Kids Dish

It occurred to me last year that I may be the only person on earth who has never eaten anything with rhubarb in it. At least not that I know of. I never remedied the situation last year, but on our last trip to the farmer’s market, when I saw both rhubarb and strawberries fresh from Lancaster County for sale I couldn’t resist buying them both.

The problem was what to make. The strawberries were so perfectly ripe and sweet we ate one of the two quarts in the car on the ride home. I am not a pie person and strawberry rhubarb pie is the most popular dessert using the two ingredients. But once again, Smitten Kitchen came to the rescue with this fantastic crumble. It’s easy to make and it used ingredients I had in the kitchen except for the Demerara sugar which I substituted with dark brown sugar. Serve it with ice cream.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Crumble
For the topping:
1 1/3 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons Demerara sugar (or turbinado sugar, or Sugar in the Raw)
Zest of one lemon
1/4 pound (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
For the filling:
1 ½ cups rhubarb, chopped into 1-inch pieces
1 quart strawberries plus a few extras, hulled, quartered
Juice of one lemon
½ cup sugar
½ cup flour
Pinch of salt

1. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Prepare topping: In a mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, sugars and lemon zest and add the melted butter. Mix until small and large clumps form. Refrigerate until needed.
2. Prepare filling: Toss rhubarb, strawberries, lemon juice, sugar, flour and pinch of salt in a 9-inch deep-dish pie plate.
3. Remove topping from refrigerator and cover fruit thickly and evenly with topping. Place pie plate on a baking sheet, and bake until crumble topping is golden brown in places and fruit is bubbling beneath, about 40 to 50 minutes.

Thursday’s box contained two quarts of shelling peas, a bunch of beets, a bunch of baby pak choi, a bunch of lacinato kale, and a bunch of shard. I still had some green onions, the entire bunch of turnips, some of the lettuce and a head of regular sized pak choi left from the week before when I was sick and couldn’t bring my feverish self to the kitchen.

To make sure I’m using all of the vegetables in a timely manner I’ve been making a list on the fridge and crossing the vegetables I use off as I go. We didn’t do too badly last summer and so far we’ve only lost a bit of lettuce to the compost bin. Two heads of lettuce is more than we can eat in a week, but since that box was farmer’s choice I don’t blame myself.

The two year old has become quite the picky eater as of late, subsisting mainly on fruit and noodles. I’m not too concerned. I know that this will pass and until it does I’ll just keep offering. I don’t cook him a separate meal (though we do cook more pasta then we need so we’ll have leftovers at the ready) so he gets what we eat on his plate and if he doesn’t eat it I’ll bring out something from the fridge or cabinet so he won’t go to bed hungry.

So what do you do as an adult if you’re stuck with something in the CSA box you don’t like? I don’t like radishes and last summer our radishes (I ordered them once on a whim) ended up in the compost after a month or two in the fridge. This time I did a search and found a recipe for radish sandwiches. It sounded pretty awful- just baguettes, butter and thinly sliced radishes, but the reviews said they worked. And sure enough they did.

Here’s the recipe from epicurious.com

2 1/2 bunches radishes, trimmed
Unsalted butter, room temperature
20 1/4-inch-thick diagonal slices baguette
Maldon sea salt or coarse kosher salt

Place radishes in medium bowl of ice water and chill at least 30 minutes and up to 2 hours. Drain radishes and slice thinly. (use a mandoline or v-slicer if you have one)
Spread butter generously over baguette slices and sprinkle lightly with sea salt or coarse kosher salt. Arrange radish slices atop buttered baguette slices and serve.

I skipped the chilling, used 3 large radishes and salted butter. I also toasted the baguette. If you have radishes to use up this is a palatable way to do it.

My baby is one month old. It’s kind of tough to do a monthly update for a month because at one month not much happens. Babies are still so fetal, and my little one-month-old is no exception. But he’s getting so, so big. He’s grown out of some of his diapers already and moved to a more generous snap setting on the diapers that were so huge just a few weeks before. His face is losing that newborn puffiness and starting to look more like the baby he’s going to become. His hair, while still dark, has lightened considerably from black to brown. His eyes are still a dark navy blue, a blue that makes me wonder what color his eyes will become.

He still spends the majority of the day sleeping, but when he’s awake he spends his time looking around with those dark blue eyes. He’s mostly calm and content and very rarely cries for reasons I can’t figure out immediately. He’s a good sleeper and naps on his own for hours at a time in his crib, the pack n play in my bedroom, or on a mat on the floor. At night he wakes to eat twice between 11 and 6 but generally goes back to sleep immediately after nursing for a few minutes. Last night he pleased me by sleeping for a good six-hour stretch. I am grateful.

He nurses quickly and efficiently and doesn’t spend a lot of time just hanging out on the breast, which I really appreciate. The quick and efficient nursing makes him pretty gassy which leads to spectacular spit ups once or twice a day. It’s astounding how much liquid can spew from a newborn’s mouth without them really noticing or caring. The pooping seems to have slowed down, and while there’s still plenty of poop (one of the downsides of parenting) I no longer have to change three diapers in a 30-minute period because of it.

The poor little guy hasn’t had the best health so far. He’s already had a staph infection, a nasty yeast rash (which the other pediatrician in the office told me was not yeast when I brought him in the first time. Two days later she wrote me the prescription for the yeast cream and it promptly went away), and now he’s got a cough. The same cough his brother and I both have. It’s awful to hear his little body coughing, especially since I know how much it hurts. But it hasn’t seemed to affect his mood and it hasn’t affected his sleep.

He’s really pretty strong. He surprised everyone by lifting his head and looking around immediately after his birth and he’s continued to show off his impressive head control since. When he’s on his belly he pushes up on his arms and looks around. He’s also got strong legs. Sometimes when he sleeps he’ll push himself several inches forward. One day he turned a full 90 degrees. I’ve also seen him turn from his back to his side. He’s so advanced. (doesn’t every parent say that about their kid?)

My little baby is growing up. It’s amazing how easily and how immediately we loved him. I’ll miss the newborn stage when it’s over. I love how soft and cuddly he is and how perfectly he fits under my chin. But I can’t wait to see what he’ll be like as he grows.

I apologize for the long absence, but I went and had a baby. The arrival of number two basically put all cooking on hold and I’ve been relying on the freezer stash, pasta, and the kindness of others for meals these last four weeks. Now we’re in the middle of a god-awful heat wave and the idea of cooking makes sweaty, even in the air conditioning.

The good news is that last week was the first week of the Red Earth Farm CSA share for the season. We signed up for a partial share this season, since with a newborn in hand and a toddler underfoot I didn’t think I’d be able to preserve all of the extras we’d be unable to eat. My partial share included a bunch of pak choi, a bag of perpetual spinach, a head each of red leaf and green leaf lettuce, a bunch of radishes and green onions.

The CSA is also offering fruit, egg, herb/flower shares and yogurt shares this season. The herb/flower share is new this season and all flowers and herbs are organically grown on the farm. The yogurt share, also new, is a partnership with Pequea Valley Farm in Lancaster. The cows on the Lancaster farm are grass fed and hormone and antibiotic free. CSA members can choose from a plain share and a variety flavor share that includes two quarts of yogurt biweekly. The buying club through the farm is currently offering cheese from Oak Shade Cheese and medicines and other herbal products from Avena Botanicals.

I’m sort of sad that we didn’t go ahead and buy a fruit share, but last summer’s fruit share just wasn’t worth it until late summer/early fall when each share had tons of apples and pears. I guess there’s always the buying club and the farmer’s market up the street. No shortage of local produce, it just requires some extra legwork on my part.