Table scraps

Opah!
Josie crossed off two cuisines this weekend while in Birmingham (aka The Big Salty) celebrating her Grammy's birthday. She ate Greek and Thai within a 24-hour span.
We had birthday dinner at DoDiYos in Homewood kind of late — at least for people now accustomed to eastern time — but Josie was fine as long as there was food. There was bread with a garlicky feta spread and pita and hummus. After she got bored with it, she ran hummus through her fuzzy locks and "combed" them with the pita slices. Bizarre!
There was also roast chicken and potatoes. Seared grouper over truffle risotto. And salad. Yep. She's a crumbsnatcher, for real.
We'd give her food. I swear! Things she could eat that were cut or mashed into appropriate bits. But quickly, she discovered everything is better when snatched directly off Mommy's or Daddy's plate. Including salad. I don't know how she snuck the lettuce or why, but she was defiant when we tried to take it away.
And given that her tooth count remains at two (but good gravy is she trying for uppers!), she did fairly well gumming everything up.

How do you like them apples?
I must have the only child on Earth who doesn't care for apple juice.
After weeks of battling to get her to drink juicy water (that's about one part juice to about two or three parts water) out of her sippy cups, it finally dawned on me that maybe Josie doesn't like apple juice.
Sure enough, tried out some mango juice and she was all in. Blueberry juice? OK. White grape? Aight.
Just no apple, please. Wonder why?

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. 

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.

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.

What's yours is mine and what's mine is mine

That's apparently Josie's new fooditude (That's right. I'm combining words like peanut butter and jelly). But before I explain, allow me to do what I so frequently enjoy. Let's Tarantino this!

So as you may recall, today was Josie's first day eating big kid lunch at daycare. I was a little nervous, which I think may be my normal state now. As usual, all that worry was in vain. Head lady said Josie was super excited when she realized she was being seated with the table food-eaters and not the spoon-feeders this afternoon.

She ate pasta and corn and tropical fruit. Now, I'm not totally enthused about the corn and pasta. I don't count corn as a true vegetable. I count it as a starch. But I know Josie will get plenty of veggies, and apparently she really liked the corn.

In fact, I think lunchtime may have looked something like this:

That is if Josie were Godzilla (or Babyzilla) and corn were Tokyo.

Since she did so well at lunch, I thought she should have an all-finger-foods dinner. My parents were in town and we all went out to eat at an Italian restaurant. I toted along steamed carrots and peas in case there wasn't anything I thought Josie could eat off the menu.

BOY WAS I WRONG!

She snacked on the peas and carrots until my chicken parmigiana came. But it wasn't the chicken she had her eye on. Rather, the sides of rotini alfreddo and sauteed spinach caught her eye.

I spooned a few cut-up pieces of rotini (double pasta day) and spinach onto her place mat but didn't really think she'd be that into it since both were garlicky, and I don't just mean a little bit.

BOY WAS I WRONG!

She inhaled it. Looked up and demanded more. "Dedd darhhh jerrhhh!"

She ate off my plate for the rest of dinner.

By the end of the meal, her cheeks were smeared with cheese sauce and spinach. She smelled like a garlic roll. I almost took a bite.

And as I tried to scrape the scraps off her place mat, she looked up at me with a pouty face that said "No, mommy. No."

Apparently, little piggy doesn't share. But I gotta respect that. Girl don't play.