So Much Going On.....

I guess it is just getting to be that time of year....you know, right before the holidays, when everything goes to hell in a hand-basket?  I have been crazy busy the past week or so.....I restarted my cake business and it has been booming!  That is great news, but it has not allowed me time to write and I really intended to blog at least once a week.  Ah, well.  What are you going to do, right?  Anyway, we have had a lot of stuff going on, in addition to all of my cakes.  The baby has been trying new foods right and left and has moved to eating three meals a day.  We are working on texture with him right now, which he is not particularly fond of, but I think it will come in time.  As far as "real human food", as my five year old calls it, goes, he has tried potatoes, scrambled eggs and mashed bananas.  The eggs were moderately successful, but he tried really hard to gag himself on both the potatoes and the bananas.  It was not a pretty sight. We have been moving through the second foods pretty rapidly as he has also increased the amount that he eats at any given meal.  Right now, he seems to be enjoying the green vegetables the most (usually an odd combination of green veg and fruit, actually), but he has also shown an affinity for the pumpkin and banana combo, as well as a lovely pinkish bananas, beets and blueberries that he tried yesterday and today.  I plan to get him some teething biscuits at the store in the next couple of days and hopefully, we can start giving him food from the table pretty soon as well.

Probably the most interesting thing I cooked in the past couple of weeks was our German dinner a week or so ago.  I did a roasted pork tenderloin, served with red cabbage and sauteed spaetzle and mushrooms.  The spaetzle was by far the most interesting thing on the table, particularly because we grew the mushrooms!  My sister gave my husband a "grow your own mushrooms" kit for his birthday and we decided to try it out.  Lo and behold, we successfully grew about 1/2  pound of oyster mushrooms!  I harvested them, cleaned them and sauteed them with the spaetzle for a twist on our "normal" spaetzle combo of onions, mushrooms and swiss cheese.  Yum.  I missed the cheese in the revised dish, but it was still pretty delicious.  The mushrooms added a nice earthy quality and, since I did actually saute them in the drippings from the pork tenderloin, which I seared before roasting it in the oven, they picked up quite a bit of the pork flavor as well.  In any case, it was pretty tasty, which makes me more than a little disappointed that we have not had any success (yet) growing mushrooms again from the kit.  (You are supposed to be able to grow between 2 and 4 crops of mushrooms.  We are only on our second.)  The weather changed recently, bringing colder temps, so that might have something to do with it.  Ah well, maybe we will still get some more delicious mushrooms that I can play with in another dish.  Until next time, folks!  Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Slacking

I really don't have much of anything to write about today, but this is pretty much the only time that I have this week to blog, so I guess those of you who actually read my ramblings will just have to put up with it for this week at least.  As far as the baby foods go, we have not started anything new with him yet this week.  I did, however, buy A LOT of new foods to start (after we finish our stash of first foods that I have in the pantry).  I think the one that I am most excited for him to try is the Pumpkin and Banana 2nd foods from the Plum Baby Organics line.  I don't know why that sounds good to me, but it does.  I also bought a couple of foods from the Happy Baby Organics line (Pear, Peas and Broccoli, I think), so that will be interesting as well.  We are going to try mangoes, spinach and eventually beets, blueberries, zucchini, summer squash and lentils (as well as about a million other things that I can't even think of right now).  I am actually really excited about having him try all of this stuff.  The baby could kind of care less right now - he hasn't been all that interested in eating his fruit and cereal in the mornings lately.  I can get about two bites down the hatch before he starts fussing and turning away, so down the garbage disposal it usually goes.  Dinner time seems to go a bit better, but that may be because he is eating veggies rather than fruit.  Who knows? 

On another note, I called this post "Slacking" because I have been doing just that in the kitchen in general.  I was sick last week with a particularly nasty cold, which knocked me clear on my ass for the better part of the week, so I did pretty much anything I could to avoid cooking.  I did, however, make homemade chicken noodle soup early in the week, which was delicious and satisfying, but did almost nothing to make my cold symptoms disappear.  Home remedy my foot.  Anyway, the rest of the week was all sandwiches, runs to the....gasp!.....local fast food joint, etc.  This week, I am feeling better and am planning to cook dinners all week long.  Last night, we had something dubbed "American Ghoul-ash" by Michael Symon of The Chew talk show.  It was ok - not spectacular, but relatively inexpensive and very easy to make.  Let me take a quick detour here and state my personal opinion about the show itself.  I feel like I should like this kind of talk show....I mean it has famous chefs, who make lots of tasty looking food, as well as decorating, home improvement and entertaining tips. All right up my alley.  I keep turning it on (mostly by accident as the noon hour is about the only time I have to sit down and watch TV, as I scarf my lunch before the baby gets up from his mid-day nap) and I keep HATING it.  I haven't yet figured out why I dislike the show so much.....maybe it is because I find Mario Batali beyond pretentious or maybe it is because I generally find the women (who I don't even know their names) insipidly obnoxious.....I don't know.  I do kind of like the aforementioned Michael Symon and I obviously liked the recipe idea enough to try it myself.  I don't think it will be repeated because the kids ate it only begrudgingly, but I could probably do a riff on it myself at some point.  Back to the topic at hand.....I will probably have some more interesting things to post about in the next couple of days (or next week, rather).  We have some German food on the menu for this week, complete with homegrown oyster mushrooms (that is definitely another post altogether), as well as lentil soup, which, oddly enough, always goes over well in our house.  Until then, Happy Dia De Los Muertos to you all!  Hasta luego!