Garden Update - Time to Grow

There's no question that our garden is thriving - well, parts of it, at least. Turns out that I should have read a little bit more carefully about row spacing when I decided to grow cucumbers. I spaced the hills three feet apart, but I didn't give them six feet horizontally until the next crop. I gave them about two. Which means they're now alternating between strangling the lettuce, my green beans, and Greg's beautiful lawn that finally came in. Whoops.

I couldn't help but feel a little discouraged and disgusted with myself for not planning things better when I realized that they were spiraling out of control because I hadn't given them nearly enough space. One of my first thoughts was "Grampa never would have planted them like this."

Grampa Bridges, my great-grandfather, was an amazing vegetable grower. I think of him often when I'm out picking green beans or lettuce. I miss the giant sunflowers he grew next to the fence in his thriving backyard, and the tee-pee with flowering scarlet runner beans growing all the way up to the top. It was the perfect place for great-grandchildren to explore at family gatherings.

But then I realized something. By the time I was wandering through Grampa Bridge's garden in awe, he was not just a grandfather, but a GREAT grandfather. I have years and years of learning and making mistakes before I make an impression like Grampa did!

And that realization made me smile, not just about gardening, but about a lot of things. I grew up in the footsteps of some truly amazing people, whose skills I regard with awed admiration. Who else grows flowers like Grammie Ruth? Vegetables like Grampa Bridges? Has the patience and personality of my great-grandmother Mimi? The truly, truly good heart of Gram? The knitting and baking skills of my mother? Woodworking and sailing saavy like Dad?

But now I realize the trick - they weren't born that way. They worked towards becoming the wonderful people they are and who I will always remember. And they had time to do it. It'll be at least five years before Will starts really remembering my cooking, gardening, knitting, and sewing. I can have those crooked curtains fixed, and my cucumbers in a better location by then, I'm sure of it.

People always say you should never stop learning, cliche cliche, blah blah blah. But now I realize that these coming years are a true opportunity to become the person I want my children to remember me as. And then I'll have even more time to become the grandmother I want to be. It's kind of exciting.

So it's ok that my cucumbers are trying to take over the world, and I feel like laughing whenever I look at my overcrowded garden. (Didn't want to thin things out appropriately because those plants just looked so little and innocent... how can you choose which ones live? I'd rather eat crooked carrots. This year.)

I'll figure it out. I've got time.



Myself, top, with sister Elizabeth and relative Alex peeking out of Grampa's scarlet runner bean tee-pee.

Meat Dishes for Will - More Homemade Babyfood

Thank goodness Will has finally taken to eating solid foods, and with great enthusiasm! But this new three meals a day routine means I have to devote greater energy to providing him with variety and nutrition.

My pediatrician encouraged me starting at the nine month visit to give Will small, well cooked portions of anything we were eating with the exception of shellfish, peanut butter and honey. In theory, this sounds great - I'd love to feed him little pieces of steamed green beans and cooked chicken. But the reality is that I'm often eating leftovers or sandwiches for lunch, having dinner with Greg after Will goes to bed, and in the summer, we eat a lot of raw fruits and vegetables, salads, and other things that aren't very baby friendly.

So while he and I can happily split a hummus sandwich or share our morning oatmeal, I still need to have plenty of baby food on hand so he can have something to go with his typically carb-loaded finger foods.

The organic jarred food I buy is great and convenient and preservative free, but there are only so many kinds, especially now that Will should have chunkier meals with some texture. He should also be eating more meat at this age than just vegetables, in order to get the fat, iron and protein babies require to grow at the rate they need to. (Healthy eating for adults and healthy eating for babies are two different things, which I realized mostly after reading three different baby books reminding me that full-fat dairy products and butter are beneficial for babies, while high fiber actually isn't.)

Long story shorter, here's two baby food recipes I made up for Will to stock my freezer.


Ground Beef with Sweet Potato and Onions

1/2 pound grass fed ground beef
1 T unsalted butter or olive oil
1/4 organic onion
3 medium sized or 2 large organic sweet potatoes

Roast the sweet potatos at 400 degrees until soft, approximately an hour and fifteen minutes. Remove from oven, slice lengthwise, and allow to cool. Melt the butter in a medium skillet on medium heat. Dice the onion very finely and cook in the melted butter over medium heat until softened and transluscent, about ten minutes. Add the ground beef and break it up into tiny pieces while it cooks. I use a potato masher, which works great. Cook beef until well browned and thoroughly cooked, then remove from heat. Slip the skins off the sweet potatos and puree with a hand blender or in a food processor, adding enough filtered water to achieve a thick but smooth consistency. Stir in the ground beef and onion mixture. Refrigerate and use one portion, and freeze the rest for up to one month. Makes 4-5 cups, which I turned into 17 quarter cup sized servings.

Note: It might be better to have your butcher grind a cut of beef for you on site; some packaged ground beef is actually cured with ammonia, which is not something I want to feed my baby.


