peevish mama

Hello my pretties. I’ve posted another article at Simple Good and Tasty about road trip food and it includes Tartare’s recipe for granola. Tartare, you gonna be famous!

Hopefully you’ve gotten out to a farmers market this season, or will soon. It’s still early, but the scallions, for one, are giant hunkering beasts and I’ve been working my way through a bunch all week. Read about it here at Simple Good and Tasty. Enjoy, homeys!

Guten tag! I published another piece at Simple Good and Tasty about The Black Forest Inn. Check it out, babies! Maybe you’ve been going all this time, or maybe, like me, you used to go all the time and haven’t gone in years. Well, I’m telling you it’s time to start going again. It’s the perfect place to take kids (lots to look at, pleasantly loud din, terrific kid friendly food options) while feeling like a grown up (fabulous patio, sexy lighting, awesome beer, handmade hearty food made with tons of local ingredients). Seriously, hurry!

I wrote an article over at Simple Good and Tasty about local legend and veggie queen, Jenny Breen. It was my first interview and I got to do stuff like smack a tape recorder on the table with an arch MAY I? No, I didn’t really do that. But I did say, Relax, honey, we’re off the record. Actually, I didn’t say that either. But I did bang away on a type writer, squinting through the smoke roiling off the cigarette dangling from my mouth. OK, not that either. I didn’t get to protect my sources, wear a trench coat, meet anyone in a dark bar, or flirt with a handsome weathered detective who’s seen it all, yet maintains a heart of gold. I didn’t even get to roll up my shirt sleeves. I guess I’ve seen too many movies.

Here’s St. James waiting anxiously to be scooped up for his very first ever weekend away. He’s beyond excited to be going to his oldest buddy’s cabin for a couple nights. I, on the other hand, wish I could have limbered up and climbed right into that little rolling suitcase. Instead I made him a sandwich to take with him.

I’m still in disbelief.

About the sandwich.

But I will say this:

It made me feel better.

Hola! I wrote a post in honor of Cinqo de Mayo for Simple Good and Tasty. There are a couple of delicious recipes you’ll want to try, so check it out!

Sometimes the ladies who lunch get a little rowdy. So rowdy that people FROM THE RESTAURANT NEXT DOOR turn around to stare. It all started when the one in the burka yelled “TITS!”

God help us when our kids are all in school full time.

I’ve been chefing up something tasty again. Read about how to get your asparagus fix over at Simple Good and Tasty. All hail tasty spring!

I seem to have tuckered myself out with my spring cleaning shenanigans. There’s an enviable pile of stuff on our front lawn for the ARC truck to take away, and yet the mess inside the house doesn’t seem in the least bit concerned. The micro-chaos, the day-to-day stuff, keeps on churning no matter what I swipe from under my kids’ noses to give away. The syrupy plates in the sink, the sweatshirts on the floor, the sidewalk chalk in the grass, the shower of tiny black pellets that spring out of St. James’ cleats and socks every time he has soccer practice, the mail, the pages and pages of drawings, scribbles, draft rap songs, and old homework that sprout like mushrooms wherever I look.

Our simple days in Tulum seem like a whole other life: one room, two beds and a cot, two suit cases, 2 stuffed animals per kid. Simple.

We had travelled to Mexico seeking warmth and sun as well as the chance to dip our toes in a different culture. We got those things in spades, but we also got a big dose of really pure family time. Simple. We stayed at Suenos, a lovely 12-room eco hotel that I can only describe as Swiss Family Robinson meets Frieda Kahlo. There were no paths between the thatch roof buildings – only soft, velvety sand, palm trees, bamboo groves and artfully placed hammocks and grinning skulls. I feel like I’ve been searching for a place like this my whole life. Everything, from the sturdy wooden beds, to the Mexican painted toilets and sinks, to the colorful woven bedspreads, to the multi-colored blown glass lamps in the gardens, seems to be handcrafted out of beautiful organic materials.

Our room was small, so small that Doctor Dash and I had doubts about surviving the week at first, but in a lesson about how much we don’t need (tons of space, giant piles of towels, a closet full of clothes, a pantry stocked with snacks, computers, toys, TVs) it turned out to be perfect. Our room was comfortable and chic and aside from nights, there were only a handful of times we were all in it together, lolling and chatting on the beds, taking a break from the sun and wind. Truly lovely.

