Life Through a (Toy Story 3) Lens

I'm sure that the masses of you who are now following me in my quest for produce nirvana are, by now, probably stumbling around in the dark, lost in my absence from recent posting.  Not to worry!  Here I am.  Back from a seemingly uninspired week of later-than-usual bedtimes, ready to leap tall buildings in a single bound!  Lots of food to catch up on, so here we go...

Week #3:
Romaine lettuce
Butter lettuce
Peas
Basil
Hot house tomatoes (2)
Zucchini (2)
Spinach
Beet greens

So, lots of salads.  Again.  But that's not really a bad thing.  Although it would help if salad was a culinary favorite in the 4 & under population.  But I digress.  On Thursdays, my sister Betsy (who took it upon herself to decide that in the movie version of my blog, she would be played by Sophia Vergara of Modern Family.  I on the other hand would be played by Julia Roberts, because really?  You can just never go wrong with Julia, in my humble opinion.)  comes to Ipswich to hang with the kids while I go to chorus.  Which is to say, she babysits while I go party with a bunch of seriously fabulous, slightly crazy women who all happen to like to sing.  Did I mention we are award-winning?  So anyways, back to the food.  Before chorus that night, Betsy and I dined on a delightful salad of really delicious butter lettuce with goat cheese, and some sausage, panko and marscapone stuffed mushrooms (I had filling left over from Father's Day).  I thought it would be both yummy and economical to slice the leftover muchrooms which did not get stuffed and toss them into the salad.  But when I looked over at Betsy's plate, I saw an empty plate with a tidy pile of mushroom slices pushed to one side.  So maybe more economical than yummy. 

Walter's birthday was also this week, so on Saturday, we celebrated with steamed lobsters.  Knowing that I am probably a long-shot anyways for Mother-of-the-Year, I planned accordingly by giving the kids early naps, early dinner, and having them fully ready for early bedtime.  I mean, what good is lobster dinner if you can't enjoy it in peace?  For anyone reading this who is already horrified, let me soften the blow.  I would *never* even think of using Benadryl for anything other than it's intended medicinal purpose.  So there.  You can all put down your phones and stop searching for the child abuse hotline number.  Walt and I sat down at around 7:30, enjoying dinner an each other's company.  At 9:00, I heard little footsteps coming down the stairs behind me.  And there she was.  Amelia, with her best attempt at an innocent "How-did-I-get-here?? face, but really looking more like Curious George spying the cookie jar.  She wiggled up onto the chair next to mine, with her eyes as big as dinner plates, and fixated on the giant bowl filled with lobster body shells. 

"Can I have one of those?", she says with her arm alrady elbow-deep in the bowl.  We let her check out the empty body, and then I showed her how the miniature claw moved at the end of each of the legs.  She couldn't get enough.  I offered her a bite of the lobster meat, figuring she'd spit it out.  I mean, this is the same child who usually refuses to eat kid staples like chicken nuggets and pizza.  In fact, Amelia is a kid who is very sensory and tactile defensive in every way.  She's not a fan of most foods, new sensations, transitions, swings, and God forbid we ever leave the house without a stash of clean napkins.  But there she was, giggling and eating the lobster pieces as fast as I could get them out of the shell.  She was fully intrigued with the lobster bodies, touching the eyeballs, and curious about the antennae.  When I explained what they were, she responded with, "Tickle me with it, Mom!"  And so I did.  She had an absolute ball.  Did I mention that she was doing all this while wearing the remnants of the giant claw pieces over her own fingers, like mittens?  So I guess sometimes food really is about more than just food.  Sometimes it's about growth. 




The next few days got away from me in terms of cooking some of the veggies from that week's share, but by Tuesday I figured I'd better cook my way through some of the produce for the sake of making room for tne new stuff we'd get the next day.  So, I prepared sort of a mish-mash of vegetarian assortment and ended up with:

Tomatoes, mozzarella and basil-  This was fabulous and probably my favorite.  I mean, who doesn't love fresh mozzarella?  I used a rasp to shave some fresh garlic into it, and tossed the whole thing with some homemade balsamic viniagrette.  Really yummy.