Chunky Chicken Soup with Rice

4 organic carrots, peeled and finely chopped
1/2 an onion, finely chopped
1 T olive oil or unsalted butter
2 celery stalks, finely diced
2 chicken breast halves, cut into tiny pieces
3 cups water or reduced sodium chicken stock
1/2 cup white rice

Heat the oil or butter in a medium sized stock pot over medium heat. Add the carrots, onion and celery and sautee until softened, about ten minutes. Add the 3 cups of water or reduced sodium chicken broth and bring to a boil. Add the cut up chicken and the rice and bring back to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes or until white rice is soft and chicken is cooked through. The vegetables should also be very soft, but if they're a large dice you may want to increase cooking time to 45 minutes. If desired, pulse with a hand blender to reach a smoother consistency.



Will was very receptive to the sweet potato with beef and onions especially!

Home from vacation!

Home this week from a ten day vacation in Maine spent visiting with family!

We went to the beach, visited family, and even let Will try his first bite of iced cream while Aunt E snapped photos.

Hope you had a good fourth!

Cookbooks I'd Rather Not Cook Without

I love curling up with a cookbook and flipping through the descriptions and photos for inspiration. (Unless of course dinner is in an hour and I haven’t even been to the grocery store.) I’ve purchased and been given quite a few cookbooks over the years, but there are some that stand out as absolute favorites that I reach for time and again.

Fairchild, Barbara. bon appetit fast easy fresh cookbook 1,100 quick dishes for everynight cooking

I checked this cookbook out of the library (try before you buy, a great way to get fresh dinner inspiration regularly!), and loved it so much that I mentioned it to my mother who got it for me for Christmas. Every recipe, and I mean every recipe, that I have made from this cookbook has turned out amazing. It has a focus on fresh ingredients and food that is flavored by herbs, spices and produce rather than a lot of fat or sugar. The flavors are amazing, and the recipes are easy to prepare. Some of our favorites: Pork cutlets with figs and balsamic vinegar, salmon with pistachio-basil butter, chicken with spicy peanut sauce, linguine with pears and gorgonzola cheese.


Bittman, Mark. Quick and Easy Recipes from The New York Times

I am a bit of a Mark Bittman enthusiast, and I’ve been slowly converting friends and family too. This is one of my favorite recipe books for a fast dinner because most of the recipes have very few ingredients, which cuts down on prep time and or shopping time if I do need to run to the store for something. They’re simple, but still creative. Some favorites: chicken with apricots, grilled steak with roquefort sauce, penne with butternut squash, salmon burgers.


Bittman, Mark How to Cook Everything

Presumptuous title, insanely awesome cookbook. Each chapter starts with a basic overview of the topic to help provide an understanding of the fundamentals that will benefit you no matter which recipe you choose. Everything from how to select fresh fish to the different types of flour and how to substitute them in various recipes. Much of my confidence in the kitchen comes from reading the beginning of each chapter and applying that knowledge to all of my cooking. He’s also great at providing helpful variations on primary recipes so you can take one basic recipe and make it many ways. His suggestions often spark my own creative combinations, whether it’s add ins to pasta or a new quickbread recipe. Some favorites: sauteed chicken cutlets with lime sauce, overnight waffles, curried chicken and apple salad, chicken and garlic stew.


Bittman, Mark How to Cook Everything Vegetarian

Eating vegetarian meals at least a few nights a week is healthier for us and better for our environment. Bittman’s large volume has helped me move beyond the stereotypical pasta and rice dishes and into more exotic grains like quinoa and bulgur wheat. It has charts on how to cook almost every kind of grain and legume you can find, tables on the best methods and cook times for vegetables, and a lot of suggestions on how to cook a balanced vegetarian meal. It’s full of informative reading, excerpts on whole wheat pasta and pasta alternatives, a detailed description on making your own gnocchi, a chart detailing which types of potatoes work best in which types of recipes, 17 dip suggestions for serving with crudite. Reading this doesn’t just make one dinner, it makes you a better and more informed cook. Some favorites: beets baked in foil, curried eggplant with coconut milk, simpler than pilaf baked rice.


Druker, Marjorie with Silverstein, Clara. New England Soup Factory Cookbook

Greg works near the New England Soup Factory, which is one of our favorite lunch spots for rainy days especially. Their lobster bisque is to die for, but I’ve never had a soup there I didn’t like. Their cookbook is absolutely amazing, and it’s helped me reach a new appreciation for soups. They are chock full of vegetables, many of them freeze well, and they can feed a ton of people and keep warm if guests are late in arriving. Not to mention that they’re delicious, especially with these recipes. Some favorites: carrot and ginger soup, sweet potato chicken and barley soup, chicken tortellini soup, apple onion and cheddar soup, caribbean chicken soup with coconut.


Publications International, Hershey’s Best Loved Recipes

Our chocolate loving friend Danielle gave this to me on the occasion of my bridal shower in 2007, and it’s been my default for cakes especially ever since. If you’ve been over and had chocolate cake, it was the Hershey’s Perfectly Chocolate Chocolate Cake from page 8. For Greg’s birthday every year? The German Chocolate Cake. My birthday one year and only one because I want to have more birthdays? The flour-less chocolate torte, made by Greg. Oh and it was amazing.


