Make the baby cook!

...but don't make the baby eat!

These are two of the tips that childhood nutrition instructors offer to parents in a recent Times article about parental food-mistakes. Its quite an interesting article about how our food tastes develop as children. There's a lot of common sense in the article, but sometimes, especially if your sense is a little uncommon, its nice to hear some common sense.

One of my favorite tips: if your kid eats too many cookies, stop buying cookies. Its pretty good advice. In fact, I wish that all of our problems were this easy to solve. I suppose that the "opposite" of this advice is also true: "If you are unable to stop buying cookies, your kid will eat too many cookies."

My favorite tip from the article, however, doesn't just work on kids, it works on me, too:

"Don't serve boring vegetables."

It's very easy to add a little zing to vegetables, with only minimal effort. These are easy recipes to prepare, and although they all have some fat added, its healthier for you to hork down 1/2 lb of broccoli with a tablespoon of oil on it than it is to eat only a couple of plain florets while swearing you'd rather starve than be a vegetarian.

Two vegetables:
Choose two vegetables that you think go well together. I like to put a sliced onion (or shallot) with something green, like peas, asparagus, or rapini.

Now saute them. For sliced shallots and peas you would add some oil to a pan, and saute them until they are almost done, then add the peas, and continue to saute everything until the peas are warm.

Now, remove the pan from the heat and melt 1 TB butter into the pan. Serve.

You could also add some sliced garlic, or red pepper flakes, maybe a little cumin.

One vegetable:
mix:
1 T lemon juice
1.5 T olive oil
1/4 t salt
1/4 t Tabasco

Now, prepare your vegetable as you like and toss with the sauce. This works especially well with broccoli, which I steam. I think that the broccoli is done when it is still fairly firm.

Vegetable puree:
This works really well with any squash, but I've also done it with broccoli. The trick is starting with the right amount of water. You don't want to dump any water out after you simmer because that water contains some of your nutrients, and you don't want to spend too much time boiling it all off, or the vegetable might end up like baby food.

Cut 1 squash into 2-inch pieces. Simmer in a covered saucepan with 3/4 C water, a garlic clove, and 1/2t salt for about 20 minutes, until it is tender. You should have a few tablespoons of water left.

Add squash to food processor along with the leftover water, 1/2 C milk, 1 T butter, and freshly ground pepper and more salt to taste. Puree.

Variations on the puree:

• If you want to try it with broccoli you'll need more water, about 3/4 cup for every pound of broccoli, and omit the milk.
  
• You can omit the milk for the squash, too, but you'll want to have at least 1/2 cup of water left over before you puree, so start with more water.
  
• You could add a jalepeño pepper at the simmering step to add some spiciness.
  

Salvia

This is a video from the Times about something that is kind of like a food, its leaves you consume.  Like spinach.  Spinach is a leaf you consume.

Meals for the King.

Elyse hasn't felt like writing recently about meals that she had made in the last month. So I'm just going to post some pictures, maybe later she'll get around to postings recipes, or additional comments about their preparation. I was only involved in the consumption.

This little guy to the right was a beautiful crab that we examined live at the grocery store earlier that day. They even offered to send it home live! I don't know what the plan there was, its one thing to wrap a lobster's claws, but crabs are fairly strong.

I don't know of the dish was, but I think that in Thailand this dish is always served in the presence of a King, so its a very special dish. It was presented beautifully, in fact, I always always always love it when a chef presents the head or face of the animal you are eating as a decoration. We omnivores are a sick, sick crowd. Well, while this little beasties ghost was watching I devoured his scrumptious flesh. I mean really, how can a species survive that tastes so good? We eat every single one of these things that swims on by, and they keep coming. The skunk, now that's a smart animal. That's what I would want to smell like if were an Earthling who wasn't a human.

By the way, I asked Elyse what was in the sauce? (besides the crab meat, ginger and scallions) She listed off a bunch of sauces in Chinese, who-wa sauce, moy chin bayye, Choom ma. I have no idea what goes into all those sauces but we have like 10 bottles of Chinese sauce around here that Elyse picks up from her trips to the People's Republic, apparently, because I wouldn't know where to buy them. Anyway, this was a memorable meal, for sure.


Here was another one that she threw together fast, but it was incredibly good.

First of all those are homemade dumplings, not frozen, and they were great. We have a package of those dumpling-wraps in the fridge, and inside was, I believe, ground pork and scallions, and some awesome Chinese sauce. Then she shredded carrots and garlic, and added some snap peas. The broth is our homemade stock along with some of the several times previously aforementioned Chinese sauces. It was transcendent. The dumplings were a nice meaty mush, and the texture of the peas was crisp and fresh as a contrast, and the carrot was rather hard, as opposed to crisp. It was a great collection of textures, and tasted great, too!


This one was quite simple, especially considering how good it was. You could probably make it based on the picture! You just need to stir fry the shrimp in a spicy red sauce. Whatever you like. Remember to sauté your shrimp with the shells on, it adds a lot of flavor! Its always tastiest - and messiest - to cook a shellfish in its shell, and pick the shells off at the table. We ate this on a very hot summer night with a nice Chablis. The slices of avocado are key.

Yes, that's the same head of lettuce from the last one. We're so economical. With heads of lettuce.

This meal is a standout in our memory because these are the first crêpes that Elyse had ever made in her life. Just last month! You know, I have never made crêpes. But I do own a crêpe pan. I have had it for 2 years! I have never made crêpes in it, and I bought it because I like it for frying eggs because the low sides make it really easy to get the egg out without breaking the yolk. But I knew that, simply by owning a crêpe pan, that I had dramatically increased the likelihood that, one day, I would eat homemade crêpes. It took 2 years, and marriage to an LI girl who made me crêpes with turmeric in them! Great crêpes. Great crêpe pan, too.

Here is another of Elyse's hobbies. This is not edible, it is made from femo clay. I don't know what they are going to be. My hope is for a series of psychedelic models of the Starship Enterprise, but she doesn't seem to be in a Sci-Fi phase, really.