Cinnamon Girl

Or in this case, boy, for all you Neil Young fans out there. He smelled great all day.

You can also see from this photo that I'm making progress in covering all of my interior home surfaces with plastic.

Chalkboard baby book

Sad, but true. You're looking at the 18-22 month portion of my son's baby book. The chalkboard wall in my kitchen is a stream-of-consciousness catch-all for me as I'm cooking meals or cleaning up. Without thinking about it too much, I started to jot down little notes to remind me of things I should include in his ACTUAL baby book. 

When I get around to it, that is. This does make me think that he might just have a section of chalkboard photos for his toddler years. 

foot fetish

I adore little kid feet in all the random shapes, sizes, and softness that come with them. These days my youngest can often be found playing in the kitchen sink after dragging a chair over to reach all those fun knives, bowls from breakfast, and wet dishcloths that await.

When that happens, I get to stare at cute little toes straining to enjoy the extra inch going tip-toe brings.

Headline: Peace at Bennett's

Just had a memorably peaceful dinner out with the kids. I looked at my husband toward the end of the meal  with an eyeball message that conveyed: Wow. Is this really going this well?  

He eyeballed back: Incredible! One for the record books.

I think it was nearly an hour of sitting, ordering food, and eating calmly. No trips to the bathroom. No dumped milk. No arguments. Nothing but compliments about the food (none of which was what they'd asked for -- pizza/hot dogs).

Heaven. Absolute heaven.

The Art of Cooking

My daughter was in the kitchen with me as I tried out one of my fun new kitchen tools. I was chopping some ingredients for a stew using my new hand-chopper (thanks, Mom!), and was struck by how photogenic the little squares were with colorful bits of veggie poking through. The light-dark (yes, the chiaroscuro, having recently read Despereaux), the symmetrical pattern of the squares, the unruly vegetables. 

I looked at it for a moment, and my daughter, reading my mind, said, "Mom, we should take a picture of that."

She then wanted to find some beauty of her own, with camera in hand. Here's a photo of some celery she found alluring. Isn't that green hue delicious this time of year?

I hereby dedicate myself to finding beauty in the kitchen this year. 

Toddler Lunch

Confirming once again that I am the only person in our house that eats mac n' cheese.

Two Takes on the Gingerbread Man

My daughter's gingy, with cute little Santa hat.

 99¢ kits at Trader Joe's. So fun! They're about 10 inches tall, so look substantial enough to hop off the pan and run away.

My son's gingy, with fangs.

Kitchen Refuge

My son was standing in the kitchen the other day sticking his tongue out and making horrible faces. I asked him what he was doing. He said, "The elf can't see me in here."

Back story:
We have an "Elf on the Shelf" who was hanging out in the dining room that day. My son had been making faces at his sister who informed him the elf was watching. He sought refuge in the kitchen where he could express himself without risk of being reported to Santa.

The kitchen really is the soul of the house!

Week 108—Salmon are swimming

Mon – Spaghetti, bread, and edemame 

Tues – Steelhead, broiled, with roasted fingerling potatoes and edemame (popular lately!)

Weds – Chicken enchiladas w/tomatillo sauce and corn soup (Simply Mexican)
Thurs – Potroast something with large chunk of beef recently purchased (crock pot?)
Fri – Personal pita pizzas with feta, toms, etc and couscous

Alts – breakfast; Cuban rice and eggs

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So many culinary things happening right now, so little time to write. Child joyfully shooting edemame across the dining room tonight will wake to find St Nick Pez dispenser full of soybeans in his shoes. Cannot wait. And yes, I think I'm a day late on the whole St Nick's day, but the kids don't care.

Happy cooking.

Pies! Chickens! Chicken pot pie?

Between a sick kid and needing foil pie pans, I've found myself a day late and just barely in time to bake  2 pies I volunteered to bring to my kid's preschool fundraiser winter bazaar. So, I'll be baking pies tonight. One apple, one cherry-strawberry. No idea how the latter will combine, but couldn't find canned un-gooped cherries, so decided to try a strawberry variation. Whatever. It's pie. Can't go too far wrong.

I saw my first "12 Days of Cookies" recipe in my inbox today. Shortbread dipped in chocolate. I've made shortbread before, but the photo just makes this look so appetizing. Getting me in the holiday cooking-baking mood.

Pies for tonight. Visions of shortbreads can dance through my head later....

p.s. we had a chicken in our house over Thanksgiving. Confusing? Here's a photo to illustrate. She was NOT consumed, but rather returned to my son's preschool the Monday after Thanksgiving weekend, minus a feather or two. Yes, she does have a bald neck. Has for years, apparently.

Bad dinner guests

Never bring your child to someone's house for Thanksgiving dinner when they were sick earlier in the day, no matter how healthy and recovered they look.

You might end up being really really bad dinner guests.

Hot Dogs, Big Pretzels, Roasted Peanuts, Pizza

These are a few of our favorite things...when traveling in NYC, anyway.

We have a Little Critter book at our house, I think it's called "Just Me and My Mom." Critter and his mom visit the city and a museum that looks a whole lot like the Met. They get kicked out of a finer eating establishment due to Little Critter's frog, and end up eating hot dogs outside the Met. Frog incident aside, my kids shared an equal thrill at eating hot dogs from vendor carts outside the Met this past weekend. As a result of this, my 18 month old now says "hot dog!" every time he's hungry. No bun required.

