tammylc

Back from playgroup and lunch, and Liam is on nap #2. Since this blog is ostensibly about what I'm eating this week, I'll back up to breakfast for a moment, when we both had our usual. I realized that I forgot to write about Liam's lunch yesterday - he had 3 cubes of spaghetti (whole wheat pasta mixed with spaghetti sauce and chopped up into bits), 1/2 c of tofu chunks, and more applesauce. In the afternoon he had some cheddar cheese chunks as a snack. I was hungry on my way into playgroup this morning, so I stopped at Zingerman's Roadshow for a snack. I have a long post about Zingerman's planned for the tomorrow, when I'll have pictures from a bunch of members of the Zingerman's family, so I'm not going to post any now. I wanted a ginger scone, but they were all out. In true Zingerman's style, when I asked if they had any slices of coffee cake instead, she offered to cut one up for me. So I had a slice of sour cream coffee cake with walnut and cinnamon, and a lemonade. Playgroup was fun, as usual. I hadn't had an opportunity to do much research on a new place for us to eat, so I decided to default to somewhere we'd been before. The Creekside Grill isn't the most exciting or interesting place to eat, but they have a big menu with lots of choices, ample seating space that's mostly empty by 1:30 in the afternoon, and five highchairs. Today we had 8 moms, 1 dad, and 8 babies. Here we all are: I could talk about what we all ate, but it was a bar and grill - it's not really all that exciting. I had a battered cod sandwich and fries, with a glass of water. The babies had a slightly more varied selection. Closest to Liam is the food I brought for him today - a beef/potato/tomato/onion stew, the pears I made last night, and some cheerios. Across the table, James has a smorgasbord of diced apple, diced tofu dog, provolone cheese, and turkey slices. But he'd rather eat a lemon (he ate about half of this piece, rind and all). Apparently, so would Amelia. Liam, on the other hand, was not so impressed by his first taste of this new food. Maya is just starting to eat solid foods, and here dips into a vegetable medley her mom considerately cut up into tiny bites for her. And then there's Jack ("we don't need no stinkin' spoons") about to lick some hummus off his mom's finger. Luckily, Autumn brought her own chair to sit in. Her mom is feeding her a mixture of rice cereal and something that came in a jar - squash or sweet potato, I think. And Stacia may only be 5 weeks old, but if everybody else is eating, why gosh darn it - she will too.

Making baby food. The baby food cookbooks all talk about batch cooking, but with only 2 ice cube trays and a crowded freezer compartment, I tend to do a little bit per day for a few days. We've been really low on fruit choices other than apple sauce for a few days, so last night's priority was processing up some pears, one of Liam's favorite fruit. I just peel them, cut them off the core and pulse them in the food processor until they're in Liam size chunks. When he was little I'd puree them smooth, but now he likes his food with some texture. Then spoon them into ice cube trays, cover with plastic wrap and freeze for a few hours. This morning I popped them out into a freezer bag, thus freeing up the ice cube trays for my next project. Even though I was most concerned about the pears, in the spirit of multitasking I started a batch of veggie lentil puree before I started working on the pears. Here's the recipe, modifed from Annabel Karmel's First Meals: 2 tbsp olive oil 1/4 leeks, finely sliced 1 c carrots, peeled and diced small 1/2 c red lentils 1/2 lb sweet potato, peeled and diced small 2 c water Saute the leeks in the olive oil for 2-3 minutes. Stir in carrots and lentils and cook for 2 more minutes. Add sweet potatos and water. Bring to a boil, cover, then reduce heat and simmer for 30 minute or until vegetables and lentils are very tender. When this was done cooking I put it in the refrigerator overnight and then spooned it into the ice cube trays this morning after removing the pears. For a small baby, you'd puree this finely in a food processor or blender. For Liam, I just cut the pieces small and mashed it a little bit with a potato masher when it was done. It's surprisingly tasty, and as I've mentioned before, would make a nice dip for pita chips. I'd add salt, maybe some cumin, and lots of lemon juice, then puree it well. Cooking veggie lentil puree:

