Dadblog

food blog

When I was a college freshman, I shared a mailbox with alphabetically adjacent Cheryl Sternman. Twenty years later, in addition to having children named Alex and Andrew, she also has an awesome food blog, which I hope you'll check out.

What we eat is who we are

Almost two months ago, we decided as a family to go "mostly veggie". Nobody was willing to give up meat entirely, and leaving the escape clause in the agreement has made it much easier to live with. We can eat the occasional chicken without compromising our mission. I find that I want to save my carnivore moments for the big stuff, like perhaps if someone is going to make me a really good steak. That hasn't happened yet, but I have been fantasizing about it a lot more than I used to.

What strikes both me and Rachel is how well the kids have taken to this change. Alex was fully cognizant of the decision when she voted, but I think Andrew was just going along and Lizzie declined to vote. Neither Andrew nor Alex have complained about lots of beans, tofu and vegetables. Last night, in fact, Rachel made a thai basil/peanut curry. It was delicious, but it looked like gritty toothpaste. She served it over green beans, chickpeas, potatoes and cauliflower with pineapple on the side. Lizzie mostly just ate pineapple and unadorned chickpeas, but Andrew rested his head on his hand and manfully shoveled it in. I daresay he is one of a very select group of five year olds who will cheerfully eat unfamiliar green paste as a condiment.

Last night when I went upstairs to bed I found Rachel reading Cooking Light. "There's a good recipe in there using baby artichokes," she told me. We started talking about how conflict-free this change has been for us. "It makes me want to see just how far we can push them," she said.

Everyone's a second grader

Dinner after coming home from a long trip is an excercise in creative pantry-sacking. Rachel cooked up a very tasty vegetarian chili last night, but Alex was only interested in picking out the kidney beans. "More beans, please," she requested. Seconds, then thirds. At fourths, she explained, "I don't know why, I just love beans."

"That's fine," I told her. "They're good for your heart."

Rachel stifled a response, then added, "Beans, beans, the magical fruit."

"What are you talking about?" asked Alex.

Ironic, as we would never tolerate this conversation at the dinner table if it had originated from Alex.

back so soon

After the waiter took our order, Rachel cringed and said, I completely forgot until just now about the Vietnamese restaurant. As if it was more than a few days ago.

We were eating out again because last night we finally realized the source of the garbagy smell in the newly refinished basement. Our sink seems to be backwashing, particularly when I use the Insinkerator Garbage Disposal to grind up the goo left from dinner dishes. Last night I identfied teeny tiny pieces of swiss chard on the basement floor. The plumber comes tomorrow. Until then, nothing's getting washed in our kitchen.

At Alex's request, we went to Sang Kee, the neighborhood noodle house. The food they serve is kid friendly and not spicy. Actually we all like it, nobody except Lizzie complained too hard about going,  and she only because she was roused too soon from a postponed nap. It took concerted kindness from her big sister to bring Lizzie back around to joining civilized people who don't scream in restaurants.

One big improvement over the aforementioned Vietnamese debacle was we had food in front of us by 6:15 pm. We gave our order to the waiter just as soon as he sat us down at the table. Lizzie has officially given up sitting in high chairs (too demeaning) and did an okay job slurping Udon noodles squatting on a regular chair next to me. She lost one, and insisted on going down on the floor under the table to rescue it. She handed it solemnly to me and resumed eating.

There is a Carvel ice cream store next door to Sang Kee. I view it as the Sang Kee tax. We have to go. The ice cream isn't great by any stretch, but they have these giant sprinkle dispensers. For 39¢, your kid can put her cup of ice cream under the nozzle and release a pound of sprinkles into her ice cream. And there are five colors to consume.

Andrew milked the sprinkle cow so vigorously that he had to chew every bite of his ice cream. It looked like a lot of mouse poop to me. Eventually he grew tired of the sprinkly tedium and started spooning it into Lizzie's cup. She was thrilled.

dinner when you're stressed out

Yesterday's visit with the doctors kept Rachel and Lizzie at the hospital for seven hours. From there they picked up the older kids and rushed to swim lessons at the local physical therapy center. It's right around the corner from our house, and the woman at the pool there gives individual lessons when there's no clients needing her services. Both kids did great under her tutoring; Alex looks more ready than ever before to take off swimming, and Andrew got his face under the water voluntarily.

The pool temperature is 95°. "It makes everything easier," the teacher said.

I was home when they arrived, and Rachel was still jangly from spending all day in foot-world. We took the easy way out and went for pizza at the local place. Alex had coaxed a promise from her mother that they could pick up a treat at the pharmacy between the physical therapy store and the pizza store, so Rachel escorted Alex and Andrew to pick out a dessert while I took Lizzie to grab a booth and put our order in.