Our pared down surroundings and the absence of TV allowed us to simply BE. Like everyone, we’re always busy running from one thing to the next. Even when we’re home, there’s noise – TV, music, youTube, neighbor kids. It was good to detox from all of that stuff and just be. Be together. Dash remarked that it felt like camping since we were up with the sun in the mornings and falling into bed exhausted at night. A couple nights the kids went crab hunting on the beach with flashlights and we marveled at the star studded sky in the absence of urban light. Our stay felt low tech, low impact, low light (all solar energy), although we were hardly roughing it. It was abundant and indulgent in the things that mattered: warm ocean, big surf, soft sand, hot sun, gorgeous views, idle playtime and killer food.

And ay chihuaha cosita sabrosa we feasted like kings. Breakfast at Suenos was strong coffee, copious fruit platters, granola, yogurt and pastries in the gorgeous open air two-story palapa with a view of the sea. For lunch we’d either crawl back up there or stroll down the beach to one of the other open-air, shoes-optional, restaurants that dot the beach. The only time we put on sandals and flip-flops was when we got in the car to go to town or on a day trip. We ate tacos and tostadas and quesadillas with fresh fish, shrimp, beef and cheese. We never asked them to hold the pico de gallo, beans or guacamole, and the kids ate way out of their comfort zone – with gusto. Blame it on the big waves, the sea air, or, more likely, the lack of constant snacks, but they were hungry when mealtimes came and willing to eat green and red things they would never have eaten at home. At night we’d venture into town to walk around the crowded colorful streets and found three outstanding Italian restaurants, any one of which I would love to have here in Minneapolis. Again, meat sauce, tomato sauce, the kids gobbled it up. Could it be that butter noodles are a thing of the past for us? I can only hope.

One of my favorite moments was coming up from the beach and finding my kids standing with a man weilding a machete. They were each clutching a coconut, waiting their turns and watching with wide eyes while Jorge hacked open coconuts for them to drink. They had scoured the beach for coconuts with their pals from San Fransisco and found a way to convey what they were after to the friendly owners.

As one day slid onto the next, our kids managed to do everything and nothing at the same time. They befriended the motley crew of Mexican dogs that guarded the place. They made a fort in the bamboo and buried each other in the sand. They snorkled, climbed Mayan ruins and tracked spider monkeys through the jungle in a nature preserve. They crashed their little bodies into the surf for hours at a time. Once a day, Saint James would get creamed by an especially harsh wave and emerge from the water sputtering and muttering that he’d had enough, only to be drawn back in within the hour. He stalked lizards and iquanas and played soccer on the beach, finding his legs in the slow slippery sand. Supergirl explored every nook and cranny of the property, collected coconuts and drew faces on them. Devil Baby remembered that she knows how to swim and ruled the pool. And Dash and I? We did everything and nothing too. But mostly nothing – if by nothing you mean watching and smiling and trying, trying so hard to remember every sound, every color, every moment of Tulum.

I wrote another article over at Simple Good and Tasty about making lunch for my kids and ALL that entails. Check it out here if you’re so inclined!

Hey, yo, I have another post over at Simple Good and Tasty. Pop on over if you’re inclined to read about me lurking and fretting in the bulk food section of our local co-op. I seem to be doing a lot of lurking and fretting lately. What, exactly, do you suppose is my problem? Just feeling lurky and fretty, and I’m not sure why.

Remember the Naked Chef? That cute, British, slacker chef who cooked fresh food in a really simple, sloppy, adorable and inviting way? Well, he’s no slacker. He’s been busy and I realized just how busy when my editor, Shari, over at Simple Good and Tasty emailed me the link to his acceptance speech of the TED Prize. He carries a powerful message and, man, would it ever behoove this country to lend an ear and make some serious changes. If you have a little time and a thing for scruffy passionate Brits, do yourself a favor and watch this. If not, here are some highlights from his speech. 

“I profoundly believe that the power of food has a primal place in our homes that binds us to the best bits of life.”

“Fact. Diet related disease is the biggest killer in the United States, right now, here today.” 