What you're looking at is our "Art Wall." Each quarter community members are invited to bring art from their homes, and a small group picks out art to feature for that quarter. Sometimes a quarter will have a theme, and this time around it was Travel. We had a little contest where people had to match up items with their country of origin. So it's very possible that the tapestry you're looking at is from Guatemala. Although Senegal might be more likely, as we have a family where the parents met during a Peace Corp stint in Senegal. One of the downsides of the way our meal system works is that we can't take advantage of buying wholesale or in quantity. Every time I buy a 5 lb bag of rice I'm annoyed that I can't just by the 25 lb bag next to it that costs only twice as much. Since there's no coordination between cooks in setting their menus, there's no coordinated buying either. It would also complicate the billing system, since meals are optional and different people attend different meals - splitting the cost of food items across a couple of meals would make the accounting more complex. And then there's the issue of having insufficient storage space for keeping large quantities of things like rice and flour. We do have a pantry fee that pays for stocking some staples - salad dressing, sugar, basic spices, salt, flour, etc - so if you buy something like that in a quantity larger than you're going to use for your meal, you can bill it to that account instead of factoring it into the cost of your meal. This is something that I'd like to see us do better, and perhaps over time we'll be able to develop a different system that would allow us to do so.

Great questions, everyone! Now that Liam is *finally* down for his nap, maybe I'll have time to answer them. There is frequent lingering and socializing after dinner. Kids have to stay at the table for a half hour after dinner is served, then they're set free and descend upon the kids room in the common house (pictured below) or just out to the playground depending on the weather. The common house has a number of other rooms in addition to the kitchen, dining, and kids rooms that you've already seen. There's a comfy sitting room with a gas fireplace, used for socializing and committee meetings, an exercise room with a treadmill and a weight machine, a media room with big screen satellite TV, and a games room with a ping pong table and a piano (pool or foozball pending). Plus a laundry room (about a third of the community chose not to have laundry in their own home and use the common resource instead, a guest room (which can be reserved on a first come first serve basis and costs $5/night) and 3 office, which are rented out by community members for their small businesses. The idea of the common house is that it is to be considered an extension of your own home, and that by having all these resources in common, we were able to build smaller homes (our 3 bedroom is 1300 sq ft, plus an unfinished 800 sq ft walk out basement). Kids room: A little bit more about cleanup, and community work in general - in addition to the 3 cooks, there's a team of 3 cleaners who start cleaning up at 7, and are usually finished no later than 8:30, depending on how much baked on cheese the meal contained. While I tend to cook, Mr. Tammylc (my husband Eric, pictured feeding Liam a while back) takes cleaning shifts. Other people in the community do gardening or bookeeping or other tasks - every adult it expected to put in about 8-9 hours of work each month. We have a lot of kids at a variety of ages in our community. There's a big cluster right around 4-5 years old (almost all boys), and there's a little cluster around Liam's age, with Sawyer 3 months younger, Divya 6 months younger and the newest baby due in April. Okay - I went off on a few tangents there - thanks for the inspiration.

Tonight's dinner: Tonight's cook was Willie. He's a great cook, but has a tendency towards overcomplicated extravaganzas that end up more expensive than most people like. Also, he's a vegetarian who doesn't feel the need to do anything special to accomodate meat eaters. This doesn't bother me at all, but some people complain. Tonight's meal was pretty straightfoward, and really, really tasty. Here's Willie plating up bowls of jasmine rice from the big rice cooker: One of the coolest things about cohousing is coming home after work and having dinner ready and waiting for me. And no dishes to wash! We eat much better than we would otherwise - salad almost every night. Of course, there's dessert almost every night too. And since we try to accomodate kids who are picky eaters, it's harder for parents to force kids to eat/try foods they don't like. Every night there's a selection of foods for the kids. Here's a shot of tonight's kid's table: Bread, baby carrots (a standard selection), steamed broccoli, hardboiled eggs, and some leftover mac and cheese from last night. I took some of the broccoli and mac and cheese for Liam. I'd also brought a few things from home - 3 cubes of veggie lentil puree, 1/2 cup of cottage cheese, and a pear. Liam's dad tried to feed him the lentils, usually a favorite, but he wasn't very interested tonight. But he actually fed himself a little bit of broccoli (usually green foods might as well be poison, so this is a good sign). He ate all of the cottage cheese, some mac and cheese, and as many bits of mango (from dessert) as we put in front of him. He loves mango. Last night, snowangel asked how seating is handled. People seat themselves, and no one seems attached to any particular seat, at least not that I've noticed. Families usually sit together, although sometimes kids will create their own table so they can eat with their friends, or if people arrive too late they might get split up. We try to set a few extra spaces each night to allow for flexibility. And we try to occasionally use different table layouts - when the tables are set for 6 a family of 5 might as well just be eating at home, in terms of opportunity to socialize with their neighbors... Certain people definitely do sit together more often than others, though. Our table mates for the night included Willie, his wife Katie, and Jillian, who lives in a unit in the same building as ours. Alright, off to turn some of the groceries I picked up last night into baby food. Stay tuned for a baby food recipe that doubles as a tasty dip for pita chips.

