One of Braydon’s favorite things to eat in the whole wide world is Tom Kha Gai (Thai Coconut Chicken Soup). We have a favorite Thai restaurant near us, and their Tom Kha Gai is one of the only foods on earth that Braydon craves and can’t resist; he just loves the stuff. Recently I became bound and determined to figure out how to make Tom Kha Gai, and –specifically—to try to replicate the specific version of it that Braydon loves so much at our favorite Thai restaurant. After meshing and molding and tweaking from a whole bunch of different recipes I took from cookbooks and online, I finally am pretty sure that I’ve mastered it (or at least come as close as I think I will to mastering it). It is still not as good as at the restaurant, but when we can’t go out to eat (which we rarely can), this will surely do the trick in place of it! My recipe below.

One of my favorite Thai dishes is Thai Salad with Peanut Dressing. I especially love Thai salads made with Napa cabbage. I also really love the combination of nut or seed dressings over roasted cauliflower and/or broccoli (for example, roasted cauliflower with Tahini sauce is one of my absolute favorite Middle Eastern dishes!). So, I set out to combine all these things into one all-encompassing Thai-esque salad. It turned out great—and the roasted veggies made the salad warmer and perfect for a fall supper! My recipe below.

This Soup & Salad dinner was a big hit this week at our house—especially with Braydon!

Heather’s Thai Coconut Chicken Soup

• 1 can coconut milk
• 1 32 ounce container reduced-sodium chicken broth
• 6 quarter-size slices fresh ginger
• 1/2 medium-sized onion, sliced very thin
• 1 pound boned, skinned chicken breast or thighs, cut into 1-in. chunks
• 2 cups sliced mushrooms
• 2 cups bite-sized pieces of broccoli and cauliflower
• fresh juice of 2-3 limes
• 2-3 tablespoons Fish Sauce
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 1-4 tablespoons Thai Chili Paste (depending on how spicy you want it)
• 1/3 cup chopped fresh basil
• 1/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro

In a medium saucepan, combine coconut milk, broth, ginger, and onion. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat. Let simmer about 20 minutes. Add everything else except the basil and cilantro. Continue to simmer until chicken is cooked through, 5 to 10 minutes. Discard ginger pieces. Add basil and cilantro. Cook for just a minute or two more. And serve! (Braydon and I add more Chili Paste to our soup just before eating— the kids do not!)

Heather’s Thai Salad with Peanut Dressing

Dressing:

• 3/4 cup smooth creamy peanut butter
• 1/3 cup soy sauce
• 1/3 cup rice wine vinegar
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil
• 2 teaspoons Thai Chili Paste
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• fresh juice of 2 limes
• 1/2 cup hot water

Combine all ingredients in a jar, cover with tight fitting lid, and shake until combined.

Roasted Cauliflower and Broccoli:

Place clean, dry cauliflower and broccoli florets on baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake at 400 degrees, turning once or twice, for about 20 minutes, or until vegetable pieces are slightly soft and lightly browned.

To Assemble Salad:

Combine whatever salad ingredients you like with roasted veggies. Toss with dressing. Serve sprinkled with chopped peanuts. Salad ingredients can be any combination you like—such as Napa cabbage, red peppers, shredded carrots, etc.

Meera continues to create masterpieces of art each and every day. Never does a day go by that she doesn’t draw, paint, color, stamp, or smudge. Besides playing outside on the playground, anything artsy crafty is always her favorite activity at preschool.

Last week Braydon and I indulged in three whole luxurious nights away from our children. It was glorious. Since becoming parents we have rarely left our kids overnight. We can count on two hands the number of nights we’ve ever not slept under the same roof as Kyle and Owen. And prior to last week, we had only ever left Meera overnight once (when we took K & O to the DR).

Five years ago, to celebrate our 5th anniversary, Braydon and I went away to a fancy shmancy hotel/resort in Naples Florida. It was supposed to be a lovely wine-and-spa get-away, but it turned into a pathetic-3-days-of-wallowing-in-the-misery-of-terribly-missing-our-bambinos. All we could talk about was K & O. All we could think about was how much we wanted them there with us. It was ridiculous. We came back from that trip vowing we would travel more with them, and never leave them again. The only good thing about that trip was that – fortunately!!!!! – we both felt the same way about it (thank God for that!!!!!!!!!).