Sauteed beet greens-  I wasn't sure how to cook these exactly.  I made sure to rinse them well.  Repeatedly.  My Mom makes seriously outstanding beet greens and I have no idea how she does it.  Note to self:  get this recipe.  So I ended up sauteeing them in a pan on the stove with some garlic and oil.  I figured that even though they were huge, they would probably cook down to nothing, the same way spinach does.  It turns out that this is true, however they remain humungous until they cook down to nothing.  So, long story short, either use a BIG pan, or please cut the damn greens in half.  Don't let your culinary pride (or secret desire to think that you could cut it as a wild-card contestant on Top Chef) get in your way.  For everyone else's viewing pleasure, I will upload a photo (not to be missed!!) as soon as I have access to my camera cord.  I hope no one will hold this small faux pas against me, particularly Tommy Clicks!

Carla's Scrumptious! Peas-  Anyone who watches Top Chef will already know what I'm talking about here.  On the Chicago season of Top Chef, the remaining  5 (I think?) contestants were asked to draw names of famous chefs, and create their desired menu for their "last supper."  The ever-adorable Carla Hall drew the also adorable Jaques Pepin, who requested a dinner of quail and peas.  Upon first taste, the gastronomic experts at this table (which, by the way was cleverly set up to replicate Christ's own Last Supper) could not swallow their food fast enough to proclaim Carla's peas a triumph.  Jaques Pepin went so far as to adorn them as "Scromp-tious!"  Now, I have Never (yes, that was an intended capitalization) been a fan of peas.  Fresh, frozen, sauced, in casseroles... nothing.  I think they taste like soap, just greener.  But Carla does cook with love, and Jaques was just so French and convincing in his assessment.  Also, I happened to have a large container of fresh peas from our CSA share sitting in my fridge that had to be used.  So I figured this was going to be my adult turning point with peas, when I stopped hating them like a child and finally realized their savory worth.  I googled the recipe, and sure enough, Carla's sctompt-ious! peas have a cult-like following out there in the culinary/online world.  So the recipe really turned out to be realitively simple:  Mash some soft butter with lemon zest, fresh thyme, fresh tarragon, salt and toss this with the blanched peas.  Easy enough.  This took about 3 minutes.  Shucking the damn peas  out of the pods took closer to 30.  And, very sadly, when I finished I had a soggy, green thumbnail, and approximately 1/4 cup of peas to show for it.  Hmmph.  Figuring I might be missing something very obvious, I ate one of the pea pods.  I mean, maybe I was missing the best part of cooking with fresh peas.  Let me just say that I'm pretty sure I achieved my fiber count for the week right there.  Back to the few peas in the bottom of the bowl.  Tossed with the butter compound, they were pretty good.  But let's be honest, I dare anyone, anywhere to find anything that is not scrompt-ious! when tossed with lots of butter.  Right?  To top it all off, and I can't believe I'm going to type this out loud, but it was so disappointing to open up each pea pod and find that the cute little peas nestled in there did NOT have sweet little smiley faces on them like the pea pod toy on Toy Story 3 (which I only know because it's been the movie of the month at my house lately).  I mean on some level, I really expected the faces to be there.  Oh well, I suppose it would have been hard to eat them if they were smiling up at me, talking to the other veggies in their cute, celebrity voice-over animation voices.  So, yes, the peas were yummy, but I can't say I'm totally a convert.  That's OK.  It will leave me with some excellent opportunities for the swap table next time. 

Earlier in the day on Tuesday, I noticed something, or perhaps heard something, or saw or smelled something that triggered very strong memories of my Dad.  Somedays I feel OK.  And then, occasionally, I'll have moments like these.  When something instantly reminds me of him and I miss him so much it hurts.  This day, I found myself wishing I could talk to him just one more time, not even sure what I would say if I had the opportunity.  Dad knew that I loved him.  And I knew that he loved me.  But now I look around and still seem him everywhere I look.  And he always knew what to say to make someone not feel so bad about something.  I was about waist-deep in wallowing in my own sadness, that I wasn't even aware that my one-year-old had come into the room.  I was broken from my reveries of my Dad to the sweet, sing-songey sounds of: "uh, oo, ee."  I looked down to see Anthony moving his deliciously chubby little index finger from one freckle to the next on my leg.  My sweet little man was counting my freckles.  What could make anyone feel better than that?  I knew we named him after my Dad for a reason.