Food shared is love.
TL; DR: I made good food and invited my MIL to join us and it was good. Long ramble follows before getting to the yummy dinner on Saturday evening.
One reason I wanted to have a car for picking up Benito from day school was so we could have adventures that aren't at home. In the summer I'd take him to Richmond Country Farms, a big farm market that also has animals that they tell you not to pet, but come on: goats that come over to the fence and stick out their noses demand to be carefully petted, right? Also, "do not feed" doesn't mean the hay that's right there at the fence, right? Anyway, they have the goats, and also chickens, roosters, one big goose (evidently its mate died a while back and it's alone now), ducks, two llamas, three horses, and a bunch of bunnies. There's also a lot of dirt, puddles (sometimes), a little pond with a waterfall, a nice steep small hill (but probably huge for a 2 yr old), some big pastures, and a railroad track. It's toddler heaven! Without a car I was sad to miss this opportunity when we'd have warmth and sunlight again after 4 PM.
The other thing I would miss would've been shopping - the little guy loves helping me in the grocery store, not in small part because our local one has small carts that he can push, and also he gets a cookie from the bakery. Of course, this means I don't want to make this too regular a thing. However, when we go to the green grocer, they give him a box of raisins - ahh, much better! On Thursday I was inspired to try and make a stir-fry again, so off we went. When we got there, I asked him to help me find the different veggies, then help me pick some and put them in the bags. I left our basket by the check-out and had him walk each little bag over to the basket and then come back; it thrilled me to see him weave his way to the front, drop the stuff off, then run back to me. (It's a smallish store, not crowded, so I had him in my sight the whole time.) We ended up with broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, mushrooms, and he got excited by kale so I picked up a bunch of that too. This looked to me not very much like stir-fry, but did look like pasta primavera, so that became the plan for Friday night. (Getting home around 5:30 meant there was no way to make those ingredients into a multi-step dinner that night; it's either a night to shop or a night to cook.)
Friday, he played with the neighbor kids while I cut up broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, and sweet potato to steam, and large-diced mushrooms to saute. This took a while; he ate dinner of cold stuff while I did this prep, and by the time I was done with that he'd eaten his dinner and it was too late for me to be able to make a cheese sauce and also be the active parent. The rest of this food prep would have to wait; I threw the prepped veggies into a large casserole dish to wait for the pasta and sauce. After all the bedtime stuff, Rick came home with a friend who had visited him at his work, and we ended up hanging out for a bit, so I cadged together enough food to be satisfied and left this project for after shul on shabbat.
Fast forward to Saturday afternoon, and I finally cooked up egg noodles and made the cheese sauce. Of course, my butter wasn't in easy-to-measure stick form, so I did my best guess on 2 T butter, then put in flour, then added more butter, got it nice and brown, added the milk, then tossed in grated marbled cheddar and mozzarella, salt, onion powder, granulated garlic, a little dry mustard, a little curry, then went to grind some mixed peppercorns in there. Hilariously, one twist later, the grinder completely broke! Peppercorns fell in, on top of the other spices. I calmly got out a spoon and fork and spent the next 5 minutes fishing out whole peppercorns, lest I kill my cheese sauce and my palate trying to eat this stuff. *sigh* This is another good reason not to add spices directly into your food, but perhaps take them in hand first. *sigh* After all that, though, the sauce was really great, a good consistency, and I mixed the sauce with the solids, sprinkled parmesan reggiano and whole wheat breadcrumbs on top, and put it all in the oven to get everything toasty until it was time to eat.
I invited my MIL over for dinner, for a few reasons. I want to spend social time with her; I had lots of food and wanted to share it; I want Benito to not just associate Grandma with not-parents; I enjoy having people over; I like my MIL and want her to know it genuinely. She came over and brought dessert - lemon meringue pie - and we had a good time. There's enough leftovers that Rick and I had some of the primavera for lunch on Sunday, and I have two containers for lunches as well. I also have more of all the veggies, so maybe I'll make minestrone with them! Oh yum, happy thought!