On school lunches: ” There’s not enough veggies at all. French fries are considered a vegetable. Pizza for breakfast. They don’t even get given crockery. Knives and forks? No, they’re too dangerous . . . and the way I look at it is, if you don’t have knives and forks in your school, you’re purely endorsing, from a state level, fast food. Because it’s handheld. And yes, by the way, it is fast food. It’s sloppy joes, it’s burgers, it’s wieners, it’s pizzas . . . “

“There needs to be a new standard of fresh, proper food for your children.”

“Under the circumstances, it’s profoundly important that every American child leaves school knowing how to cook ten recipes . . .”

“My wish is for you to help a strong sustainable movement to educate every child about food, to inspire families to cook again, and to empower people everywhere to fight obesity.”

Ooof! Gives me chills. His new show, “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution,” premieres Friday March 26, 8:00-9:00 p.m., CT, on ABC. Gentlemen, start your TiVos.

I’ve got another post over at Simple Good and Tasty. Check it out.

And by the way, that “hey, hey, hey” is pronounced à la Duane from the beloved late seventies sitcom, What’s Happening!!  Don’t ask questions. It just is. So, I’m just a smidge excited to share this news with you. I got my first “real” piece of writing published over at Simple Good and Tasty this morning and I’m all a’ dither. Simple Good and Tasty is an online foodie mag based in the Twin Cities dedicated to promoting local, sustainable and organic foods and the people who produce them. I know! LOVE! Of course, I dig their mission, but I also dig their approach. They don’t seem to take themselves too seriously and they obviously love food. Kinda like me!

I have Lady Shutterbug to thank for pointing me in the right direction when they were looking for writers. First I sent them links to a few of my posts from Vittles, which got me through the first hoop. They invited me to write a spec blog post for them and I hemmed and hawwed and almost didn’t do it because I just couldn’t bring myself to write a well researched “straight” piece. Finally, I just wrote what I wanted to write and lo and behold, they actually went for my particular flavor of crazy! Check it out here and feel free to leave lots of comments so they think they’ve hired someone really famous and special! Just kidding. No, not kidding, do it. Heh, just kidding. No I’m not. Yes I am. No.

The picture is from my bio for the website and if you’re wondering whether I ate that bacon, the answer is – of course.

Yesterday Nanook, Crackerjack and I headed downtown with our poor neglected, understimulated third born girls to MacPhail Center for Music for a Mom Culture event featuring Adam Levy. Adam Levy plays in a few bands around here, our favorite being Hookers and Blow. We had heard that he started a kid music band and thought it might be entertaining to see this guy do his thing for the kiddos. We’ve enjoyed some silly, dance-a-licious Hookers and Blow adventures and are trying to make up for the serious paucity of story times, music classes, and gymboree type shit that has been the fate of our thirds, so there we were.

Before he came on, there was a music class led by a hefty lady with a guitar. Seriously, is this an archetype for music teachers? The girls were not interested in her operatic crooning of Wheels on the Bus and within minutes I found myself outside of the auditorium digging through my purse for one of the three bags of Cheez Its I had brought with me. As I sat in a corner, I watched some well-scrubbed mommies packing up their elaborate snacks into little glass and stainless steel containers. As my daughter licked cheese dust off her fingers, the well-scrubbed mommies offered their toddlers another bit of edamame, a little more red pepper, just one more cube of tofu. Good God, I thought to myself peevishly. There was a time when I would have felt a tinge of inferiority at such a display of peripatetic culinary organization and motivation, but I have completely retrained my thinking and in a masterful feat of mind judo, I turn the tables and manage to feel superior. While they were chopping tofu into perfect little cubes, I had time to peruse all the dresses from the Golden Globes on line. Who’s the sucker? And then Nanook comes out in her sexy brown thigh high boots and tosses a package of fruit snacks on the table for her daughter and I realize that this right here is one of the reasons why we’re friends. (The fruit snacks, not the boots. Well, maybe the boots too.) Maybe the well-scrubbed mommies will become as lazy as we are someday. Maybe not. The point is, after all the switcheroonies took place, we shared a chuckle about the lovely cheese and fruit snack we had conjured out of our bags and went back to enjoy the show.

