Food, glorious food
Too tired to be productive; too wired to go to bed yet. So I have decided to document some of the things we’ve been really enjoying lately, food-wise. Lyr’s renewed presence in our present becomes obvious in some of the choices, I think.
Hummus: we were lazy and bought hummus from the organic farmer-cook women and my god is their recipe ever good. It has no olive oil in it, just chickpeas, tahini, garlic, lemon, and sea salt. We will be trying to duplicate (only because at $3 a smallish jar, it’s out of our league and we can get the organic components if it is that important to us). Without the olive oil or a lot of water it stays solidish so not very dip-y, and so we’ve been eating it on sandwiches made with hardo whole wheat bread which is a somewhat dense (”hardo,” get it?) and sweet Jamaican bread, with butter and slices of cucumber. Delish.
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I adapted a Cooking Light macaroni salad as follows:
1 500 gr package whole wheat macaroni
2 cups frozen peas or, of course, fresh peas
2 red peppers chopped reasonably small
fresh green beans (this one time, don’t bother with frozen)
two stalks of celery chopped reasonably small
1 cup grated old cheddar cheese
3 rashers bacon, cooked and crumbled -or- 8 slices salami chopped up -or- artichoke hearts -or- capers (you’re going for something a bit salty and/or with meaty mouth feel, here)
cook pasta, add peas and green beans for last couple of minutes, drain and mix with about a quarter cup (or a bit less) olive oil
dressing: (we just mix components right into the salad)
1/2 cup mayonnaise (can be low-fat)
1/4 cup yoghurt
2 heaping tablespoons of dijon mustard
1-2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
dash of lemon juice
salt and pepper to taste
additional olive oil if it’s dry
It’s very creamy and yummy. Kind of fatty-decadent due to the mayo & cheese. And it’s a huge batch.
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Our every-summer’s-backup-meals for too-hot-too-cook days are:
1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 can sliced black olives, drained
1 can artichoke hearts, drained and quartered
3-4 roasted red peppers, sliced &/or two tomatoes diced &/or cherry tomatoes
feta cheese to taste, crumbled
2-3 tablespoons olive oil
balsamic or red wine vinegar to taste (it depends a lot on your vinegar)
generous heap of oregano and/or basil
eat with whole-grain toast
or:
1 can black beans
1-2 cups frozen corn kernels, rinsed until unfrozen or, of course, leftover corn from corn on the cob the night before - bonus if grilled
3 green onions sliced into small round slices and all separated out to make little onion bits
2-3 tomatoes diced
1 cup grated cheddar cheese
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar (you can substitute others but for some reason this vinegar picks up on the sweet corn and hits the cayenne really nicely. Don’t ask me why; I wouldn’t put cayenne on apples)
couple tablespoons olive oil
1 teapoon cayenne pepper (or to taste)
salt to taste; black pepper if you must
Mix all together. If you will be letting it sit, beware adding cayenne; the heat builds overnight.
If feeling decadent, serve with tortilla chips; otherwise this goes amazingly with cornbread or sourdough. And of course either of these goes well with some barbecued meat thing, but we don’t currently own a barbeque, plus we’re fine with it alone.
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We’ve rediscovered homemade fruit salad, what with the bounty of the season. Carl’s trick: a third of a can concentrated white grape juice (which includes sugar). My version doesn’t have that, just a couple tablespoons of lemon juice if there’s no citrus fruit in it to keep it from getting brown. wash and chop tons of fruit and mix with the above. Voila. Ahaha. :)
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Despite the heat I use my crockpot all the time since I can fill it up when Noah’s napping in the morning, or at least when Noah’s fresh. I’ve recently discovered that butternut squash goes amazingly with tomato and spicy things; it’s sweet without being too sweet. My last stew was:
4 hot Italian sausage (yes, I know, nitrates etc. but buy them from a reputable or organic farmer. Or substitute some red pepper flakes + oregano + basil + tvp in this recipe if you want more of a chili and something vegetarian)
1 butternut squash, cubed into largish cubes (incidently, if you prick the squash and microwave it for 2 minutes it became hugely easy to peel and seed!)
two zucchini cut into about 1/4 inch thick slices (aren’t I nice doing this in imperial?)
1 large (28 oz) can diced tomatoes + 1-1.5 cans of water
two handfuls of lentils
1 handful of barley
a generous shake of black pepper & some salt
Cook for 8 hrs on low; break up sausages into little chunks and eat with bread. Note that the sausages are providing a lot of rich in this recipe, but since it makes about 6 servings it’s not that much sausage per. This really is more of a fall recipe though.
