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| A guy from Telus called me yesterday. Actually, he was from "S-something on behalf of Telus", which is important because the do-not-call list is now in effect and companies are not allowed to call anymore "except if [they] have a pre-existing relationship". And Telus is our ISP and land-line provider. So.
"I'd like to tell you about this exciting new service called Telus TV..."
"We don't have a TV."
"...You don't?"
"No."
"Why?"
"Uhhhmmmm... We don't want to watch it?"
I'm sure he didn't believe me.
A while ago I bought a couple of "Ethnic Gourmet" frozen meals, because as much as I abhor that sort of thing, I knew there'd be a time when I wanted a hot lunch but didn't want to cook one. And they were cheap. So I just had "Pad Thai" for lunch, which, once I added rice vinegar and fish sauce and hot sauce (i.e. made pad Thai), tasted a little like pad Thai. But carrots. Please? As if frozen and then microwaved carrots were not already bad enough, they don't belong in my pad Thai, "gourmet" or not.
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| I am finding that motherhood is one of those things that you kind of get the hang of after a while. When I was pregnant with Julian, I wondered whether I would be able to settle down more, be able to accept my job of "mom" more easily with two. And that is exactly what happened. When Julian was even a month old I found I could very easily imagine having another. (It was a stupidly hard pregnancy, but my memory is for shit these days.) With Anna, she was nearly two years old before I could even fathom it. Since having Julian I've been ridiculously content, not every minute of every day of course, and I still slip, and yell at Anna when she's running laps around the Exersaucer chanting "we need to go NOW Mommy" when it is not even time to go yet, and I am trying to get her fussing teething tired brother to sleep in the carrier first besides. But overall, things are pretty good, I mean in my head, and that's more than I can say for some other times in my life.
I met a woman in her late fifties the other day, who came up to me to admire Julian in the front carrier. She said "my babies are 25 and 30. It's so weird, it's like I was you yesterday". That almost sent me into wild sobbing, right out in the open. I cannot believe, sometimes, how nostalgic I get for times that are still here. Every day, the kids are never going to be this small again, and somehow, now that I have finally assimilated that, to my bones, I am a lot more patient about getting my old life/body/interests back again. I have years to do that, but when will I have free access to a giggling, impossibly soft baby boy? Maybe never again.
Maybe, like the memory loss, it's another form of maternal brain damage, but it beats the alternatives.
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| The main reason I don't update here more often is the PRESSURE of having to fill a whole textbox with something somebody else actually cares about... I am loving the one-liner updates on facebook and embrace them fully. So maybe what I need to do is start talking about myself in the third person, one sentence at a time, and fill this damn box.
iride has a sinus infection, and it is an outrage.
iride has concerns about the civic election results, although most of the people she voted for got elected.
iride is piss-happy that Julian is rolling over.
iride is dismayed that a mere 7 pounds of remaining pregnancy weight is keeping her from fitting into her old jeans.
iride needs a fairy godmother to deliver her a new house, albeit one that does not turn back into a hovel at midnight.
iride has mixed emotions about the fact that Anna has said to her, "Momma, you da big woman!"
iride had a great weekend with many satisfying social engagements, a rare thing these days.
And a kid pic, of course. My kids are not fuzzy; why does Xanga make them so fuzzy?
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| So I said I'd be back with recipes. I bought a half-share in a CSA farm this year, which is the bomb, but I have loads of seasonal vegetables that I need to cook before they go all manky in my fridge.
Random leafy greens
I thought I could never have too much salad. I was wrong. Only a few weeks into the growing season, I started to look for other things to do with lettuce. These recipes work with just about anything green: romaine, mizuna, tah tsoi, chard, beet greens, spinach, etc. Bonus: one whole freaking pound of greens cooks down into a side dish for three reasonably hungry people.
The winner: Tomato groundnut curry. I glanced at a recipe in my friend's Simply in Season, one of a series of quite good cookbooks published by the Mennonite Central Committee, and this is based on that.
Tomato Groundnut Curry, adapted from Simply in Season
1 Tbsp oil
1 lb mixed greens, chopped in 1/2" ribbons
1 large tomato (or 1 cup canned diced tomatoes)
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp natural crunchy peanut butter
1 tsp garam masala
Heat oil in medium-sized frying pan over medium heat. Add coriander and cumin seeds and fry until browned. Add onions and cook until transparent. Then add tomatoes and garlic and cook down for several minutes. Add greens and salt and turn mixture over regularly to wilt. Cook until done to your taste. When done, push some greens aside so there is some juice showing and add peanut butter, stirring until dissolved, then combine with rest of dish. Sprinkle garam masala on top and distribute throughout.
Variation: Saag Paneer: omit tomato and peanut butter; add 1/2 c yogurt and 1/2 lb cubed, fried paneer at end. If desired, you can smooth out the texture by using an immersion blender to partially puree before adding yogurt and paneer.
Runner up: Lettuce soup. Sounds weird; the result was astonishingly good. I made it several times.
Beets
In the spirit of Roast That Shit, I made Smarticus's beet salad from a few years ago. It was so good, I immediately made it again. It is my favourite thing to do beets, other than just plain roast and eat the hell out of them. Oh, the Russian Cabbage Borscht from the original Moosewood Cookbook is also good, and is the only way I can get anyone else in the family to eat beets.
Green Tomatoes
Seriously, don't bother. Fried green tomatoes, dredged in cornmeal first, are okay, but too greasy to do too often. Green tomato salsa is meh. Green tomato and raspberry cobbler is a disgusting waste of raspberries and cobbler.
Chinese Apple Pears
Pear crisp, frozen pear puree for when my little one starts solids, and just plain eatin' pears. That is enough pears for me.
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| Motherhood grows on you. It wasn't until Anna was nearly two that I could even imagine adding a second one to the flock. Julian is three and a half months old and I am already thinking "hey, I could do three". Three is not in the plans, but yunno, I'm just sayin'.
I'm not getting a lot of formerly-important things done right now, e.g. vacuuming, gardening, shaving my legs, but things are still pretty good. Anna is Ms. Princess Diva Bossy McBosserson a large part of the time, but I am figuring it's just a phase. Please? Tell me it's just a phase and not my terrible parenting?
Having both of them in my lap at the same time, the one thing that I thought would drive me bonkers, is actually pretty neat. Hell, it's really nice. I like this post-partum happy-trip; can I keep it?
And of course some photos, because kid+baby photos are irresistible.
He won't take a soother and she won't give hers up. Weirdos.
Hello!
Baby Guy likes camping too! (Green because we're in a green tent)
Also showing: Various harvest-time domesticities. Trying to find ways to use random leafy greens, beets, green tomatoes, and Chinese apple-pears. Not all together. Will post recipes.
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