Howdy

Recipe experimentation continues....

I've had this soy creamer in the fridge for a bit and last weekend I bought some chickpea flour, so the time had come for Isa's "Fronch" Toast. I'd be procrastinating on this one for awhile, since it had two unknown elements for me (the afore mentioned ingredients) and after the sun butter fiasco, I was feeling wary. However, once again I realized that I must trust in Isa because she's the bomb. Especially of breakfast. Although it turned out to be dinner for us. It was made even more delish by the addition of the very non-vegan Nancy's Yogurt for Jason and I. Nora had hers with honey and if her sticky hands, mouth, tray, and well, every inch of her body was any indication, it was a success. Karl got a couple of bites but not many. This could hardly be called "healthy" by the time we added all the maple syrup, but it was definitely more "light" than standard French toast and just as yummy. Unfortunately, it was eaten before I remembered to take photos. Plus, I didn't take as much a bother of presentation.

In other cooking adventures, tomatofest continues at our house with some fabulous little yellow cherry tomatoes from Local Harvest (where you can also find Nancy's yogurt) that have found there way into bacon, spinach and tomato pita sandwiches, a feta, eggplant, olive, sunflower sprout and tomato pasta salad with a side of falafel.

Busy

Nora has been a whirlwind these past few weeks. It seems like everything is much more interesting to her than ever before (which given her curiosity previously, doesn't seem possible). She is always carrying one, two, three or more items around and then gets frustrated when she wants to pick up more, but can't without dropping what she already has.
She is also getting the hang of moving things in and out of other things (fish in and out of the boat, little people in and out of the plane, shapes in and out of the sorter) and wants to do this for longer periods of time.

The other big steps are the imaginary play - bears and dolls are of more interest now and can be fed, put down for naps, and generally dragged around by their appendages, and this weekend there was cooking! As I made the ill fated sun butter cookies, Nora stirred up a mixture of flour, brown sugar and honey on her tray allowing me almost the entire time to make the cookies. Now she's obsessed with carrying around her dish and spoon everywhere. If only she had more hands! Or could figure out how to make use of pockets! And she has plenty of those, since another big deal for her is putting on clothes. She's been wearing two pairs of pants (over the giant diaper) in this heat the past week or so. She's insisting that once pair isn't enough so she'll try to pull on a second, usually the chinese pjs or the red and white striped pair (both sized for babies under one year of age) and then gets angry when she can't pull them up all the way. We pull them up for her and she's happy as a clam. I can't imagine where she gets this desire for more clothes from...
But there's always a still moment in the middle of the tornado. Karl, the every faithful, will make her slow down for a second just to give him a few pats or make him model a hat. And then she's chasing him round and everything is in motion again.

Sunbuttery goodness and then no longer....

I’ve recently become enamored with sun butter, the peanut butter like substance made from sunflower seeds. I actually like the taste better, and it has more vitamins, and best of all, it doesn’t trigger a peanut butter allergy attack in Nora (we don’t know yet that she is allergic, but given her reaction to dairy, we are supposed to avoid it like the plague until she’s five). And because I’m also all about Isa’s vegan recipes, that have yet to fail me, I thought I’d try the crispy peanut butter cookie recipe substituting sun butter. Well…I don’t blame Isa, but this was not a success. I was so very excited. The batter tasted great raw (one of the other pluses of vegan recipes – no problem eating raw cookie dough). However, the first pan (made as written except for the sun butter sub) was way too runny to possibly set up. I added some more flour to the remainder of the batter. Again, a bit too runny for cookie texture raw. Baked, both batches were too cakey – the first crumbling very unhappily

and the second still to cakey and crumbly. Also, there was a faint burnt/scorched taste – true sunflower seed oil has a lower smoke point than peanut oil – but at 350 degrees I didn’t think this was an issue. They are okay with milk, taste wise, and Nora seems to eat them, though not as greedily as the oatmeal/pumpkin/raisin ones and there is no “coookkiiee” exclamation once she eats them. I've put the rest of the batter in the fridge to eat raw, but as for cookies, it's back to the drawing board.

Look For Me On TV

I just got interviewed by the Weather Channel while walking back from lunch. I was with Laura and she shoved me in font of the camera when the reporter asked to speak to us. They wanted to know what I thought of St. Louis weather. Yeah, I said it was hot. Fascinating television, I know. They seemed to think it was more of a story than I did. I guess standing on the street in 100+ degree temperature, lugging a 25lb camera for hours while trying to talk to folks as they scurry from building to building might make you think it is indeed hotter than usual, but to me this is just St. Louis in the summer.

Now I'm really glad I bothered to put on makeup today... if only I wasn't wearing a maternity shirt from two years ago and sporting a giant zit on my chin. Advice to you all - look smart, you never know where the Weather Channel might be lurking. You'd thinking watching all of those ambush makeover shows would have made me more conscious of this.

Avatar me?

Tomatorama

This past week has been full of tomatoes. I picked up several from a guy with a truck on Broadway, and then the next day I was presented with some more, along with some squash grown by Ted and Linda via Mom, and then I couldn't help myself and bought still more (heirlooms this time) from the local gardeners at the Tower Grove Farmers Market. So what did I do with all of these? First there was the ragout with tomatoes and zucchini over grillled polenta, then there was the tomato, kasha, and cheese stuffed zucchini, then there was another ragout of tomatoes, zucchini, white beans and eggplant over more polenta (baked this time), and finally I experimented with my first crepes and stuffed them with fontina, sunflower sprouts and those heirloom tomatoes. Nora even got some in her tofu-cheese quesadillas. We ate it all so fast, I never remembered to take photos. While I'm temporarily out of them, I can't say I'm done with tomatoes though - there are still plans for BLTs or maybe just plain tomato sandwiches, Jason wants some gazpocho, I need to make some of Miss Dixie's Hot Sauce, I'd like to replicate this great fattoush salad I got in Michigan, and well I could eat more in just about any form. If I haven't gotten enough, I think we might have to attend the Iron Barley Tomato Fest later this month. I love August. A Big Thanks to all of you farmers out there with your magnificent produce -especially the tomatoes!

Nora's Glasses

Here's another short video that Jason shot of Nora wearing glasses the only way she will allow and eating a cookie. Or in Nora speak, that would be COOOKIE!