The flaw with your sales argument is that customers aren't the ones deciding if your commission should be 3%, 6% or 15%.

As I mentioned in my intro post, I have a weekly problem. Every Thursday - tomorrow - Liam and I attend a playgroup. For months now, a bunch of us moms have been going out for lunch afterwards. When the babies were little, it was easy - they napped in slings or car seats or strollers. But now they're getting bigger and needing to eat too, so our options for places to go have diminished. At the same time, the number of moms wanting to go for lunch has increased. So every week we face the same dilemma - where to take 8 or 10 moms and an equal number of babies, most of whom now need highchairs? We don't need a kids menu or anything like that, but we need a place that has at least 6 highchairs, and can set up a table that will fit all of us. Most chain restaurants can fit the bill - we've done Olive Garden once and Red Robin many times - but it's my foodblog week and I'd hate to inflict that on you! (I wouldn't inflict it on myself if it weren't for the good company...) So I promised the moms that I'd try to find something better for this week. I have a few places in mind but need to make some phone calls to see if they pass the highchair test... Oh, and for the record, this afteroon I've snacked on a few more pieces of chocolate, and some nuts and grapes from the kitchen stash. And drank a lot of water, as is typical for me.

Re. tipping and children - as the mother of an 11 month old baby who has a tendency to leave a pile of Cheerios and other food bits on the floor, when I'm out with him I tend to tip more than 20% to make up for the inconvience. Especially when I get a server who treats us well instead of acting like children shouldn't be allowed to leave the house.

I'm a research associate at a company that does workforce development consulting. (Don't worry, I don't expect anyone to actually understand what that sentence means.) Basically I sit in front a computer most days. I'm toying with a career change right now, actually. Not sure what I'd want to do, but something that would incorporate my interest in and knowledge of food is certainly appealing. A while ago I got the card of someone who runs a specialty food import business in the area, and I keep thinking I need to call and see if there might be something I could do for them. I'm still kicking myself for not pursuing an administrative job at Zingerman's that I was up for a couple of years ago. The pay and benefits just didn't match up to what I was getting from my current job and I didn't feel like I could take the downward step. I wouldn't want a restaurant job, though. I value my weekends and evenings too much. I've got considerable event planning experience and have thought about pursuing that, but once again, the hours suck. So here I sit at my desk job...

There are quite often leftovers. Basically, after about 6:45 or so, any food left in serving dishes is considered fair game and can be taken on a first-come, first-served basis. We have plastic lids for the Corelle bowls, or some people bring their own containers from home. Things that aren't taken are either thrown away or occasionally saved for the next day. There was a lot of bread left last night, and I noticed that it was still in the kitchen this morning.

Servers in Canada earn at least the standard minimum wage per hour. In the US, there is a lower minimum wage for people who are expected to get tips - it can be as low as just a couple dollars per hour. Which is why my tipping almost always starts at 20% in the US. I will leave as low as 10% for appallingly bad or rude service. Someone said that they start at 15% for diners and 20% for more upscale restaurants. I do the opposite - it's not uncommon for me to tip 30% or 40% on a cheap diner lunch - I always leave at least $1, and when I go to a diner where I can get a hamburger, fries and coleslaw for $2.65, that only seems fair.

