Shannon Phillips

In the box: collard greens, pea shoots, chard, kale, arugula, radicchio, spinach, bok choy, carrots, leeks, fennel.

Tonight I’m making a beef barley soup with the last remnants of our leftover corned beef brisket. I threw in the pea shoots because, you know, why not.

Tomorrow’s lunch: leftover soup. Dinner: pork chops and collard greens, maybe along with a French potato salad I’ve been wanting to try.

Friday lunch: spinach salad with bacon. Dinner: farfalle pasta with winter pesto (using the spinach and kale); roasted carrots and fennel.

Saturday lunch: leftovers, or something from the pantry. Dinner: baked polenta with cheese, leeks, and chard.

Sunday brunch: crepes at the crepe place! Dinner: roasted beet salad with arugula, radicchio, and blue cheese; steaks.

Monday lunch: PB&J. Dinner: Hot and sour soup with bok choy.

Tuesday lunch: leftovers. Dinner: I think I’ll try this arctic char recipe from Whole Foods (probably with the tomatoes and artichoke hearts rather than the broccoli). I usually avoid cooked fish because I’ve just never been a fan (although I love sushi), but lately I’ve been thinking I should give it another try.

There’s not much really new going on in our house. Oh, except Sam has started a new tradition of going for an evening walk with Robin when he gets home (usually while I’m finishing up dinner). The boy loves it and I think it’s really good for him to work off some energy at the end of the day.

Last week’s Sam-friendly menu seemed to go over well. Sam has been making a conscious effort to give me more positive feedback when dinner is good, and that’s been really nice for me to hear. I definitely appreciate the effort on his part. I snapped this picture of our Valentine’s Day calzones, don’t they look cozy all cuddled up together?

Well, it turns out I had no reason to be stressed about Robin’s eighteen month checkup. He’s gained weight and height, enough that he’s back on a normal growth curve: he’s 31 and a half inches, 22 and a half pounds. And Dr. Simons pronounced himself fully satisfied with Robin’s communication skills. He recommended a book if we wanted to work on his language (It Takes Two to Talk) but stressed that he does not consider Robin to have any sort of language delay, and that the book was really just in case we were freaking out and needed to do something to reassure ourselves. Which we are not, and do not.

Poor Dr. Simons. I think he must deal with a lot of pretty intense type-A parents.

Valentine’s Day has been really nice so far. I got flowers! And I’m wearing a pretty new dress.

In the veggie box: collard greens, pea shoots (!), one bunch of beets, a head of fennel, kale, leeks, bok choy, carrots, lemon, and a rutabega that’s green where I’d expect it to be purple. I’m a little dubious about the rutabega.

Last week’s meal plan strayed off course when I decide to corn my own beef instead of buying corned beef at the supermarket. This involves rubbing a brisket with salt and spices and letting it sit in the spice mixture for a week (in the fridge). So I have a corned beef brisket getting ever-cornier on the bottom shelf of my refrigerator. Instead of the corned beef I made soba noodles with bok choy (not a success; we christened it “buckwheat glop”) and a sweet-and-sour cabbage dish that Robin and I thought was delicious but Sam didn’t much care for. Along with the cabbage it involves ground beef, ground pork, tomatoes, vinegar, a tablespoon of brown sugar, dried cranberries, and rice. It’s basically like stuffed cabbage, only freeform, all stirred together in the pot instead of being made into individual bundles. I’ll post the recipe if anybody’s interested.

Sam, it turns out, doesn’t like cabbage. This is really too bad as I love cabbage. I got a little frustrated and accused Sam of just not liking food; he is, you see, the kind of person who can go all day and just…forget to eat, which is a state of being entirely foreign to me. Also, Sam has in him a wide streak of the taciturn Nevada mountain man. When he really enjoys a meal his typical reaction is a satisfied “Hey, that was all right!” When he doesn’t like something, on the other hand, he’s most likely to shrug and say “Well, that was alright.”

