They're Strong to the Finish

 . . . 'cos they ate their spinach!!

I can't believe it, but I got the kids to eat--and enjoy!!--spinach.  I'm realizing that as long as I make questionable vegetables, like last week's green beans, a tad soy-saucey, they'll eat them.  Sis had two servings!!

It's all part of our attempt to increase our consumption of fruits and vegetables.  We try to mark off as many letters of H-E-A-L-T-H as we can each day, aiming at least for the "L."  It's almost a game.  And so far, we're winning.

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Mandola’s Family Table Spinach

2 tablespoons each:  olive oil and chopped garlic (garlic powder can suffice)

2 pounds fresh spinach

20 oz (2 1/2 cups) chicken stock (or water)

1 teaspoon each:  salt and black pepper

            Heat oil in saute pan over medium heat.  Add garlic and heat until transparent.  Stir in spinach and chicken stock; simmer 2 minutes.  Season with salt and pepper.  Serves six.

Gommie’s note:  Do not brown garlic.

Gommie Hungry

                                                                                                                      

No Wrinkled Noses Here

In this season of indulgence (and what a judgement adding "over" to that is), we're making a concerted effort to eat our fruits and vegetables.  This week, we've had roasted broccoli and cauliflower and butternut squash as well as salad, apples, oranges, and "wrinkled" green beans.  I wasn't sure the beans would go over, since the kids didn't like last week's green bean casserole.  But I should've know if I put enough soy sauce on it, they'll eat almost anything.  Including a big bag of green beans.

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"Wrinkled" Green Beans

green beans, washed and trimmed and cut into preferred size
garlic, minced--as much as you like (garlic powder suffices)
olive oil
soy sauce
Maggi

If green beans are tough or old, steam or blanch first.  I steamed ours in a covered dish in the microwave for 5 minutes.

Heat oil and saute minced garlic.  Add green beans and cook on medium high until green beans begin to wrinkle.  Add soy sauce and Maggi to taste, along with about 1/2 cup water.  Cover and cook until desired tenderness.  Serve immediately.

Mama Hungry

The Broccoli Hat Trick

On Friday last, Mama Teacher and CJ stayed for dinner and, it being the hottest day almost ever in CT, we ordered out. Pizza. Cheese for Bud and CJ, broccoli pizza specifically for Mama Teacher, among other things. Sis, who likes broccoli (and cauliflower), opted for chicken tenders because she doesn't like sauce. Or cheese. (Or trying new things much right now.)

Bud was curious about the broccoli pizza, which was curious in and of itself because I've watched his crying jags over that vegetable. And then he asked to try it. He's been more open to trying things recently, except the things he's already against. And he ate a whole slice! Including the broccoli. Without picking around it, spitting it out, or crying.

The next night, I served broccoli as a side with dinner. Mama Hungry added a pat of butter and some seasoned salt to liven things up . . . and he had two servings!!!! As did she.

Finally today, I was making "Ponyo noodles," AND HE ASKED ME TO ADD BROCCOLI!!!! Which they then both ate.

You could knock me over with a feather.

I guess all our new foods, for Bud at least, will be served first on pizza.

At least it's more palatable than covering vegetables in chocolate for Sis!

First Harvest

After we watered our little garden this morning, we conducted our first harvest, hoping to save some of the produce from wilting in this unseasonal heat. Sis and Bud gently (and not so) pulled snow peas off their vines. I ate one on the spot, much to their horror. And then Sis--SIS!--gamely tried one too, even if she opened it only to eat the peas out of the inside. But she liked it and ate 2 more. I'm stunned. We'll plant a whole bed of snow peas next year! (Actually, we'll need a second raised bed because this year we planted too much in our little space--the squash plants are double the size we had last year. I wonder if it's better light? soil? Just not sure.) We also harvested a head of romaine lettuce but neither kid could be induced to consider sampling it, dressing or not. I'll save it for dinner. Otherwise, we have one tiny little Italian striped zucchini on a gargantuan plant, and lots of blossoms on it and our yellow crookneck squash plant. There is one long Dragon Tongue bean pod (don't you love the names?). On our topsy-turvy tomato plant there are several little tomato balls, a long way from being ready. But our strawberries aren't doing that well. Still, it's fun to check on our progress and eat the fruits, er, vegetables of our labors.

