Category Archives: A Day in the Life

Moments in time…

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Which are the moments we hold onto?

The important ones, right? The ones that stand out along our journeys–that make us feel as though we could take hold of moments in time, bury pieces of ourselves there, and use the gravestones we leave as markers of our progress. Marriages, graduations, anniversaries, births.

I remember a few of my milestones, but it isn’t those moments I hope to preserve. I don’t want to store my soul in official moments–I want to remember the times that love was truly present in my life; tangible, subtle, overpowering.

That’s why I wanted to bury a little of my soul in the moment when Babar followed us into the kitchen this morning.

Because, in the cool part of the morning, accompanied by a hot cup of coffee, a story makes me smile.

And because a “snuggle-up party” is always a party I’m up for. But you never know what’s really happening until these moments are past.

“Why is she covering up her face, Dada? I don’t like it.”

“Why don’t you like it, honey?”

“Because then you can’t see her face.”

How much can I tell you, girl? You’re so smart, but it can’t be time for me to explain the history of patriarchy you’re up against, can it? Isn’t it too early? I just want to tell you that this little piggie had roast beef and leave it at that.

It didn’t matter. When you’re having a snuggle-up party there’s no time for in-depth asides,only for tickle-time.

And so I didn’t get a chance to tell you, Maggie, Ariel, that you two are the gifts I cherish–so much so that I store pieces of my soul in the moments we spend together. To try and own such a gift is blasphemy. It would diminish the value of your both having presented yourselves to me, as people to love, as my family. I would never seek to wrap you and present you (or unwrap and accept you), because you’re being given and received each moment, freely, by you, and that is the price of our love. All I can do for these moments in time is thank you.

And that is what I will always do.

Love and business…

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Good Morning!

There are so many brown paper boxes of restaurant leftovers in the fridge! My mom and sister have been visiting this week from Iowa (Sis left yesterday and Mom tomorrow), and we’ve been eating out. Fortunately, none of those refrigerated boxes are Happy Meals–even the new ones are still pretty bad, despite all the back patting from Michelle Obama and Co. Tonight I cook! (And I promise, the healthiest thing on the menu won’t be chocolate milk.)

An active life and a balanced diet, right? Today, we’re off to the Portland Children’s Museum for some play, and then I’d like to take my Mom by the farmers market–just to be a show off.

I’m watching a lady let her dog poop in the yard and not clean it up right outside my apartment window right now. Why do people do that? I’m tired.

Maggie! Eat something healthy! Take a bath!

But are we using the right soap?

My God, there’s so much to keep track of in this world. Now antibiotic soap that was supposed to be keeping us all safe is actually making us sick? Awesome, and unsurprising.

Well, I’m off to take Ariel to school and then buy a salad spinner. I hope your week is busy and full of love. Here’s to getting back into some semblance of a normal routine soon. (That novel isn’t finishing itself, nor are any of your other projects, Phil! :) )

Strawberries! (2)

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Strawbies, strawbies, strawbies, strawbies.

Better late than never, right?

So after a week of wringing our hands and gnashing our teeth, of making due with regular farmers market and *gasp* store bought strawberries, we finally got our flat of secret strawberries from Know Thy Food, and they were worth the wait.

But now we had 12 pints of strawberries and nothing specific to do with them except sit on the porch steps and make a mess. So, after we ate 4 plain pints in the first six hours I thought I should try and do something fun with them before we all ended up with tummy aches.

Luckily, Rob at The Delicious Truth is having a “What to do with summer berries” type week. His focus is blueberries, but I have strawberries, so that’s what up.

Maggie: “I yike these strawbies! They have juice inside!”

So I cut and cleaned another 4 pints, 2 for the freezer (so we can try strawberry sorbet later in the week) and 2 for jam. I basically followed Rob’s recipe, but I substituted a little more lemon juice for water because I like jam to be a little tart.

Then, in the simplest of all cooking maneuvers, I combined my ingredients and let it bubble.

It was fun and easy. I totally recommend this to anyone with a plethora of ripe berries. I was even able to make mine and Maggie’s lunches while it was cooking. I just had to stir once in a while. Before long, it became this:

I may have let it thicken on the stove just a tiny bit too long, because it ended up a little thicker than normal jam, but all in all it turned out delicious and it will make a great breakfast spread on toast. Thanks Rob!