You can see how this can get discouraging after a while.

There’s also some tension between the sorts of dinners I know Sam likes (starchy pasta dishes, white bread, anything with lots of cheese on it) and what I consider to be healthy eating (whole grains, fresh leafy greens). I mean, there’s some overlap: he likes meat, and I’m convinced that grass-fed beef and other naturally raised meats are perfectly healthy food sources. And compromises are possible: I try to include at least one pasta dish every week, but I generally buy whole-grain pasta. But yeah, every time I plan a stir-fry I know perfectly well that Sam won’t be very excited about it.

I really expected him to like the sweet-and-sour cabbage though; it was tasty, hearty, stick-to-your-ribs fare that seemed right up his alley. I guess I can forgive an aversion to cabbage. He doesn’t like cole slaw either, which also seems alien to me.

Anyway, Sam has promised to be more demonstrative when he actually likes his dinner, and so this week I’m trying to give him plenty of opportunity by fixing things that should appeal. It’s maaaayyyybe not the week I would have chosen to have rutabega on the menu…

Tonight we are having orecchiette with sausage and broccoli rabe. Tomorrow, pea-shoot bubble and squeak, with grilled sausages (Sam loves sausages, can’t get enough). Robin and I will have collard greens for lunch.

Friday lunch: garlicky braised bok choy and fish sticks. Friday dinner: oven-“fried” chicken (actually covered in a crispy melba-toast coating and baked) and potato salad.

Saturday lunch: roasted root vegetables, except that I think I’ll put in the kale instead of potatoes (kale seems to roast well), and what’s left over can be reheated as a side dish for dinner. Valentine dinner: home-made pepperoni calzones and chocolate souffle.

By Sunday the corned beef will be ready to eat, with buttered potatoes and maybe some cabbage for Robin and myself. And then the corned beef will provide leftovers for dinner on Monday and probably sandwiches on Tuesday as well.

Oh, and: that pureed broccoli soup recipe from the New York Times came out quite well. It’s basically cream of broccoli soup with potatoes instead of cream, but it’s tasty. I didn’t bother to make the croutons, just bought some at the store, so our soup looked like this:

I also liked the picked broccoli stems, although I was the only one who ate them.

Robin’s just about a year and half old now, and we’re kicking it up a notch on the weaning. We were already down to three nursing sessions a day—morning, noon and night. That happened fairly organically. There wasn’t much conscious scheduling on my part other than a vague notion that I didn’t want to be nursing every hour and a half anymore. I guess I just started pushing it a little, not offering the breast first thing when he got fussy (but continuing to nurse him when he really demanded it) and that’s what the schedule settled into.

The real breakthrough was giving up our midnight nursing sessions. Boy, am I happy about that. The baby book advised me to refuse middle-of-the-night feedings long, long ago, but Robin had different ideas. And when it’s two A.M. and you just want to go back to sleep and the baby is screaming his head off and you know that simply nursing him will send him right back into slumberland…well, anything the books may say suddenly becomes a lot less compelling. So Robin got his way on that for a long time.

But it’s been a couple of months now without any midnight feedings. Again, all I did was keep pushing just a little: offering pats and soothing words instead of putting him to the breast right away. For a long time Robin pushed right back, insisting on a feeding, and then something changed; suddenly he was willing to be soothed. He would go back to sleep without the nursing. It was totally a change in him, not a change in anything I did. And boy, does it make my life easier.

So yeah, that was the biggest step as far as I was concerned. But lately I’ve been feeling that we should continue the weaning process. So as of today we’re dropping the morning session. I gave him a cup of milk instead, which he drank, and that seemed to go over okay although he definitely noticed the change in routine. He has a signal he gives when he wants to nurse: we have a nursing pillow on the couch, and he’ll walk up to it and start patting it. He’s been doing that off and on throughout the morning, like, “hey Mommy, I think you forgot something.” But I when I give him his milk cup instead, he accepts it.

