The last first of the year

This year has been a year of firsts for Josie. Many of these firsts have come at the dinner table. First high chair. First solid foods. First self-feeding. First teeth. 

To round out 2010, Josie ordered off a kids menu for the first time. Well, we ordered for her. "The little lady will have the cheese ravioli." So posh.

Normally, we'd piece together her meals out from our own plates. This time, she had a mini entree all to herself (and I have lunch for another day).
We went to Scalini's in Cobb County for her Uncle Terry's birthday. Josie was way into it. She had a captive audience. A pack of crayons. And all the garlic rolls she could get her little paws on.

Crayons are delicious. The yellow ones taste like lemon.

I doubt she understood that she was getting her own food. But she dug in and dug it. There was marinara sauce splattered here and there. Globs of ricotta cheese. It was a delicious Pollock painting. (Polack does Pollock....oh, that would have been a better blog title.)

Cheese! Ravioli!!!!!!!!

I've often worried about kid's menus. They all seem to be the same: grilled cheese, chicken fingers, burgers, fries. No wonder our society struggles with picky eaters and overweight children. While cheese ravioli isn't much of a stretch of the palate, it's a nice diversion from the fried and salted and fried offerings for tots. And while it's mostly cheese covered in cheese, there's at least a vegetable present.

Doing her best Jabba the Hutt impression

 A special shout out should go to Josie's cousin Katie, who has been a great babysitter...or baby wrangler. That's probably a better description. She so graciously sat on the other side of the hungry badger (Caution: If you sit in the front row, you will get splattered!) and entertained, taking a lot of pressure of Mommy and Daddy. I actually got to enjoy my pasta and glass of wine for longer than five minutes. So, thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Cousin Katie keeps Josie in line.

And thank you, Daddy Van, for documenting the occasion. 

Weekend recipe: turkey pasta bake

Ugh. I've thought about posting this for days. But between battling the laundry monster, scheduling and then fretting about job interviews, making lists, losing lists, making new lists and chasing around a toddler...I sorta forgot. Sorry, y'all. One week soon, maybe I'll actually post a weekend recipe on the weekend.
Then again, like this turkey pasta bake...perhaps the idea gets better the next day.
I came up with this recipe as a way to repurpose leftover Christmas turkey (like leftover Thanksgiving turkey, just jollier). Really, I ended up stretching the turkey out longer. But no one complained. Not even after the third day.
In fact, it really did get better the next day. And not only did my husband, father-in-law and teenage niece like it, so did my little gobbler Josie. Then again, who doesn't like a simple, warm meal to cheer us up after the post-Christmas doldrums set in?

Turkey Pasta Bake
Time
About an hour
Ingredients and Equipment
-13-oz box whole wheat thin spaghetti
-extra virgin olive oil
-1 bunch green onions
-1 clove of garlic
-leftover turkey, pulled off the bone and shredded
-14-oz can stewed tomatoes (you can add 2 cans if you like)
-1 tablespoon Italian seasoning (dried oregano, thyme, parsley)

-salt and pepper

-1 cup whole or reduced-fat milk
-2 tablespoons flour (preferred Wondra)
-1 cup grated Parmesan cheese, plus extra in reserve
-about 1 cup grated cheddar cheese (mozzarella or any other kind would work just as well)
-pasta pot
-large sauce pan or deep-sided skillet
-baking dish (9x13 or so)
-spray oil
Directions
- Boil spaghetti noodles in a large pot with lots of salted water.
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- Trim and finely slice green onions. Then add them to a large sauce pan or skillet with a tablespoon or so of olive oil. Saute over medium low heat.
- Mince garlic and add to pan.
- Once green onions and garlic cook down, add the turkey, stewed tomatoes, Italian seasoning and salt and pepper to taste.
- In a small bowl or liquid measuring cup, pour a cup of milk. Then dissolve the Wondra or flour in the milk before pouring the mixture into the pan with the turkey mixture.
- Add Parmesan cheese. Mix well and allow all ingredients to come to a simmer.
- Drain the pasta and add to the turkey sauce. Toss well.
- Add the pasta and sauce to a baking dish that has been lightly sprayed with oil. Then, top with shredded cheese and a sprinkling of Parmesan.
- Pop in the oven and bake until the cheese is melted and there is a golden, bubbly crust.