Veggie Love

Okay, I think I might have gone round the bend: I've become obsessed with vegetables. I used to laugh at my friend "Church Miss L" when she said the same thing, but I can now see how it happens. I'm getting ready for spring produce appearing in the grocery stores and even more importantly to CSA season. And I'm literally dreaming of vegetables. Sure, I'm a vegetarian and one would think that implied veggie-love, but, no, you can definitely exist as a vegetarian on pastas and grains and beans and dairy. I did that the first year. But now, entering my third year as a vegetarian, and having been introduced to good produce through the farm and to ethical eating through Pollan and Kingsolver et al, I can't get enough vegetables (and fruits, I should say). Which will probably strike my mom as funny, being that I look back on what I wouldn't eat as a child and the list is legion, most of it the colors of the rainbow (I did like broccoli, as long as it had some cheese, and some greens and green beans but only very cooked, and of course corn and peas--and I liked limas!!--but never lettuce or tomatoes or carrots or peppers or mushrooms or zucchini or eggplant, much less all the vegetables like leeks and kohlrabi, which I've only recently discovered). And now I can't get enough. I'm even planning my vegetable-season strategy, which includes planning my new, bigger garden in back (after we pull out a huge invasive burning bush) as well as sorting interesting recipes by main vegetable ingredient in advance--so soon, you'll see an asparagus post, dandelion greens, garlic scapes, whatever (soon is relative). And because it's me, it goes without saying that I'm obsessively hording vegetable recipes.

Which is why I thought of this tonight. Because I was at a craft club meeting at church--more on that tomorrow because it is really late (and then only if both kids go to school which seems iffy right now)--and the people working on the service auction were there. And there was this gift box of books called The Vegetable Box, which was organized by different vegetables and contained different little recipes books for each vegetable. Heaven help me (and thank goodness I'm a UU), I coveted my neighbor's recipes. So I offered the auction organizers a check there and then and I got it for much less than it sells online right now. It's a cute little set and the recipes seem eclectic, as the writer has Scottish, French, Spanish, and Italian influences. And maybe the quirky box will get the kids more interested in cooking with vegetables too.

Come on, vegetables!

More Handy Tips

According to the Environmental Working Group:

EWG research has found that people who eat the 12 most contaminated

fruits and vegetables consume an average of 10 pesticides a

day. Those who eat the 15 least contaminated conventionally-grown

fruits and vegetables ingest fewer than 2 pesticides daily. The Guide

helps consumers make informed choices to lower their dietary

pesticide load.

Never remember which is which, or what food to buy organic? Get a handy download at FoodNews. Or, see below.

But where are bananas?

"Dirty Dozen"--Buy Organic!

1. Peach
2. Apple
3. Bell Pepper
4. Celery
5. Nectarine
6. Strawberries
7. Cherries
8. Kale
9. Lettuce
10. Grapes (Imported)
11. Carrot
12. Pear

Clean 15--Lowest in Pesticide Residue

1. Onion
2. Avocado
3. Sweet Corn
4. Pineapple
5. Mango
6. Asparagus
7. Sweet Peas
8. Kiwi
9. Cabbage
10. Eggplant
11. Papaya
12. Watermelon
13. Broccoli
14. Tomato
15. Sweet Potato

Adventures in Cooking Our CSA Share: Escarole and Struggles

Well, we are really behind in our veggie box this week. Probably for two reasons: we weren't here for the weekend and we didn't go grocery shopping to pick up ingredients to complement last week's produce. So I find myself staring at a greens-filled fridge not sure what to do. I'm going to give away some lettuce again, having already given away the hakurei (Mama Teacher, they were turnips!!!), bok choi and lettuce to the grandparents, and we're going to try to push through the rest, hoping it doesn't go bad before we can cook it.

That leaves

• curly kale--gonna just stir fry it
• a dozen eggs--hmm, what's a quintessential egg dish? an omelet?
• lettuce--this is the easy one but easiet to forget too
• kohlrabi--hmmm. stir fry? or eat raw with dip? I can try again next week.
• garlic scapes--I had thought about making hummus (no tahini, though; and the pesto has 1/2 cup of oil!) but will probably add them to the omelet. This will be in the next box, too.
• escarole--I made a soup tonight and will make another soup tomorrow night (see below). Again, we get more escarole this week.

That's a lot of veggies for 1-2 days!

So, some things I've learned about our CSA box:

• I'm not really good at identifying vegetables. Which you don't have to do at the grocery store because there are signs with the prices. I almost put lettuce in my soup today and ate the escarole straight up, which would not have been good.
• I don't really know which veggies will go bad first. I realize that the key to cooking our CSA share is using the most perishable produce first. But I don't know what that is. And I can't find a list online. Though, I'm learning. It's a steep learning curve, and expensive too.
• I don't know how to prep most of these vegetables: can you eat the stem? can you eat the leaves? I don't have to put them in my dishwasher, right? (this harkens back to a story about Southern women so stressed about gritty greens that they put them on the top rack of their dishwasher and run it through rinse. Now, for the life of me, I can't recall what book that's in).
• Every recipe starts with olive oil and garlic.
• Cooking new-to-me produce every night is rather stress producing, even if the recipes are simple.
• But I've liked almost everything.

