Good Taste: Chicken Salad with Potatoes and Arugula

From August 2008 Real Simple

1 pound new potatoes
Kosher salt and pepper
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 rotisserie chicken
3 bunches arugula, thick stem removed
1/4 cup fresh tarragon leaves, chopped
1/2 cup Parmesan, shaved

Place the potatoes in a large pot, cover with cold water, and bring to a boil. Add 1 1/2 tablespoons salt, reduce heat, and simmer until tender, 12 to 15 minutes. Drain, run under cold water to cool, and slice.

Meanwhile, in a small bowl, whisk together the oil, vinegar, mustard, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Using a fork or your fingers, shred the chicken, discarding skin and bones.

In individual bowls, combine the arugula, chicken, tarragon, and potatoes. Drizzle with the dressing and sprinkle with Parmesan.

Thoughts: Perfect autumn salad, especially on a busy day.

The Good [Kids'] Stuff: Poisson Rouge

I have been very reluctant at giving my kids much screentime, but after a crazy summer of packing, moving, living at grandmas, moving again, and unpacking, there have been moments that I've needed a little something up my sleeve to help Peter stay entertained. My amazing friend, Krisanne, introduced me to the kids site, Poisson Rouge (red fish). It is endless! It has very cute, happy games, no annoying Dora or Elmo, and a cool art vibe. Peter can navigate it so easily, it scares me. I didn't know he could drag things on my laptop until I saw him do it so deftly on one of the puzzles. The website is French, although there are multiple languages offered. Once I walked in, and he was doing one of the games in Greek and trying to repeat the words--that was hilarious.

Does anyone else have any kids' websites to recommend?

The Good Stuff for Me: What I'm Listening To....continued

I recently went to an art history conference in Amsterdam, where I had the opportunity to hear Neil MacGregor speak. Neil MacGregor is the director of the British Museum. After he spoke, I gasped! He was incredibly inspiring, thought-provoking, and best of all, a fabulous story teller. After talking to a few art history folks there, I learned that he is doing a series for the BBC called "History of the World in 100 Objects." Mr. MacGregor started these lectures in efforts to attract a more diverse crowd at the museum. These are 15-minute mini-lectures (lectures make it sound boring; these are really engaging, exciting story-telling sessions). All the objects are in the collection and each segment follows the thesis of the entire project: we, as humans, are more alike than we are different. At moments, these talks are so very poignant that I have to fight back the tears. You can listen to these lectures here.

Good Taste: Grilled Shrimp and Lemon Kebabs

If you know me (and you all do, I'm guessing), you may know about my secret. I have this bad tendency to hoard recipes. Not like you imagine, where I'm drowning in papers and have to clear a path to my bedroom! Maybe hoard is too strong of a word...maybe I collect recipes. Many recipes, 3 overflowing binders of recipes, mostly in the form of magazine clippings. So, I am changing my system. I always have thrown away recipes that haven't impressed me and my food tasters, but now I am going to dump all the successful recipes right here and throw away the paper. This means that there will be a lot more recipes on here and more peace in my life.

Grilled Shrimp and Lemon Kebabs

24 medium shrimp

2 lemons, cut into small wedges

3 yellow Squash or Zucchini, ends trimmed

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon kosher salt

4 sprigs fresh basil

16 bamboo skewers, soaked in water for 30 minutes

Heat a broiler on high. Place the shrimp and lemon wedges on 8 skewers, alternating them. Halve the squash or zucchini lengthwise, then cut them into 1-inch-thick slices. Divide the squash among the remaining 8 skewers. Place the skewers on the grill and cook until tender, 3 to 4 minutes each side. Serve the shrimp and squash with the basil, torn into pieces if desired.

Thoughts: this meal takes 10 minutes and the grilled lemon is great squirted over everything. Yummy with simple salad or rice pilaf.

Good Taste: No room for ice in our ice cube trays!

[note: this post was intended to be created pre-move! Currently, our ice cube trays are still in a box!]

For the past few months, our ice cube trays have been filled with baby purees. After ecstatically receiving an immersion blender for Christmas from my mother-in-law, I have been pureeing up a storm for little Nathan.

My best resource for baby food has been Annabel Karmel's First Meals. It has great ideas for purees, as well as food for toddlers and preschoolers. We especially love our 'sunshine rice' (which is officially Paella in the cookbook). There are newer editions of this book, as well as other similar books by this author, but I've checked them out from the library and still love this one the most. Be warned: she has some pretty intense meal planning for babies and she also recommends milk and bread too early for my liking. We really only do the simple veggie and fruit purees (and not even all she recommends--who wants cauliflower puree?). For the the more exciting combos, we've been going back to my very favorite Earth's Best baby food, which is usually on sale at Amazon (like it is today) and is cheaper than Gerber.

Nathan is just now growing out of baby food, which is a relief to both of us. He likes to feed himself and I like to eat my dinner. I'm remembering what I used to give Peter at this age: chickpeas, toast, soft fruit and berries, little bits from my meal, and cheerios. Lots of cheerios. So, tell me, what little finger foods am I forgetting?

The Good [Kids'] Stuff: Survival Mothering

I have a large amounts of posts in my mental queue for both this and my family blog, not to mention a few other writing projects that I'm excited about, but I thought I'd record a few activities we've been doing that I'd rather not forget. Everything in our lives is unbelievably scattered--while I was in Europe, my very kind husband moved us out of our apartment. While my parents are generously hosting us at their house, our belongings are strewn between both of our parents houses and a storage shed. Ugh, I just can't think about it too much, or my head starts to hurt. However, we are enjoying some wonderful time with family. And I can't believe how nice it is to have grandma's loving attention for Peter during the transition times. Man, I'm getting soft!