However…

A lot has changed in the past five years. We now have three kids. Our careers are more demanding than ever. And life is faster paced now than we ever could have even imagined five years ago. As we approached our 10th anniversary we could not wait to get away for an Adults Only Retreat From Our Reality.

We picked a wine-and-spa trip again (we are nothing if not determined!). And we picked the Finger Lakes Region of New York (a place we’d never explored). Our only plan was this: we would only do things that we could never do with our kids in tow. And that, precisely, is what we did.

Yes, we talked a lot about our bambinos. But we talked a lot about other stuff too. And yes, we missed them (because we’re pathetic like that), but we enjoyed our time alone together.

We got massages. We sat in hot tubs and saunas. We did wine tastings. We admired vineyards. We went to bed early and slept late. And played many hours of Boggle (yes, we’re geeks like that). One of us read the newspaper. Another read Bon Appetit. We watched t.v. And ate steak frites for dinner. And croissants for breakfast. And drank whole cups of coffee from start to finish without forgetting where we set the mug down halfway through. We spontaneously went to the movies one night. And drank champagne at least once a day. And talked and talked and talked and talked, without interruption. These are things that we don’t normally get to do. It was phenomenally fun.

We’re already planning our 15th anniversary. We can’t wait!

MorMor and MorFar graciously took care of the bambinos and kept up things on the home-front while we were away. Three nights doesn’t sound like long, but believe me… it involves a LOT around here. Kudos to my parents for being able to pull it off so graciously and gracefully. They are the best. And they gave us the best anniversary gift by agreeing to take care of K, O, and M. The bambinos not only survived, but they loved their “alone time” with their grandparents.

Now it is back to reality. Laundry and dishes and cooking and kids-waking-up-with-fevers and insane-work-calendars and soccer games and toddler tantrums and, basically, generalized chaos 24×7.

(at left: the kitchen floor, upon arrival home after work and school today / at right: their most recent driveway trick (and please refrain from lambasting us with nasty comments about what horrible parents we are because our kids don’t always have helmets on)

The three nights of wine-and-spa are a distant memory. But one that will not be forgotten— and those three days will keep us chugging along for quite some time. Amazing what a little Adults Only Anniversary Retreat can do.

* * *

p.s. This is not a paid advertisement, by any stretch of the imagination, but nonetheless I want to plug LuxuryLink.com (/Family Getaway/Vacationist). This is an online auction site for vacation destinations. We bided on and purchased our 3-night-stay in the Finger Lakes on LuxuryLink for a fraction of the price it would normally cost.

Thank you so much for the suggestions for awesome pumpkin treats and chapter books with black characters!

• …an awesome recipe for pumpkin bread/pumpkin muffins/pumpkin cupcakes.
• …awesome “chapter books,” appropriate for 7-8 year-olds, in which black boys represent major characters.

If you have suggestions for either (or both!), please post in the comments here!

* * *

In the meantime, we’re taking a little blog break. We’ll catch ya back here in about a week!

Since the start of the fall semester there have been several occasions when we’ve needed a babysitter just for Meera. Meera’s at home on Fridays this semester (at daycare Monday through Thursday), but I’m not always able to “work from home” (i.e., frantically cram in a day’s worth of work into Meera’s naptime) for the full day. Often a meeting will pop up that I can’t miss, or a deadline will be looming that I just can’t push out any further. In times like those, Taylor has come to the rescue!

Taylor is one of my favorite Lehigh students. She has taken a couple of courses with me and I’ve always had this gut feeling that she and Meera would really hit it off. Taylor is the perfect babysitter for Meera: she’s creative, imaginative, theatrical, artistic, and she seems to have a bottomless ability to play “princesses” or “dollhouse” or “dress up” or “fairies” for hours and hours and hours. Topping it off: she’s a fashionista, just like Meera. They compliment each other on their outfits, their hair, their nails. They watch princess movies and then act out the parts with princess figurines while playing “castle.” They do dramatic improvisation together with baby dolls and toy strollers and cribs and stuffed animals. They are both strong, beautiful, brilliant, creative, kind-hearted, warm girls. They are perfect for each other!

