Toddler Dinner Boot Camp

The goal: To have dinner with Sam, at the table. Since Josh gets home between 6:30 and 7pm, and Sam eats at 5:30pm, I will eat a coupe faim while Sam eats a "homemade" meal. The quotes are because sometimes it's a heated item as opposed to something created by my hands.

Day One: Pea-ricotta "pesto." Sam didn't put so much as one piece of pasta in his mouth. He just looked at it and pushed the bowl away. This happened on both Sunday and Monday evenings when I tried this meal. I continue to believe that we need a pig. The pig would be well-fed, eating all of Sam's rejects as well as his leftovers. And then we could make our own sausages, bacon, etc., and put it on the blog!

Day One Verdict: Failure.

Day Two: Falafel. What was I thinking? The photo of the meal could be both the before and after shot. At first, Sam took a big bite and said, "Mmmm." He chewed. I stayed myself, waiting for the bite to come tumbling out, but it didn't. He chewed as he examined his carrots. Chewed as he told me that we would "then [watch] Elmo," meaning after dinner. It was all I could do not to rush back into the kitchen, grab all of the falafel, and shove them onto his plate screaming, "There are lots more, son! Lots more! Eat! Eat!" I watched him chew thinking what a great story this was going to make! A miracle food: the falafel. And then! out came the tongue, pushing little shreds of falafel with it. He sat there with his falafel-covered tongue protruding as he exclaimed "Uh! Uh!" I wiped his tongue with my napkin as he told me that he "choked, choked!"

Day Two Verdict: Failure.

Day Three: I didn't manage to make anything, per se. I only heated up a breaded tilapia stick and a spinach cake. Both were rejected. The fish stick is usually devoured, while the spinach patty is a crap shoot. But to have both dismissed out of hand? Crazy. This kid is on a rejection roll. I then gave him a wee slice of the homemade whole wheat bread that I baked earlier in the day. He took one bite, then set it down and started sucking his arm. I tried a bowl of O's, and he ate with gusto. Oh, and we didn't have dinner at the table because Mommy was having a hard afternoon and knew that if he rejected his dinner and I was sitting across from him that I would either (a) break down crying, or (b) scream and break down crying. Since I already freaked out about him climbing on the couch with mud all over his pants, I decided that Sam had his freaky Mommy fill for the day.

Day Three Verdict: Failure.

Day Four: Macaroni and cheese. I know, this seems like a gimme. What kid doesn't like mac and cheese. I dress it up a little by using pureed cauliflower for the "milk" addition. I am, naturally, speaking of the packaged M&C variety. Not the neon orange one, but rather Annie's, which is organic, but still packaged. Well, bless my son because he doesn't like it anyway. I have three boxes left that I will give to Matthew W if he wants them.

I am tempted, however, to call this dinner a success because Sam decided on and then ate his own dinner. Yogurt and O's he said. So that's what he had while I ate my homemade wheat bread and triple cream cheese. He had two servings and we had a delightful conversation. It's a success of sorts. I'm just glad it wasn't plain O's. My mother tells the story of me eating nothing but Rice Krispies for three weeks - that's breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The fact that Sam had yogurt is wonderful. And, you know, that's probably a better choice than the mac and cheese even though yogurt isn't really "dinner."

Day Four Verdict: Quasi-Failure.

Day Five: Zucchini patties. I got the recipe from Bon Appetit and thought I would make them for the adult dinner, but keep the toppings (creme fraiche and smoked sardines) off for Sam. He sat down with Josh and Auntie Mel and was actually, I thought, eating them. Nope, that was Josh and Auntie Mel making their own coupe faim from Sam's rejects. What he did eat was bread (my homemade whole wheat!) and peanut butter. That's okay.

Day Five Verdict: Quasi-Failure.

Day Six: Lumpia. I know, again? This time I got the recipe for the ones that Sam definitely likes. "Recipe" is generous, as the instructions are minimal. I have much more to say about the lumpia I made this time, but will save it for a separate post. So, this should have been another gimme because, as I have mentioned before, Sam loves lumpia when R makes them. We have had them a couple of times at gatherings and he goes wild gobbling them up. The verdict on these? Sam looked at the one I held out for him, repeated lumpia, then asked for yogurt with O's. The three adults ate lumpia with our stir fry. They were awesome!

Day Six Verdict: (Delicious)Failure.

So, Sam ate nothing I prepared for him this week. Wow. That has to be some kind of record. I think next week I will be even more daring and just serve him what Josh and I eat. Really, if he's not going to eat the things I make specially and separately and painstakingly for him, why bother? Seems like a no brainer! I won't bother!

Barbecuing in the Rain

Or should I say a thunderstorm ... because that's what it actually was. We don't get a ton of those in these parts, but, by gum, I decided to bust out the barbecue during one. The coals were just ready when it really started to pour. I was able to move my operation under cover and not burn the house down. Nice.

Why is barbecuing associated with men? It's funny, really. If I do the cooking, it also stands to reason that I do the 'cuing. Somehow, if we add a real fire, the outdoors, and, presumably, meat, we add men to the picture? Hm.

Not that men don't cook and barbecue, of course. My dad certainly does both.

This is what the sky looked like.

And this is what I made. Zucchini and red potatoes in a mustard-rosemary "sauce".