My - you all are quiet today... The problem with having a baby who wakes you up at 6:15 am, is that by 11:30 breakfast is long behind you and you're hungry again. My office can be a dangerous place to be hungry. I've already scarfed two pieces of chocolate out of the bowl in my coworkers office. And as if that wasn't enough, if I get hungry later I have this spread to look forward to: I suppose it's very nice to work for a company that provides such an array of treats (healthy and non) for its employees, but the temptation to indulge is awfully strong. For now, I think I'm going to eat my lunch - leftover macaroni and cheese from last night's dinner. I usually try to bring leftovers or a frozen dinner for lunch - with only working 3 days a week and needing to leave promptly at 5 to pick up Liam at daycare, I don't have time to go out very often. Not to mention the cost savings, of course.

So this morning was a typical morning - bananas, yogurt and toast for Liam, frosted mini wheats for me. He must not have been very hungry this morning, because he left behind most of his banana. I gave Liam a couple pieces of cantaloupe to try, but I don't think he even tasted them before deciding that they should be deep-sixed off the side of the highchair tray. He did the same thing to the beets we gave him last week. Unfortunately, Liam has decided that morning starts at 6:15, and has woken up at that time all this week. I was fine with 7 - heck, even 6:45 was okay. But 6:15 - blech! This allowed us a somewhat leisurely morning getting ready for daycare, so I put Iron Chef America on in the background and watched last weekend's Bobby Flay vs. Rick Bayless Buffalo Battle. And now I'm at work, so I suppose I should go do some.

It really is a lovely place to live. It's a little gray now, but we've got many avid gardeners so it will soon be a a cacaphony of flowers and vegetables. The flashes of orange pumpkins wending they're way through gardens always make me smile. In addition to the 6 acres that we are built on, we've also got 3 acres of wetlands and a pond. So we're a regular stop for migrating birds, and as they take off from the water they fly right past my windows! Right now two swans have taken up residence in one of the ponds - it's amazing to see them fly. In a couple of weeks the spring peepers (frogs) will start singing, and we won't be able to sleep at night for the noise! There's a small group of deer that wander along the edges of the wetlands, and we've seen coyotes and foxes too. Not to mention the pheasants strutting along the edge of the road - they always make me think of dinner! It's a really wonderful place to raise kids. The pedestrian village, lots of room to explore, and more ability for unsupervised play than in most neighborhoods, because we (and the kids) know all of our neighbors. Plus there are some great opportunities for intergenerational involvement - Liam doesn't see his own grandparents very often, but our senior citizen neighbors are happy to watch him for a little while during the day if I have to run out for an errand. One of his best friends is an 8 year old boy who'll come to the door and ask "Can Liam play?" Okay, back to the cooking. I try to avoid starting the day before, and plan meals that will fit within the constraints of the scheduling. I sometimes shop the day before, although often I do it all in one fell swoop, grabbing ingredients at the grocery store and moving straight into the kitchen when I get to the common house. I am not planning to stuff grape leaves, but anything could happen between now and then. I'm going to check out the EGCI course that Behemoth mentions, and maybe I'll try something interesting and new from there.

Liam has never been a cereal fan, so I never bothered trying the porridge. He ate rice cereal a couple times, but has refused oatmal whenever I've offered it, and looked at me like I was trying to poison him. Speaking of beans, last week he happily ate a whole pile of cooked black beans (smooshed to break the skins), so I picked up a can of them at the store last night. He loves things he can feed himself.

Thanks everyone for the kind words - glad you're enjoying my blog! I'm having fun writing it. Also thanks to everyone who weighed in on my menu decision for Sunday's meal. The summer rolls are a really good idea, but not for this week, since I'm going to be too busy blogging to plan a meal I haven't made before. So I'm going with the Middle Eastern/meze approach. Tabbouli, hummus, baba ganoush, yogurt and cucumber salad, feta cheese, lamb or beef kabobs, pita bread, baklava for dessert. No falafel this time around. While I was writing down my menu for this week I had two people request that I make Tortilla Soup again before the weather warms up too much, so I went ahead and put that in the book for the next time I cook, April 14. And I'll definitely do the summer rolls this summer, when they'll make for a nice refreshing cold dinner.