At the restaurant, I entertained Lizzie with a finger puppet until she realized there were six boys in the booth behind ours. She ignored my fish play and stood up on the seat, trying to get the boys' attention. They were speaking French to her, but it didn't matter. 

When Alex was a baby I used to worry about that fine line between "flirty" and "trampy" but now I know that Lizzie's behavior will adjust as she gets older.

Rachel came in with the big kids. During dinner, Andrew forgot the instruction to be very careful with his drink and poured half of it on his mother's leg. It was not a tension-dissipating event. Nobody besides Lizzie wanted much pizza (our standard half pineapple, half black olive). I think Alex and Andrew had been fed by their playmates' mom before Rachel collected them.

Dessert was broken out of its brown bag. Alex got gumballs, Andrew got Good and Plentys. They had brokered an exchange rate of 1 gumball to 3 GPs, but when Andrew spilled his GPs (off Rachel's leg again, clattering into the puddle on the restaurant floor) we had a currency crisis. Fed up, Rachel took Andrew and Lizzie home. Alex was glad to stay with me until I advised her that she was only welcome to stay with me if she felt like cleaning up. She bolted after the rest of the family.

I asked at the counter for a rag or a mop but they wouldn't hear of it. Still, I couldn't bear to leave our mess behind, and there were other patron/witnesses, so I got on my hands and knees with a fistful of napkins and starting blotting the soda on the floor and picking up the wet candy turds.

Rachel was surprised at the extent of my efforts, but I told her that I was just trying to live up to her standards. She said I'm a better Rachel than she is, obviously.

What would you do?

I stayed after work to play poker with friends. Rachel took the kids to Applebee's for dinner after a long playdate.

I called from the subway station at 9:30 to tell her I was on my way home.

She told me that the kids were fine, and behaved as well as could be expected. However, during the meal, Lizzie stood up in her high chair, announced "Poop!" and wouldn't sit back down. The diaper bag was in the minivan.

"What would you have done?" Rachel asked me. "Think about it on your ride home."

Well, what would YOU have done? The answer will be posted later this week.

Favorite Foods

What are the kids eating nowadays?

Alex likes pasta, all kinds of meat, but especially beef. She shares the fondness for "fish in a can" with me and my dad. She loves some cooked vegetables, like swiss chard, spinach, and green beans but won't touch others (cooked peppers or carrots). Hates onions. Loves olives (a dominant maternal trait. I can't stand them.) Her favorite cheese is smoked Gouda.

Andrew likes pasta. Other entrees are touch and go. Some days he will devour a bowl of lentil dal on brown rice. On other days he will look at that same meal and react as though it was inedible. Like Alex, he prefers his crisp vegetables raw. He also loves olives. His favorite cheese is Parmesan.

Elizabeth likes pasta and sweet fruits, like bananas and pears. She rarely eats any meat. Her olive gene also favors her mother, and her favorite cheese is American (2% white singles).

All three kids have rip-roaring sweet tooths, like their parents. We all like chocolate - I like the dark stuff, Rachel and Alex prefer milk, and the other two don't care. The kids also like lollipops (Lizzie calls them "poppops") which turn up more often than you might expect. The friendly mailman always has some in his pocket, and the dry cleaner around the corner will send Andrew home with extras for his sisters if she sees him walking past.

dinner bell

A few years back I mentioned to my brother that I couldn't remember much about family dinners. He reminded me that we spent them reading in silence.

For posterity, then, here is how we do dinners now. The preferred timing is right about 6:00 pm. Andrew starts yammering for snacks around 5:00 pm and must be held at bay, lest he fill up before we get to the table. The table is set with Andrew at the head, in the chair with arms. It's just always been that way. Alex sits to his left, Rachel sits to his right. I sit next to Rachel. Elizabeth's highchair is to my right.

Elizabeth gets a bowl of baby cereal mixed with a jar of baby food. She responds favorably to all flavors. We sometimes grind up vegetables in our baby food maker but the lumps make her gag. I usually start feeding her before we call the kids to the table.

We insist that the older kids drink at least one cup of milk (or soymilk) with dinner. Alex would prefer water, and Andrew would prefer undiluted orange juice, so some arm twisting is involved. One time we were out of milk, so we dispensed calcium-enriched OJ. I was busy scraping carrots off Lizzie's chin when I heard Andrew exclaim "it's NICE to share!" I spun around and saw Alex filling her brother's cup from her own.

At some point, Alex learned that old ladies suffer broken bones from sneezing if they don't get enough calcium and this scared her enough to accept the milk regimen. Before that, though, she would spill her milk "by accident", or wander towards the bathroom with her full cup, then return with it empty, proclaiming "I'm finished!"