But I’m not always this blasé about snacks. In fact, I’m about to lose my shit over this whole snack business because Devil Baby is a relentless snacker. As someone who tends to eat in more of the boa constrictor mode – gigantic meals that leave you so stuffed you can’t even think about food until all of the sudden you are starving and ready for the next gigantic meal – I abhore being asked for food every twenty minutes. It just doesn’t seem to be a healthy habit to be thinking about food, much less eating food, with such frequency. I understand little kids need snacks, so I’ve gotten sucked in to the whole thing – especially since my particular little kid will NOT take “no” for an answer. I dole out snacks for peace. If I cut up an apple, she’ll stop asking for food, at least for a few minutes. If I say no, I will find her hooking up her carabiners and scaling the pantry shelves to help herself to some Oreos. So I give her a snack because at least that way, I get to pick what it is and I don’t find myself prying something unhealthy out of her death grip, or more often, just letting her have it.

Every night she sits with us at dinner, not touching a thing on her plate, and Doctor Dash listens patiently while I bitch: Uh, it’s obscene! She doesn’t eat a bit of protein! She eats crap and carbs all day long, she’s a dough girl, this is horrible! She’s not touching her food! Look how she’s not touching her food. It’s terrible! This has GOT to stop. I can’t stand it. She doesn’t eat a speck of meat! What the hell is wrong with her? Here, Devil Baby, one bite, here it’s dipped in mayonnaise, one bite. Arrrgh. Sweet mother of God I’m so sick of this! etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. This morning Doctor Dash sent me this article from the New York Times before he went to work and I devoured it with my coffee, muttering like a mad woman Yes, yes, yes!

The point of the article is that snacks are ubiquitious these days and heavens knows, no one is in danger of starving. At first when Saint James started playing soccer, I didn’t really care about the snack. It was our only activity and a rice krispy treat or a Kudos once a week seemed like no big deal. In fact, the first time some parents banned the snacks and juice I thought they were total buzz kills. This is childhood! Where’s the sugar? Where’s the sweetness for our perfect little angels? Well, people, I’ve come around. And then some. Those parents probably had older kids and had had their fill of watching their kids’ bulging-eyed fish faces as they frantically sucked down Capri Suns after every single game and every single of their siblings’ games. Obviously the kids are thirsty after a game, so those juice boxes are drained in an instant. That’s kind of gross. What’s wrong with the water bottle we dutifully schlep every time?

So I realize I’m veering around like a drunken old lady with my flower hat all akilter. On the one hand I scoff at the mommies with the super healthy snacks in pcb-free bento boxes. On the other hand, I would be happy if snacks and juice were banned from all sporting events from here on in. I just think we don’t need to be EATING all the time. It’s about DELAYED GRATIFICATION. The reason I bring snacks around now to a much greater degree than I did with Saint James and Supergirl is because, unlike my other kids, Devil Baby will kick my ass all over the soccer field if I don’t have something for her to graze on while the others play. I didn’t used to be this way. I’m not a Boy Scout by nature. I don’t like to plan ahead. That’s why I nursed my kids – zero prep, zero planning, just a little exhibitionism – that much I can handle. If we really find ourselves starving out in the world, we can always drive somewhere and get a bite, right? If I had packed snacks for the park every single time, how many ravenous hair raising drives to Galoonies for steak and cheese subs would we have missed out on? Practically all of them! And now that Galoonies is gone, I’m so glad we weren’t sitting in the sand eating carrot sticks all those times.

Today I was visiting a potential pre-school for Devil Baby for next year and the tour guide was describing snack time; she said they provide Club Crackers, Ritz Crackers, gold fish and the like and one of the other mothers raised her hand and asked: Are the snacks just crackers or do you include vegetables and protein? I couldn’t help myself. I had to turn around and take a look. And guess what!!! Sister didn’t look so svelte. Maybe she’s a music teacher. Or maybe someone should tell her that if her snack features all the basic food groups, it’s not a snack – IT’S A MEAL!!! 

Maybe that’s why my on-the-go snacks are so half-assed. I don’t really want to admit that I’m planning ahead – I want to pretend we are unfettered by and independent of the tyranny of food. If we happen to squeak by a morning without digging into the celophane, so much the better, no big deal, no harm – no foul, I can save it for the next time. But you better believe if I had boiled edamame or cubed tofu, I’d be busting that out before the first stomach rumble.

Food for thought.