Cooking (With) the Child
I don’t know how to make pants or even fix them. And I hope you are not waiting for me to craft a bunny rabbit out of the cylindrical box that used to house the oatmeal, because you will be waiting for a long time.
I realize, though, that one of the greatest satisfactions for a person of any age is self-reliance, and that another is creating. Thank goodness there are so many ways to do it! The most typical ways for me to create are writing and cooking.
I suspect that Henry’s gift might be music, but I can’t wait to see what his relationship to writing will be. He already has a fantastic relationship with books, and that makes me happier than almost anything.
He’s also a very enthusiastic cook. I’m not so much of a baker, but baking is a lovely thing to do with a child. It doesn’t involve knives. It involves stirring together lots of powders that you likely already own. There is sugar, and cornmeal, and vanilla, and eggs are fun to crack and watch transmogrify from individual yellow eye-looking things you can count into one binding paste. Batter is yummy, and the results are splendid. We love to cook and eat.
We are always looking for something to do together, and we need to eat anyhow, so why not involve him? Yesterday he hugged the KitchenAid mixer and said “I love this.”
Also, I have a confession: I hate toys. What good are toys? I ask my husband. They let you be creative, and manipulate things with your hands, which is very satisfying. Don’t worry, lots of people play with toys with my son. And he plays with them alone. But I have a hard time getting myself to sit down with a giant pile of stuff and, I don’t know, play.
Ok. We do play, but it’s more like word play. Henry and I do a lot of snuggling and a lot of talking and singing and a lot of hiding and a lot of pretending.
Also, I pretend to eat him a lot.
“I’m hungry . . . ” I’ll start, and glance around the room, not looking at him. He starts to laugh and kick ” . . . but I can’t find anything to eat.” He shrieks and kicks his arm or leg closer to me.
I once read some story about a family who was pretending to eat a baby and they were all laughing, but the baby was laughing the hardest of all. Perhaps because of that, and perhaps because eating is a motif around here, I frequently pretend to eat my baby.
“I think I’ll just take this nice fat leggy and put some butter on it, and maybe some blueberry jam.” I pretend to gobble the leg and he shouts “no!” Still, he wants me to do it many more times.
I used to joke that I knew just how I would cook my cat if I were going to eat her. Braised, like a rabbit, I’d say, moving her soft and pliant back leg to and fro in its joint. She was just so soft and pliable, already just like a yummy braised thing should be, but in the version of my alive and much-loved cat. Let me be clear that my idea was not a violent one, but rather an expression of my love for her, for her physical self, for her overall appeal. I wasn’t ever thinking of killing the cat, I was instead conflating my love of food and cooking and goofy play with my good friend and loyal charge, the cat. But not everyone thought it was in great taste.
I guess I pretend to cook Henry sometimes, too. Matthew heard me doing this the other day as he was getting ready for work.
“I will take this leg and fry it up in the pan and pour butter and syrup on . . .”
“What? You can’t cook him!”
“I can’t cook him?”
“No! That would hurt him!”
I guess that if I actually fried my child, even just a limb, it would hurt him.
“What about toasting?” I ask. “That’s more like surface cooking. It’s not on the stove.”
“No cooking Henry. No toasting.”
Ok. Just lemon juice and a little powdered sugar right on his tummy and I’ll roll him right up. We’ll pretend he’s . . . precooked. A precooked crepe.
Another game we play is that his feet are really, really stinky. We have been playing that since long before he could talk. Now he often tears off his socks and waves his perfect and perfectly clean little loaves of feet around so that his father or I can roll our eyes and begin to choke on the fake fumes, protesting about how odiferous they are. Oh, the laughter.
I also sniff Henry’s neck, because it tickles him. Sometimes he gets confused with the word “sniff” and points to his neck and yells “Stink me!”
And I pretend that his toes are raisins (his favorite food) and that I am plucking them off and eating them one by one.
The other day he shoved his feet in my face. I pretended that they stank but that’s not what he wanted. I pretend-plucked off two toes and pretended that they were raisins: no dice.
I looked at him to get another idea, and he looked at me waiting, expectantly. Finally he shook them at me.
“Cook them!” he finally implored. “Cook these feet!
Dear Counselor Chomp: The Nine Commandments
Dear Counselor Chomp:
Parenthood has been a joy but now toddlerdom has begun and WOW! I wasn’t really ready for it!! My poor husband now has two control freaks in the house. Any tips?
