Back in the Saddle, and Saddled up to the Table

And we are back. After a few very busy weeks preparing and celebrating my brother's wedding we return to life under the monkey tree. (For those of you not in the know our home is guarded by a giant monkey tree that serves as a landmark for anyone in the neighborhood.) It is good to be back, and feels cathartic to work out the kinks after odd bedtimes, various family and friends rotating through, and of course it is good to be back in my kitchen, cooking good food.

On the topic of celebrations and food I was reminded of a few things. First, young ones need to eat, as they say with voting in Chicago, "early and often". Both Gus and Freja did best when we prefed them before a gathering. Even if we were going to a "barbeque" we discovered that we could not just expect that they would get a well balanced meal in a different and often exciting environment. Often, they were so excited by their surroundings that they could not sit still long enough to eat, and if they did not get the calories they needed it meant we would be in for a long night and early morning focussed on food. Is it just us? Does anyone else have kids that wake up in the middle of the night asking for food? Granted, they both have been growing like weeds and playing outside hours on end, but come on! We finally settled on setting out a snack for Gus at night so that when he wakes up way to early he can eat something to keep him calm until the rest of the world is ready to rise and shine.

Second, chocolate is not all that it is cracked up to be. So if you read earlier posts you might recall that Gus had some pretty major food intolerances when he was tiny. Because of that we hit the books and read up on how foods affect kids at different ages etc, and one of the big decisions we made was NO CHOCOLATE. Now, I love chocolate, and need my daily fix, but when I read that children cannot digest chocolate until around age three I decided, why waste good chocolate on my kids? And the funny thing is that it became a joke between Gus and me, that he could have chocolate when he was a big kid, "like 5 or something". Well, I ended up making a killer groom's cake for my brother that was chocolate, Gus asked to try it and after a taste decided that he much preferred the orange buttercream frosting instead. HA!

Other news that is fit to print, blueberries are in around here. We picked our hearts out at Cascadian Farms last weekend. I cannot say enough about the health benefits of then for both the old and the young amoung us. Try reading Blueberries for Sal, and making jam together.

Eat well.