Mac People

I grew up with cassette players, then compact discs, mini-discs, MP3 players and then,... the iPod. The advent of which brought on a whole new gamut of technology. My daughter who is now five months will have no clue what video cassettes are or why I had a bulky DVD player to watch movies. The idea that I once owned a computer that filled a desktop and respective foot space for its processing unit will blow her mind. As I sit here typing on a slim laptop, which, when purchased was fairly good technology, will become a relic in only a few months. As the world turns and research is more readily available, so much will change in her world.

But, I sit here munching on my Macintosh apple knowing, rest assured, that when my daughter laughs at the mention of the archaic iPod and Apple computer, she will still recognize a quality baking apple when she sees one.

Official 1st Night Out

I was giddy: almost like a high school student out on a school night. I was not planning to be gone long, Aoife has a cold and is not weaned yet, but the thought of dressing up and being on my own for an evening was just thrilling.

I dug my wallet and keys out of the diaper bag and found a purse, a pair of shoes that I do not normally wear when I am toting Aoife around and put in a little hairspray, mascara and lipstick and I was on my way.

Perhaps the oddest thing I found once I arrived to this birthday party that I was attending was that I almost didn't know what to do with myself. Usually I am holding my five month daughter and if I am not, my husband is and I am busily eating, drinking or quickly putting my hair up and preparing my nursing cover so that I can take her back. This time though, I sat in a little corner arm chair with my cup of chamomile tea balanced on my leg and though the cell phone was within view and poised to alert me that Aoife had woken, it did not draw my attention.

I was only up the street from my own home and in total, I was gone only 45 minutes, but it was refreshing. During my day, (evening and night, too!) my focus is on my daughter. As I am still learning the balance of motherhood, I am realizing that my needs are to be met also. The delightful thing of it all is I have surrounded myself with amazing women who are incredible mothers who would do anything for their children. Now if only I can find a way to spend more time with them...

Mommy Eats Colors

There is an age old question: "does life imitate art or does art imitate life?" There are scholars who debate in both directions, but at any rate, children imitate their parents.

Aoife is quickly coming up on five months and naturally the question arises, "are you introducing solids soon?" (FYI: The answer is no, Joshua and I intend to feed Aoife only breastmilk for the for her entire first year. There is too much evidence that introducing solids too soon can be harmful for an infant, not to mention it is infinitely more easy to breastfeed than it is to prepare meals for a baby!). The second popular question we receive makes me laugh, "is she showing interest in food?" My answer is almost always, "of course!"

I love looking at the world through Aoife's eyes and this one is the one that tops the charts. It must be so odd for her to watch me eat. There are colorful objects on my plate: orange carrots, green broccoli, red peppers, brown rice, and pink salmon that I scoop up and put in my mouth and then, it doesn't come back! How bizarre. Aoife is at that stage where absolutely everything ends up in her mouth. She must look at me like I just inhaled one of my toys. She probably wonders how it is that I can consume my colorful toys but she cannot. She watches the process very carefully and I can tell that her little mind is trying so hard to compute where those 'toys' are ultimately ending up and if I can play with them again tomorrow.

I can understand parents thinking their children are showing interest in "food", however, if they have never had an introduction of their own to adult foods, then it will not occur to them that they are missing out on an opportunity. I also know that the flavors of the food I am consuming is passed to my daughter through my breastmilk, so she begins to discern different tastes and preferences of her own. The wonderful part of this process is that I am already giving Aoife a head-start on healthy eating. When I consume healthfully, she develops a desire for those wholesome foods as well and when we do begin solids those foods will be her preference. Unfortunately, the converse is also true, so I better stop eating sweets after church on Sundays or she will become permanently addicted to all things chocolate (of course, as a female, I think she may already be doomed).

As far as the question goes, life does imitate art and for Aoife, I want to make sure what she emulates from me are healthy eating patterns since there will come a day when that she will be eating mommy's "toys" too.

