Veritable Vegetable Verbalization

Helplessness is what I feel about Haiti. I am not a trained medical professional; I am not rescue worker or a road mender. But, I can be a fund-raiser and so can you. Give money. Give. You can give directly to World Hunger Foundation or to Doctors without Borders (amongst others)

And, along with that, if your a food blog reader, you could visit:

No Recipes
Zen Can Cook
Laura’s Best Recipes
Online Pastry Chef

They are all donating this month's revenues to Haitain food relief. I will be as well; though as my readership is not on the order of those big guys, my husband and I will be tripling it.

And, as I know I have been a little blog lax, I will post very regularly through the end of the month. Come back often, click a lot, as ad revenue is based on clicks.

And onto the post:



I am a trickster, a kitchen charlatan. But I am no fool.

The boredom of churning out meals night after has started to get to me. The carefree, easy-going joie de vivre of never making the same thing twice has come to a close. Children like routine, I am told. The unexpected at dinner can set off fantastic and epic tantrums; of this I can attest.

Now, instead I make the same thing often. Thankfully the puck in me revels in small changes. ittle oregano, a pinch of paprika, a pop of green peas…

A little boredom once got me to sneak in a bit, really just a smidge, wait what is a bit less than a smidge, well, whatever that is, sooo little lets say, beet into the dumplings in our regular chickpea and dumplings stew. The result was at first whining, then a strange calm, then sitting on the hands, then running around the table and then finally pleading for a liquid dinner (milk). But, then, after a display that seemed to offer insight into the Belle of a decade hence, a bite of beet dumpling made it through the gal’s lips. As is so often in life, this was not an unmitigated success, but one nonetheless.


Then there was once the case of the veggie letters. Savory pies are a big favorite at our house. Encase anything is pastry, and it becomes a hit. Recently, when Belle was at nursery school, I sat down to whittle my vegetable bin into letters (well, I used fondant cutters.) In my mind, I pictured mounds of carrot orange m’s, pearlescent turnip t’s, verdant n’s. In the end, I got through the alphabet 1.5 times (and began to thank my lucky stars I was not cutting out the Tamil alphabet.) But, the glee that formed when an m appeared out of one’s dinner pie was well worth the labor.