Mom, Kelly’s Family Cookbook

When I was nine months old, my mother took a blank journal and started writing in it all the favorite family recipes that she made, and we requested, often through the years. It has all my favorite bread recipes, plus Grammie Ruth’s vegetable soup, the zucchini bread we couldn’t get enough of growing up, how to make mom’s chicken pie, you name it. Pretty soon I’m going to start one for Will.

Pumpkin and Spinach Baby Muffins (8 Months Plus)

Will has finally started eating solids with great enthusiasm - with one caveat. Wants to do it himself. Vehemently. This makes finger foods my friend, since his frantic grabbing for spoons full of baby food requires a great deal of effort on my part to keep aimed towards his mouth rather than forehead. Half a jar of baby food mutually guided works especially well for both of us when it's supplemented by something he can have complete control over, like baby puffs or teething biscuits.

When I give him something he can eat on his own, he gets a great deal of entertainment and satisfaction, and I get ten to fifteen minutes to eat my own food, empty the dishwasher, or start dinner. (All while keeping an eye out for choking, of course.)

But while baby puffs are well received, they're expensive and not very nutrient or calorie dense. So I flipped through my baby cookbooks and saw some recipes for baby muffins. Just the thing! Except that most of them had eggs and added sugar, the first being a no-no for babies under a year, and the second being something I'd like to avoid as much as possible.

So I took some inspiration from about five different recipes, substituted apple sauce for the eggs as a binding agent, sweetened it lightly with molasses, and made Will some mini-muffins that are chock full of vitamins AND entertainment.

Here's the recipe:

1 and 3/4 cups organic all purpose flour*
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
dash of ginger
1 cup finely chopped fresh organic baby spinach
1 cup organic pureed pumpkin
1/2 cup no sugar added applesauce (I use homemade, see baby food blog)
1/4 cup vegetable or canola oil
1/4 cup molasses
1/2 cup water (more as needed)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Mix the dry ingredients and then add the wet ingredients and stir just until blended. Add a little more water if necessary to reach a thick batter consistency. Spoon into a greased mini-muffin tin. Bake in middle of oven for about ten minutes until tops are lightly browned and a toothpick comes out clean. Cool in pan for a few minutes then remove to finish cooling on a wire rack.

*Talk to your pediatrician about any new recipe, and about serving wheat, especially if you have family history of food allergies. Will had already had wheat prior to this with no reaction, so our pediatrician cleared this recipe for him. Look into substituting rice flour.

Will ate two of these with great gusto even after he had already had his normal dinner of baby food! I put most of them in the freezer and kept out some for the next few days. I plan to thaw them on the counter overnight for more nutritious entertainment in the coming months.

I hope to experiment with more muffin recipes in the future. Sweet potato, zucchini, carrots - any vegetables that do well in quick breads are shoe-ins for baby muffin recipes where you get to control the sugar. Once Will is a year old I can substitute whole wheat flour for some of the regular flour and up the fiber and nutrient profile of the muffins, plus at that age you can usually introduce cow's milk and eggs, so baking will be even easier. Until then, I am considering taking some help from a vegan cookbook (local library here I come!) to find tips for baking without milk and eggs.


I loves muffins.

Oh, the Places We Go - Our Car Journal

I love my Subaru Outback. It's got plenty of space for a car seat, Will's stroller, and all the baby gear you'd ever need for a weekend in Maine. It hauls garden plants and top soil like it was made for it, and in the winter, it could safely transport a Floridian driver down unplowed New England roads.

Plus, it reminds me of my first car, a blue 1983 Subaru GL hatchback that I loved right up past it's nineteenth birthday when my parents had to sell it because it wouldn't wait the long winters for me to come home from college, and I couldn't bring it with me to Atlanta.

Seeing my excitement about my Subaru, and knowing how I hope to have this car for years, Greg came up with the brilliant idea of keeping a car journal. Every thousand miles, I pull out a little notebook from the glove compartment and record the date, mileage, and where we're going.

I've got 12 entries now, and they're little snippets of our lives and the places the car has taken us. They start before Will was born, and even before our house was done. Trips to Maine. Prenatal yoga. Cat to the vet. Dinner with friends. Costco and lunch with Greg and Will.

As an added benefit, I now keep much better track of my mileage, which means my scheduled maintenance happens much closer to when it should. Never a bad thing with a baby on board.

I look forward to seeing where I'll be each time the odometer ticks over another thousand, and I love reading the little snippets of our lives that might otherwise be forgotten. It captures everyday living, the moments that otherwise get lost as not important enough to photograph or write about, despite their being the bulk of our experience.

And I think that's kind of neat.

Garden update

Our vegetable garden is growing!

We have carrots, leaf lettuce, cucumbers, and green beans all happily sprouting. If plants are happy. And actually our green beans appear to be getting eaten by something... but everything else is doing well!