I noticed 2 trends in vendor stands since my last trip to New York:
1) Where are all the doughnut vendors? Has everyone gone anti-trans-fats??? What is the world coming to?
2) Gourmet vendor carts are everywhere. That's no ordinary giant pretzel being eaten in the photo below. It's special. Special because it sits next to pretzel flavors like "bacon and scallion" and "rosemary garlic." Special because it costs ya' an extra buck. My take? It's probably worth it. It was really good.

votes are in

Skipping the weekly meal plan this week. Actually, there is a plan called "Let's empty out the fridge" since we're headed out of town for a few days. Always a good chance to reclaim some old plastic containers that have harbored long-forgotten left-overs a few days/weeks too many.

On another note, I have learned two lessons so far this week:

1. No amount of persuasion will convince your 4-year-old boy that wearing his sister's old dark purple and black winter boots is cool, or even just ok. He's used to hand-me-downs, but purple is NOT ACCEPTABLE.

2. Same 4-year-old boy that breaks down in tears upon learning sweet potato pancakes are being made instead of the usual Bisquick follows up by single-handedly eating almost half the batch.

Tally: Purple boots, 0 / Sweet potato pancakes, 1.

Louisiana Sweet Potato Pancakes recipe, from AllRecipes.com. So sweet you almost don't need syrup. Almost.

Be honest.

Who has eaten more of your kid's Halloween candy? YOU or YOUR KID?

(probably not relevant for parents with kids ages...7 and up?)

I'm confident I am crushing the youthful competitors in my house. We're running out of chocolate though, so I'll be slowing the pace.

Scenes from a Halloween Kitchen

I think my son was secretly delighted that he stained his hand green w/food coloring while mixing frosting for our Halloween cookies.  

A few days before Halloween he declared that the kitchen was not creepy enough. So we brought in some newly obtained seasonal lighting (bottom photo). Thanks, Colleen! Creepiness attained.

Thanks Mom, but we've got it covered

The kids have enjoyed making their own cocoa and lemonade for the past few months (note there is cocoa powder lightly dusted on the floor here too, to further the effect).

I love this interest in self-sufficiency. Now to refine the clean-up process!

five and a half hours

This photo is probably only relevant if you've read or watched 127 Hours. It's my version from a couple weeks ago.

There is a picture in the book that lays out all of Aron Ralston's supplies that he had to use to survive as he was trapped by a boulder for 127 hours. I won't go into his efforts to escape, other than to say it's worth a read and/or watch. 

Last week, I had prepared a nice picnic lunch and tossed in some rare treats (you see above) that were left-over from our Habitat purchases. We visited my son's preschool, then planned to go on a couple hour hike in the surrounding woods, farm, and pond with the kids. 

We had a nice start trekking about, and about an hour into our journey, as we were all getting nice and hungry, we settled on a picnic spot. I opened my backpack to find that somehow I hadn't actually PACKED the sandwiches, veggies, and drinks. The picture above shows what I did have. So, we did what any intrepid hiker in dire straights would do. We made lunch out of Oreos, Skittles, and a shared bottle of water. The kids thought it was awesome. Of course, this also means my 16-month-old youngest child ate this food as well. I wouldn't have even had this stuff in the house when my oldest was that age. No wonder the youngest ones get spoiled. They benefit from older-sibling corruption and more harried parents. 

No limbs were lost, incidentally.

Lunch Lady Blues

The good news is, my kid loves school lunch. She told me tonight she wants to tell the lunch ladies that this is the best food she's ever had. I told her to go right ahead, they'd be so happy to hear it.

The bad news is, this is hard not to take personally. What about my Mark Bittman pasta tonight? And the crusty bread and olive oil accompaniment? Nada.

Having eaten lunch where my kid goes to school, I have to admit it is pretty good, fresh stuff. Not the canned green beans of my childhood. In truth, I am mostly just delighted that she eats a good lunch and I DON'T HAVE TO MAKE IT.

Go lunch ladies!

Week 98—Back to School, for the 1st time

Mon – Homemade pizza, salad

Tues –  Chicken stir-fry

Weds – Beef skewers w/cherry toms and mushrooms

Thurs – Pasta, beans, and greens

Fri – Burgers/dogs

Alts – Alfredo; falafels

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I've been admittedly lax on the whole meal-planning-grocery-shopping ritual this latter part of summer. It's been a nice break, reminding me of the order that is brought to my life when I do menu plan. No scrapping for meals, no looks of "what's this?" when I set, uh, something on the table.

Tomorrow, 9/12, represents the first time in my 6 years of parenthood that I will officially ship a kid off to school for all-day every day education. Which means one huge thing to me: I have to have 3 kids who are in varying states of neediness (diapers to tricky zippers) out the door by 8AM every day.

Some parents shed tears at the prospect of sending their little ones off to kindergarten. I think my overriding concern is for one of a dictated schedule for the first time in years. What does parenthood look like from here? Should be an exciting week. Happy cooking.

Cakes, as decorated by the kids

This year, the kids were very excited to decorate their own cakes. The theme for both was basically "stick toy on top of cake" so it was a pretty clean proposition.

My daughter wanted a horse cake, so we frosted it with a lush green pasture, then she put a fence, tree, couple of ponies, hay bale and water trough on top. I'm describing it so thoroughly because I didn't get a picture of it other than in video form.


My son wanted a spider cake. I was pretty excited to make a round cake and give it big hairy spider legs, but he spotted some Spiderman cupcake toppers that he thought were the coolest things ever. So instead, I frosted a web onto the cake and he popped the little Spidermen all over the cake.

Pretty simple cake year compared to the Barbie cake last year, and alligator cake from a couple years ago!