When the kids are called to the table, we have to keep jumping up and down to get everything that's needed. Our three-year-old frequently needs ketchup. Or Ovaltine. We need to refresh the napkin supply. Stew flew - get some paper towels. I drank all my milk, can I have some water?

If the food is palatable to young people, it gets consumed very quickly. Sometimes Alex and Andrew are finished eating before I've turned from the baby to my own plate. On the other hand, if the food is not acceptable, then Alex and Andrew ask to be excused even sooner. If Rachel and I believe that the meal was simply not given a proper chance, and was skipped over because Myrtle was heard playing outside, then we advise that no supplements (carrots, by tradition) will be allowed at bedtime. We don't usually withhold dessert, as we don't want to make food into a reward.

During the precious moments that we are all sitting and eating together (Lizzie picking up puffed rice with her new pincer skills), we talk about school ("Like usual," says Alex.) I try to think of something interesting that I saw on the train, or in the city. There is often some harping about eating with fingers. It's always a struggle to coax Alex to use her fork without nagging all the time.

Starting this fall, we decided Alex should carry her plate to the kitchen after she's done eating. My dream is to incrementally increase responsibilities to the point where kids are washing dishes. However, I can see clearly enough into my past to know that it's going to be more stressful to impell them to do the dishes than it would be to just do them myself.

grownup dinner

On Monday evening, Rachel made tofu triangles with curried onion sauce, steamed zuchini and yellow squash, and jasmine rice. The presence of tofu on the dinner table often suggests that the food gauge on the refrigerator is hovering close to "E", since the little foil bricks stay edible for months and they are what's left when everything else has been eaten or decayed. Indeed, it had been over a week since the last grocery store run. Despite this, the triangles are--or were--a house favorite. The kids take theirs without the onions. Tofu is fun for kids - it has a nice mouth feel, and no offensive, strong flavor.

As hinted, the meal was completely rejected by Alex and Andrew. They each nibbled a triangle, then declared themselves done with dinner. Alex inquired about a yogurt substitution (we were out.) Andrew requested "a different meat." Unwilling to eat, they bounced in and out of their chairs until we formally excused them. Then they lingered around, playing guitar and piano over our conversation and begging for dessert. Lizzie squalled about a diaper problem.

Rachel then announced that Tuesday's dinner would be served in two seatings: 5:00 pm and 15 minutes after the kids were in bed. She went to the store that night and bought the makings of Tandoori chicken and a bottle of imported mineral water. Also a package of hot dogs.

When I came home from work, the kids were eating dinner in the family room in front of a video, which happens maybe six times a year. Even the baby was fed. We went to the township pool for an evening swim. The kids got baths, then their bedtime ritual. By 8:30, Rachel and I were ravenous. We wolfed down grapes and cheese, then started cooking dinner.

We put the meal on the table sometime after 9:15. (Note: if you are cooking Tandoori chicken, you must add the food coloring directly to the meat itself, not the yogurt marinade. We ate pink chicken.) I made some Basmati rice and put some spinach leaves on the plate. I was too tired to put any effort into side dishes.

cousins

We enjoyed a visit from my cousin Alan and his family this weekend. Alan and Lori have three six-year-olds, two boys and a girl. Whenever I tell people that my cousin has triplets, the conversation invariably flows this way:

"Wow - they must be drowning | That must be tough | Their house must be crazy"

"Actually, they run a very tight ship."

"Of course - you'd have to!"

But really, I think many families with heavy multiples are probably in chaos. Cake for breakfast. No published bedtimes. I'm always so impressed with Alan and Lori's gang. They get cards in the mail before the last week of December - personalized, with photographs. Thank-you notes never get lost in the shuffle.

Our kids played great together. Alex and her girl-compatriot haven't always clicked in the past, but this time with Baby Liz to break the ice they connected quickly. The boys are so different from each other. It's a well-controlled experiment proving that we are born with a lot of our personality.

I showed Alan the secret storage bin in the 2004 Sienna (under the front passenger seat) and gave them a rear lens - which, if you are a minivan owner, you really need to have. It can keep you from backing over a tricycle, or a toddler.

Alan declined our offer of lunch on Saturday before their departure, saying that his kids had been to McDonalds three times in their lives, and this had been held out as a carrot for the entire week of their trip. I felt some shame. My kids have been to McDonalds three times already this month.

The weird thing was, the kids barely ate anything. (Except Andrew, who stayed hunched over his cheeseburger when the big kids bolted from the table to play with their happy meal skateboard figures.) Nobody was in danger of obesity from eating three bites of a Chicken McNugget. The parents sat at a separate table, finishing off the abandoned french fries.