The funniest thing is that Meera insists on calling Taylor “Taylor Swift.” We are pretty sure that Meera actually believes that Taylor is Taylor Swift (and the resemblance is strong enough that it wouldn’t be unreasonable for a 3-year-old to be convinced that the two Taylors are actually one in the same). Meera loves the music of Taylor Swift (the singer), and loves the person Taylor “Swift” (the babysitter). And she’s pretty protective— if you refer to Taylor (the babysitter) as simply “Taylor,” Meera gets real upset and corrects you, demanding that you say it again as “Taylor Swift.”

What makes Taylor extra special for Meera is that she’s all hers. Taylor doesn’t come to babysit for Kyle and Owen— she comes just for Meera. Taylor makes Meera feel extra special. And, I mean, really, how special is that?!— Meera’s babysitter is Taylor “Swift”!

Here is a really great Fall dinner! Cozy comfort food, but truly (believe me) quick and easy! And totally vegetarian too!

• Penne with Spinach and White Beans
• Caesar Salad
• Zucchini Bread

PENNE WITH SPINACH AND WHITE BEANS~~

This is one of my stand-by pasta dishes for Fall/Winter/Spring. We take a break from it over the summer, which is just enough time off from it to keep it beloved the rest of the year. I’ve posted about it before (click here). I’ve updated (making the recipe even simpler and easier) and re-posted the recipe below.

 CAESAR SALAD~~

I have posted before about our love of Caesar Salad, and have posted my favorite Caesar recipe (click here). Somehow, each year, the feel of fall makes me crave Caesar Salad. So, we end up eating a lot of Caesar Salad in the fall! The great thing about Caesar Salad is that it is so versatile. [See * at very bottom of this post.] And depending on how much time/energy you have, you can whip it up fast in any of three ways:

1. Easy and Best: Make the dressing yourself (I’ve re-posted my favorite recipe below), make the croutons yourself (cut up a store-bought baguette into bite-sized pieces, drizzle with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and bake at 350, turning croutons a couple of times, until they are brown and toasty), chop up some fresh Romaine, and toss it all up together with some fresh Parmesan cheese and freshly ground pepper!
2. Easier and 2nd Best (but still good): Buy a bottle of your favorite Caesar dressing, some store-bought croutons, a bag of ready-to-go Romaine lettuce, and toss it all up together with some Parm!
3. Easiest and Worst (but totally decent): Buy your favorite Caesar Kit from the produce section, and follow the directions! Our favorite is this one: click here. I buy this a lot. I need to buy 2 bags of it when I’m serving it to my family, because Kyle and Owen alone will devour one whole bag.

 ZUCCHINI BREAD~~

This is the only portion of this meal that I have never posted about. But let me just tell you: we LOVE zucchini bread in the fall! I’ve already made this bread twice this October, and will surely be making it a few more times before zucchini disappears from the farm stands around here. I can’t seem to keep a loaf in the kitchen for more than 48 hours before it is entirely eaten. We eat this zucchini bread for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Kyle likes to eat his with cream cheese on it. Owen likes his with butter. Meera is not a fan of it (yet!!!). Mommy & Papi especially like it for breakfast, toasted! I’ve posted my tried and true recipe below.

THE RECIPES:

Penne with Spinach and White Beans

1 box penne pasta

2 bags of fresh baby spinach

1 can of white beans (cannellini beans/white kidney beans), drained and rinsed

olive oil

butter

4-5 cloves garlic, sliced thin

red pepper flakes

salt, pepper, dried oregano

fresh parmesan cheese

Cook penne in boiling, salted water. While penne is cooking, heat up large sauté pan to medium-low heat and add about 1-2 tablespoons butter with 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil. Once butter is melted, add garlic, and red pepper flakes (I usually add a small pinch; add as much as you want depending on how much spicy heat you like). Stir occasionally, cooking until garlic is soft but not browned. Add white beans. Season generously with salt, pepper, and oregano. Once beans are heated through turn off heat and let sit. Meanwhile, when pasta is just one minute from being done, dump all of the spinach into the pot. Let cook for a minute (literally! just until the spinach is barely wilted in the pot of water and pasta). Drain pasta and spinach, reserving about 1/2 cup of the cooking liquid. Toss pasta and spinach with the white bean mixture. If dry, add some of the cooking liquid and/or more olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Serve with lots of freshly grated parmesan cheese.