It's a Christmas miracle

For the last two days, Josie has had only milk. Formula at night and she's taking her milk out of bottles. But still, it's progress. We're on the road to free-wheelin' weandom.

And the winner of the $35 CSN Stores voucher is......NOODLES!
Random number generator picked 2, and that's you my dear.
I'll message you later today with the one-time promotional code that you can use at any of CSN's Web sites. Happy shopping!

Making groceries merry

I love to take Josie grocery shopping with me. She seems to like all the sights: the people, the produce, the colorful packaging, the beeping checkout scanner.
But I also think it's a good way to talk to her about food choices and prices. While she may not exactly get my end of the conversation, it's at least good practice of my spiel. And, perhaps, some of it will sink in.
Until then, I'm the crazy lady talking to my child in the grocery store about where apples come from, how many is five, why chips and soda are occasional treats and the best way to prepare mahi-mahi.
During our trips to "make groceries" as we used to say in Mississippi, I've learned some important ways to keep her happy and occupied.
1. Give her a job. OK. OK. I learned this from watching the Dog Whisperer. But it works. Usually, I hand her something (big and unbreakable) like a butternut squash or (noisy and unbreakable like) a box of couscous. It is her job to wave it around, shake it and then throw it in the cart.
This past weekend, I let her drive the buggy. She had great fun. The only hard part was keeping her from licking the steering wheel.

Look out! Student driver!

2. Sippy cup and snacks. Period. Paragraph.
3. Talk to her. As stated earlier, she may not get what I'm saying. But at the very least, she knows I'm near even if I'm out of her field of vision, perusing the myriad choices of mustard.
4. Go, baby! Go! Since having a baby, I've learned to appreciate the art of strategy (or is that strategery?). While not everything has to be a military operation, it helps not to dawdle or tarry. (Does anybody use those words any more?) Seriously, get in and get out. Josie's a pretty get-along-go-along kinda gal, but once she reaches her limit the whole freakin' store will know it. And then I'm stuck with THAT KID.
5. Bribery. In the wake of an unholy meltdown and all my previous defenses have failed, there is always hope in a new toy. Or better yet, a rediscovered toy. So, in her diaper bag are small trinkets that she only gets while we're out. I learned this from a wise woman and it has rarely failed me.

If all else fails, I just pull the chord, open the chute and bail. Don't feel bad for leaving a full cart behind. Sometimes, some things just ain't worth it.

I know there will be new challenges up ahead as Josie starts to walk on her own. I'm sure that keeping her contained in a cart will be a feat of Olympic proportions. So, I'm always looking to add to my arsenal of sanity savers. What are y'alls' tricks for running errands with baby in tow and avoiding epic melt-downs?

Also, don't forget to comment on my giveaway post for a chance to win a $35 shopping voucher at CSN Stores online! Winner will be announced Friday, Dec. 24 around noon or whenever I want.

Weekend recipe: split pea soup (AND GIVEAWAY)

Sorry this is long overdue, but when you're unemployed it can be hard to sort the weekday from the weekend.
I kid, of course. I'm spending as much time chasing after a toddler and applying for jobs, as I would at a regular 9-to-5. I'm also cooking again. Hooray!
It's kind of weird whipping up a meal in unfamiliar environs. We're living temporarily with my father-in-law, who is a wonderful, wise, witty man and a steadfast patriarch. But he is not a cook.
In fact, his rule of measure is that he won't make anything that takes longer than seven minutes — start to finish.
And with my regular arsenal cookware in storage, I'm a bit fumbly. But I broke in my culinary habitat with a big pot of split pea soup. It always makes me feel at home.
Plus, the weather in Atlanta was awful. Our first week was cold and cold and just plain cold. Perfect soup weather.
So, I will share my recipe for warmth with, y'all.
AND, get yourself a little Christmas. How does this sound: a $35 promotional shopping code at CSN Stores (an online emporium of more than 200 Web sites where you can find furniture, kitchen ware, leather messenger bags, baby gear and all kinds of stuff )?
Comment below and let me know what soup warms your wintry cockles. I'll select one comment randomly and announce the winner on Friday. That's Christmas Eve, y'all.)