Girls' Night In

I was thinking about having a "girls' night in" party this weekend. My roommate is going out of town and it will just be the two of us girls partying at the house alone. Of course, when I think of a "girls' night in" party, I think of fun appetizers on little amuse bouche plates and swirling glasses with old vine Zinfandel. Perhaps a girly movie; a romantic comedy that is featured in black and white and requires the closed captioning feature. With the movie inevitably brings popcorn, so I'll have to find a big bowl suitable for that. Naturally, if it is a girly night there will be nail polish and facial masks and perhaps the occasional nose strip. Oh wait!
Aoife can't chew. She doesn't have teeth. I also wouldn't dare paint her nails or put a nose strip on her cute little button. Vino? Not happening. Movie? Perhaps, but that's only if she catches a sneak peek when she rolls over in bed, since she will likely be turning in at her recent bedtime of 5:45. Maybe I'll just celebrate my little girl by serving my dinner on white china and I'll toast my grape juice to my sweet daughter and hope my husband comes home quickly.

Chestnuts Roasting

Is there anything more quintessentially autumnal than warm freshly roasted chestnuts? I used to eat fresh chestnuts at the autumn and winter festivals in Japan. Street vendors would sell them in little brown bags and they were so heartwarming. Sold for pocket coinage, they came already shelled and skinned and when you opened the little sack a little warm puff of nutty sweet air met you before you put your hand in.

There is an autumnal recipe I am in love with that I started making a couple of years ago for Thanksgiving. I found it again this season and it perfectly pairs apples, chestnuts, sausage and wild rice: it makes me want to special order Minnesota wild rice just to make it. At any rate, I usually find jarred chestnuts at the market to make the dish but recently there were large sacks of bulk fresh chestnuts: we bought them.

It has been getting cold recently and tonight I thought it would be so romantic to roast chestnuts with my roommate and listen to the Thanksgiving Song by George Winston as I begin the early drafts of my Thanksgiving menu. Aoife went down as soon as we got home and I could already smell them roasting in the oven. I won't lie: I was salivating.

I heard the timer go off and I bounded off to the kitchen. I'd never attempted roasting chestnuts in my oven before: the song says "chestnuts roasting over an open fire"... naturally, I deduced that was the only way to do it. As I read every page of December's Bon Appetit, I found a recipe for chestnuts with peppered honey as well as a very simple way to roast them in your oven. 'Life is short', I bemused...

And now I'm standing in front of my stove top, looking at the popped husks, revealing that sweet nutmeat underneath. Roomie has already started shelling one and though they are hot to the touch, with a bamboo tong set, I start peeling one as well. I've never had to peel my own, so when the shell was off and I was looking at the skin, I looked at Roomie and said, "now what?" Pushing the nut between my thumb and forefinger, it cracked again, and inside was an overcooked little chestnut. I took a bite, but it wasn't the flavor I remembered.

We started going through the pile, opening them up, first peeling the shells and then popping the skins but we noticed something: they were either overcooked or rotted. Nice, I thought. Not exactly what I had in mind. As it turns out, chestnuts are the highly perishable and the pretty dish they had been sitting in on my living room table wasn't the environment they needed to be preserved.

I was reading in my foodie encyclopedia yesterday about chestnuts and they have some surprising attributes: chestnuts have the highest water percentage of any other nut (52%, the only other one that comes close is the coconut at 51% all others are less than 10), they have the lowest protein and oil composition of any other nut and are remarkably high in carbohydrates. Harold McGee writes, "chestnuts are best kept covered and refrigerated, and should be eaten fairly quickly. If freshly gathered, however, they should be cured at room temperature for a few days. This improves the flavor by permitting some starch to be converted into sugar before the cells' metabolism is slowed down." Since the world's largest chestnut producers are China, Turkey, Korea and Italy, I'm going to go on a limb and suggest the nuts I bought at the market likely were not within their first couple of days of curing.

Luckily for me though... I recently had a run in with a chestnut tree, so my odds of trying this recipe again with absolutely fresh and local chestnuts has drastically increased.

Watch out, Roomie... that romantic night is coming.

Turkish To Do List

For our holiday season this year, my roommate and I are taking our little "snuppy head" to the Mediterranean to see "Nanna and GrandDad". Of course there will be plenty of snow to be had, a double serving of Mom's Christmas Eve post-candlelight-service lasagna, a wonderful four part harmony round of caroling to of all of my parents' friends and then secretly, there will be my to-do list to accomplish:

1. Pick from a pomegranate tree
2. Buy fresh tahini (sesame seed butter) in a candy store
3. Purchase whole shelled walnuts from a street vendor
4. Eat ice cream off a pole
5. Visit a mosque
6. Ride a camel (the non-spitting variety)
7. Walk somewhere the Apostle Paul walked
8. Buy a pashmina tablecloth
9. Take a photo of a Turkish woman oogling over Aoife
10. Eat lamb