And pork tenderloin. It marinated for two days. This was a good thing.

Marinade:

1/2 cup soy sauce

1/4 cup sesame oil

1-2tsp. honey

1/4 cup brown sugar

2T Sherry

8 garlic cloves, minced

4-8 green onions, sliced thin

2-4T sesame seeds, toasted

This is one of my dad's recipes. I think he made it up. I've used it several times and like it a lot. I'm thinking of tweaking the sugar:honey ratio. I usually use fewer green onions, too, since I don't much like them although I do enjoy the onion essence they lend to the marinade.

Go-to Dish

Everyone needs a go-to dish - one that's quick and easy; one that has ingredients usually found in the cupboard. I learned about this dish in Spain. My friend Ginger took me to a simple restaurant (that I would go back to again and again) and told me about their Cuban plate. It had rice, beans or ground beef, red sauce, a fried egg on top, and a plantain alongside. We had all those ingredients (minus the plantain, those were last week), plus some leftover fennel-olive stuff from the fish. A five-minute, nutritious meal was had. Yeah me.

Lessons

Microgreens garden salad with toasted hazelnuts, beets, apples, and maytag bleu cheese.

My current read, although "study" might be more accurate, is "French Women Don't Get Fat," by Mireille Guiliano. Compelling title, no? It purports to offer the unique European formula to permanently shift your outlook and assumptions about lifestyle. That shift will lead you to equilibrium. The book is written for American readers, since the author is French but lives in NYC most of the year, and has experience with weight gain a la americaine. I am almost finished and so inspired. I ran out (read: clicked out on amazon.com) and bought her cookbook, too, assuming that it has all the recipes in the book, and there are many. I thought it was going to be a novel, and there certainly are stories of her life in there. But it's really more a lifestyle guide with pertinent recipes and anecdotes. I highly recommend it.

One lesson that I intellectually knew and understood but never truly put into practice, is about portion size. We have discussed how my family eats large portions and that my sister thinks we are uniquely endowed with the power to burn a multitude of calories and not get as fat as others we see eating similarly large portions. Maybe that's true, but what is definitely true is that we Americans eat way too much and it's way too big. In addition, what I have been slowly realizing, and what Guiliano also writes about, is this thing that the American food industrial complex is doing: ruining everything! So we eat more of things that are gross. Example #1: Chocolate can be something beautiful, sensual, luscious. How does a Snickers bar fit into that equation? It doesn't. The second example is embedded in the segue to the next lesson: pay more for quality (in smaller portions). After reading about Guiliano's charge that Americans, in the wake of the growing popularity of balsamic vinegar, found out how to wreck it, I checked the ingredients of my bottle. Who would ever think to check that? You should see only "wine vinegar" and probably "sulfites." Do you know what is in mine? Caramel color! It's made from corn and actually is on the no-no list is you are gluten-free. What the what?

Speaking of books and the French, I also bought "Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques." It is enormous, so my plan is to read a section every few nights and then add the wisdom therein to my Understanding and Practice. Even the introduction has good information. One tidbit that I will share with you here - because I was so shocked (Dad, you will need to be seated for this) - is that JP tells us, implores us to never (sic) use charcoal briquettes to barbecue. Never. He avers that the nice, smoky char on your chicken contains carcinogens and tar such that you might as well eat a pack of cigarettes. And guess who just bought two bags on sale at Costco. I will be making the switch to real chunk, because JP says so.

That takes us to my recent barbecue adventure. Let me just say here that I suck at fire management. I can certainly make one, yet once I dump the coals into the BBQ, I go from a bunch of red cherries to one eensy-weensy hot core that I try to squeeze everything around. Do I just need more, like way more, coals?

This is jerk chicken and it was pretty good. I have another jerk rub that I like more, so I won't bother with the recipe here for this one. It does have a habanero, also known as Scotch bonnet, in it! To my knowledge, this was my first dealings with the chile. I wore gloves so as not to get any juices on me. And I removed the ribs and seeds so as not to overdo it. For four chicken breasts, it was just enough heat for me.

Which reminds me. In Spanish, the "H" is silent. Always. And the "A" makes an "ahhhhhh" sound. Always. I recently heard a newscaster talking about Hugo Chavez and he sort of combined Spanish and English pronunciations of the first name, calling the Venezuelan president "Yugo," like the car. Funny.

That glop next to the charred poultry is plantains! Not my first taste of the pod, but definitely the first time I worked with them. I was supposed to get black ones, as the varying degrees of ripeness make a huge difference in texture and flavor, but they were only slightly black at the store. I stuck them in a paper sack with an apple to speed things along and it worked somewhat. Peeling those things is so weird - the peel sticks and is tough. The flesh itself it meaty and firm. The preparation has you boil chunks until tender, then mash them with coconut milk and butter and salt. It was pretty good, and fun to have something different as a starch. I would like to try this again with a different milk, maybe rice milk. I just don't like coconut milk. It tastes like I am eating suntan lotion.

There is so much going on in the food section of my brain right now. Notes to self:

1. Only chunk coals for the BBQ.

2. Smaller portions, always.

3. High quality ingredients that I must be emotionally prepared to pay more for. And, hey, note #2 helps with the pocketbook aspect, doesn't it?

4. Throw out my balsamic vinegar. Gross.