Split pea soup
Time
About an hour and a half
Ingredients and Equipment
- 1 pound bag dried split green peas
- 2 cloves of garlic, minced
- 2 carrots, peeled and diced
- 2 14-oz cans chicken broth
- 4 cups of water
- 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- salt and pepper
- 1 teaspoon ground dried thyme
- 1 teaspoon ground dried sage
- 1 teaspoon paprika (not hot)
- 1 package turkey kielbasa (optional)
- soup pot
Directions
- Saute the carrots and garlic in olive oil in the bottom of the soup pot until tender
- Rinse split peas and add to pot. Then pour in chicken broth and water.
- Turn up heat to a boil and then lower to a simmer.
- Add salt and pepper to taste. Add spices.
- Simmer for about an hour, stirring occasionally. Peas should become very tender and nearly melt.
- Slice turkey kielbasa and heat in a saute pan until browned and add to soup.
This stuff is even better the next day. And there will be a next day because this recipe makes a lot.

Dear Santa

Since you are magic and can do anything, the following is what I'd like for Christmas.
WARNING: This is gonna be a toughie.
1. For Josie to embrace her sippy cup. Or at least, for your elves to invent one that she actually likes.
Sure, she enjoys them in so much as they are liquid-filled missiles. But to drink out of, not so much. Girl likes her bottle. What can I say? She get it from her mama.
I've heard from several mommy mentors that often it takes several different kinds before the "right one" is found. But dang, yo! That gets expensive. Do I really have to invest $80 dollars in sippy cups? Or does the trial of various kinds just pass enough time for her to warm up to the idea in general?
Help a good girl out. I can't keep calling her sippy cup "ba-ba" and thinking I'm gonna fool her.
2. For Josie to embrace milk. Or at least, for your elves to find a cow that makes milk Josie will drink.
Man, when Josie finally decided she liked formula, she committed. She's tolerating the half and half bottles (half formula/half whole milk), but she's flat out rejecting the just milk bottles. Even when we warm the milk. Short of dunking some Oreos in there, how else can I get her to make the switch? Haven't I been nice?
That's all. You made Artie on Glee walk. This should be doable, too.
I'm counting on you, Santa.

Table scraps

Baby, I don't think we're in Jackson any more.
We are finally settling into our temporary home in the Atlanta area. Right now, we still live in a magical fantasy world of cardboard boxes and clothing piles. So, cooking is not the top priority. But I've managed to make some decent meals this week and Josie has tried some new things.

Babysaurus Rex
A while back, I fretted about whether and how to introduce Josie to meat. Turns out she's a big fan of animal flesh. I'm OK with it. I'm OK with it. I'm OK with it....(repeat).
Actually though, I am becoming OK with it. While I have made the decision not to eat mammals and flip-flopped back and forth with vegetarianism, I think Josie should eat what makes her happy and healthy. And that can include meat until she decides otherwise.
She's been a big fan of eggs and poultry — especially dark meat chicken and turkey — since the day she first tried it. In fact, on cranky days when we can't get her to eat anything else on her tray, she'll eat baked chicken.
She's had beef at day care. And she tried ham at my parents house last month.
Today, she tried lamb and fish (mahi mahi) for the first time. She ate both like she'd been eating them her whole life.
So, look out animals! Basically if you roam, crawl, fly or swim, Josie will eat you.
And there's more bad news. She'll get more teeth. (She still only has two)

