Lunch with Finn

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by Lisa

I’m in my last year of having a little one at home  (though little is a relative term for my son, who has never been small).  Finn attends preschool only 3 mornings a week, I have a sitter for about 5 or 6 more hours, and the rest of the time, we do important  5-year-old things, like Lego, and Indiana Jones, and playing in the park, or taking short day trips, or reading, or napping, or building, or planting, or cooking.  We have a lot of unstructured play time.  We talk a lot. He plays alone a lot.  Some days, we stay in our pajamas until 10 am.  It’s been a terrific time, with just the two of us, and while he is endlessly excited about starting kindergarten at the big school, and I am looking forward to to more time for my work, I’m also sad to see these lovely years end.

One of the most tangible things we do, on occasion, is go out to lunch, just the two of us, some place local and casual.  I’ll pick him up from school, we’ll run an errand, we’ll find a place to eat.  He usually has a  say in what we eat and where.   Sometimes we go to a terrific little breakfast/lunch spot in town because they give the kids wikistiks. (Also the food is good.)

Another time, we found a hot pretzel on an SF trip, before we spontaneously decided to wander into Chinatown. We came home with some great almond cookies.

And last week, he was dead set on grilled cheese, which we found in a little lunch shop, where we were able to eat outside in the middle of a street art fair.

Surprisingly, the Lays chips he chose were a lot healthier (less fat, less salt, more vitamins) then mine, a fact which still makes him laugh.

He got his grilled cheese. I got a terrific turkey club. We both had Italian sodas.  He was sweet and grateful.  We sat in the sun and ate and chatted about things, like whether or not we liked the paintings lining the street, why his dad is famous for his kidtinis, whether or not that plane flying overhead was a jet plane or not, the plans in his head for his new Lego construction.  It was an easy, joyful meal.  My son is growing up.  Fast.  But that also means that we can enjoy being together in surprising new ways.  I love his company more than ever, and most of the time, he still enjoys mine. A little pause for lunch together, alone, in the middle of the day, with a little bit of good, easy food, is a simple way to enjoy each other’s company on our own terms.   An easy, affordable meal out with your child lets you be together without distraction, without the burden of preparation or clean up, without interruption. It makes you pay attention.

Planting Potatoes

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by Caroline

Last summer when we visited my parents, the boys experienced the treasure hunt of digging potatoes. This spring, to bring the process full circle (backwards!) they planted. Both boys have done a fair amount of seed planting, both at home and at school, and Eli’s recent picture demonstrates some understanding of the process:

But potatoes are different. They don’t grow from seeds. And since we don’t have the space nor the climate for potatoes here, I’m grateful that my kids could head out to the garden with my dad for a brief farm lesson in the dirt.

I was stuck inside on crutches on the day they planted, so I have no story to relate about the event, but my sympathetic husband took some lovely pictures (you can click on them to enlarge):


Three Lovely Salads

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by Caroline

As I approach my tenth wedding anniversary, I’ve been reminiscing about our extravagant celebration of my parents’ fiftieth, a cruise in southern France, guided over by a wonderful crew, including the inimitable Chef Charlie. Charlie made every meal an event, and now when Eli asks to light the candles or Ben folds all our napkins in a new way, I think about what we all learned at Charlie’s table.

Of course, life is not a cruise through southern France, and there is no Chef Charlie here to make one of the things I loved most about this trip: our daily lunch of les trois salades. Here, it is just me with my vegetables, but with the farmer’s market and the CSA ramping up, I’m doing pretty well with some new combinations. Check these out:

wild rice salad with oranges & pumpkin seeds

The recipe came in our CSA box, and is credited to Jonathan Miller:

2 c cooked rice (I used a mix of brown and wild rices; this is, of course, a perfect use for leftovers)
the zest and juice of one orange
3-4 more oranges, peeled, sectioned, and chopped into bite-sized pieces
1/3 c toasted pumpkin seeds
a handful of chopped cilantro or parsley
a handful of spinach leaves

Toss all the ingredients in a bowl, and season with olive oil, salt, and pepper to taste. You could also add some grilled fish or chicken to this, or crumble in some feta or ricotta salata.

Salad #2

chickpea and dried cherry salad

This one came from Real Simple magazine; the amounts are for 4-5 people, but, like any salad, it scales up and down easily, and to taste.