Plants. I don't know what kind. Not edible ones. There's a really nice herb garden right outside the common house door, though. Doesn't look like much this time of year, but I was harvesting rosemary and thyme into December this year.

Okay, shopping is done. Where was I? Oh yes, dinner. Each night one of the cooks writes out the menu for the evening. This is a particularly nice example - clearly this cooking crew had some time to kill! Different cooks approach the job in different ways. Tonight's cook, Amy, has a stable of dishes that she rotates through over the course of a couple months, and Mac and Cheese is a standby for her that is generally well appreciated. Liam certainly liked it. He ate quite a bit of it. As did I, to be honest. Plus some salad (romaine with dried cranberries and cherry tomatoes, with some Shitake Sesame Vinaigrette). Dessert for me was butter pecan ice cream. Liam had kiwi. After each spoonful of kiwi, Liam would make that face. But then he'd open up wide for the next bite, so we're thinking it was the baby version of sour candies - good, but you still can't help but cringe a little from the sourness. After he finished the kiwi he was still hungry, so we gave him a little bit of banana, and then he gnawed on a couple hunks of Zingerman's farm bread. We're doing our best to raise a little gourmet - the first bread he ever had was Zingerman's, and he loves it. The nice hard crust of the farm bread is perfect for teething on. Earlier bleudavergne asked about the kitchen, so I took a couple pictures of the setup. These were taken just a few minutes before dinner was served. The kitchen never looks this clean moments before I serve - this meal is simple and has a long downtime while the mac and cheese bakes, so there's ample time for the cooks to start cleaning. There's a separate team of cleaners that comes on after dinner, but it's considered polite to clean as you go if you have the time. And here's a shot of the dining room. This is our most common table configuration, although we try to mix it up a little by combining tables in different ways. We can seat 64 easily, with 8 people at each dining table, and on the rare occasion we need more than that, we pull the buffet tables into service. Last, a couple of pictures of the community that all this is located in (it was twilight as I was taking these, so they're a little dark, sorry). We have 37 households built on 6 acres of land. The buildings are clustered together to preserve green space, and each building has 3 or 4 units - basically condos. The interior of the community is pedestrian only (with exceptions for move-in/move-out, emergency vehicles, snow plow, etc), which makes it great for kids to play and neighbors to connect.

Okay - I haven't disappeared entirely, but between picking up the baby from daycare, feeding myself, feeding him, getting him bathed and in to bed, I've not had a minute to post. But I did have minutes to take pictures, which I'll be posting along with the details of tonight's common dinner, just as soon as I get back from grocery shopping for Liam. I have to write a shopping list for myself, so I might as well do it here... Yogurt Cheese Cottage Cheese Tofu Bananas Pears Frozen peaches and mangos Kiwi Carrots Leeks Mandarin oranges Diapers Okay, time to print this out and head to the store. Back in a little while with pictures.

Rachel - I used your baking method in mini muffin tins and used a disher to portion. But I made 144 of them - it took a long time! I borrowed a couple of muffin tins so we were able to make 48 at a time and bake them in three batches. I just remember it as a lot of work. But then again, I was 8 months pregnant, so maybe that was my problem...

Soba - I loooove taramosalata. Yum. Baba Gannoush, not so much. But I'm not just cooking for me, and I have thought about it. People like the falafel I made for that meal, but they were a lot of work and the part I'd least like to repeat. But I'm not sure people would consider just the hummus, etc as enough of a meal... bleudauvergne - The common house kitchen is basically a slightly souped up home kitchen. I'll post pictures of it some day this week. We've got a six burner gas stove (but the burners are too close together to accomodate the big pots you need to cook for this many) and two electric wall ovens. One standard household size refrigerator, since food is generally purchased only a day or two in advance and isn't stored. A commercial Hobart dishwasher and two compartment stainless steel sink with sprayer. Lots of counter space for multiple people to work at. Not enough storage space (our planned pantry space got taken over by unexpected fire suppression infrastructure required by code). I've use my range in my home twice, once when I planned too many things that needed to be cooked in the oven, and another time when I was assistant cooking for someone who'd planned too many things to cook on top of the stove. Or more accurately, didn't take into account how long it would take to fry slices of 10 eggplants... There is a smallish household food processor, but it's not very good and I usually bring my food processor over if I need one. We're talking about buying a commercial size one, but it's not in the budget for this year. We've got two Kitchen Aid stand mixers. There are a variety of pretty good knives, although they don't get sharpened enough and I often bring my Global, just because I like it so much. I try to bring over my Chef's Choice Sharpener at least once a month. We've got a restaurant size rice cooker. And a whole lot of big pots.