The other two nursing sessions are going to be harder to give up. The noon feeding puts him down for his nap, and the evening feeding puts him to sleep for the night. “Milk coma,” we call it, and it’s by far the easiest way to get him to drop off. If for whatever reason he doesn’t nod off while nursing, we know we’re in for a long evening of increasingly-crabby baby, until finally either Sam gets him to sleep by walking and bouncing him, or I lie in bed with him singing lullabies while he squirms all around and kicks me in the face. So yeah, I’m not particularly eager to give up one of the most potent tools in my mothering utility belt. We’ll keep going with two nursing sessions a day for a while longer yet.

Here’s a thing I love about living in the city: last night, as we were sitting around after dinner, we heard the sound of distant music. “Oh yeah,” said Sam, “I think the big Chinese New Year’s parade is tonight. Should we go see it?”

“Sure, why not,” I said, and so we put a jacket on the boy and walked down four blocks, and there it was: lights! floats! firecrackers! lion dancers! stilt walkers! fan dancers! marching bands! and almost more little children in spotted cow hats, shaking their tufted ox-tails, than you could even say “awwww” at. But we said “awww” at them all.

There were shiny silver oxes:

(yes, those ARE small children in rooster, hare, and ram costumes surrounding the ox. yes, they ARE adorable.)

There were glittery gold oxes:

There were scary electric oxes with glowing demonic eyes:

The interesting thing about this ox-herder is that she was either pregnant or wearing a costume to make her look pregnant. Shout out to pregnant ladies in the Year of the Ox!

And there were close encounters of the lion kind:

This lion came up to be petted by, and to flutter his eyelashes at, the onlookers. When we got home we flipped on the TV and the local commentators were talking about lion dancing. They said that using the motion of the head and articulation of the face parts, like the eyelids, the dancer is supposed to be able to convey eight separate emotions. One of them was sleepiness, which I thought was awesome. Wikipedia has a lot more on lion dancing and what the different colors of lions signify. I did not know that lion dancing is linked with kung fu!

Robin liked the parade:

I thought he might get scared when the big dragon came by, with those little poppy firecrackers going off in its mouth, but he just stared at it. And he really liked the ribbon dancers, the marching bands, and the troupes of little kids in their cow costumes. At several points he did his best to squirm out of Sam’s arms so that he could run into the street and join them! Not this year, little buddy.

I am resolutely not worried about Robin’s speech development. I am not worried about it even though the baby book engages in base scare tactics, warning us to “alert our pediatrician to possible signs of developmental delay” if our toddler is not speaking at least fifteen words by eighteen months. I am not worried about it because Robin is happily babbling away and I have talked to many other mothers of little boys who tell me that their boy, or another boy they know, wasn’t really talking until two years or even later. (It’s a boy thing. The girls are little chatterboxes, all of them.)

I am not worried about it even though Robin’s eighteen-month checkup is coming up, and the doc told us that if Robin wasn’t talking by this point he’d want to check his hearing. Robin’s hearing is fine. He turns his head when we call his name and he imitates sounds that we make. He is interactive and very conversational, it’s just that the sounds he makes to indicate how he’s feeling or whether he wants something aren’t English.

In fact, as I was fretting on a low level about that upcoming checkup, it occurred to me that I may be drawing an arbitrary distinction around what counts as a “word” and what doesn’t. We’ve been focusing on the English, trying to tell ourselves that when Robin points at a dog and says “da-gi!” he’s saying doggie, ignoring all the times he points at his juice cup and says da-gi, or points at a dog and says guh! or buh! We tell ourselves that when he runs to Sam calling da-da-da! he’s saying daddy, ignoring the long hours when Sam’s at work and Robin shouts da-da-da all day anyway.

But there are things that Robin only says in certain contexts, never randomly. He says “awwww” when he lays his head on my shoulder, or when he pets the cat. He says “mmmm!” when he sees food that he wants to eat. He doesn’t make these sounds at any other time. They are meaningful. He clearly understands that awwww is an expression of tenderness, while mmmm! is an expression of yummyness. Are these words? I think they must be something very close.