Caesar Dressing, recipe from one of my all-time favorite cookbooks, At Blanchard’s Table: A Trip to the Beach

1 cup Hellmann’s mayonnaise

3/4 tsp anchovy paste

1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

3 1/2 Tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

3 medium garlic cloves, minced

3/4 tsp coarsely cracked black pepper

Put all ingredients into a medium bowl and whisk until well blended. Will keep in the fridge for at least a week. My own notes, not from original recipe: I (Heather) actually half the amount of garlic in this recipe… I also make it in the Cuisinart (instead of hand whisking it)!

Zucchini Bread, recipe from my Mom (I have absolutely no idea where it originated)

3 eggs

1 cup vegetable oil

2 cups sugar

2 cups grated fresh raw zucchini

2 tsp vanilla

3 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350. Beat eggs. Add oil, sugar, vanilla; cream well. Add zucchini; mix well. Add flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon; mix well. Butter and flour loaf pan (makes 1 large or 2 small loafs; can also be made into muffins). Bake for about an hour—or until toothpick inserted at the center comes out clean. Let cool. Slice to serve.

* P.S. One of our favorite ways to eat Caesar Salad is as a stand-alone lunch or dinner with grilled or blackened shrimp, chicken, or steak on top of it! Also, even easier: I like to use leftover rotisserie chicken to put on top of the salad (or sometimes I even buy one just for this purpose!). We also love to make Caesar sandwich wraps with this salad (with or without shrimp/chicken/steak).

Kyle is home sick from school today. Bad cold. Poor boy. Braydon and I had this same cold last week. It is a nasty one. We plowed through our days of work, wishing we could take sick days (but knowing we have to save every morsel of our “sick day” excuses for when our kids get sick). Good thing we did that!!… because less than a week later… here we are!… using our “sick day” excuses to re-schedule our work days so that we can stay home with Ky Ky. Today we’re taking turns; I covered the morning and Braydon is covering the afternoon. Thus is the life of a dual-career-family-with-no-relatives-anywhere-nearby. I had to cancel 4 different meetings in order to be home this morning… which means I will now need to reschedule 4 different meetings… somehow cramming them into my already jam-packed calendar. The beautiful thing, though?! Kyle has no clue. All he knows is this: His mommy sat on the couch with him all morning (me with my laptop, him watching videos), getting up only to periodically check the soup on the stove. At age 7, he knows nothing of the stress a day like this causes, but knows everything about the importance, and inherited ritual, of homemade chicken noodle soup on a sick day. As it should be.

Owen was thrilled when I brought home fancy yogurt covered pretzels to have for dessert last night. He loves to try to make letters out of pretzels by nibbling little bits and pieces off to turn the pretzel shapes into letter shapes. He and I sat at the kitchen table after dinner, carefully working on the above project, which was entirely his idea.

Meera has now passed an important milestone in life: full participation in a family board game! Candy Land it was! We played it as a family—all five of us—last night. The boys have long since outgrown Candy Land, but were good sports about playing it for Meera’s sake. It was our first time playing a whole entire round of a board game with all five of us together!

We used the long weekend to kick off Fall. Summer morphs into Fall, right before our eyes. Amazing, how that happens. There’s no stopping it.

What started out as a cool crisp Fall-is-in-the-air weekend, quickly morphed into a looks-like-Fall-but-feels-like summer weekend. Just like somehow scenes like this:

…quickly morph into this:

Friday night was our First Friday. Owen chose to go to Cracker Barrel, after all the great reports on it from his brother. He ate an entire adult-sized meal platter of ham, glazed carrots, macaroni and cheese,and biscuits with butter. There wasn’t a spec left on his plate. This is not the kind of food their mama makes, but my boys (Braydon too) love this stuff. After we ate, Owen and I played checkers.

Our First Friday checkers match started off fun-and-serious, but quickly morphed into swing-the-head-back-laughter-and-glee when Owen realized full well that he was about to beat his mama fair and square:

One of the reasons that Checker Barrel is such a hit is the store there. With Kyle, and then again with Owen, I let them pick out something for themselves and gifts to bring home to their siblings. They love gifting their siblings. Owen picked out three “piano horns” – at $4.99 a piece, these were a steal – and once these “piano horns” were opened up (bright and early on Saturday morning in Mama and Papi’s bed), they then proceeded to be played alllll weeeeeekend loooooooong.

It was o.k., though, because the beauty of the rest of the weekend more than made up for the obnoxiousness of those “piano horns.”