This entry was originally posted at http://avivasedai.dreamwidth.org/672893.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
One reason I wanted to have a car for picking up Benito from day school was so we could have adventures that aren't at home. In the summer I'd take him to Richmond Country Farms, a big farm market that also has animals that they tell you not to pet, but come on: goats that come over to the fence and stick out their noses demand to be carefully petted, right? Also, "do not feed" doesn't mean the hay that's right there at the fence, right? Anyway, they have the goats, and also chickens, roosters, one big goose (evidently its mate died a while back and it's alone now), ducks, two llamas, three horses, and a bunch of bunnies. There's also a lot of dirt, puddles (sometimes), a little pond with a waterfall, a nice steep small hill (but probably huge for a 2 yr old), some big pastures, and a railroad track. It's toddler heaven! Without a car I was sad to miss this opportunity when we'd have warmth and sunlight again after 4 PM.
The other thing I would miss would've been shopping - the little guy loves helping me in the grocery store, not in small part because our local one has small carts that he can push, and also he gets a cookie from the bakery. Of course, this means I don't want to make this too regular a thing. However, when we go to the green grocer, they give him a box of raisins - ahh, much better! On Thursday I was inspired to try and make a stir-fry again, so off we went. When we got there, I asked him to help me find the different veggies, then help me pick some and put them in the bags. I left our basket by the check-out and had him walk each little bag over to the basket and then come back; it thrilled me to see him weave his way to the front, drop the stuff off, then run back to me. (It's a smallish store, not crowded, so I had him in my sight the whole time.) We ended up with broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, mushrooms, and he got excited by kale so I picked up a bunch of that too. This looked to me not very much like stir-fry, but did look like pasta primavera, so that became the plan for Friday night. (Getting home around 5:30 meant there was no way to make those ingredients into a multi-step dinner that night; it's either a night to shop or a night to cook.)
Friday, he played with the neighbor kids while I cut up broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, and sweet potato to steam, and large-diced mushrooms to saute. This took a while; he ate dinner of cold stuff while I did this prep, and by the time I was done with that he'd eaten his dinner and it was too late for me to be able to make a cheese sauce and also be the active parent. The rest of this food prep would have to wait; I threw the prepped veggies into a large casserole dish to wait for the pasta and sauce. After all the bedtime stuff, Rick came home with a friend who had visited him at his work, and we ended up hanging out for a bit, so I cadged together enough food to be satisfied and left this project for after shul on shabbat.
Fast forward to Saturday afternoon, and I finally cooked up egg noodles and made the cheese sauce. Of course, my butter wasn't in easy-to-measure stick form, so I did my best guess on 2 T butter, then put in flour, then added more butter, got it nice and brown, added the milk, then tossed in grated marbled cheddar and mozzarella, salt, onion powder, granulated garlic, a little dry mustard, a little curry, then went to grind some mixed peppercorns in there. Hilariously, one twist later, the grinder completely broke! Peppercorns fell in, on top of the other spices. I calmly got out a spoon and fork and spent the next 5 minutes fishing out whole peppercorns, lest I kill my cheese sauce and my palate trying to eat this stuff. *sigh* This is another good reason not to add spices directly into your food, but perhaps take them in hand first. *sigh* After all that, though, the sauce was really great, a good consistency, and I mixed the sauce with the solids, sprinkled parmesan reggiano and whole wheat breadcrumbs on top, and put it all in the oven to get everything toasty until it was time to eat.
I invited my MIL over for dinner, for a few reasons. I want to spend social time with her; I had lots of food and wanted to share it; I want Benito to not just associate Grandma with not-parents; I enjoy having people over; I like my MIL and want her to know it genuinely. She came over and brought dessert - lemon meringue pie - and we had a good time. There's enough leftovers that Rick and I had some of the primavera for lunch on Sunday, and I have two containers for lunches as well. I also have more of all the veggies, so maybe I'll make minestrone with them! Oh yum, happy thought!
This entry was originally posted at http://avivasedai.dreamwidth.org/672893.html. Please comment there using OpenID.