In the veggie box: leeks, collard greens, kale, lemons, arugula, broccoli, some truly gorgeous looking carrots, bok choy, cabbage, oranges.

What’s for dinner:

tonight: um, spaghetti with tomato sauce out of a jar. The veggie box came late, we didn’t get to the store, and I’m just not feeling inspired.

But I’ll make up for it tomorrow by roasting a chicken with lemon and making a side salad with arugula, oranges, feta, and sugared pistachios. Sounds fancy eh? But it’s just a salad so it looks easy to throw together. The fiddliest part of it is the pistachios, which get tossed with egg white and sugar and toasted in an oven for half an hour—I’ll just have to make sure that I do that early in the day so the chicken can get in the oven at the right time. Oh, and Robin and I will have the collard greens for lunch, with bacon and vinegar.

Friday lunch: fish sticks. Dinner: I’m intrigued by the New York Times’ Recipes for Health feature, so I’m going to try out their Pureed Potato and Broccoli Soup With Parmesan Croutons (I can make stock for the soup with the bones from the previous night’s chicken) and Pickled Broccoli Stems.

Saturday I’m not planning to cook because I think Robin and I are hanging with a friend. So either we’ll scrounge dinner out of leftovers and pantry staples, or we’ll get takeout.

For Sunday brunch we always go to the crepe place. Sunday dinner: corned beef with boiled cabbage and carrots, yummmmm.

Monday lunch: Indian-spiced lentils with kale. Dinner: leftover corned beef!

Tuesday lunch: braised bok choy and brown rice. Dinner: …it’s entirely possible that it will be yet more leftover corned beef, like maybe corned beef sandwiches or something. If the corned beef is gone I’ll come up with something else.

The goulash we had the other day was really nice. It is, incidentally, gluten-free. The recipe is from America’s Best Lost Recipes, a really excellent cookbook that collects “heirloom” recipes from families across America. Because every recipe has a story behind it, the cookbook is as much fun to read as it is to cook from. Székely Goulash, for instance, apparently “gets its name from the Székely Hungarians, an ethnic minority group in Romania whose name, Szekler, means frontier guard. They guarded the eastern flank of Hungary, which was prone to invasion because of its geographic position in Europe as a crossroads.”

The goulash takes a long time to cook but it isn’t really much trouble. You need 2 pounds of boneless pork loin, cut into 1-inch pieces, patted dry with paper towels and seasoned with salt and pepper. Heat 2 tablespoons of butter and 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat, until the foaming subsides, and then brown the pork on all sides (you’ll have to do it two batches or it will just steam rather than browning properly). This is the most time-consuming step. Incidentally, I used to cut corners when browning meat until I read about the Maillard reaction and how important it is in unlocking the flavor of meat. Now I take the time to brown meat properly. This would probably count as my second substantial improvement as a cook (the first came when I started using home-made chicken broth instead of the storebought stuff).

Anyway, while the pork is browning, chop up two large onions (I used leeks because that’s what we had) and mince a couple of garlic cloves (or get them ready to be put through a garlic press, which is what I always do, as it yields a more intense garlic flavor). Once the pork is browned, transfer it to a plate and pour off all but 1 tablespoon of fat from the pot. Cook the onions until soft, add the garlic along with 2 tablespoons of paprika and stir it around until you can really smell it, about 30 seconds. The recipe specifies to use “sweet, not hot” paprika, but the stuff that is sold in the supermarket simply as paprika will do just fine.

Add the pork back to the pot and stir in one and a half cups of chicken broth, a tablespoon of chopped fresh dill, a teaspoon of salt, 1/2 teaspoon of pepper, and bring it all to a simmer. Also, turn your oven on to 300 degrees. When the broth is simmering, cover the Dutch oven and transfer the pot to the oven, where you will let it cook for an hour and a half.