6 cups of mesclun (I had baby romaine, arugula flowers, and miner’s lettuce, so it was particularly pretty)
2 carrots, scrubbed or peeled, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced
1 15 oz can chickpeas, rinsed
1/2 c dried cherries (a staple in my house since I discovered this recipe)
1/4 c fresh dill sprigs
4 – 5 T vinaigrette

Toss all the ingredients together, season to taste with salt & pepper, and serve.

And finally, courtesy of one of my food heroes, Jamie Oliver, comes the tarragon salad.

tarragon salad with grapes & shallots

Again, the measurements aren’t entirely precise here (I’m sure my handfuls are smaller than Jamie Oliver’s) but it’s a salad: use amounts that look good to you.

2 shallots, peeled and very thinly sliced
a pinch of sugar
4 T white wine vinegar
4 small bunches of fresh tarragon, leaves picked from the stems
4 handfuls of green and red seedless grapes, sliced in half
ricotta salata or pecorino cheese, grated on top, to taste

salt, pepper, and olive oil to taste

Toss the shallots with the sugar and vinegar and let sit a few minutes, while you pick over the tarragon and slice the grapes. Toss the tarragon with the grapes, shallots, and some of the shallot-y vinegar. Grate cheese over the top, and season with salt, pepper and olive oil.

If you don’t have lots of tarragon, or don’t want a full salad of it, by all means augment with other greens. But try it just once with nothing but tarragon; it’s delicious, and truly, you will feel transported. Perhaps not all the way to southern France, but pour a crisp white wine and slice some crusty bread, and you’re almost there…

Tomato Surprise

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By Lisa

This side dish/appetizer is so easy that it would be dumb–if it weren’t so cute. It came about one day last spring, when I was looking for a really fast, mess-free, new way to serve the fresh tomatoes the kids eat every day when they’re in season. Marginally decent tomatoes are just beginning to make their way into our market, so the Tomato Surprise has made it’s way back to our dinner table.

The idea is simple:  sprinkle a  little salt in a small, shallow dish, pour in about a tablespoon of olive oil and splash or two of  balsamic vinegar.  Cut a tomato in half, then in quarters, then put one half the tomato in the dish (you can see how this is a snap for 2 kids). Tuck a basil leaf (or mint, or cilantro, something fresh and spare-looking) and serve. The “surprise” is that the dressing is under the tomato. For some reason, my kids think this is one of the best things ever. They eat it nearly every day as a quick appetizer, or sometimes even for snack or lunch.  I like it because it’s neat and, obviously, healthy. The food looks like what it is, but with a little flair.  As I’ve suggested before, when it comes to food, looks matter.   If you like, you can experiment and make an inverted caprese by putting a thin, quartered layer of mozzarella under the tomato.

The 2A Farmer’s Market

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by Caroline

The 2nd grade curriculum at my son’s school is built partly on the study of communities, so every month or so there is a field trip to a different part of the city, where the kids hear stories about the neighborhood and eat some snacks: fried chicken feet in Chinatown, tacos in the Mission, you get the idea. The Civic Center field trip was timed to hit the Farmer’s Market, and although Ben missed it because of a nasty case of strep throat, the kids had such a ball, tasting fresh produce and chatting with the farmers, that the 2nd grade teachers decided to put on a classroom farmer’s market the following week.

The kids were assigned a single fruit or vegetable, and worked with partners to create informational posters about their produce:

Ben was assigned the orange, and not only did it give us a nice excuse to talk with the orange farmer at our neighborhood market, but (at my dad’s suggestion) we checked out John McPhee’s lovely book on oranges and learned this:

“Botanically, [oranges] are spectacularly complicated. They can be completely unripe when they are a brilliant orange and deliciously ripe when they are as green as emeralds. An orange grown on one side of a tree is better than an orange grown on the other side. Citrus is so genetically perverse that oranges can grow from lime seeds. Most California lemons grow on orange roots. Most Florida oranges grow on lemon roots.”

Oranges are crazy! And they’re also delicious. The farmer’s market offered naval oranges, Valencia oranges, and Moro oranges, so we bought some of each for Ben to cut up and share with the students, parents, and school staff who came to the market. He even wore an orange shirt for the occasion.

Ben loved the project, as his enthusiastic classmates clearly did, too. And I loved seeing food and farming get such close attention in the classroom. Now all we have to do is find room at the school for a garden…

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