Why I Love the CBC

I like the CBC. I especially like the CBC over my kitchen radio while one of my kids is napping upstairs and I'm mixing something up and maybe there's a glass of wine involved. I don't usually get to listen to a whole segment; maybe just a snitch of an interview or a couple callers commenting about something random like the time they got to touch the Stanley Cup. (Being a quasi-Canadian, I really wish I found that story more interesting but I just can't get all that riled up about a big sweaty metal trophy no matter how I try).

If words were objects, the CBC would be a crazy neighbourhood yardsale that would give you weird and appealing insights into the lives of people you don't know. Today, for example, an old Nubian man said "it's a simple life." His grandchildren were floating and playing games on the river (the Nile, that is) while chickens pecked corn in the yard. Their whole community had been uprooted years back when the Egyptian government decided to flood the land the Nubian people have lived on for centuries. (I missed the part about why the government chose to do this, but having lived in New Orleans I understand that it is sometimes politically and economically advantageous to flood people out of their homes for various reasons. Apparently God is down with that too, Noah's Ark and all). Interestingly (and yet it gets a big fat "well, duh, it would go that way") a great deal of energy was spent preserving and protecting the ancient monuments created by the Nubians of old; zero of which was dedicated to supporting the modern-day Nubians who are now, as the CBC host explained, "scattered like pearls from the necklace of a beautiful girl." Well, that's probably just a nice way to say it. (Dispatches, by Yolande Knell, originally aired April 9, 2009).

I've never thought much about the Nubian people. I'm not sure I was even aware of this distinct ethnic identity. The word conjures long-necked, dark-skinned women with large almond shaped eyes. Two-dimensionally, like a drawing on a wall or a piece of pottery. But somewhere in the world (ummm, Egypt) Nubian children are lallygagging on a river while their grandpa talks to a CBC reporter (and then there's the chickens, pecking away).

It's also nice when you hear something reported on the CBC with which you are familiar. Like yesterday, Sarah Elton did a big story on Buddha Dog, which is a restaurant on Roncesvalles that I used to go to after music class with Loki on an almost weekly basis. To put it simply, they make "gourmet" hotdogs. An oxymoron if ever there was one. But really, they are a political statement. They took a classic fast-food icon - the overly processed, mysteriously stuffed street meat - and turned it into a perfect example of slow-food. Made with locally sourced aged beef and cheeses and featuring gourmet, chef-created sauces that range from sweet to savoury to spicy the Buddha Dog is the conscious eater's answer to the wiener. (Funny aside: why is it called Buddha Dog? In reference to the old joke: "What did the Buddha say to the hotdog vendor? Make me one with everything." ba-dum-dum, chh.). The thing is, most people I've sent to BD end up disappointed. The dogs are tiny (a standard order is 2 or 3 of them) and there's not much else on the menu. Herb wouldn't step foot in there - not when you can get a foot-long polish sausage as thick as Nate's arm, just a couple doors down. And I should admit that maybe I like the idea of Buddha Dog a little bit more than the actual dogs themselves. But hearing it described on the CBC made me feel really cool. Like someone in the know. I don't often feel that way (as evidenced by the fact that I spend so much time listening to the CBC in my kitchen).

And that's just it. I discovered the CBC during my first mat leave with Loki - it was a way to catch glimmers of a world bigger than my house and the 4 streets I walk up and down every day and I could do it while feeding him peas porridge cold or shaking a rattle or bouncing on a big rubber ball. Then, when Herb came home at the end of the day, I would have something to talk about other than the shape and consistency of Loki's poop. The CBC makes me feel interesting and connected when I am in a state that makes me the least of both.

Tonight's Dinner:

Me: Indian with Krish and Olimpia - Yay! Grown Up dinner! Good thing I have that whole Nubian story to talk about. I hope neither of them has read this entry.

Herb & Loki: Chicken sausages, tomato rice & green beans

Nate: Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge from the pot currently on the stove.

Indelible. Diatribe.

Dahlia.

These are some words I like.

