Ice cream!
Yum, nothing beats an ice cream cone on a hot summer day. This may actually be the first one we just handed to her and let her eat. The back porch was an easy cleanup spot and we all enjoyed a cone after our morning swim. She could use some work on her technique, it was melting faster than she could eat it. Ethan and Zach did not have the same problem, theirs were gone lickety split.
One food from Jordi’s childhood are arepas. As I have been taught, arepas are different depending on where you’re getting them from, Venezuelan ones are primarily white corn meal and water formed into english muffin shapes and sauteed/steamed. Columbian ones are more like pancakes with yellow corn meal, Jordi would call those cachapas. We stuff cheese into the middle of all of them, yum.
Josie got her first lesson in making arepas and she enjoyed it. She helps me most every day in the kitchen to measure and pour food for dinner. For the arepas I had to demonstrate just how to mix them up with your hands because she did not seem to believe that I actually wanted her to stick her hands in the food, since I usually am cautioning her against it. She had fun. She still doesn’t really eat them though, but the cheese is well liked.
Tonight for dinner I tried a new recipe. Tex-Mex Rice Cakes from a website I’ve just started reading for some more meal ideas. We’ve gotten into a serious rut and I have been completely uninspired to get us out of it. These were a pretty good success, although nothing crazy but they were quick and used up leftover rice. Josie enjoyed helping to make them, eating most of the ingredients as they went in. And she is slowly lingering over them this evening even though they weren’t too exciting to start with. Jordi compared them to crab cakes, minus the crab flavor.
I made some small modifications, I didn’t have cilantro, so I threw in some taco seasoning for some flavor. I also thought corn plus rice plus bread crumbs was a little much so I swapped out half the corn for black beans. We had some avocado on the side too, I’d add a salad, soup or other nice veggie rich dish to go with it.
Whenever Josie see’s a zucchini in the grocery store, or in the fridge she immediately proclaims ‘Zucchini pasta!’. It’s her favorite dish. It’s simple, it gets some veggies into her and it’s yummy and garlic filled. Since I seem to keep screwing up 3/4ths of the new things I try to make, I’ve been sticking to the old favorites lately like this. Here’s how it goes in case you want to make Josie her favorite meal! I think I may have picked it up from Rachael Ray, but I really can’t remember at this point.
Zucchini Pasta
serves 6 (or 4 big big servings)
Boil water for pasta and cook according to package. Save 1 cup of the pasta water before draining. In a big (I use non-stick) frying pan, melt butter and olive oil together over medium low heat. Add in zucchini (I add it when I put the pasta in the water for pretty good timing) and garlic. Cook approximately 7 minutes, until cooked and just starting to brown.
Add in the drained pasta and cheese and half a cup of pasta water. Toss to spread everything around to keep cheese clumps from forming. Ideally the cheese will just melt into the sauce. Add more pasta water if the pan is dry, the pasta shouldn’t have a soupy sauce, but shouldn’t be sticking to the pan either. You can cook it off if you add too much. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Add generous heaping to your plate and enjoy eating some well hidden vegetables. I’ve also added shredded red peppers in too which adds a slightly different but also yummy flavor and color to the mix.
Lately I’ve found some time to do some cooking and have picked out some new recipes. Some have been good, some have not. Here’s what’s gone down:
Josie has become a bit of a help in the kitchen, she can wash fruits and vegetables, take grapes off the stem, and measure and pour with a small bit of help (like making sure she actually fills said measuring cup). Here she does a great job rolling out some scallion pancakes. Thanks to Alice for teaching me back at Zeta how to make them!
I made some home-made pasta with pesto today without pine nuts. Turns out Josie likes it. Seems to follow her general trend of liking anything I put lots of cheese and garlic into!
She is a great eater at home and whenever I’m making the food. She doesn’t do quite so well at restaurants unless we order extremely plain food, so we always bring an avocado as backup. Not sure what’s up with that.
I’m behind in the food category, but it just hasn’t been terribly exciting. She’s had a few new things. One fun one though was chickpeas. I introduced it to her in whole form just as a bean to start with. That was a severe disappointment. Then next day I made it into some baby hummus with some cumin, olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper. I gave her a spoon and a cracker to eat it with and it was a big success! It was also one of the biggest messes she’s ever made. There was hummus in her hair, her ears, and the underside of the seat somehow. She enjoyed it again today for lunch.
One story I hadn’t mentioned a while back was when I was grocery shopping with my mom when Josie was probably about 8 months old. My mom gave Josie a full bulb of garlic to hold to entertain her. Josie (ever the eager eater) decided to take a big bite of the raw garlic. I caught her too late and she had already sunk her teeth into it. And then she went back for another bite. So we know she’s not a vampire!
I’ve fallen behind in the food documenting arena again, but there haven’t been any great reactions. Over the last several weeks since she turned 9 months we were able to introduce some new foods like egg yolks and olive oil! She doesn’t eat or drink the olive oil, but I can use it now to cook some of her foods. None of these foods were particularly big hits to begin with, but after a few weeks of offering it to her Josie has decided that avocado now beats broccoli for best food in the world. Good thing the stores had sales on avocados last week. She will sit and eat almost an entire one in a meal. We started on black beans yesterday but it took a lot of cajoling to even get her to put it in her mouth. I expect that like avocado she’ll try them more later and like them more then.
One thing that the egg yolk and oil gave me was a chance to actually do some food combinations and cooking. For instance, I made her broccoli potato “fries” shown below. They weren’t a huge hit although I thought they were pretty tastey.
Her appetite for food has increased quite a bit and she will eat surprisingly large amounts of food. I’m also starting to appreciate the fruit that she eats because I don’t have to cook it, just cut it. I think the avocado mask she gives herself nightly also might be helping to improve her complexion!
Her cold from last week finally ended after almost three weeks, and that combined with the daily avocado and olive oil on other foods seems to have given her the small double chin back again which makes me feel better. This week she goes to the doc to confirm the ear infection is gone and we’ll get another weigh-in.
Broccoli potato fries
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