Jan 14 2012

Salad Update

Aaron
Salad Update

I wanted to provide an update about Abraham. You may recall a recent salad post Anna wrote about how Abraham asked for a salad and shocked us both. Well, it is not a one time thing, it struck again. But first, a back story.

I’ve mentioned before how I have taken to a more whole food, plant based, fresh/raw diet. Part of my daily eating routine is I eat an entire head of romaine lettuce, whole leaf by whole leaf. Plain. Yes I rinse it in the sink. I know most of you reading this find it weird, perhaps even repulsive. I’m alright with that. I’m even alright with the faces and snickering my beloved wife directs at me as I eat my delicious raw greens in a manner more befitting of Peter Rabbit than the leader of the A-Team. My dear progeny will grow up thinking it’s normal and I find that awesome and yet humorous.

Anyway, earlier this evening I was eating my crunchy fronds of romaine goodness in our kitchen and Abraham is watching me. Closely. As in he wants my food. So, I oblige the stare and ask him if there’s something he wants. He says “I want some of your lettuce Daddy.” So I break him off a bite size piece for him to try. He actually eats it, though I can tell he won’t be asking for more. You see, he had already eaten his entire dinner, and on top of that he’s been running a very slight fever and has a head cold so who knows what to expect attitude- or appetite- wise. Another minute passes and I’m standing there at our kitchen island crunching away with the paced voracity of a giant Galapagos tortoise and Ham asks for more lettuce. Except when I offer him more he replied, in a tone more typically reserved for a teenager implying it should be painfully obvious,”no daddy, that is not a salad. It has to have croutons and all of the other stuff!” Well, excuse me! So, I shred up a frond as an offering to the all knowing Ham of Ensalada, and Anna puts in all of the other stuff that our resident 3yo salad specialist required. He then polished off the bowl.

 

He’s my boy 🙂 Have a great weekend!


Jun 13 2011

June garden update: the unintentional harvest

Aaron

The A-Team has been crazy busy this spring (haven’t we all?) but here’s a little update on a few things we did today.

Here’s a photo update of our garden, we’re still working on our knowledge of how to be any good at it, but we’re pretty proud of what we’ve been able to do so far with God’s help:

 

A-Team Garden 2011, June

The A-Team Garden 2011, June

So today Anna was weeding and noticed that I hadn’t yet gotten around to thinning out the 2nd greens planting we did. So the little plants are literally choking each other out for space. Anna started thinning them out and we decided to keep the “throw away” plants we thinned as they were small but plentiful and possibly enough for some salads. Needless to say, what she brought in when finished was far more than we both expected, and enough to serve decent sized portions of organically homegrown greens to probably 12 people! We named it “The Unintentional Harvest.” For scale, this is a 14″ diameter bowl:

 

Kale, Arugula (the non-4-legged kind), Romaine Lettuce, and Baby Spinach