Here is something I overheard on my street not long ago: "That's the problem with Gypsies. They never finish what they start." I think, but I can't be sure, that the person who said this is ethnically (?) a Gypsy.

What am I at here? I'm warming up. Sorry, it's been a while and I feel like I've forgotten how to do this. This being: write as if I have something to say.

For me, writing is like exercising. I ought to do it; I need to do it. I start with great gusto and commitment - a determined stick-to-it-tivenes. And then I am undermined by "other things" - life and laziness and then lack of confidence. You know how it goes. We had a couch like this back at 77 Carlton - that's the apartment I shared with Herb and Lori when I first moved to Toronto. We called it the "couch of inertia" - How Herb misses that couch. It was our field of poppies; it just sucked every ambition out of your body until all you could do was lay back helplessly and watch rerun after rerun of Felicity. That is where my brain is and I just need to know, does she end up with Ben or not?

No. I'm fighting it. I am.

We are back from our visit from Baltimore. A trip somewhat like a haj - a physical, emotional and spiritual journey to the homeland which, while deeply important and meaningful, requires a whole lot of energy (not to mention the shlepping). Every fiber of my being before and during was lit with the requirements of this trip and so I kindof slacked off everything else. Also, Nate slept in the same room as the computer. Sure, there's my excuse.

Well, also, I've felt a bit shitty (for lack of a better word) and writing in this way requires something from me that gets lost easily when I am not at my best. My voice, I guess. It's not writers' block, more like writers' laryngitis. What I mean is this: So in university I was big in the creative writing scene. I had this advisor, a wonderful man named Peter Cooley, and I would come to him with all my post-adolescent angst about my worth and value and say things like "I just don't feel like I deserve to call myself a poet." And he would say, "Well, Jessie, if you're going to be a poet, you're going to have to get over that." Guess what - I write funding proposals for a living (not that there isn't some poetry there) but I didn't. Get over it, I mean.

I could not commit to writing in that sense - as a poet writes - because it seemed necessary to know something about life and the world; to have some experience or insight that was unique and worth sharing and as far as I could tell I was the most ordinary of persons with a fairly comfortable and easy life with no great risks or losses and who on earth needs to hear about that? The fact that I was good at it, that it came naturally, that it was a compelling force - maybe the only compelling force - in my life just didn't seem reason enough. Cowardice trumps passion: a tragedy.

Well, not a tragedy really. I'm quite happy with the way my life rolled out and things would certainly have gone differently (not necessarily worse, I guess, but differently) had I taken that other path. And I like what I do...knowing in a concrete way that what I write matters, that it has a purpose larger than and outside of me.

But that's not this. This is indulgent (isn't it?).

I spent a great deal of time in the kitchen today pureeing carrots and listening to the CBC. They were interviewing a writer, Rick Moody, about his work, mostly fiction, but he was talking about the one memoir he wrote: The Black Veil, which is somewhat about his search for his family roots and his struggle with depression, which he prefers to call melancholy (another beautiful word despite its meaning). Between spurts of the deafening hand-mixer buzz, I listened to him explain how difficult and painful it was for him to write about himself, how he hated it, in a way. Now this is a very famous and very talented writer. I am neither but I felt something like kinship to him as he spoke. He said that while he is so deeply uncomfortable writing about himself and his experiences that it is the only way he knows how to process his life and the things that happen to him. And that he doesn't understand anything about what he knows or thinks until he writes about it. I am that way too. I am a constant, silent narrator - explaining myself to myself. Putting it all in words, so I can get it. And maybe it is because that work is so private and intimate, it feels uncomfortable to put it out there.

So there you go, I'm sure I've burned off enough mental calories to have (another) glass of wine guilt-free. I'm back on track. If there's anyone still interested.

Tonight's Dinner:

Flattened Chicken (ask me about this if you don't know. you should know, really).

Mushroom Risotto

Spinach Salad

Pureed carrots & peaches, 1/2 an avocado (That would be Nate. He later threw up a good chunk of that. It was distinctly both orange and green, not brown as you'd think).

Conception

Nate is hungry.