In keeping with the Vietnamese theme...I made pates chauds for the Spawn's French class last week. They were a big hit and they were very easy to make. I used the recipe found here: click After looking at that link again, Vietnamese sandwiches would be nice too but they might be better as a summer meal since they're served cold. ← Thanks for the link - I took a quick look but will investigate further later. It's the first week of spring here in Michigan, so warm weather food feels somehow appropriate!

Shanta - thanks for reminding me! I posted about my lunch, but not about Liam's! Who knows what he actually ate, but what I sent for him was a 1/2 cup portion of a beef/tomato/potato stew that he really likes, a 1/2 cup of organic unsweetened applesauce, and a cube of pureed carrots. A "cube," you say? Well, as I said earlier, I make most of his food myself, when he's not eating table food, that is. I just blend things in my food processor, freeze them in ice cube trays, and pop the cubes out into a freezer bag for easy portioning later. One cube equals about one ounce of food. The beef stew I froze in larger 4 oz containers, since it's a good portion for lunch or dinner, and I was making a BIG recipe of it up and didn't want to deal with a million cubes. We're getting a little short on cubes in the freezer, so I'm planning to go shopping and make up some more after he goes to bed tonight. At least, that's the plan. Liam also gets expressed breastmilk in bottles at daycare, although over the last month he's dropped his consumption from about 13 ounces a day to 8 or less. Yesterday he only drank 4 ounces! I think what's happening is that - in addition to eating more solid food - he's just starting to walk and doesn't want to take the time to drink out of a bottle. But he's always happy to nurse - cuddle time with mom is worth taking a break for, I guess.

Okay, back to the matter at hand - Sunday's dinner. We've got a suggestion for summer rolls on the table... As much as I like the idea of letting people customize, for simplicity's sake I think I'd do as Rachel suggested and make up a variety in advance. Seems like it would be a pretty laid back prep - a bunch of time chopping, a little bit of time making sauces, and then some assembly. I haven't talked about the timing for common meal. As I mentioned earlier, there's a head cook and two assistants. The assistants start at 4 pm the day of the meal, and dinner is served at 6:15. Depending on who's assisting, you might be able to make arrangements to have them start earlier, but usually if I need more time I just start earlier myself. Which makes doing long cooking meals less appealing. My Beef Burgundy was a huge hit, but I was alone browning beef chunks and chopping vegetables at 2 pm to allow enough time for the stew to stew... But summer rolls sound like they'd lend themselves to the timeline alright. Are there any other suggestions? My original inclination was to repeat my Middle Eastern meal as referenced in the other post - hummus, tabouli, falafel, maybe lamb kabobs instead of chicken - but I like trying new things too.

Lunch from Zingerman's Bakehouse: a calzone with pepperoni, portabello mushrooms, provolone and sicilian tomato sauce with anchovies. And an Odwalla Mango Tango fruit smoothie. I picked up a bag of Zapp's potato chips for later - Cajun Dill Gator-Tators to be precise. The Bakehouse is located in an industrial park not far from where I work. It's where they make all the bread for all the different Zingerman's locations and other stores that sell their bread. But they have a little retail outlet with lunch food at a much more reasonable price than sandwiches at the deli, so it's a frequent stop. I took some pictures while I was there, so I'll write more about the Bakehouse and the entire Zingerman's Company of Businesses later tonight, when I can jazz things up with pictures.