Normally in control in NYC
Dear Normally,
By dint of the fact that I have not yet been done in by my own toddler, I will now pitch myself as an veritable Moses.
First, let’s lay out the goals of parenting during the toddler years, aside from the obvious desire to produce a perfect, indulged but not too indulged, enriched and happy child. We are taking those goals for granted. For our purposes, these are our goals:
Safety
Not Going Insane
Not Seeing Your Toddler as an Adversary
Below, you have the Nine Commandments of Managing a Toddler, which will help you achieve these three goals.
With your goals in mind, you can determine what to let slide, and how to adjust your own perspective when necessary to enjoy life when you’re getting lots of challenges.
Let me start by saying: you are going to let a whole lot slide. According to my brilliant pediatrician, who has six children of her own and yet seems very calm, choose very few battles, but those that you choose, you must win.
And that is the first commandment of parenting a toddler.
The second is that toddlers are nearly indistinguishable from Chinese finger traps, and the more you pull, the more they pull, and unless you change tactics, you will be stuck forever. Instead, stop applying pressure and take a completely different approach.
What, you might ask, is a different approach? Well, rather than negotiating the issue at hand, change the discussion. Always remember and never forget to distract, distract, distract. That might be with a different activity, or a different toy, or a verbal game, or even a different approach to the same situation. A different approach might be getting the to do something themselves, which they take pride in. See the following commandment:
Kids are struggling for independence; when possible let them to “do it ‘self.” You can even use this against desire against them to get them to start projects they wouldn’t necessarily want to start!
When time is passing and you’re trying to work out your new approach, consider this next commandment:
Try looking at time in a different way. In certain aspects of my personal and professional life, I am rewarded for multi-tasking, thinking ahead, efficiency. Toddlers aren’t interested in that. And when I am going crazy checking the time, wondering why we can’t just walk down the street at a brisk pace, and have to, I don’t know, watch my child stop and smell the flowers, I try to remind myself what an exceptional pleasure it is to be with a kid who says funny things and takes his time and forces me to breathe fresh air. Let’s not rush this moment; I’ll be stuck behind a desk soon enough. Also, when we get home, chances are excellent that we will be struggling to find stuff to do. Why not just stay out a bit longer?
Oh, consistency is your friend. Like dogs, people like consistency. Knowing what to expect makes us happy and secure. So when you make a routine or a rule, enforce it regularly, even when it’s not convenient for you or for your kid. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t breaks in routine.
Breaks in routine are also your friend. I like to think about life as being made up of regular days, and holidays. We worry about the nap schedule most of the time. On what I think of as a holiday, ie, an unnormal day when you are traveling or visiting someone or are doing a very special outing or you know that there is simply no chance that the child will nap, I try not to worry about the break in routine. It’s like ice cream on a diet, or a skyscraper bending in the wind. We need to be a little flexible in order to be successful.
Convenience is next to godliness. Or: keep it simple, superstar! It might not be your favorite scenario to have your kid eat Pirate Booty that isn’t, er, artisanally crafted by local pirates, but it sure is convenient. I’ve also noted that it is harder for a child to scream when its mouth is full of a foamy cheese snack.
Choice is another friend who starts with C. It’s best to avoid creating a monster who will only eat out of one particular bowl, even if it is in the dishwasher, even if you are on vacation and the dishwasher and bowl are in another state. Praising flexibility and not caving in to the whims of a hungry demon therefore make sense.
However, kids love to choose. Who can blame them? So where possible, let them choose their shoes, their snack, their shirt, whether they want peas or broccoli in the casserole, or what do do during the afternoon: this will give them a sense of agency. But remind them that sometimes you choose, too: it’s nice to sometimes listen to M. Ward in the car, instead of just the Sesame Street Singalong CD.
In the next installment, I am going to show how to apply the commandments to different situations.
Roast Forth
I don’t blog. It’s not because I don’t love you, it’s because I’ve been functioning at low levels due to a low potassium level, and or dehydration. Leave it to pregnancy to find new and special ways to punish me!