I know we have covered this territory before but let me say it again: Nate is hungry. For food, yes, but not just that. He is a hungry being and he consumes everything (from pureed pear to Loki's attention to my snuggles and Herb's coos) as if he might never get enough.

We are not supposed to compare our children.

I'm not sure who wrote this rule but we all know it.

We are meant to love them each, individually, in a perfect vacuum. But there is something so fascinating about considering them in juxtaposition. Maybe it is because I am an only child and so, while I have witnessed it, I have never lived the actuality of having a person drawn from the same genetic grab bag who is like me and different from me all at once. This fact of my children - their samenesses and differences - blows my mind. And they are still so young - who they are becoming becoming clearer everyday like a Polaroid sharpening. But it was true from birth and I would argue, perhaps, from conception.

Now that's something we don't generally swap stories about. "Oh, your little Suzie is so sweet. Tell me, how was she conceived?" Don't worry, Lori, I won't gross you out with the gory details. But it seems to me that the circumstances - or maybe better, the contexts - surrounding their conceptions connects to who my children are and how they are different in an interesting way.

I willed Loki into being. Herb was there too. But I feel as though I truly summoned him to be mine. I had had a heartbreaking miscarriage and a number of desolate months trying to get pregnant again. It was July, in fact it was this week in July (Canada Day weekend) and Herb and I had planned to visit an old friend of his who lives in a small, hippy-esq town just on the Quebec border (a place we had never been to before and will probably never go to again). The morning of our trip, I had scheduled an ultrasound just to make sure that everything was okay and back to normal following the D & C. I hated everything about that place - the waiting room filled with beaming round bellies, the distracted receptionists, the cold gel and the bleeping of a screen I couldn't see or make sense of. But the technician was kind. Everything looked okay, she said. "In fact, there's a ripe follicle right there." And that ripe follicle - that pre-egg - was Loki. It is odd to think that I knew him that way - the equivalent of a biological possibility, the potential for potential.

Just before we left that pretty little town in the middle of nowhere, I went skinny-dipping (alone) in the cold lake water near our hosts' house. Maybe it was the brightness of the morning or the coolness of the water, but I was filled with a calmness and a clarity that I had never felt before. In my mind, that communion with the lake marked the moment when Loki's life began. It was the universe responding to my heart's desire.

Nate, on the other hand, I truly believe willed himself into being. If Loki is the child we demanded of the universe, than Nate is the child that the forces of the universe conspired us to have. I had just returned from my first weekend alone since Loki's birth. I had gone to visit college friends in New York and had spent a surreal 48 hours childless, falling into a pre-baby self the way you collapse gleefully into a strange, crisp hotel bed, knowing that your real bed is at home waiting for you. Loki was just over a year old. I was done nursing, had lost the baby-weight, was starting to work again...life was good and balanced. Sure we wanted another but no rush...maybe we'd try in the summer, maybe in the fall. After the amount of energy spent on conceiving Loki, I didn't think it was even possible to get pregnant without really really wanting it, without really trying. Getting pregnant by accident seemed as likely as accidentally winning the lottery (especially if, say, you only buy a ticket maybe twice a month, because generally you're just too damn tired to go all the way to the store when you can just close your eyes and go to sleep...echem, if you know what I mean). In general, we were using the oldest method of birth-control (a toddler) and relying on the fact that probability was on our side.

Maybe there was something about going away and coming home - I seem to remember some odd fact from Psych 101 involving mice couples having higher conception rates after brief periods of separation - did I make that up? But it was more than that. Now, this is as graphic as I'll get...I promise: They say there are food people and then there are sex people. Well, just guess which one I am. I spend all day thinking about what to eat for dinner. My cravings are generally of the wine and chocolate variety. But for some reason that day, the day I was coming home to my husband and child, things were different and I'll leave it at that. A couple months (and six pregnancy tests) later, when the surprise wore off a bit, it occurred to me that we had been chosen by this child for this life.

I read a beautiful excerpt from Clair Bateman's story "Otherwhere" in Harper's that truly captures this feeling and the last line reads:

After a birth does occur, the mother gazes into her infant’s eyes with deep tenderness, knowing that it has chosen to die to countless could-have-beens in order to take the plunge into a particular is.