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Escarole and Bean Soup

1/4 lb White beans
5 c vegetable or chicken broth
2 Tablespoons olive oil
2 Tablespoons minced garlic
1 onion, diced
2 c chopped escarole
Salt and pepper -- to taste
croutons, optional

SOAK THE BEANS OVERNIGHT IN WATER. Drain. Place beans in a pot, add broth, cover and cook over medium heat until beans are soft, about 30 minutes. (or use canned white beans if there isn't time to soak and cook...) Meanwhile, place another pot on the stove, add oil, place over medium heat, add garlic and onion and cook, stirring occasionally, for 7 minutes, or until onions soften. Add the escarole and continue to cook until wilted, another 10 minutes. Add the beans and broth to the pot with the escarole. Add salt and pepper as desired, cover and simmer for 20 minutes. Serve hot, with the addition of croutons if desired. serves 8

from our CSA people

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Garlic Escarole Soup with Rice

1 tablespoon olive oil

3 medium onions, thinly sliced

4 garlic cloves, minced

8 cups stock

1 teaspoon salt, or to taste

1 medium head escarole, washed and roughly chopped (about 5 cups)

1/2 cup Arborio rice (I just used pre-cooked white rice, as I had it on hand)

grated Parmesan cheese to taste

Heat oil in large soup pot over medium-high heat. Add onions and cook uncovered for 15-20 minutes, until caramelized. Reduce heat to low, add garlic, and cook for another 5 minutes.

Add stock and bring to a boil. Add the salt and rice and cook for 5 minutes.

Add escarole. Simmer, covered, for about 10 minutes, until rice and escarole are tender. Season to taste with salt. Serve with Parmesan cheese. (We didn't have cheese and so served it with a bit of lemon juice).

Johnna Albi and Catherine Walthers, Greens Glorious Greens! (adapted--they had chicken stock and shredded chicken, too)

Vegetables of Our Labor

We tasted the first crops in our container garden today. We had been playing outside all morning, and, as per usual, perused our garden as we headed inside. The flowers are spreading, the grass seed is filling in, and there are vegetable plants in our pots. Nothing near ready to eat yet. Except the mesclun. I thought Mama was nuts for buying lettuce but turns out it was a great idea. So, there we were, water bottle in hand, washing lettuce leaves and eating them. Yum.

Now, just to convince the kiddos not to eat just any plant in the yard!

Let the Garden Begin

We planted seeds in a seed starter box yesterday. Organic soil, organic seeds. We're trying to get a good start.

We filled them with dirt. Or, I filled them with dirt as neither Bud or Sis wanted to dirty their hands.

But they loved pinching and placing seeds in each of the 50 little cubbyholes.

Green beans, carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, squash, oregano, parsley, basil.

We forgot zucchini.

They also loved watering the seeds with their little watering can.

Today, already, Buddy asked me where the vegetables were.

And, after sucking all the flesh off the pit of the mango, Sis asked if we could plant the mango seed and grow a tree full of her favorite fruit.

At least she gets the idea.

Inch by Inch

Our yard is a mess. I'm convinced the neighbors, whose lawns are immaculate--and poisonous, with large carbon footprints--bemoan the state of our yard. There are weeds, sticks, long grass, dead patches, untrimmed bushes, old leaves, toys.

I'm going to talk about all but the last one because I think toys are perfectly normally for any family's yard.

I don't particularly like yard work. It's the one thing I totally underestimated about owning a house. I don't like to get hot. I don't have the back to do a lot of picking up, weeding, or the like. I happen to like wild violets and dandelions and clover and ivy. And fall leaves. And bushes in natural shapes. We don't use any chemicals on the yard or plants. We don't waste resources by doing any watering of the grass. And I don't like the gas-powered lawn mower, with its noise, smell, and carbon footprint (our people-powered rotary lawn mower can't handle our bumpy and stick-strewn yard).

And this week in the paper I actually read a defense of my kind of yard. Kent Pierce, of Connecticut, a plant and pests expert, noted, “I’m 51, and I remember that for kids in the ’60s, lawns were really spectacular, interesting, amazing places. There were cool weeds, flowers, clover, dandelions. And there were butterflies.” Well, I'm a kid of the 70s, and while we had an interesting red berry bush in the backyard, it was mostly ChemLawn.

