More spring meals

Although I've been planning meals for a long time now, we have (over the last six months) come to realize that, with Elsie eating full meals now, our three-meal per week plan was no longer working.  At the end of every week, we'd come up short.  In addition, we've been receiving weekly produce boxes and (sometimes) a Blue Apron delivery of ingredients for pre-planned meals.  Finally, although she's always been a good eater, even as a little baby, Elsie has started morphing into a picky eater before our eyes.  With that in mind, we've instituted some new food rules in our house, with the most important being that we eat a starter vegetable course with every meal.  We figure that if she's hungry enough, she'll eat (or at least try) her veggies.

With all these different infusions of food and food rules, I've had to take the planning up a notch.
  And so, for the last few weeks, I've been scribbling out a menu and posting it on the fridge.  It's been fun but has certainly involved a lot more time in the kitchen. 

I need a place to record not only some of the new recipes I've gathered but also some of the alterations and tips I've used when cooking the recipes.  For next time.  So here they are.

Meal 1

Green salad with carrots, green onion, and feta
Tempeh reubens (Veganomicon)

Meal 2

Cold cucumber soup
Grilled tomato bruschetta (Bittman)
Strawberry tart (Bittman)

• Tip: use more fruit than you think you'll need, and don't pour the sauce over the tart when it's finished.  Leave it on the side for drizzling.

Meal 3 (Picnic!)

Deviled eggs (Bittman)
Lentil Cornish pasties

• No real recipe here.  For the filling, I just sautéed carrots, onion, and celery with thyme, cumin, and paprika until they were super soft.  I cooked French lentils separately until almost done.  I mixed everything together and cooked for a few minutes with about a half cup/one cup of turkey stock and a little flour for thickening.
• I used pre-made pie crust for the pastry, rolling it out and cutting it into rounds using a saucer.  I had to keep putting the dough back in the fridge, because colder dough is easier to shape into pasties.
• I filled the dough rounds and sealed them into half-moon shapes.  I brushed them with an egg wash.  I baked them at 400 degrees for about 35 minutes.
• They were pretty delicious, although next time I think I might add some cheese in the filling and season with a bit more salt and pepper.

Blueberry custard (Bittman)

• The real thing to remember here is that a full-sized custard needs to bake at least TWICE AS LONG as the recipe in the Bittman cookbook.  (At least an hour, I would say, and probably at 350 degrees, rather than 300 degrees.)

Meal 4

Creamy broccoli soup

• I am not sure I'd make this one again.  It tasted predominantly of turkey stock, and was a bit grainy and thin.  I like the idea of a pureed soup, though, and Elsie really like this one, but I wasn't wild about it.

Baked potatoes

Meal 5

Carrots cooked in coconut milk and rosemary

• This recipe was quite lovely.  It took a bit longer to cook than the instructions (40 minutes instead of 20), and I made the parcel out of tin foil instead of parchment paper, but the carrots came out delicate, just barely soft, and lightly sweet.  Elsie loved them.

Tofu and cabbage stir fry

• This also was a real winner, as we all love a good stir fry.  Per the usual, the tofu is messy and takes longer than the recipe, but everything else came together quite quickly.  (FYI, I did most of the veggie chopping the night before, so I could just throw everything in.)  I added some sweet onion (because I had it), and omitted the ginger and veggie stock (because I didn't have it).  It was still delicious.  We ate it with rice.

Meal 6

Bok choy with crispy shallots and sesame seeds (an old standby from Veganomicon)
Baked sweet potatoes

Spring meals, the french way

Here's what we've been cooking this week:

Meal 1

Cherry tomatoes with rosemary

• No vanilla bean, but it was pretty good nonetheless

White pizza with ricotta, arugula pesto, and pea tips (Blue Apron)

Meal 2

Zucchini carpaccio
Spring minestrone with fava beans and asparagus (Blue Apron)

Meal 3

Green salad
Macaroni and cheese with broccoli

• Chop broccoli into fairly small florets
• No need to cook broccoli ahead of time (if cooked, it ends up disintegrating in the mac and cheese)

Meal 4

Skillet sweet potatoes

• The coconut oil will cook off after about 10 minutes of cooking, so add some water a couple times in the last 5-10 minutes (this will help caramelize the sugars anyway)

Kale and leek pie

• Generally use the filling recipe, but omit the chicken and add gruyere/white cheddar to the top of the filling once placed in the pie
• Use frozen pie crusts from Trader Joe's to make one large pie
• Bake at 375 for about an hour
• Can be assembled the night before and reserved in the fridge

Meal 5

Shaved carrot salad
Tofu stir fry (Blue Apron)

Other cookings

• NY Times No Knead Bread
• Zucchini & apple savory muffins (Bittman)

Mother's Day

I need to stop reading the Huff Post Parenting section.  It's overrun by mommy bloggers... and, I suppose, for good reason (because who else is going to blog?).  But I just read yet another article, this one entitled "What Real Moms Want for Mother's Day," which included a litany of quotes from the mommy bloggers regarding their Mother's Day wishes.

It seems like the same wishes were represented over and over: (1) time to myself to read a book, (2) a day in the house, by myself, without the kids, (3) having someone else clean my house, (4) getting to use the bathroom by myself, (5) sleep in past 7:00 a.m., and (6) a vacation alone, without my family.

I just . . . can't relate.  While I recognize that these are valid desires, they all seem to come from the mommy blogger/stay-at-home mom contingent.  Would it hurt anyone to poll the working moms out there, perhaps to see what we want?

And maybe there are tons of working moms out there who want the same things.  I can't deny it would be nice to have someone clean my house, to take a nice vacation, to sleep in once in a while.  And I am sure there are other working moms who would like a good night's sleep, or more time to themselves.

But here's what I really want for Mother's Day: a full day with my baby girl, who is growing up so fast it makes my heart stop.  Who wakes in the morning with a head of curly hair and a sweet smile, smelling like sleep and soap, and who I have to kiss goodbye just minutes after kissing her good morning.  I want to get her out of her crib, change her morning diaper, and eat breakfast with her.  I want to fix her hair and pick out her outfit for the day.  I want to take her for a morning walk, or to the library, or to the park.  I want to read to her before her naps.  I want to play hide and seek with her and sit out in our back yard watching her dig through the dirt and move rocks from pot to pot.  I want to pick strawberries with her.  I want to bake zucchini bread while she sits on the counter and watches.  I want to give her a bath and snuggle her warm, wet-haired self as we read books before bed, her bare feet curling inside my arms.  I want time with this girl. 

I just want time.