Hot and Cold

Last night I made an omelet for Babyman with an egg and some smoked gouda.  He eyed it suspiciously as he climbed into his booster seat (Babyman and eggs have been on somewhat tenuous terms lately), but ultimately he tried it.  "I like this omelet, Mommy!" he exclaimed.  "This omelet is particularly tasty!  Is there tasty cheese in it?" (Babyman's diction has gotten quite adult lately and it's pretty hilarious.  A couple of Sundays ago he looked at me across the breakfast table and said "Your dress is just beautiful, Mommy."  At the time, I was wearing a sweatshirt and pajama pants and had ... [READ MORE]

There’s a McApp for That

In my last post I mentioned that we had recently returned from our summer vacation.  Oh, Tahoe time!  What a wonderful week. It was touch-and-go there for a couple of days.  A week before our trip my husband went to get the car washed and found it in its parking space a few blocks from our apartment, hood crumpled from a collision, with a cryptic note bearing a bum policy number and no name.  Needless to say, we were on the hook for the rather extensive repairs to our dear old '98 Dodge Stratus (aka The Stratus Symbol) and the garage called at the 11th hour to let us know it probably ... [READ MORE]

A Bit of Inspiration

While we're on the topic of having time and being inspired, I've been meaning to post this website on the blog for quite some time.  I found it, quite randomly, through the RSS feed of the gmail account at my last job (spooky, right?). Heidi Swanson is a vegetarian chef who lives in San Francisco and shops at a lot of the same places we do!  She's just published a new cookbook, Super Natural Every Day, but I just enjoy her website.  The recipe archives are well-organized and easy to search.  My only complaint is that some of the recipes lack zing: in other words, where she recommends a ... [READ MORE]

Cooking “Well”

It has been woefully long since my last post.  I left full-time employment on June 30 and you'd think that would leave me with much leisure time for things like blogging, but we went on vacation for ten days and since then I have been in turbo-nesting mode.  My husband oscillates between amusement at my third-trimester behavior and mild panic that all this frenzied laundering of baby clothes and re-organizing of closets means our second child is making its debut any minute. Cliches aside, I am quite enjoying having two days a week to putter at will before the baby is born, and I am dipping ... [READ MORE]

Diggin’ on Dumpin’

When I was a little girl, maybe three/three-and-a-half years old, my parents started training me to make my own breakfast.  I would wake in the morning and head to the kitchen, where they would have left a bowl of dry cereal and a tiny pitcher of milk on a low shelf in the fridge.  While they got ready for the day, I would pour the milk myself and settle at the table for breakfast.  To this day, I eat cereal every single morning. Babyman and my husband eat breakfast together, side-by-side at the dining room table, hair askew, while I pack lunches in the kitchen.  We have a window from the ... [READ MORE]

Gun-Shy

My mother's group message board has been lighting up lately with requests for baby food inspiration.  It's been a reminder that I'm in kind of a rut.  I'm not going to be too hard on myself -- what I call "a rut" is really "the total lack of downtime afforded to two working parents whose child has abandoned his nap" -- but the long and the short of it is this: I am sick of the sight/taste/prospect of my own cooking.  I make the same damn things every week and it's boooor-ing. My CSA box is the only thing keeping our kitchen remotely interesting these days.  (Along with the odd pregnancy ... [READ MORE]

Toddler Food: the Fantasy & the Reality

I was browsing through the New York Times' Motherlode blog this morning and this post jumped out at me. Yes.  Exactly. Enjoy! ... [READ MORE]