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Edit: one more ’cause this is somewhat new. Couscous curry salad:
2-3 cups cooked couscous, or a little more (couscous being nearly instant to make)
1 can chickpeas
1 cup raisins
3-4 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons or more to taste madras curry powder (yes, I buy it premixed/ground)
Very yummy. A variation is dried cranberries, and two tablespoons orange juice an a bit of salt instead of the curry. Toasted pine nuts or almond bits go amazingly in either.
Spaghetti of champions
Allow me to rave about spaghetti squash here for a bit. It’s not a noodle, it’s a vegetable! That’s like a noodle! And recently I have discovered that microwaving (no, I don’t believe it harms food overmuch) the squash for about 10-12 minutes, with three stops to turn it around, after pricking it a few times with a knife (v. v. important) is so simple! And it results in quickly made “noodles” for everything else! Rather than all this -roasting- that used to have to go on!
So tonight I made a crazy “what’s in the fridge” casserole - one spaghetti squash minus a few bites for Noah to try as finger food (he hated the texture), a cup and a half of salsa, two onions sauteed, two tofu “sausages” (I was trying them out, they’re the Yves brand for you Canadians - they are pretty much just thicker spicy tofu dogs as far as I can tell), mixed up, smothered in cheddar cheese and breadcrumbs, and baked.
It was very yummy, although the sausages are not really that thrilling. Roast potatoes rounded out the meal.
We are in the process of cleaning up our eating habits here, so that we are all on the straight and narrow by the time Noah’s really noticing. Plus he’s eating a lot of stuff with us although not wheat, dairy, soy, etc. So expect more food posts. :)
The yuppy saga continues
You can tell that Lyria really is around more and more, and that she’s coming back from the brink a bit. Proof:
- We have canvases on our kitchen counter which are half-painted (a crafty sort of project, not art-art)
- Homemade oatmeal-wheat germ cookie bars (recipe below, which is an amalgamation of two recipes from the oh-so-70s Feed Me, I’m Yours)
- Somehow last night’s dinner (a chicken-zucchini dish + mashed sweet potatoes) also produced reams of baby food (chicken + sweet potato, sweet potato + zucchini)
- I took a nap with Noah yesterday
The week got better and better after the low point in the middle. I finished some work. I went to playgroup, which was also a demonstration of a myriad of baby-wearing options. It was good to try them on. I’d thought I was going to get a mai tai or a maya wrap, but I ended up getting an actual carrier - the Ergo. It cost as much as a stroller, but I think we can use it on hikes for quite a while, and that’s what we really needed. I can make a wrap myself by buying the fabric, if I go that way. I do like our ring sling, but Noah’s quite squirmy these days. The frugal and bank balance checking side of me wanted to look for it used (it really was quite a splurge for us, these days). But Sandra from Pooka Baby had come out to our group to talk about babywearing and put all the demonstration time in and she’s a local eco-friendly businesswoman and so - I just went ahead and bought it. I’ll report back at some point on how useful it is. I should do a gear post sometime.
Yesterday Noah learned about the word “no.” He bit me at said babywearing session, and I said quite firmly: No biting! and closed up the boob shop. He was happy to substitute toasted-Os at the time, but then at the going-to-bed nurse he would put his mouth around my tit without sucking or anything, barely touching it. And then he would sloooowly bite down until I said “no biting!” and would cover up for a few minutes. We did that about 4 times, and then he laid his head on my breast, patted it, and went to sleep.
My little social scientist.
Carl also decided to give me a real lie-in this morning - until 9 am! And then there were doughnuts! - which really, really helped with the whole sleep thing. This afternoon we are off to such a yuppy thing I almost shudder to tell you what it is: it’s an open house for a Waldorf pre/school. I seriously doubt we’ll be into the private school thing, but Carl knows one of the board members and well, why not spend a bit of time there? Although this is part of their “Walstock” (a whole day of musical events) and I am not sure I can get through anything involving the word “Walstock” without getting tossed out.
Cookie recipe!
3/4 c brown sugar
1/2 c butter
dash of baking soda
2 c oatmeal, uncooked
Boil sugar and butter and baking soda until it’s all blended and bubbly. Stir in oatmeal. Spread mixture into a greased 8 x 8 inch pan and bake at 350 for ten minutes. During last five minutes…
8 oz semisweet chocolate
6 tablespoons peanut or other nut butter (I use almond, currently)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 c toasted wheatgerm
Melt chocolate and mix with nut butter and vanilla. Stir in wheat germ. When the oatmeal cookies come out of the oven, spread with this mixture. Let cool on rack for a bit then keep in fridge.