Let’s be clear though: in every bin of fresh-from-the-tree apples, amidst all the beauties, are some not-so-beautiful ones. Can I hear an ‘Amen’? And in every glorious long weekend of warm autumn breezes, picnics, and pumpkins, are some not-so-glorious moments. Can it just go without saying, please, that of course, amidst the loveliness of it all our weekend was also splattered with our share of yuck? While our photos purposefully attempt to capture the lovely, the unphotographed yuck included, amongst other things, 1 puke into the woods on the edge of a parking lot; 1 emergency toddler pee stop on the side of the road; more “CUT IT OUT!”’s than I could possibly count; a few feisty spats; 2 time outs; 1 white skirt completely ruined by mud stains; a couple of hard-core meltdowns; and a To Do List that didn’t even come close to having half of the items checked off it. So, yes, let’s just acknowledge it: it is imperfect. And yes, it should go without saying that: we sift through our moments, we more-often-than-not choose to focus on the good, and we let the bad filter on out as much as possible.

There was a trip to our favorite Farm Shop to pick up a picnic lunch on our way to Peace Valley—

…where we proceeded to have a heavenly time soaking it all in.

And then it was off to a fabulous party at friends of ours’ farm, where our kids proceeded to have an absolutely fabulous time.

The next morning there were waffles, made by Meera (with just a little help from Mama):

…which morphed into after-breakfast-conversation that lingered and lingered while Kyle relished in telling us about how he wants to be an astronaut, explore outer space, and “study the planets”:

And then it was off to the Sunday morning Farmer’s Market, followed by a nice long bike ride:

And another picnic (2 picnics in 2 days = 1 awesome weekend). And this particular picnic, on the side of the bike trail…

…quickly morphed into steep-slope-climbing and maniacal-mud-sliding:

Which was followed by our last trip to Ritas of the season… which quickly morphed into the kind of crazy sister love that only a sugar rush can provoke:

Back at home there was sprinkler playing:

…which quickly morphed into “soup making”:

And tree swinging… that quickly morphed into tree climbing:

And somehow, peppered in there, there was also time for rainbow painting:

And chess playing:

Bedtime-routine-with-kittens (yes, they are slogging their way through Harry Potter), and early-to-bed-sweet-dreaming (for a girl who hits the hay at 6:30 if there has been no nap that day):

All in all, it was a lovely few days (with a smattering of yuck). Perfect is so over-rated.

essence:  es·sence [es-uhns] noun; the basic, real, and invariable nature of a thing or its significant individual feature or features; the inward nature, true substance, or constitution of anything, as opposed to what is accidental, phenomenal, illusory, etc.

I took it upon myself, this weekend, to try to capture it: the essence of my three, at this phase in time, in photos, as best I could. The camera is so constraining, never quite grasping it, but I’m always up for a good challenge. I also am currently working on a new phase in my own life: the challenge, to myself, to be satisfied with satisfactory (as opposed to constantly striving for optimizing, maximizing, and perfecting). Again, I’m always up for a good challenge (and, oh-my-word is this a challenge for me).

As the weekend ends, and I sit at my computer, the house quiet, and me self-reflective, I find myself smiling at the photos, inside and out. Among the nearly 400 photos I took over the past 3 days, yes indeed there are three for each that satisfactorily capture, in my mind’s eye, The Essence of My Three. No words required. I hope I’ll remember them just like this—at ages 7, 7, and 3—the beautiful and magnificent beings that they are. Gosh, they drive me crazy. And gosh, do I ever love them. Fiercely and fully, I love their essence—each of the three of them for their own unique ways.

And so we move forward, marching into the Fall, each with our own challenges—challenges external pushing upon us, and challenges we bring to ourselves. It is, after all, a new season. The best we can do is embrace it.

Owen:

Kyle:

Meera:

My mom pointed out that in every year prior to 2011 Owen was on the left and Kyle on the right. It was then bugging me incessantly. Until I realized: ‘I can just flip it!’ Thank you modern technology— you have spared my three children (and their parents) from another round of the torture that is The Posed Photo. Hip hip hooooooooorrrrraaaaaaaay!

The bad news: 2011 marks our first year in front of a different tree. Sadly, the beautiful birch tree (where we always took the tree photo) died, and had to be cut down shortly after last year’s tree photo. The good news: we really like the new tree! Here are our tree photos, 2005-2011!

late edit for 2011 (see above):