Happy Independence Day! (2)

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So, we took the little Maglet downtown for the fireworks last night. I thought she’d like that. It turns out that I was wrong.

Lesson: after hours of sitting in crowds and eating potato chips and waiting, and waiting, and getting sleepy, and wanting to watch Dora, the actual fireworks show is a little bit of a letdown for my three year old.

That’s okay. I still had a great time reliving my childhood July 4ths. The mixture of sulfur and hotdog smells, preteens running around pretending to be adults, some guy who thinks he can break dance falling in the middle of a circle of laughing kids.

Ariel packed us an awesome spread.

And, unlike Maggie or Ariel, I’ve always been right at home in big crowds, so I got a big kick out of getting to see stuff like this:

Or awesome guys like this (he let Maggie play with his collapsing ball and then gave her a trumpet rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star):

And there was plenty of playing, so that wasn’t bad.

But by the time the fireworks started they were a little too loud and it was a little too late. That’s okay. Next year. Until then, happy birthday, USA!

Independence Day!

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Ah, the fourth of July.

Maggie and sparklers, the smell of barbecues across the country being fired up simultaneously, Portland Blues Festival… and I have to work.

But don’t feel sorry for me, I’ll be off in time to catch evening’s the action. And, in bigger news, WE GOT OUR CONDO!! So we have a lot to be thankful for on our country’s 235th birthday. :)

In the meantime, I wanted to share a few things with you. This, for example is one of my favorite fourth of July recipes:

Pretty simple, huh?

and having picnics in the park is one of my favorite Independence Day weekend activities!

And I also love how beautiful our city is this time of year:

It’s a good morning to be alive. :)

From Farmers Market to Dinner Table…

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Well, big news here in the land of The Selective Omnivore. Yesterday, Ariel and I made an offer on our first home! Exciting, nerve-wracking, anxious, queasy, thrilled; feelings that contributed to our day being memorable (to say the least).

Hard as it was to imagine after that , we had to return to the real world–suddenly dizzying and much fuller of inputs. But hey, little girls (not to mention big girls and boys) gotta eat, especially when they’re checking their email every thirty-five seconds–as if anything could possibly have happened in the two hours since the offer’d been live. So we had lunch and Ariel went to class while Maggie and I hit the farmers market to get a few things for our dinner.

As always, going anywhere little Maggers is a lesson in patience. Fortunately, I like a quiet stroll while balance beams are being practiced (she’s so sweet–who could possibly be impatient?).

Eventually, we did make it to the market. The afternoon was cool and threatening rain, but that didn’t stop our fellow Portlanders hitting the Park’s produce stands en masse.

We needed a couple of nice, fresh ingredients for the tacos we wanted to have for dinner–not to mention that somebody, I won’t say who, really, really, really needed some strawberries.

Side note: Strawberries this week from Know Thy Food were delayed for reasons I can’t understand (the hazards of working with a food buying co-op). We’ll have fun strawberry stories next week, I hope.

In any case, the farmers market managed to have virtually inexhaustible options for beautiful produce and berries, so we were in luck:

We window shopped and Maggie tried samples from all the tables offering berry samples (because how do you know if you’re making the berry best choice until you try them all, right?). Once we had our food, it was time for nap. Then, dinner.

Tacos–virtually from scratch–are actually much easier and less time consuming than you might think. I recommend them to any single dads, or dads like me with partners at work or school, who need healthy things to cook that don’t require an entire evening to produce. With prep time, this dinner was on the table in 45 minutes. (I’d allow an hour if you don’t feel like being frazzled trying to chop fresh garlic or lettuce while things are already on the stove.)

I began, as usual, with the Joy of Cooking, and went from there. To begin:

One onion, chopped.

Then, when the onion is cooked, add this:

1 lb of local, grass-fed ground beef. This time, from Taylor-Made Farms.

Make sure it’s crumbled and browning nicely, like this:

Then add, 4 cloves of fresh garlic (minced), 1 tbsp chili powder, 2 tsp coriander and cumin, and when that’s cooked, one can of Mexican style spicy tomato sauce. I chopped the lettuce, broke out the Emerald Valley salsa (because I’m not one of those childless, or otherwise superpowered bloggers who has time to make everything from scratch), reheated and mashed some leftover beans from a meal last week, and voila! Taco bar dinner is served!!

