New Nate-ism

Driving along in the car with three cookies in a little plastic bag.

Nate: Can I have one of those Chanukkah cookies?
Me: sure
Nate: (after inhaling cookie number one) Can I have one more of those cookies?
Me: OK.  But this is the last one because we are headed home to have dinner.
Nate: Can I have that last cookie?
Me:  No.  I told you, it's almost time for dinner.
Nate: (after a longish silence from the backseat): Mr. Cookie, are you crying some tears? You are lonely in your bag and miss your mommy and daddy in my tummy.  You should come in my tummy and see your mommy.

Thanksgiving 2011

I want to preface this by saying that I mean no disrespect to anyone who observes dietary restrictions for philosophical reasons.  I was a vegetarian for a while in college and Dave and I kept kosher for a couple years so while neither of them seemed to enhance my life enough to keep it up, I understand the urge that leads people to embrace a particular dietary lifestyle.  It's just that in our house all the dietary restrictions are  driven by health concerns and one way to deal with it is to make light of it.  It's also convenient to have a shorthand way to convey the list of forbidden items to others.

So, describing Nate as a carnivorous soy-free vegan is accurate and useful.  (Now of course we have to add the caveat that he can't have any nuts except almonds, but that is a fairly new addendum and we haven't worked it in yet.)

This year, as I did last year, I made a Thanksgiving dinner that was completely Nate-safe.

It was a soy-free vegan menu - - -  except for the turkey and the bacon.

Here's the menu:

For breakfast:

Mimosas - a tradition Dave and I originated with our first Thanksgiving and have never given up.  Some years it has been cool enough to chill the OJ and champagne in the snow on the porch.  This year we needed some space in the refrigerator.

Dave and I had pumpkin spice lattes (not pictured) and Nate had almond milk hot chocolate while we watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

I made cinnamon rolls the night before that I could just pop in the oven in the morning.  They were deliciously vegan-ly gooey (No one should EVER confuse vegan and healthy as synonyms)

Dinner:

The turkey - dry brined in a lemon oregano salt crust and brushed with lemon oil while cooking.  A little large for 4 1/2 people, but I wanted leftovers.

Cranberry Agrodolce, the same I make every year since Dave tasted it at our dear friend Bree's house.

Mashed potatoes and gravy (made from the turkey drippings and addictively good - though the brining made it pretty salty and if I did it again I think I'd grind some diuretics into it)

Stuffing (that never saw the inside of the turkey) made from home-made bread, onions, celery, spinach, and home-made stock.

Sweet potato hash with bacon and green apples

Ultimately the star of the show was this coconut pull apart bread - sweet but not too much, tender and moist and so, so fragrant. Nate ate about a quarter of a loaf.

And for dessert:  vegan pumpkin pie (adapted from Pim Techamuamvivit -  recipe to follow in another post)

 We pounced on it!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!!!!

P&Q

Maybe you already love quinoa.  In which case, I have nothing to offer you.  Maybe, however, you are like me and find it OK but with a bitterness that you don't love.  Maybe you've tried soaking it before cooking as some recommend and found no difference.  Maybe you have a child who is allergic to beans, milk, nuts, and soy - limiting his source of protein to chicken and occasional pork - but can actually eat and enjoy this protein rich grain.
Maybe you'd jut like to expand your horizons a little.  If so, I offer you this delicious recipe:

1 medium onion - chopped
3-4 carrots, chopped
3-4 parsnips, chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
1 pound chicken (I use boneless, skinless chicken thighs b/c they are cheap in bulk at cost but I'm sure anything would be fine)
1 cup quinoa
2 cups chicken or veggie broth
salt and pepper to taste

1. Heat 1tbsp of oil in large skillet with lid.
2. Pat chicken dry, sprinkle with salt and pepper and brown in hot oil just a couple of mites on each side - want brown and tasty but not cooked through.
3. Remove chicken to a plate and cover
4. Add 1 tbsp of oil and when hot, sauté onion 5-7 mints until soft and just starting to caramelize (can cook for a shorter time if in a hurry, but caramelized onion is TASTY!)
5. Add chopped carrot and parsnips and cook for 5-7 minutes until slightly softened.
6. Add quinoa, broth, chicken, and any juices on plate and bring to a boil.
7. Cover, reduce to simmer, and cook for about 20 minutes until broth absorbed.
8. Season to taste with salt and pepper and eat.

The sweetness of the parsnips really balances the bitterness of the quinoa.  I bet sweet potato would be good if you didn't have parsnips.

Anaphylaxis

I guess they give you an Epi-Pen 'cause they think you might need it.  Despite the ads, you really don't have to ask your doctor if Epi-pen is right for you.  If you have life-threatening allergic reactions, then someone is going to prescribe one for you.  They'll teach you how to use it.  Then you'll go home, put it in the diaper bag or purse and hope you never have to use it.

Nate's allergies are a problematic set from an anxiety standpoint because a lot of the stuff he is "allergic" to is really better defined as an intolerance.  If he gets milk or soy or peanuts he's not going to stop breathing.  He's just going to throw up, and probably not until hours later.  What we've seen from beans and peas has been only hives and a stomach ache.  Even the sesame, which is the worse we have seen to date, resulted in hives and vomiting that went away with benadryl.  OK, and yes, he did develop some stridor, but he never needed epinephrine and he got better before we went to the hospital.  And eggs?  Well, we avoid eggs.  We don't keep the crumbly liquid little devils in the house because we've never seen what happens and frankly don't want to.  His blood and skin testing for egg was so over the top impressive that we avoided it on principle for a while and when we finally got brave enough to let them into the house, Nate got a whole body skin rash after I put lotion on him after touching a hard boiled egg.  So, no, then.  No eggs 'round here.

