January 1 - Here We Go!

Happy New Year!  Having stayed up past midnight to ring in the new year last night, which is three hours past my normal bedtime, I am quite lazy today.  Add to that a refrigerator stocked full with leftovers and I was not highly motivated to make a real dinner tonight.  But because it is the first day of the "year of the family dinner," I felt compelled to at least cook a side dish to jazz up the leftovers.  Otherwise, what would have I have to write about on my blog?  Wouldn't want to fail on my first official blogging day.  See?  The blog is already making me accountable!  And I haven't even shared it with anyone yet (that one's still up in the air). 

I settled on lemon lentil soup with spinach.  It is from one of my favorite cook books - Peter Berley's Fresh Food Fast.   I also love another book of his - The Flexitarian Table, but those meals take much longer to prepare (each recipe features a meat and meatless option).  Fresh Food Fast features vegetarian meals that can supposedly be made in an hour or less.  I say "supposedly" because I'm pretty sure the time frame assumes that your prep work is already done (onions are chopped, carrots are sliced, ginger is grated, etc.).  The prep work adds anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes.  Both of Berley's books are divided by season so you are cooking with the produced that is in season at the time.  That setup is fantastic for buying local organic ingredients, which I try to do.  Another bonus to the Fresh Food Fast book is that it includes yummy desserts centered on seasonal fruits- no chocolate chip cookies here!  The other cook book I use is Nigella Lawson's Kitchen.  Unlike Berley, many of her meals are 30 minutes or less start to finish.  They are thus perfect for weeknights.  I often have to come up with my own vegetable accompaniments, though, as they are not included with the meals.  I won't retype the recipes I use here, but if I can find a link to a recipe, I'll post it. 

Which brings me back to lemon lentil soup with spinach:  http://community.cookinglight.com/archive/index.php/t-98374.html.  I served it with leftover buttermilk strata with mushrooms and leeks:  http://captious.wordpress.com/2009/05/24/buttermilk-strata-with-mushrooms-and-leeks/ (yeah, I didn't know what a strata was either until I started cooking with Peter Berley - it is made with eggs, milk, and cheese, not unlike a quiche - although there are chunks of bread in there as well). 

Both recipes are delicious.  But "delicious" does not mean a four-year old will eat it.  Four-year olds are tricky.  When a four year-old tells you about her likes and dislikes, you should automatically add "today" to the end of her sentence.  "I like my red shirt [today]."  "I don't like Sophia [today]."  "I like my cow Halloween costume [today]."  Annika's food preferences are far more volatile than her even friend selections, which change dramatically with every playground slight (real or imagined).  Today, the issues were mushrooms and spinach, both of which she claimed to hate despite having gobbled both down on several other occasions. 

Conventional wisdom is to force your child to eat everything on her plate, regardless of whether she likes it or is hungry.  But the "clean your plate" philosophy leads to overeating and an unhealthy relationship with food later in life.  So that's out.  Nor can I cater to the pickiness.  I'll end up a short order cook (who has time for that?).  Also, I want to develop her palate for healthy sophisticated food, which requires her to repeatedly sample a variety of foods.  Instead  of "clean your plate," I do "take X bites."  She has to take one bite for every year of age of everything on her plate - four bites of each dish.  That tends to work, but eight bites of dinner (four of strata, four of soup) is hardly filling.  So tonight I tried something different.  I told her to choose a number between four and twenty and that's the number of bites she'd have to take.  I know what you're thinking - any logical creature would just take the lowest number of bites and get it over with quickly.  Four-year olds, however, are not logical.  Annika was so delighted to have autonomy that she chose ten, completely forgetting how much she "hates" both mushrooms and spinach.  And then we counted those bites in Swedish, further distracting her from the actual food.  It worked!  No fights or tears at dinner.  Well, other than four-month old, who - balanced precariously on my thigh because she utterly refused to sit in the bouncer - decided that she was tired of watching other people eat.  Fortunately, Annika finished her ten bites just before Astrid truly erupted and I was able to rush back to the bedroom and nurse Astrid without too many baby tears.  Perhaps starting solids and having the baby eat at the table with the family will simplify, rather than complicate, things.  I guess we'll see. 

For now, I am declaring January 1 a success.  I am celebrating with a glass of sparkling wine.  We ambitiously bought three bottles for new year's eve and barely consumed one before passing out from exhaustion last night.  Cheers!