Berbere baby
We've only been in the ATL for four days and already we've eaten Indian and Ethiopian. Food. Not people. Felt the need to clarify, after the previous post.
This was my first time eating at an Ethiopian restaurant. It was good. Hearty, spicy lentil stews. Garlicky collard greens. Spongy, sourdough, pancake-like rolls of bread for scooping and sopping.
Josie was a big fan of the bread, called injera. She also liked the greens (??? I can't figure out if she likes garlic or just humors me sometimes.) and the mild, stewed chick peas.
I didn't actually let her try any of the Berbere spice mix because I thought it may be too overpowering for her. But she ate some of Chris' lamb stew.
It made me happy to share a new experience with her. And I hope she's an adventurous eater as she gets older. I think it's a good way to broaden her palate and introduce her to new cultures.
Whose cuisine should we hit up next? Maybe Polish. 'Bout time she had some pierogi and borscht. Those are her birthrights after all.
Or maybe some Persian (Ahem. Samira, I will trade babysitting. Seriously.)
Or Korean. Or Lebanese. Or dim sum. Or South African. Or Jamaican.
Atlanta maybe rooted in the heart of Dixie, but it's dinner table has traveled the globe.

Birthday girl

A picture paints a thousand words...but, uh, I can't think of any cool enough to describe these.
Today, we celebrated Josie's first birthday at day care. To make it more dramatic, it was also her last day before we head out of town.
But Josie loves drama.
And cupcakes.

Josie and her gal pal Clara

Daddy surprising Josie at day care

Josie holding court

(Im)patiently waiting on her cupcake

Suuuuu Garrrrrrrr!!!!!

Squishy frosting

Yums!

Chowing down on enormous cupcakes

Mommy trying to steal a sugar kiss

Aftermath

The wipe down

Sugar high

Lovin' on Miss Tabitha and Mrs. Jasmine

A cupcake by any other name

...is a mess.
Today is my daughter's first birthday.
HOLY CRAP! WHAT?! (Sorry, I just read the second line out loud.)
I told Chris I wouldn't make a big deal out of it. She's not going to remember it. I said for months there will be better times for blowout bashes. I swore no to-dos.
I lied. Eh. At least I talked a good game.
She's going to have a party at day care tomorrow. (Today will start at the pediatrician's for another round of vaccines. Happy birthday! But we'll sweeten the day with a trip to our regular Indian joint so she can visit all her fans)
I have ordered a dozen vanilla cupcakes with LIGHT PINK icing. Good golly, I sure hope my request to tone down the icing color transmitted.
The bakery manager was pleasant and polite enough, but I'm willing to wager he doesn't have kids. He was slow on the reasoning that less food dye is OK. I believe I showed great restraint in not reciting the What Goes In, Must Come Out speech.
Truth is, it all felt a bit silly. I had my heart set on making Josie's first birthday cake. It was going to be a low-sugar carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. In my head it was beautiful and delicious.
But with the impending move and the fact that Rosie, my lovely KitchenAid mixer, is packed away, I gave in to sanity and ordered from the store. (Also, my vanity would have insured that I would be crest fallen when Josie and her classmates took their first bites, anticipating total glucose overload and instead finding wheat germ and no processed sugar, and cried.)
[Can I just add, too, that there is tremendous mommy peer pressure from the day care set. I also made nine goodie packages for Josie's class. They're adorable blue pails stuffed with a bath toy, wash cloth and individual-sized package of apple puffs. Yep. Party favors for infants.
But let's be real. I'm competing with the other moms who have sent home sippy cups filled with animal crackers or tiny board books inside Chinese take out style boxes. Have I mentioned they're infants?! Whoever started this is either obsessed with Martha Stewart, rich, nutso or all of the above. But then, what does that make me for continuing it?]
On Friday, we are completing the first leg of our move to Atlanta, stopping in Birmingham and staying the night with my parents. Of course, the proud, first-time grands have already planned out a Josie-focused menu with banana pudding for dessert.
So despite my best intentions, I have given into mommy peer pressure and baby sugar lust.
Bring out the cupcakes and the cameras, I say! Bring on the sugar! Bring out the crumbs and the icing smeared hair and the mess!

Full-bellied livin'

More and more, I am giving credence to the notion that our uninhibited selves manifest in our children. Or at least that's what we see when we look at them.
A stellar example Monday night: (Caveat: This is what happens when your husband finds himself unemployed for the first day in a two-week stretch between jobs, for the first time in nearly two decades and home, alone, all day.) We decide to take Josie to a national, sit-down restaurant chain fondly parodied in Glee as Breadsticks.