I aspire to an interesting yard. We already have several of those things (plus a great rock wall), including the butterflies--a yellow one was flitting around this morning. As was a great big bumblebee, several squirrels, a cardinal, a blue jay, two robins, and several sparrows. I haven't seen our little bunny in several months, or the turkeys, but I liked their visits (rumor has it there is a three-legged fox, but I haven't seen it). And we'll have more butterflies because I bought the kit where you order the larvae and grow, then release, your own. We just needs some more flowers for them.

Which takes us to gardening. I don't know how to garden. The plants we put in don't seem to survive our neglect or the winters. We have several patches of blossom-less tulips and daffodils. Though, some daylilies, which I was convinced weren't going to make it, seem to be coming back. Let's see if they bloom. And the hostas never go away. I don't like them much but they're hardy so we got some more from a friend.

And now everywhere I turn, I'm being encouraged to plant food. If I can't keep daffodils and tulips going, won't I kill lettuce and zucchini? I'm not even sure how to make seeds sprout. We stood in the seed section of the local store recently and were so overwhelmed and unsure that we left without buying anything. Michael Pollan's exhortation to plant a garden to combat climate change is a powerful idea, but now we need someone to take those of us with no garden experience (those of us who grew up in the immaculate lawns of the cheap-energy without guilt era) by the hand and help us out. We've looked at books but they are complicated and advanced. We're going to start small, with containers for a few vegetables.

We just need to start.

And mind you, while we focus on getting some food to grow, the rest of the yard will just become messier.

And I think that's great.

Out of the Mouths of Babes, III

DD likes to play with her food. Sometimes, she uses banana peels as ladders from the table to her plate so the other food can "walk" up and down. Often, she identifies objects in the food she eats--that's a train, that's a car. I'm hoping she'll find a Mary or Jesus so I can sell it on eBay and send them both to college. And today she was making families out of vegetables.

"This is Mommy Carrot. This is Baby Carrot, next to Mama Carrot. Daddy Carrot is way over there, hiding in the peas."

Size Does Matter

My kids ate two whole bags of steamed vegetables today! We used to buy fresh vegetables but the kids would go on and off, say, a broccoli kick and we wouldn't eat it all and it would go bad. We didn't want to try canned veggies too much because of the high sodium, even though there are several organic varieties at our stores (we shop at two--the grocery superstore and the small health food store; everyone says to go to Trader Joe's but I'm not adding a 3rd store and they don't carry enough allergy friendly stuff to drop either other store off my list). So a friend turned me on to frozen bags of vegetables that steam in your microwave. And they even come without sauce.

So how do I get the kids to eat two big bags of veggies in one day? I choose the mixed bags--broccoli, snow peas, and carrots; broccoli and cauliflower; corn, carrots, and asparagus--and put the plate between them. They then pick out what they want--which is never the same thing--and work their way through the whole plate. Today, they even left behind their hot dogs to eat the corn and carrots (I know, I know, hot dogs are terrible. But at least they were nitrate/nitrite free turkey dogs). It's actually quite fun. I get in the game, too, setting the right vegetable-eating example--oftentimes, DD likes to choose which ones I get. I got all the small carrots. See, "big" is very important when it comes to food. DS always wants a "big one," meaning a big portion of whatever. He likes the longest asparagus, the widest carrot slices, the most cereal. She does too. Which is why I got the small carrots.

But when it comes to vegetables, bigger--and more--is better.

Children of the Cauliflower

My kids are weird.

Proof #1: We reheated last night's pork for lunch. All they wanted to eat was the onion.

Proof #2: For dinner we had hamburger patties, with a side of steamed broccoli and cauliflower. They ignored the hamburger and ate all the cauliflower, even crying when they ate the whole bag! So then they settled for the rest of the broccoli. And never finished the meat.

Not bad-weird, just weird.

Otherwise, it was a hard day: no nap in the toddler beds due to the removal of a dirty diaper and the subsequent spreading around the room of its contents. Ugh. We then slept two hours in the car, were tired for bed but scared to sleep in the toddler beds. After an hour of crying and comforting, it was finally quiet. I guess we got off easy tonight.

But I realized a beautiful thing: in the last 24 hours, my children have become best friends. They used to tolerate one another, or annoy one another, or play side by side and then fight, with lots of jealousy over who was sitting closer to Mommy at that moment. But starting yesterday when they crawled out of their cribs, it's been the two of them as a team. In that Herculean task of transcending the crib rail, they bonded. And it's been clear since yesterday. They're playing together--building a blanket fort, scaling the couch, chasing each other through the little tent, jumping in their beds--and there has been no fighting. They've exchanged loveys, passed each other toys, swapped playdough colors without my suggesting it, and sat side by side on the couch to watch Dora.

It's been wonderful. Almost as wonderful as . . . cauliflower.