It turns out, though, that danger can be lurking where you least expect it.
In a 1 1/2 pound Costco bag of pine nuts.
When Nate, cruising around the kitchen while we were getting ready for dinner, asked if he could try some, I said yes.  He's never had problems with nuts.  Eats almond butter, had cashews on the way to school in the morning that very morning, and loves macadamia nuts, but who doesn't really?

He loved the pine nuts, too.  He was smiling and scooping them into his mouth.  At some point he stopped and told me "some of those pine nuts taste kind of yucky" and requested some juice to get the taste out.  He spilled rather than drank his juice but left the kitchen to work on a puzzle in the living room.  It was dark in there, so I didn't notice the hives on his face until the sight of him scratching his tongue made me take a closer look.

With hives erupting on his face and the ongoing tongue scratching Dave and I rushed him upstairs for some benadryl.  Still, he quickly got worse with a cough, some gagging, and a speech impediment that sounded like he was trying to talk around a mouthful of marbles.

Here's what it's like to use the Epi-pen.  First of all, you'd better have a helpful adult ready to subdue the toddler.  Secondly, you are not going to remember how to use it and reading the directions when you are just a shade below panic is not easy.  The click of the needle release mechanism sounds like a gun went off and the baby screams "I don't like that pokey thing!" over and over in a voice made horrible by his too small throat and too large tongue and too copious saliva. You feel brilliant to have remembered to count to ten before pulling the needle out.  Then he cries and retches until the fire truck pulls up, sirens and lights on, and he is suddenly way more fascinated with the outside world than he is with his own misery.

A little unsolicited advice:  If an ambulance comes to your house, ride it to the hospital even if the driver doesn't think you need it.  Because no matter how good the Epi-pen has made the baby look, if you let the ambulance drive away empty, the epinephrine will start to wear off and you my find yourself in a a car with a screaming toddler who is breaking out in alarmingly red hives and scratching himself bloody while screaming that his tummy hurts and it hurts to breathe.

Later, when the emergency room physician tells you that you saved your child's life, you will feel a little light-headed.  You might even get teary.

You will be incredibly grateful when he is at home the next day, no worse for wear and managing to get on your nerves.

L'shana Tovah!  May 5772 be a year without anaphylaxis!

Up, up, and away

We went to the airshow this last weekend.
Nate has been an airplane ever since.
"You want to cover your ears" he will call from the next room, "There is a loud jet coming!"
"Zzzzzzzzzz" he soars into the room, arms outstretched, and opens his "nose cone" to take his medicine.

This morning he was a helicopter, twirling around the room with one arm over his head and desperately trying to keep his "tail propeller" going at the same time.

Whe he got to school on Monday morning he bounced into class and sat down for breakfast.  "Miss Sharon, we saw some airplanes. And two helicopters.  One was a "Korsky"!"
"A what?"
"A Sakorsky," I told her.
"A what?" she repeated.
"Don't worry," I said, "I hadn't heard of it either."

We also, due to the 9/11 memorial at Somerset, witnessed the landing of Air Force One.
"And we saw Marine One," Nate chimes in when we tell the story.

Oh, yeah, and he got to "fly" a jet too.

Garden Update

I promised some pictures of the watermelons.

From this . . . 

 To this . . . 

 Plus the now famous "secret watermelon" that was hidden in our neighbor's weeds.

Here is the recalcitrant tomato that has grown and grown but refused to turn red, finally showing an early blush.

And finally, a little harvest on its way to becoming our dinner.

I am basically in love with the garden.  Next year we might just till up the whole backyard.

Dinosaurs are big in the city of Pittsburgh.  Andrew Carnegie funded a huge excavation to bring a dinosaur skeleton here to his museum.  That skeleton is now replicated all over the world.  Consequently, when the city wants to say something cool, it usually says it with dinos.

The Pittsburgh Center for the Arts has a T-Rex out in front that the students outfit as appropriate for weather, current events, etc.  I've seen it in a Santa Hat, in gay pride gear, in Harry Potter glasses and a cape for the opening of the last movie.  It's cool to drive by and see what they've got going on.

*****

As you may or may not know, they have been shooting the latest Batman film in Pittsburgh.  They destroyed traffic with rolling street closures in downtown, made it snow in the middle of August, and even convinced thousands of Pittsburghers to show up to the Steelers' stadium in winter parkas to serve as extras for the shoot of a football game.  A lot of the filming has been within a few block radius of Dave's work, sometimes right outside his door, so he has kept us updated and inundated with pictures.  Nate has deduced, from dinnertime conversations, that "Daddy works with Batman."

We took a Ducky tour with Papa ken and Grandma Nancy that passed Batman filming and then Dave's building, and I think this really cemented the two ideas together.  Now every morning when Dave leaves for work, Nate announces that he is going to work with Batman.  

I am convinced he doesn't actually know who Batman is, couldn't pick him out of a lineup, wouldn't recognize him if he swung in on one of his cool toys and had his way with Catwoman right in front of us.

So this morning I asked. "Nate, do you know who Batman is?

Nate: "Uh huh.  Batman is a dinosaur."

Me: "A dinosaur?"

Nate: "Uh huh.  With a black hat."

Taken by Papa Ken on our Ducky Boat Ride (while we all pointed and chorused, "look at the Batman Dinosaur!").  

So nothing gets by our boy.

Duly noted.