It’s a really good thing Henry is swirling around being so hilarious and charming, reminding me that this is worth it, reminding me that I would not have traded this opportunity to know Henry for anything on earth. However, the Henry trauma is now a story, a memory of heartburn and hardship, but a polished and patina’d one with all of the good good qualities of a novel and none of the bad bad qualities of actual sleeplessness and reflux. So at the same time that I am hopeful about this child whom we call Rainbow, I’m flattened. I wish I had, I don’t know, help. A nap. The renewed ability to regulate my blood pressure. A four-day, three-night vacation from my own saliva.
Write about what you know. Well, one thing I have learned about this weeks is trying to get enough potassium into my diet.
Don’t worry: if you’re not struggling to keep fluids in and down, chances are great that you have potassium covered. So don’t go out of your way to potassium load, because one thing I’ve discovered is that people who purposely potassium load turn quickly into magnets for huge, scary insects. Yesterday I was stung by a bee and then an hour later, smacked in the head by my husband who, while not an arthropod himself, was wheeling around trying to protect me from a wasp who was about to sting me.
And we will not discuss the roach incident.
I will now deftly switch from the topic of roaches to the topic of cooking. How deft!
Do you know what has a lot of potassium? Potatoes. They are also delicious. Along with some salmon and some asparagus—also great sources of potassium—my husband roasted some potatoes for me the other day. He chose new ones chopped and olive oiled with onions and garlic and sea salt. My GOODNESS. It’s roasting season, people. Get thee to the oven and roast.
In fact, whether you need more minerals are not, take any vegetable you want who isn’t a leaf—beets, brussel sprouts, onions, garlic, peppers, asparagus—and slice and rub with olive oil and salt and pepper if you wish (try white pepper!) and put it into a hot, dry oven. Leave uncovered and roast until done. Enjoy the sweetness, the saltiness, the brown crinkled bits at the edges.
Go forth and roast things for yourselves. Or take a cue from my husband, who made me feel so much better in so many ways when he made me my potassium-rich dinner, and roast things for me.
The ‘merican Flag
Late this morning, Henry and I went swimming during one of our last opportunities this summer. It was lovely. The little boy swam (or rather, was carried in the pool by me) until his lips turned a deep purple and his teeth knocked together.
“Aren’t you cold, honey? Should we get out?”
“No I am warm. Not cold. Just warm.”
Chatter chatter chatter.
Finally we get out, and as I change back into first my skivvies, and then my civvies, he looks around the chipped orange and blue gymnasium that serves as the changing room for the Red Hook recreation center.
He points at a basketball hoops. “That’s a net!” he says. Wow, that is a net. One net (he looks at one net, and points, then swivels on a heel and points to the opposing net down the length of the gym) “two net,” (swivels back to the first) “and three net! Three nets!” He counts to three when there are only two four or five times.
His focus shifts. “That’s a flag,” he states, pointing to a large American flag.
“Yes, that’s an American flag,” I offer.
“It’s very very great, the ‘merican flag,” he explains, gravely, to me.
Then, “It’s orange and green and white, the ‘merican flag,” he mutters, explaining the flag to himself this time.
“Hmm,” I say, wondering for the zillionth time if he’s color blind. “What shapes are on it?”
I am confident that he is not shape blind.
“Stars, lots of stars. There are one two three four five six american flag seven eight nine ten stars . . . and STRIPES!”
When I am at the pool, I can’t help think of how different things will be next summer, with a bigger Henry and a smaller baby. Will we be able to go to the pool? I remember swimming there during evening lap swim while pregnant with Henry, dragging my tired body through the water, being defensive at the lithe and hairless swim men behind me, and wondering how life would change for Matthew and I the next summer, when we couldn’t simply meet for a swim after work a few nights a week. The first year with Henry, we actually did do that. We switched off watching him on the deck while the other did laps.
That’s not possible, now. Matthew works late and anyway, Henry’s too big and vocal to sneak into adult-only swim times. No more evening laps and then dinners out, which is how our relationship began. I miss that part of my life, though I like this one.
So, I may miss the pool and the way it was this year. I will certainly miss this particular brand of conversation, which has evolved to where it is now, and will evolve to something else so soon.
Goodbye, this summer. You were so nice in so many ways.
The Turkish Delight: Circassian Chicken
A friend posted on Facebook that she was making Korean short ribs. “So good!” I commented. “And easy!”
She replied asking what I like to make that isn’t easy. Oops, busted.