The resulting bars do have a slight tendency to come apart a bit but they are really yummy and not -terrible- despite butter, sugar, and chocolate.
Nourishment of many sorts
Yesterday I overcame two things:
1) my blogverse colliding with my mumgroup (that would be this one where we’re openly multiple vs. oh-so-not)
2) my general blahness this week
to go to Ann Douglas’s launch party for two of her latest parenting books: Mealtime Solutions and Sleep Solutions (actual titles are a bit longer but I am lazy). I didn’t go to the blog festivities, just the reading/signing at the Ella parenting centre. I’m not prepared yet to step off this page in person at some event, even if I am happy to have some mom bloggers as readers. But I did say hi, and I took mums from the mum group with me. So baby steps. That felt very naked to me.
And it was great. My big question about food was answered, which was: now that my dr says - which she did! - to move towards just feeding Noah what we’re eating, more or less (chopped up, less salt, etc.) what do you do if what you eat is largely spicy? The answer seems to be serve it slightly less spicy and then work your way up. But it was just nice to hear other people obsessing about it. It was super nice to get out and to a literary event. And Noah had a blast screeching at the other babies and trying to out-volume Ann Douglas.
I wasn’t dressed well enough for Leaside, but I didn’t care. Believe it or not.
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I have a theory that you can either worry about sleep or worry about food. I worry about Noah’s food way more than his sleep. Partly because he’s a relatively decent sleeper, but also because with sleep I figure eventually, he will sleep. But food is this minefield.
I thought I was allergic to milk and wheat and eggs growing up. In fact, it turns out my mother just took me off all three because I was allergic to something and it worked. I eat all three now. But what I remember of the experience, besides feeling - because my mother made it seem this way - that Milk and Wheat and Eggs were POISONOUS (hence the random capitalization) was odd.
Because you cannot attend a birthday party, particularly in the 70s, without there being wheat and milk present.
So avoiding allergies is a big thing for me and current wisdom says that if you don’t introduce wheat, milk, and eggs before age one (and indeed milk and eggs are in some circles especially not supposed to be introduced) you lower the risk that your child will develop an allergy.
So I’ve kept toast, pasta, teething biscuits, etc., away from Noah because of the wheat. Milk and soy are big question marks to me. And eggs, eh, well, eggs are pretty easy to leave out.
And I’m paranoid about choking, because I’m freaky about anything to do with oxygen, because I saw my daughter come out grey and limpless and saw the scans of her damaged body and also stared down life with a severely handicapped kid, and so breathing is a big deal around here. So I will be chopping Noah’s meat and carrots and everything ’til he’s 12. Oh well, we’ll help fund his therapy.
The other thing is bacteria/food safety. I grew up with my mother, who is nothing if not paranoid about food poisoning. Let me define paranoid. To serve chicken she puts on latex gloves, puts newspaper on the counter, puts the cutting board that is chicken-only out, prepares the chicken, gets it in the oven, throws out the newspaper and gloves, and bleaches the cutting board, sink, sink handles, oven handles, and counter top. That’s just one aspect of her fear in this area.
One of my (our) earlier memories is my mother screaming that we didn’t rinse a pot well enough and the soap will poison! yes poison! us all. So for years we saw food as just something that would kill you as soon as feed you.
Meanwhile, I live with Carl, whose family actually has some really sanitary habits, like scrubbing out the sink after every round of dishes. But who also don’t read due dates and leave things on the counter overnight and so on and so forth.
Over the years we’ve evolved a middle ground where the kitchen is clean and food is properly kept, but there is no psycho disinfecting and you can finish your meal in peace. I do intellectually believe that a few germs are okay for you (better than anti-bacterial stuff, which we generally don’t use anyway), and I also intellectually know that certain food-borne diseases are really bad and everyone should be careful, particularly since current farming/butchering processes are really bad for spreading things around. And okay, I just don’t buy sprouts any more ’cause there are just too many sprout-related things every year.
Plus growing up most of the food tasted bad. My mother really tries hard, she does, and she fed us night after night. But, in the words of my sister “I didn’t know until I moved out that meat could taste good.”
With Noah I want to do the utter opposite. Lyria has led us into a world of appreciating food and eating well and enjoying a range of tastes and cuisines and all kinds of neat stuff, and it’s so cool. And we’re keen to bring that to our parenting! But oh FEAR that we’ll screw up along the way.