It was her pre-first birthday party and my pre-last day at work party and our pre-moving celebration and an excuse for my husband to get out of the house.

Josie gleefully ate said breadsticks, mashed potatoes, chicken and cheese tortellini. And then? She passed out. Cold. In the car. Full belly. Heater on. Oh yeah.

Only a child would have such confidence and shamelessness and joie de vivre as to eat carbs, forgo vegetables, guzzle drinks, wave at strangers and talk with full mouths and not feel that's in any way bad. It's also good that those people have parents so they don't do that all the time.
But we can take lessons from children in how to find and enjoy the good things.
Eat up those fleeting pleasurable moments and then enjoy a full-bellied rest.

Kitchen Helper

So, I don't wanna brag, but I pretty much have the best kitchen helper ever.
Josie loves to hang out in the kitchen. Some of her most favorite toys are in there: refrigerator magnets and pots and pans.
Behold:



P.S. I still haven't talked her into making me lunch, though.

Ain't no thing

As we prepare to move two states away, start new jobs and find new routines, we're also preparing to wean Josie now from bottles to sippy cups and from formula to whole milk. Great timing, no?

Most docs/officials/smart people recommend switching baby to whole milk at a year old, and we hope to do that. But we may delay the big switch for a few weeks depending on how quickly Josie adapts to her new home and schedule. 

Josie has done so well with all the other transitions we've asked her to make. Still, this is the first time we've asked her to make such big ones so close together. I don't want to yank the bottle out from under her, so to speak.

As usual, the rationale side of me knows this will be difficult at first but still harder for me than for Josie. And the worry side of me is saying "Ah! Ah! Ah!"

The rationale side will win, and the worry side will remember this:

Out of sheer curiosity on Saturday, I let Josie try milk. 

Did she like it? Dunno. She didn't not like it. 

I poured the milk in a sippy cup because I don't want Josie associating her new beverage-of-choice with bottles since that would defeat the weaning goal. And I didn't heat it up because I want her to take milk straight from the refrigerator. 

When we weaned her from breast to formula bottle, we heated her bottles to make the transition easier and more appealing. But now, she expects warm bottles all the time. When the bottles go, I'll be done with the tedious heating routine.

Any way, Josie took a few sips of milk. And then a few more. She never broke her concentration on the alphabet magnets she was rearranging on the fridge. She took more sips and carried on carrying on.

Basically, her whole demeanor said, "Ain't no thing."

I am encouraged. Now, if we can only cut down on the number of bottle feedings each day and get her to eat more table food....

Hopefully, by January, I'll be able to look back and say "Ain't no thing."

The way the cookie crumbles

Reaching into my jean pockets Friday morning, I was caught by surprise. I was fishing for a hair band and came back with a fist full of crumbs.
"Huh? Oh yea...." It was, folks, evidence of my guilt. The crime? Bribery. The punishment? Well, none. I pretty much got away with it.
And I'm not sorry. Not, I say. I did and I'd do it again.
You see, Josie developed an ear infection and the doc prescribed her the regular 10-day regimen of antibiotics. This time, instead of the 1/2 teaspoons twice daily dose, he decided we needed more of a challenge and bumped up the dose to 1 teaspoon once a day.
Given that the only thing Josie likes less than taking medicine is having her nose wiped, the first few dosings went as we expected. One of us (Chris) distracted the babe while the other (me) coaxed her into swallowing the cloying, thick medicine. Or at least, that's how the ritual began.
It quickly tumbled into a bad cop, worse cop routine with Chris pinning her to the changing table while I alternated between jamming the syrup syringe into her cheek and covering her mouth so she couldn't spit it out.
On Friday, Chris went into work earlier. And so, faced with the routine alone and unarmed I improvised. OK. I bribed.
I got a cookie from the cupboard. I'll leave the rest to your imagination, but it worked like a charm. I don't want to always use food as the proverbial carrot but I can now see why food symbolizes incentive so well.