We are Nate's particular is and he is hungry, hungry, hungry for this life. I am so deeply grateful that the universe chose me to feed him.

Tonight's Dinner:

Nate: 4 cubes of pureed pear & apricot mixed with oatmeal, 6 ounces of formula, 2.5 boobs

Loki: Crunchy fish fillet & carrots

Herb & Me: Cheeseburgers, Potato Salad (Heather's fantastic recipe which involves English Salad Cream and chopped up pickles), neon-green coleslaw (that was all Herb, I won't consume anything that colour).

Losing Dinner (& My Mind)

Today I almost lost my dinner.

Not in the "praying to the porcelain goddess" sortof way. Literally. Like, lost it. Left it, in a bag, by a bench, on the sidewalk, in front of a busy street. It was the reason Nate and I had left the house, in the threatening rain and distracted by a cup of coffee and the possibility of cut flowers, we were halfway home before it occurred to me that we were missing something.

I am missing something. In my brain. Something is definitely amiss.

I have been fighting a funk for a couple weeks now and, alongside an irrational moodiness, is this pervasive foggy distraction. I am not a forgetful person nor am I disorganized or flighty. Lots of other things, yes, but those things, no. So to leave our dinner on the sidewalk, or my purse in the grocery cart (didn't even realize it was gone until my neighbour - who works at the grocery store - phoned to tell me she'd drop it by), or to double book appointments one after the other all week long - well, these aren't the sorts of things I do. Except I can't stop doing them.

I am tempted to throw the word "hormones" at it but I am tired of that explanation. Between pregnancy, childbirth, nursing and weening I have been a hormonal El nino for the past 3 years and it just feels like a lame, warn-out excuse. But a convenient one. Easy to pull out of the bag when, say: you show up for a pilates class on the wrong night after having rushed to find a babysitter because it's Herb's hockey night after all and why did I book this class on Herb's hockey night-oh well- I guess I forgot- okay got the sitter and we're covered and right - no I didn't book a class tonight - of course I didn't - but here I am anyway and there's a teenager in my livingroom and I can't go home. Exactly.

So I did what the nice instructor told me to do ("You have an entire, free hour!" - she has 3 small children and gets it). I went and bought myself a yummy coffee-type drink and looked at silly magazines in the bookstore. They were "Home Decor" magazines because we are thinking, finally, of putting together our bedroom in a fashion that does not involve curtains hung from untwisted wire hangers or "heirloom" Walmart dressers with a "distressed paint" finish caused by packing tape. As I flipped through the glossy pages trying to identify my so-called style, it occurred to me that what is wrong with our bedroom is also what is wrong with my mind. It is filled with the bad kind of clutter.

Now if you ask Herb, there is only one kind of clutter and it is all bad. But I disagree. I like things, artifacts, objects...of a certain variety. Not surprisingly, I like the kinds of objects that one finds in a kitchen: stubby jars filled with herbs, bowls of lemons, green glass bottles of olive oil and wine, kitschy coffee tins, a stack of blue-rimmed ceramic bowls. In all the magazines I flipped through, it was the pictures of kitchens that appealed to me. The bedrooms were either too stark or too overdone. A kitchen is a real space. A place where people do their real living and working and talking (and eating). Bedrooms are either too private (i.e. strewn with laundry, covered with little piles of coins and ticket stubs and other detritus dumped out of pockets, medicine bottles, old glasses of water) or they are for-show and then they feel forced and false.

In a kitchen you can be yourself and go about your business but still be surrounded by beauty.

Our bedroom is my undone brain. It's filled with all the scraps and leftovers of our life. The things I need to do and haven't done (hang up that shirt, fold that basket of laundry, pack away those baby toys, make the bed, bring that ancient glass of water downstairs). The way our life is - we enter it, drop what we can't hold any more, sleep, wake up, and shut the door behind us. It doesn't get to have a complete thought...it is an interrupted space. My moments of clarity come, of course, in our kitchen where things are timed and ordered. So, perhaps with this little remodeling project, I will try to add some sense and tranquility to my brain. Fill it with things I like to consider (a vase of yellow flowers, a red mixing bowl, an oversized stainless steal pepper grinder) and air out the dirty laundry and distraction- or at least pile it in a rustic wicker basket.

