man.

Thankfully my kids are not yet fully aware of or attuned to his jingle-jangle but I had an idea, so I headed to their local grocery store for A) a few precious moments in free air-conditioning and B) some cool delicious treats.

I’d heard that Klondike recently added some heavy hitters to their classic brand of ice-cream bars, but I wanted to find out for myself. Thankfully with 4 adults and 4 kids staying under one hot tin roof, I had the perfect sample size to not feel guilty about trying out a smorgasbord of Klondike’s newest creations.

I was impressed by the options I discovered, as I was previously only really familiar with the old-school Klondike chocolate-on-vanilla variety. After looking over their lineup, with choices like Heath Bar and Rocky Road, which took up almost its own section in the freezer aisle, I settled on a quartet of diverse options for every palate in the house. Also, I didn’t rush my decision as the A/C felt as amazing as the ice cream options looked. 

I’d heard about Klondike’s new Kandy Bar lineup and was tempted by the Cookies and Cream option, which is my 5 year old’s favorite flavor, but wasn’t sure if he’d be down with the white chocolate shell. Luckily there is an Oreo option in the regular collection which made for a great alternative for my picky eater. On the flipside, I debated the Mint Chocolate Chip classic-shaped variety, but opted to give the Kandy Bars’ Mint Fudge Cookie a shot because it had a few extra bells and whistles to nom. Peanut Butter anything has long been my jam, so Reese’s was a no-brainer for the cart. Cookie Dough is another one of my favorites, as it is for pretty much everyone I know.

My choices waiting in the freezer.

After dinner that night I opened up the freezer and the sampling began. With three 6-packs and one 4-pack (the Kandy Bars), we had at least 22 opportunities to try things out without anyone having to share. To make sure everyone got to try everything, however, we did some slicing and dicing of the bars, quartering them to afford everyone ample chance without over committing.  

I immediately jumped into the Reese’s bar and that classic PB flavor did not disappoint. Rich and creamy peanut butter is always the perfect answer, no matter the question. Next I decided to give the brand new Cookie Dough bar a whirl, since cookie dough has long been one of my go-to ice cream choices. I like my cookie dough ice cream to be full of chunks and, when I unwrapped it I was disappointed to see that unfortunately that wasn’t the case with these, which contained “ribbons” of cookie dough, per the wrapper. I wanted to like this one, I really did, but to be honest, it tasted like Vanilla ice cream with just a miniscule hint of cookie-dough flavoring that only an ice cream sommelier (if there is such a thing) could sniff out.

I wish the Cookie Dough had been a little more doughy. 

The Little Dude is an Oreo aficionado, so we split one of those next. It was definitely a good choice, like a classic Cookies and Cream kicked up a notch. Definitely a solid selection.

Mint Fudge Cookie is the way to go. 

Finally I dove into the brand spankin’ new Mint Fudge Cookie choice from the Kandy Bars collection. These deviate from the classic Klondike square shape and are shaped like, you guessed it, (rectangular) candy bars. This one was nails. The mint ice cream was light enough to be the perfect balance for the rich layer of fudge lying atop it. The dark chocolate crunch-filled outer shell really made this the best of the 4 options we tried. I only wish it came in a 6-pack, rather than 4, because these went like hotcakes, which would definitely NOT be a good flavor for Klondike to expand into.

Overall, I was impressed by the diversity of Klondike’s 12 different options, especially since I was previously unaware that they made anything beyond their original classic chocolate shell on vanilla ice cream style. I give them credit for trying to mix things up with some new varieties, even if they weren’t all my cup of tea.

I participated in an Influencer Activation on behalf of Influence Central for Klondike. I received free product coupons to facilitate my review as well as compensation for my participation.