All that’s left then is to eat.

Strawberries!

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Good morning!  Today I’m feeling excited! Maybe it’s the coffee. No, no. I think it’s because we’re getting our first flat of the strawberry season today! I know someone who’s going to be thrilled.

What should we do with all of them?? On the one hand, I was planning on just eating ‘em, but that does lack something in the creativity department. Maybe we need to get funky and try a pie (with a little rhubarb?), or a jam, or a stew (just kidding).

I like them best cut up on breakfast cereal. Ariel and Maggie like them best when they go straight from hand to mouth. All I know is that we’ve got ours coming (you can too–just know thy food!) and we’re ready to get down on some local, seasonal freshness this week.

Hooray for summer!!

Update 6/29:

Check out our friend Alicia’s blog for an amazing strawberry tart recipe!

Welcome Back!

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Well, we’re back from our mini vacation and weekend of work, and I thought, before I get back to business around here, that I’d share some pictures from the beautiful Oregon coast with you.

Like this:

From the beach just below the house we shared with Ariel's parents...

Look at that! It almost looks… um, sunny. That’s right. I couldn’t believe it either–but we did get sun on both of the days we were able to spend there.

That's not the house. I just thought it was pretty.

And Maggie was SO excited to get down to the water. Why? So she could dig holes in the sand with her little shovel and then fill them up with ocean, of course.

Duh, Dada. That's what you DO at the beach.

Then, it was time to make some cookies.

Because a girl's gotta eat, right?

After we said our goodbyes (thanks again, Ken and Margo!) and headed back up Portland way, we had one nice sunny day for some fun.

Like going to the fountain park and then being too nervous to get wet (or out of Ariel's arms)

But then not being too nervous to make a friend at the playground to go down the slide with, like, 13 times in a row.

Is it Summer yet?

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Welcome to the wettest, coldest, grayest spring in memory! Yesterday I went for a lovely little run in the rain, and today I’ll do the same–unless it pretty’s up out there soon.

But summer! Oh, summer! I know you’re just around the bend! How do I know this? Well, for one, this awesome recipe is up at Poor Girl Eats Well. Fresh strawberry and peach ice cream? Booya! Also, I’ll be looking at this all week:

Oregon Coast, here we come!

And even though the forecast at the coast doesn’t look all that promising, you never can tell with the coast. Maybe we’ll be lucky.

Side note: the fight for a safer food system continues. Nicholas Kristof, of The New York Times, wades into the fray this week with this very good op-ed piece condemning the overuse of antibiotics in factory farms: When Food Kills.

In the meantime, with recipes for ice cream, and fish sandwiches, and jalapeno apricot jam highlighting the blogosphere, I’m thinking summer.

Love Love Love…

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Oh, love.

Of Johnny Cash on the car stereo,

Dada, be twiet. We listening to the man talking right now...

How gratifying is it to have a 3 year old with good enough taste in music to know that, even if I’ve conditioned her to expect my blabbing 99% of the time, she still knows that it’s not appropriate during A Boy Named Sue?

On a more serious note, I’ve been thinking that there are really 3 distinct functions this blog serves for me, and I want to take a second to elucidate them. Perhaps this benefits no one but me, but browsing the sites of some of the more swanky bloggers out there one thing is clear to me: I need more organization.

The thing is, at times I like to use this blog to help me learn about and comment on the issues surrounding the politics of food, but at other times I like to simply give a window into my life–because it’s fun to share pics of Maggie and Ariel–and sometimes I want to use the blog to talk more specifically about the things we’re actually eating. What do you, my dedicated readership, like most to read about?

Today, for me, it’s A Day in the Life.

Moving on:

Yesterday we took Maggie to the park at the zoo.

Next time, I’ll get a shot of the whole play structure–but to give you an idea, it’s like a castle, complete with turrets, winding paths, and multiple slides of all sizes.

A girl can work up a thirst with all that play!

Not to mention a hunger. We had FOL Farm pork chops, with some wagon wheel pastas and broccoli. Yum!

I yike wagon wheels!

Then, it was time to play dress-up and do magic! Guess who got to be the flying fairy. :)

Blankie, I'm turning you into a book about Toy Story. Bippy Boppy Boop!

But even fairies gotta relax sometime, right?

Mmm! Cantaloupe!