Tonight's (Reclaimed) Dinner:

- Roasted Flattened Chicken

- Stuffing "muffins"

- Steamed broccoli

Money Soup

When I was about 7 years old I had a chameleon named "Jerry." He died and I got another chameleon, and named him - you guessed it - Jerry. It occurred to me one day that I would like nothing more than to have a little tea party with my reptile friend. I'm not sure where I conjured this image from, maybe a greeting card, but it was a watercolour picture of a little girl and a white tea pot and a lovely little lizard sitting daintily on a leaf and they were all enjoying a wonderful, magical afternoon together. That's what I was shooting for when I took Jerry from his little terrarium and placed him on top of a large house plant next to the coffee table. I quickly learned two things about chameleons (1) they change colour (2) they do not sit daintily on the edge of leaves; they run mad-mad fast. That was the end of the line of Jerrys.

This is a bit of lifelong pattern for me. I imagine clear, lovely images in my mind of how a thing ought to be and then seek to reproduce it in real life, ignoring - say- the laws of physics or biology or just basic common sense.

This is why I taught my two-year-old to push a kitchen chair from the table to the counter and stand on it while I cook dinner. I had a picture. A really nice picture of a cute little boy in a white apron (do we even own an apron?! Yes, it's black and it says "Kitchen Macgyver") gently stirring a wooden spoon around a big ceramic bowl while watching his mother - with awe and wonder - create a delicious home cooked dinner. Amidst lemons and fresh herbs, he would soak in the warmth of maternal love and the smell of garlic sizzling in a pan and would one day tell his children about these treasured, blissful moments (insert sound of record screeching)...

Okay, have you met my kid? There are SO many things wrong with this picture that I don't even know where to start. Oh, I know...how about garlic sizzling in a hot pan spitting hot oil all over both of us. My son throws the wooden spoon against the wall and reaches deftly for the chopping knife, spilling the fresh herbs all over the dirty, dog-hairy floor. He then proceeds to throw a cataclysmic tantrum until I let him suck on the lemon which he mashes in his mouth and then spits back into the ceramic mixing bowl filled with whatever else we were supposed to be eating for dinner. It usually goes something like that. Not exactly the Norman-Rockwell-meets-Food-Network thing I was going for.

I have kicked myself for introducing this little ritual a thousand times. Why can't we go back to him sitting dumbified in front of the tv while I sip a nice glass of wine and quietly destroy my own kitchen in my own way (I'm a really sloppy cook and believe me, I don't need a toddler's help to spill shit on the floor).

But tonight, I must say, we lived the dream. Well, sortof. Okay, so it was after dinner and I wasn't actually trying to cook anything, granted that makes a huge difference. I was doing the clean up, putting things away, rinsing a few dishes, and trying to keep Loki entertained while Herb put the baby down to sleep. As always, Loki pulled his chair up to the counter and began reaching for the most dangerous and/or expensive things in sight - Herb's puffer, the cell phone, my iTouch. I swept each beyond his grasp in turn and then he started playing with a pile of change Herb had dumped on the counter (don't get me started with this habit). I had to stop myself from stopping him. Here's the little internal dialogue that took place in my brain:

"Don't...stop...don't...put it down."

"Wait. It's just change. It can't hurt him."

"It's dirty and he could choke"

"So just don't let him put it in his mouth. He'll be fine."

"Right. Good luck with that lady."

"Stop being such a killjoy. It's just some quarters and pennies. He's having fun."

"Fine. But don't say I didn't warn you."

