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Monday, April 30, 2012

Anything Slaw

You know how everyone has a few guilty pleasure foods?

On a three week soils field trip, my professor asked the students in charge of buying food/drinks to get him a pack of Coors Light.  I remember we thought he was joking (cause that beer is groooooooooss).  He said he was serious, that on hot, dirty, no shower trips like that he liked that beer.  He also wanted Hormel chili in a can...as in, to eat it out of the can. 

As for me, well, I have a few guilty pleasure foods: store-brand boxed fudge brownie mix (made into brownies, obviously), chocolate donettes, and slaw.  There's this BBQ place down near Hunstville, Alabama and my grandparents used to get us take out dinner there sometimes when we visited.  This place served the BEST slaw.  It wasn't creamy at all, more of a vinegar based dressing that was the perfect combination of sweet and tangy.  The cabbage wasn't sliced or chopped, more like ground up into teeny weeny pieces.  Dang, so good.  And yes, I even love that overly oniony and too-much-mayo KFC slaw.  Creamy and crunchy?  Yes please.

I'm all for making a version of what you want with the ingredients you have on hand.  So yesterday I made a big bowl of slaw using a bunch of random stuff from our CSA basket.  Traditionally, slaws are "cole" based (brassica family: cabbage, broccoli, etc.) but really, you can put anything you want into a slaw.  Jalapenos or bell peppers, tomatoes, celery, fresh herbs, fresh or dried ginger, any greens (spinach, collards, turnips, mustard, broccoli, beets), jicama, and fennel would all be delicious.
Here I used spring onions, radishes, kohlrabi, broccoli, carrot, and turnip.

I also used a bunch of Russian kale, ribs and all.

I washed and spin-dried everything, then chopped it up into a bowl.
For the dressing I used a dollop each of mayo and plain yogurt (I personally like the fatty mayo for my slaw,  but all yogurt would be good, too), a few table spoons each of sugar, rice vinegar, and lemon juice, plus a touch of salt and tons of black pepper. 

I tossed the slaw in the dressing.

Then tasted it, knowing it would only taste better after sitting until the next day.
It was really quite tasty.  We took it in our picnic lunch that we ate after a morning of weeding the strawberry field at our CSA's farm.  It was cool, crunchy break after a hot morning of manual labor.  I also ate a huge bowl of it with my lunch at work today.  Mmmmm, slaw.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Eddie is My Battery

Last week was rough since my mom was in the hospital and I was worried about her.  All I wanted to do on my Tuesday afternoon off with Eddie was go home and dig in the dirt.  Gardening calms me and I needed to reconnect.  But of course, kids have their own agendas and it's unfair to spend our time doing only stuff I wanted to do.

So I packed up a snack and we went to a new park that afternoon, just like Eddie wanted (always wants) to do.  This time we went to Sandy Motley Park, which was fun because it had a backhoe digging toy and a seesaw.



I brought his little red potty and I'm glad I did...he needed to use it.
Tucked behind a rock doing his thing.

After this particular pottying at the park experience, I asked my Facebook friends about what happened there:

Question for parents: what's the etiquette for kids to go potty at the park? We've nixed daytime diapers and not all parks have restrooms. So we just take a little Ikea potty and Lysol wipes wherever we go (restaurants, too, since Eddie hates "loud potties").

Yesterday we were at a park and a little girl watched me take Eddie's potty out of my bike basket and remind Eddie to use it when he needed to go. She immediately told her mom she needed to pee...the mom looked at me and laughed, saying, "Oh...we don't bring a potty...she just pees near a tree," and then helped her daughter squat to pee.

I'm not necessarily against public urination for little tots--but I couldn't figure out if this woman was laughing AT me bringing a potty or if she was defending herself for not bringing one. Thoughts? I don't have much sans-diaper experience with kids Eddie's age...is tree peeing the norm?




We got home in time to reheat a frozen homemade pizza for dinner AND plant some beans in the garden.  And so concluded our perfect afternoon together: we both got to do what we really wanted, and we got to do it together.  I spoke to my mom on the phone that night and she sounded comfortable and much better than before.  I was amazed that night how much relief I felt.  My stress was gone and I really felt recharged. It was great and evidently, just what I needed.  Spending time with him definitely recharged me.

Yesterday I went to Livermore to visit with my mom (sans germy Eddie), now that she's out of the hospital and on her way to recovery.  We didn't do much--just had lunch at our favorite Japanese restaurant, Hanabishi, and chatted at the house.  It was particularly nice because Edward and my dad joined us, so it was us 4 Levies together.  We didn't do much other than that.  She had some chores to do around the house so my dad and I spent some time diving up herb seeds so we could each plant some.  My heart aches to see her sick, but I know that she's getting the care she needs and it was so nice to hang out with her for a bit.