After its time in the oven the meat should be just about tender. Pull the stew out and stir in 2 pounds of sauerkraut, drained and rinsed. You want the fresh stuff (from the deli or a vacuum-sealed package) if you can get it. Also stir in 2 teaspoons of sugar. Then put it back in the oven for another 45 minutes. At this point the pork should be really tender, and if it isn’t, keep cooking it. When it’s nice and tender take the stew out of the oven and stir in 2 cups of sour cream. Serve it with extra chopped fresh dill, and if you want, spätzle, boiled potatoes, or hot buttered egg noodles. We ate it plain and were very happy with it that way.

Here is a bonus picture of Robin with a little bit of goulash left on his face and collar:

I’ve been thinking lately about how much easier it’s gotten, being Robin’s primary caretaker. It was astoundingly, asskickingly hard at the beginning but it got steadily easier, and now as he’s learning new ways to communicate his desires it’s easier still. I mean, we have our days—especially when he was recovering from being sick, and wouldn’t eat much, and as a consequence was hungry and cranky—but his appetite is completely recovered now and so are his spirits. Oh, except that he still won’t eat bananas, which is a sad thing.

But a well-fed, well-rested Robin is a happy Robin, and a happy Robin is good company. Which is a lucky thing, because he is quite literally my constant companion. He sleeps snuggled up against me. He wakes me in the morning with kisses, pats, and gentle coos. Yesterday and this morning he gravely offered me first one foot, and then the other, expecting kisses on his toes which I obligingly provided. (“Oh look at those delicious toesies nom nom nom nom mmm oh it’s a very fine crop of toes today, thank you my dear.”) I suppose someday he will have to become accustomed to a world wherein his feet are not kissed first thing upon awakening, but that day has not yet dawned.

From morning to bedtime we are never far from each other. Even as he races around the park he keeps me in his sights, and toddles back to my side every now and then for a quick hug before pelting off again. He generally even joins me in the shower. He is my little buddy, my good friend, always wanting to help no matter what it is I’m doing. He is so funny and so sweet, and most of the time it’s easy, now, to be with him.

Of course this total intimacy won’t continue much longer. I’d like to establish some bathroom privacy at some point in the near future; and when we move into a larger space we can start getting him used to sleeping in his own bed. But I know that most of the separation will be at Robin’s own initiative. He’ll hit the normal developmental stages that lead him to seek greater and greater independence. He’ll be growing and changing, and he’ll reach a point where he doesn’t want to be always at mommy’s side.

But I, ungrown and unchanged, will be a little sorry when it happens.

A few things in the veggie box that we haven’t seen for a while: arugula, lettuce, and broccoli, along with the now-very-familiar kale, collard greens, leeks, radicchio, bok choy, carrots, and oranges.

Robin snarfs up the oranges, and I’ve taken to substituting leeks for onions in most recipes, so those will take care of themselves. In fact I already used some of the leeks in tonight’s Szeleky Goulash (a pork stew with sauerkraut). I’m expecting there will be leftovers tomorrow for lunch.

Tomorrow’s dinner: the recipes in the box this week included a neat-looking one for fennel and carrot slaw with Spanish green olives, lemon juice, and balsamic vinegar, so I want to try that. I’m thinking it might pair well with arugula pesto…

Friday lunch: Robin and I will have the collard greens cooked with bacon. Dinner: bok choy and chinese egg noodles with spicy beef sauce.

Saturday lunch: salad. Dinner: roasted broccoli, kale with bacon and black-eyed peas.

Sunday we eat brunch out, but for dinner I’m planning a glazed pork roast with parsnips and onions.

Monday lunch: leftover greens-and-peas. Dinner: philly-style sandwiches with the leftover pork, topped with provolone and garlicky broccoli rabe.

Tuesday lunch: fish sticks. Dinner: lamb shanks with barley stew (aka Scotch Broth).