Then, this is what I said out loud as Loki caught the corner of my eye and dangled a shiny copper penny just inside his parted lips, "NO NO NO NO NO. Not in your mouth. Here." And I dumped all the change into a big wooden salad bowl and handed him a big wooden spoon (there's the spoon I've been dreaming of...I knew it existed!). "We're making money soup." Just like that, I invented the best game ever. He would yell out "ingredients" and I would get them out of their respective spots, prepare them and dump them in the bowl for him to stir. In case you're wondering, here is how you make Loki's money soup:

Start with a handful of change and add:

1 carrot, chopped

1 slice of hot pizza, cut up

2 crocodiles (wrestle them, throw them on the table, chop them up)

2 "baby-lion" fish (a rare, rare breed that can only be found in our kitchen sink)

3 big scoops of icecream

It's very similar to stone soup except with wild animals and money.

So I accidentally became a really fantastic parent for about 10 minutes, the kind you read about in Dr. Sears books (specifically, like Martha Sears, who I am fairly certain floats around with an umbrella breastfeeding a four-year-old in one arm while leading her houseful of deeply bonded children in a round of the goat-herder song with the other).

In his book, "The Happiest Toddler on the Block," Harvey Karp basically explains that the key to raising kids of this age is a steady mixture of reverse psychology and the ability to turn every task into a romping, gleeful new game. "Let's race to see who can put on their shoes faster?! I bet I can beat you! Look I'm wearing your shoes on my head, is that where they go? Look I'm eating your shoes?! Isn't mommy so silly! I bet you can't put your shoes on if I eat them!" etc. etc....You must be endlessly creative, upbeat, patient, and intuitive. He's right, of course, but that's like saying - look, you want a perfect body, just eat 1500 calories a day and work out 6 days a week. No problem. Oh, except I have other things to do than spend 30 minutes trying to convince Loki that putting your shoes on is fun. It's not fun; it's just one of those things you have to do in life. Put on your shoes. Now.

That being said, it is really amazing when you can squash that voice - the NO NO NO voice - and just go with it and let it be silly or messy or probably not really the best idea. Like saying, what-the-hey, you want to jump in the bathtub with your clothes on? So they get wet...who cares. You want to throw all the couch cushions on the floor and jump on them...well, yeah, that looks like a lot of fun. Run around naked in the backyard and pee on the rosebushes, sure, go wild. That's sortof what the kitchen counter is about...I know it makes cooking dinner harder and messier and I know that it is probably a bad idea to let my child within arms reach of burning elements, but it opens the door for thing like money soup. And that's the good stuff, worth it's weight in gold.

Tonight's Dinner:

Poached Salmon with lemon-dill mayo sauce

Mushroom & Chevre pie (from Max's, not my own, as if there is a "my own" with this sort of thing)

Waste Not, Have Waste

I'm not sure if it is because the garbage people went on strike this week, or if that's just an unfortunate coincidence, but I am dying to throw everything away. Everything in the cupbords, everything in the fridge, I just want to clear it all out and start over.

We live in a culture of waste and I know this because I am a Class-A-1 waster. Believe me, I'm not proud of this fact, and I do actively try to curb it, but it is deeply a part of my nature and I'm not sure why (wait, culture...right, I'm blaming our culture). I hate the last bit of anything: the crumbled up flakes at the bottom of the cereal bag, the crystalline layer of icecream at the bottom of the carton, the single pickle floating like a specimen inside a jar of murky juice. I'd rather throw it out than eat it.

Part of it, I think, is a fear of eating something gone bad. I'm not sure where this fear comes from...I've never had a serious case of food poisoning and aside from a mouthful of sour milk here and there over the course of my life, I've never encountered truly rank food. Also, I realize that my definition of "bad" doesn't necessarily jive with other people's. Take moldy bread...at what point is it really moldy? One spot, an entire crust edge, or full-green fuzz-front-to-back? Some people (Herb) are content to cut off a bit of mold (it's just a little penicillin! Won't hurt ya!) and pop the slice into the toaster - no harm, now foul. No, foul. If there's the vague idea of mold on one piece of bread in the package, I take it as a sign that it's been around too long and out it all goes. I'm a bit more lenient with fruit...I will pick out the moldy berries and keep the clean ones, I'll cut a yucky bruise out of an apple, but honestly, I don't like to.