And so when Noah’s/my doctor said on Tuesday that Noah’s pretty much ready to eat more-or-less what we eat (ground up a bit, and in a gradual way), it freaked me out! I thought we had a while longer to keep him in his pristine world of homemade organic baby food + organic jarred ground meat + boiled water and cereal or the occasional bit of oatmeal.
I mean wheat! germs! salt! not to mention that we have occasionally been falling to the dark side of takeout!
But today Lyria calmly dropped $35 at Essence of Life, and tomorrow we’re going to Fresh from the Farm for non-certified organic, Mennonite-raised meat. We’ll be okay. Really.
Torrid love affair
Yesterday I woke up at 2 am for a feed (he slept 9 pm ’til then, so not great but not terrible) and could not get back to sleep at all due to anger - there was a relatively minor present-day reason that sparked it off, between Carl and I, and then I was remembering some childhood stuff that really got me angry. So around 4 I finally got up and burned the energy off doing some scrubbing, had a shower, &c. I was sore and tired out and rather grumpy by the time real morning came about.
And I seriously considered blowing of the momdatinggroup that was meeting at the mall. But Carl pointed out I’d been looking forward to it and I decided it wasn’t likely I would get much of a nap anyway so I put on my kickass jeans (I really think I will get another pair of jeans this spring so I have more than one pair that makes me feel like this one) and a nursing top and headed off.
Oh. my. god. am I so glad I went. There were 5 women there for this first meeting, and it was a lot of fun. A lot. I have been skeptical of the whole Mom Synergy thing but I tell you it actually is possible to get along sheerly on the basis of stretch marks, at least enough to enjoy - really enjoy - a lengthy coffee.
So some interesting stats:
4 white collar professional jobs/1 retail, pre-pregnancy
2/5 planning to stay home full time, 2/5 (if you count me) hoping to work something creative out, 1/5 going back full time at the end of mat leave
3/5 breastfeeding (in one case, supplementing as well) - that surprised me; I thought it would be higher
2/5 co-sleep in bed; 2 cribs, and then us with our cosleeper
1 Baby Signs instructor
5 bored out of their tree at home. :-)
I got the scoop on a Mother Goose programme I think I’ll try out (it’s not meeting next week I think, but after that) and a mom-tot swim programme, and the Y was recommended to join and it has daycare for $3.50/hr while working out and hmm. Just - yay!
I hope the other moms liked me and I can play with the cool kids. :-)
Meanwhile though… I must confess that I was having a torrid love affair the whole day. (No not those!) Yes, while angry at Carl I got hooked up. It was steamy, it smelled delicious, it involved legs and breasts. It was…
Crockpot Hunter’s Chicken! (That’s chicken cacciatore with whatever veggies I happen to have). And it was delicious and I turned the leftovers into a cacciatore sauce for tonight, that I think I will serve over wide egg noodles. I love it when you take $3 worth of chicken on the bone, leave enough skin around to make it rich, toss it in with peppers and zucchini and cauliflower and carrot and a can of crushed tomatoes and ridiculous amounts of oregano and basil and rosemary and it comes out with two amazing dinners. With couscous & peas last night and noodles and salad tonight and - yum!
Food, Dominic, and stuff
Dominic cooked a couple of weeks ago. He made scallops mornay with an unfortunate amount of lemon. This is a fairly major event, given that he rarely fronts and up until recently seemed kind of uninterested in daily life.
Unfortunately, he didn’t clean up. If he has to be a mostly-gay-guy can’t he at least be stereotypically neat? We had a huge squabble over it. I realized that I have come to some new level of acceptance because when I walked into the kitchen and found a mess my reaction was not whathappenedohmygodIlosttimewhatdidyousay The End Is Nigh but: why didn’t you clean up the fucking kitchen and why did you have to use three pots?
He mostly laughed at me. Which is - good. Really good.
Food seems to be almost our marker for staying grounded in the present. The best sign that people are enjoying life in the now is that they start to appreciate food in some way. This might mean trying to get around the no-Cheeze-Whiz edict, or it might mean trying to make scallops Mornay. I have pretty much fully bought into what Lyr was/has been/will be getting at with her book, in that food is a basic connection to the body and to nature in some mystic way, and it seems that I’m not atypical of the system in that.
And breast feeding Noah is a lot like that too: a basic love-food-comfort-warm-mnn connection. And soon - at 6 months and not much before, on the advice of our family doctor who’s watched us struggle with various food sensitivities and a few full-blown allergies - we will be introducing Noah to food. And wow, won’t that be something else. It really will.