I am still committed to my Mama School, although the next three weeks have been designated by me as our "relocation break," while we get our family from this side of the country to the other.

Here are our lesson plans for the week before and after my Amsterdam trip:

Goldilocks and the Three Bears:
Monday: Read different versions of Goldilocks, play with toy set pulled together with small, blond, naughty-looking doll, and three bears. I also gathered dollhouse furniture (from my mom): three chairs, a breakfast table, three beds. This would be most successful with a doll house, recreating the bears cottage.

Tuesday: Bear Appreciation Day. We read lots of bear books today and learned all about their hibernation patterns. We also constructed a bear cave in the living room. Because all of our spare blankets had been packed, we borrowed some fitted sheets from my mom and found them to be exceptional in sofa-fort construction. By the way, have you seen these sofa fort critiques ? They make me laugh enough that Shane starts bugging me about why I'm laughing so hard.
I think this fort deserves a B-

Wednesday: Oatmeal--the super grain! As an homage to the too-hot, too-cold, and just-right porridge, we ate oatmeal for breakfast and made my favorite oatmeal cookies
Now that I'm writing this out, it would be fun, also, to do some activities surrounding the idea of 'too hot' and 'too cold' as well as all the other comparative analyses that Goldilocks makes throughout the book.

Thursday: Please Knock, Goldilocks! I checked out a few books about stranger danger--nothing too scary, but just preliminary thoughts about it.

Friday: Jumping and Running! More library books, this time about animals that jump (kangaroos) and run (cheetahs). There were also a couple of books, sort of 'running is fun' types of books that were complete duds with Pete. We had relay races (yes, just the two of us), and I almost blew his mind when I showed him my crabwalk. He is now completely taken with backwards running. We also did the long jump and high jump, and recorded his best jumps to show dad after work. (Dad impressed us by hitting the ceiling on his vertical jump.) I also pulled up the world record long jumper, just so Pete could see the pros. He was mildly impressed.


Curious George Rides a Bike:
[Note: this week was so crazy, half of my plans fizzled into us running errands or other unforeseen shananigans.]

Monday: Curious George and Curious Monkeys. We read all of the Curious George books and enjoyed a banana. If I had my real life, I would have checked out some books on monkeys and climbing, and headed to the park for some jungle-gym climbing.

Tuesday: Read all about it! We made a family newspaper with the latest family happenings (Day Out with Thomas, Sunday dinner with my brother, Summertime activities), remembering Curious George on his paper route. My vision was to print pictures from iphoto, but I narrowly held Peter's attention for writing out the articles on a large piece of butcher paper. I think this would be a really creative, fun activity for a slightly older child.

Wednesday: Paper Boats. The book provides some excellent instructions on how to create paper boats. We didn't exactly get to the activities today, but it would have been fun to make the boats and race them down a nearby stream. I'm also wanting to do the ever-popular "sink or float" activity.

Thursday: Trumpet Day! How could we not celebrate the trumpet, after reading about the ostrich who swallowed George's trumpet? Ideally, we would have had a few fun books about trumpets, watch some Youtube of one of my musical heroes, Wynton Marsalis (although we have already spent hours watching him!), and had fun playing on Peter's toy trumpet. Sounds fun. sigh.

Friday: Circus Parade. Another day of unfulfilled plans, but there was a plan! We were going to read about circus parades (a topic that is very popular among the child lit crowd). I loved building animal trains as a kid, by lining up orange and apple boxes in a straight line and putting stuffed animals in them. I remember barely fitting in the first box as the circus engineer! I hope that our lives can settle down enough to do this later on.

A few days ago, in a desperate moment to do something fun for the remaining two hours left before dinnertime (ah, that dreaded 3:00 pm stretch!), Peter and I created "La Familia Pizzaria". We made a menu (I left the pricing up to Peter, and his rates were amazingly reasonable, aside from the $17 tap water). I may just scan the menu a post it here for posterity, as proof that I was trying to salvage something from one of those days when the hours seemed to drag so painfully. As much as I would like to report that this was a wonderful success, unfortunately, both boys came down with stomachaches just minutes before the pizza was put in the oven, creating quite a chaotic restaurant experience. Two boys screaming and an oven at 500 degrees. Perfect. Anyway, the boys rested and Shane and I had a romantic dinner for two at the pizzaria. Peter managed to recover in time to order ice cream from the menu. Peter reminded me that ice cream is great for stomach aches. Right.

A friend of mine has been sharing some things she's been working on as far as summer activities with her kids and it got me thinking how nice it would be to hear what my friends are doing with their kids this summer. If you have some activities or thoughts to share and would like to do a post, please let me know!

The Good [Handmade] Stuff: Baby Happy Pants

Our little guy can't stay little! When I was packing up our baby clothes to bring with us last summer, I was certain that I would not need the 18-month box. Shame on me for not remembering how big our boys are! As the summer months have approached, Nathan has been in need of a new wardrobe. I wanted to keep spending to a minimum, since that box of clothes that fit him is waiting for us after we move back in a few weeks (!). I bought some sale fabric from Sew Mama Sew and a fresh batch of onesies and called it good for now.
I used a combo of tutorials for these pants--I like the MADE tutorial and the instructions in Creative Family.

It is fun to have something fresh and new for this #2 boy!