Just a minute ago, I threw away what might have been a perfectly good package of chicken thighs, after thawing them overnight in the fridge because when I sniffed really really close, they smelled weird. Or maybe they just smelled like raw chicken. I'm not sure, but they've been in the freezer since January and I just don't know, so out they went.

The truth is, I have no idea how to deal with frozen food in general and I have an illogical repulsion of it. I keep trying to get over it (hence the package of frozen chicken thighs) but I can't. Here's a horrifying confession:

Just before I went back to work fulltime, when Loki was a little over a year old, I went and did that Supper Solved thing where you make all these great meals all at once and then freeze them and you have dinner for the month. It's brilliant...really it is. The meals are tasty and healthy and I fully endorse this concept as a fabulous solution for working families who still want to eat a homecooked meal together every night. I went with the best intentions. And it worked for a little while. But then, you know, I'd forget to thaw it the night before or it would take too long in the oven. Really though, I stopped wanting to make them because I stopped wanting to eat them. Frozen food looks gross, like a dead thing. And it feels gross, like a brick. It doesn't have a scent, which makes me not trust it.

So they sat, these meals (lots of them), in my freezer for months and months and months and finally, just before Nate was born - in my hormone-induced nesting frenzy - I decided that they had to leave; I could not go on another day with them in my freezer.

But I didn't throw them away. No. I didn't. I have a friend, who has a friend, who will eat anything. A single guy who lives alone and works long late hours...the kind who will eat whatever is in the take-out container in the back of the fridge and then ask "I wonder if this is left-over lasagna or curry? Oh well." So, since it was the height of winter, I piled all these wonderful meals into a bag and left them on my front steps and this guy happily swooped them up. "Free food - you guys rock!" Well, he did me a much bigger favour than I did him.

Shame, oh the shame (and guilty relief) at throwing away tubs of leftover noodles, vines full of shrivelled grapes, potatoes building their own ecosystem in the cabinet under the counter. I try to avoid the inevitable by cooking proper portions, buying things in smaller sizes that I know we can finish (like the farmer's loaf of bread - perfect for 4 days!) It means going to market every day or other day for dinner items, but that's something I enjoy. Unfortunately, it is probably an unsustainable lifestyle. Once my mat leave is up and I'm back at work, we'll have to figure out something else. We'll have to figure out a whole mess of something elses, but that's another post.

For now, I eat and cook the way I like best - with fresh ingredients bought today or yesterday or maybe, possibly, the day before. And I am deeply grateful and appreciative that I have this luxury. I realize that it is an unusually privileged life that allows me even to consider the option of throwing food away. I know I am giving into my worst self when I do. Which is why I ate two-thirds of a cup of stale Oatmeal Crisp cereal for breakfast this morning. But now, I have to go buy fresh chicken thighs for dinner. Afterall, my whole family dying of salmonella won't really make the world a better place either.

Tonight's Dinner:

- "Sticky Chicken" - from Annabell's Fussy Eaters book, so far the recipes have been a hit

- Corn on the cob

- Caesar Salad

Fussy Wussy Was An Eater

While shopping for puppets today (honestly, who doesn't want to start a story that way) I picked up a tidy little cookbook entitled "The Fussy Eaters' Recipe Book: 135 Quick, Tasty, and Healthy Recipes that Your Kids will Actually Eat."

Things I noticed about this book within the first few seconds of flipping through it:

It is by Annabel Karmel - mommy chef guru, who has written like a trizillion kids cooking books, and is apparently the "leading author on cooking for children" according to her About The Author bio . She advocates using cookie cutters to shape carrot rounds into little hearts and stars to make them more appealing (I read this in her "finger foods for toddlers" book) and I've never been able to figure out (a) where to find cookie cutters small enough, or carrots large enough, for that to work and (b) if you'd have to steam the carrot rounds first or just press down really hard, that is, if you could get clause (a) worked out.

