Category Archives: food

October 11, 2011 · 6:00 pm

Shopaholic Mama Goes Bananas…

…and artichoke and cantaloupe and spinach and strawberries.  I joined an organic produce coop at the boys’ preschool and today was the first delivery.  For $45, I got two reusable grocery bags filled to the gills with the following:

·     1 container of strawberries

·     2 bags of baby carrots

·     2 heads of spinach

·     1 head ofgreen leaf lettuce

·     1 bunch of bananas

·     5 yellow and green zucchinis

·     1 artichoke

·     1 head of cauliflower

·     2 cantaloupes

·     5 apples

·     9 roma tomatoes

·     10 yukon gold potatoes

·     3 large onions

Check out my beautiful bounty:

If I had walked into Whole Foods to buy all of this produce, it probably would have cost $145.  Right now I’m feeling as smug as an extreme couponer must feel when she gets a week’s worth of groceries for $1.59.  I’m far too lazy to aspire to that, but this – organic produce that I can bring home with me when I drop my kids off at school – I can do.

The challenge now is not to waste any of it. The fruit will be pretty easy to consume, but the veggies will require some effort.  Tonight we’re having salmon burgers from Whole Foods.  There’s spinach and feta mixed in and they’re delicious and I will not tell you how much they cost.  Okay, okay. They’re $5.99 each and worth every ridiculous penny.  At least I’m splurging on food instead of shoes.  Speaking of which, I’ve been pretty good with spending lately, but I digress.

Back to the bounty.  I’m going to make sautéed spinach and oven-baked potato wedges to go with the salmon burgers.  Tomorrow, I’m thinking of making pasta primavera with the zucchini, tomatoes and the remaining spinach.  Since we always end up with brown bananas in our house, maybe I’ll make banana bread this weekend.   Jessica Seinfeld’s book, “Deceptively Delicious,” has a great recipe for banana bread with pureed cauliflower hidden inside (it’s actually really good), and I also found arecipe on her Do It Delicious Web site for artichokes with a balsamic dipping sauce.  Yum.

Do I sound a little bit overly enthusiastic about all of this?  I probably am, but if cooking keeps me from obsessing about my root canal, which is now less than 48 hours away, then it’s a very good thing.  And who knows, maybe the boys will try something new?  It’s possible…  Maybe…  One can hope…

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Filed under cooking, dentist, food, shopaholism

March 4, 2011 · 3:07 pm

Smile, Laugh, Quack, Sneeze

“Do you know what happens when you eat purple grapes?  You get happy.”

This is what I told Dylan during our impromptu backyard picnic yesterday.  Yes, I hosted an afternoon picnic for Dylan and Riley.  Believe it or not, I’m capable of creative parenting that doesn’t involve the television…on occasion.  And besides, I read another article about how preschoolers watch too much television and how bad it is for them.   I’m not sure if I agree entirely (Dylan can count in Spanish thanks to Dora and he knows the ins and outs of camping from the Bubble Guppies), but my mama guilt went into overdrive.  Thus, the backyard picnic.
Dylan actually requested the picnic snacks – grapes, strawberries, Pirate’s Booty and fruit squeezers.  I imagined the fruit would go to waste unless Riley and I ate it, but I never turn down an opportunity to expose Dylan to new food. 
So, we were sitting on the picnic blanket in the backyard and I asked Dylan if he wanted a grape.  He said yes and ate one.  I kept my cool because making a big deal out of these things can shut him down, but I actually thought I might pass out from the sight of him eating a purple grape.  I didn’t want him to stop, so I told him that eating purple grapes makes people happy.   This caught his attention.  “You get instantly happy when you eat a grape,” I said.  “Grapes make you smile.”  Then I pretended to be sad and ate a grape and smiled.  What happened next was unimaginable.  We ate grape after grape pretending first to be sad and then to be happy. 
I really was overjoyed, but I was also a little bit suspicious.  I thought maybe Dylan had been snatched at school and replaced with an imposter, but then he heard a noise in the yard behind ours and got scared that foxes were coming to get us.  Nope, it was definitely my Dylan.
“Dylan, do you know what happens when you eat strawberries?  You laugh.”  I demonstrated and then he took a turn.  Then me.  Then him.  It was unbelievable.  Even Riley got in on the game, although I’m not sure he knew what the game really was.
So, this was how Dylan came to eat a ton of fruit yesterday with no pressure, punishment or negativity of any kind.  When the picnic was over and we were back in the house, he asked for pretzels.  It was close to dinnertime, but I was so happy about the fruit consumption that I obliged.  Before he put the first pretzel in his mouth, he said, “Mommy, what happens when you eat a pretzel?”  I said, “You quack like a duck.”  There was a lot of quacking after that. This morning, Dylan asked for a banana for breakfast and I said, “Do you know what happens when you eat a banana?  You sneeze.”  There was a lot of sneezing after that. 
If you see a little boy today who is smiling, laughing, quacking and sneezing – potentially all at once – don’t be too concerned.  It might just be my little Dylan who is gradually discovering that eating fruit isn’t so bad.

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