I don’t mind expending effort — if I didn’t, I wouldn’t love to cook — but I’m often looking for ways to cut down on it. Like, once you know how good shrimp cooked for a minute with butter and garlic and lime and salt is, and can make some cole slaw and guac and put into a taco, I don’t see a huge reason to make a huge fuss, because that is about as good as it gets.
And for a moment, I could not think of one thing I like to cook that is “hard.”
But then, I remembered Circassian Chicken.
This is a dish that is a bit more effort than usual, but it’s oh-so-worth it. I implore you to try it.
A Work About Turkish Food
I began to love Turkish cuisine the year I was asked to review The Sultan’s Kitchen, a cookbook by the restaurateur and author Ozcan Ozan.
The vibrancy of the color blue in the cookbook initially caught my eye—it’s a stunner, visually—but the recipes within outdo the aesthetics. And oh, the Circassian Chicken. What might be overlooked by most as a chicken paste with tons of paprika and mushed up bread—people never seem excited when I describe it as they do when I make it—is in reality a more delicious dish than you’ve been served in most restaurants.
Circassian Chicken
Serve this dish at room temperature with plenty of warm Turkish pide bread, or any sort of flatbread from the supermarket.
Materials
3 pounds chicken breasts with skin and bone (about 4 breasts)
3 cups water
1 carrot, roughly chopped
1 stalk celery, roughly chopped
1/2 medium onion, cut into chunks
2 cloves garlic
1 bayleaf
Several stalks of parsley
1 T peppercorns
Procedures
Place all ingredients in a covered pot. Bring to a boil then immediately reduce heat and simmer chicken until cooked through, between 15 and 20 minutes. Remove the chicken to a platter to cool. Strain and reserve the cooking liquid.
When chicken is cool, shred it (by hand or with a knife). Mix with tarator sauce and serve on a platter, garnished with pieces of parsley and walnuts or hazelnuts, and a drizzle of oil.
Tarator Sauce
This nut-based sauce hails from Georgia (the country, not the state), and while it provides the bulk of the character for this dish, it’s also wonderful on vegetables, fish, or lamb. It can be made with hazelnuts or walnuts, and with olive oil or walnut oil.
Materials
2 T butter
1/2 medium onion, finely chopped
Reserved stock from recipe above
2 slices day-old white (French, Italian, or sandwich) bread, crusts cut off
2 garlic cloves
1 1/2T paprika (sweet, or combination of sweet and hot)
1 cup walnuts
Salt
Procedures
Warm the butter in a pan and over low heat, and add onion, cooking until soft. While onion is cooking, place some chicken stock and the bread in a bowl, and let the broad absorb the liquid. Squeeze the excess liquid out of the bread and crumble. Set the crumbles aside. Add garlic and paprika, stirring through until color is evenly distributed. Remove from heat.
In a blender or food processor, grind the nuts, a cup of chicken broth, the onion and garlic mixture, the crumbles, and 1 t salt. Process into a smooth paste. Continue to add tablespoons of stock if necessary. Taste for salt and adjust.
Sidenote: Turks are Nuts for Hazelnuts
Circassian Chicken is a dish that comes from Georgia, a country formerly associated with the USSR. It’s to the Northwest of Turkey and part of the local cuisine is sauces made from nuts. This recipe is most often published with walnuts but when a friend who is allergic to them was coming to dinner, I tried an alternate preparation, which is created with hazelnuts.
While no one wants to kill their beloved walnut-intolerant friends, do not try to denude your own hazelnuts: the process of removing the clingy dark skin is one of the worst I can imagine. It’s always described as easy in cookbooks—heat up hazelnuts and them rub them with a dishtowel—and yet it is not.
There will be burned hazelnuts, there will be tiny clinging skins all over the floor and your face, you will be forced to dispatch a scared loved one to buy more hazelnuts, and when the dish is done, it will taste burned, it will taste like the hazelnut skins that wouldn’t leave, and it will taste of tears. (In terms of horrible tasks, it’s second only to a wedding shower I once threw where I attempted to scald, give an ice bath to, and then peel hundreds of cherry tomatoes before soaking them in a vodka bath. The vodka bath should have been saved for the host – or the guests who had to put up with her.)
I also prefer the flavor of walnuts. So there. If the walnut impossible one is coming, make a different thing.
Church Avenue Chomp 