More about Annable Karmel that I learned today: she lost her first child at 3 months to a rare viral disease, she is British, she looks a great deal like a character on Dynasty and not at all like she spends most of her time thinking about what to cook for children (which clearly she does, as she has made her career out of it). I don't know what I would expect her to look like - maybe a bit more pea puree and a little less Salon Selective ad? But I guess if you can have perfectly set hair and whip up a plate full of homemade pasta, shaped like zoo animals - power to you.

Eaters' is Plural: In other words, you may be dealing with more than one "fussy eater" and this book is prepared for that fact. I like when people think about punctuation.

Food Porn a Plenty: It is filled with gratuitous and beautiful photographs of food, delightfully presented on precious kiddie plates with polka dot napkins and funky cutlery playfully askew. There are no spills, stains, sticky spots, dirty socks, junk mail or purple crayon scribbles surrounding any item of food anywhere in this book, which is how I know for sure that not a single shot was taken in my kitchen.

Recipes For Foods I would Eat: Things like "sizzling asian shrimp;" "pasta with tomato and marscapone sauce;" "mini corn fritters." Yes, I'll have one of each, thank you.

Recipes Herb would not object to: In principle, anyway. Lasagna recipes and sweet sauces aside, there are a few Herb-friendly ones like mini meat loaves, lamb koftas, pork and peanut noodles...also, I think he'd be into Annabel's hair (it's big and blond and kindof 80s looking).

Prep & Cook times in the 10 - 20 Minute Range: This is assuming that you have all the ingredients in the recipe, know where your husband hid the grater and what your 2 year old did with the whip after blessing the couch with it a few thousand times. Also, that your 2 year old is not "helping" you cook this meal and that you have use of both of your arms. Re-calculating: Prep & cook times in the 15 - 35 minute range. Good enough.

So I bought it. Of course I did. Did I mention the food porn? And Annabel's awesome hair?

I think I'll use it, really, I will. But here's the thing. I kindof have an issue with this label, "The Fussy Eater."

It really bugs me when I hear parents brag about how their kid will eat anything, as if that's an accomplishment. First, it makes me wonder what kind of range we are talking about with this "anything" business. Like really, anything? Boiled cabbage? Cow's brains? Lamb hearts? Have you tried that or do you just mean Little Johnny will eat pizza with pepperoni or without it (what a champ). Secondly, what you're basically saying is that your child has no preferences; no taste. It's all the same to her. Well, that's something you should really be trying to fix, not celebrate.

What does "fussy" mean anyway? Doesn't it mean particular, choosey (i.e. conscious). Don't we want our kids to think about what they put in their mouths and not just stuff it all down? Isn't it also having a sense of self-knowledge and the ability to impose this "me"-ness on the outside world. This is what I like. This is what I don't like. Could it be that choosing what to eat could be as empowering for a small child as choosing what to wear or what to play with. Isn't being fussy a little bit like being passionate? (Do I sound annoyingly like Sarah Jessica Parker when I write one pointedly rhetorical question after another? Sorry.)

Now, I'm not suggesting that we should all constantly cater to our toddler's eating whims (that's when you end up with croutons for dinner, honey). Certainly, as parents our job is to present a healthy variety, guide good choices, challenge our kids and help them develop their tastes. But to expect your child - or anyone - to like and to eat everything you put in front of them is insane. I don't like (or necessarily eat) everything I make and I'm the one who chose to cook it!

I feel like recognizing your child's tastes is part of discovering who they are. Loki likes garlic and salt. He prefers popsicles to icecream (why?!) and broccoli to carrots. He likes matzoh balls and spring rolls and does not like tomato sauce. He can eat his weight in fruit - just about any fruit except bananas, until just recently, when he suddenly started to like them (why?!). He is sensitive to hot food and prefers everything basically e coli-warm. He likes to eat "big" things (like a whole ear of corn) until he decides that it's too much work, and then he wants it cut up really small. Any or all of these statements may change tomorrow. And that's not fussy, that's just Loki figuring out who he is.

Tonight's Dinner:

- Orange Chicken (it's more tangy than sweet - that's what I tell Herb)

- Broccoli

- Steamed Rice