Kyle is such a worker. He’s such an industrious, helpful little guy. He loves doing stuff like taking out the compost… even in the dead of winter. And he’s always sure to do it neat and tidy (and always washes his hands when he’s done). He’s such a lovable little neat-nick. The polar opposite of his bro.
Owen is such a messy eater. You’ve never seen anything like it. He is fully engaged with his food. The drippier and stickier and messier the better. His favorite season to eat in is summer. He can go shirtless and let the watermelon juice drizzle in streams all the way down his body. He doesn’t mind being hosed off. He’s a total, total lovable slob. The polar opposite of his bro.
Tonight K & O ate all but 2 pieces of a large cheese pizza. That is 3 big slices each! (and they each drank a bottle of root beer too). Braydon and I have always joked about how we’ll be having to order them each a large pizza of their own when the boys are teenagers… I think it is coming sooner than we’d think!!!
Dear Readers,
We are mindful that the vast majority of the world has not the riches that we do. That reality looms large in our family. Haiti, especially, is always close to our heart. And people are starving there. Right now. Lots and lots of people. But what can we do? Please click here. Please consider donating directly, or — consider sponsoring our friend Corey who is running a half marathon on April 4 to raise money for Heartline.
Thanks for reading,
HBJ
clockwise from upper left~~ apple slices; their current favorite cookies (Country Choice Organic Iced Oatmeal); “squeezy yogurt” (as they call it — their current favorite: Horizon Organic Yogurt ‘Tuberz’); baby carrots; “special rolls” (whole wheat wrap rolled up with hummus and shredded cheese)
*green peppers, cherry tomatoes, shredded carrots with honey mustard dip; strawberries and blueberries; Annie’s Honey Bunny Grahams; ham & cheese on whole wheat
*fresh pears (they love pears, especially when I peel them!); puffed corn; grapes; turkey & cheese on whole wheat bun
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Annie’s Peace Pasta (mentioned in post from yesterday… strangely they’ll eat this at room temperature — I say “strangely” because normally they insist on stuff like this going in a hot thermos); mandarin oranges; baby banana; cheese stick; red peppers & blanched green beans with ranch dip
*Granny Smith apples and red pears; Fruit U Bu fruit roll up (a special treat!); “squeezy yogurt”; baby carrots & cherry tomatoes; sesame nut butter & jelly on wheat (their school is completely a nut-free zone, so we need to use sesame nut butter, which I personally think is some pretty nasty stuff… interestingly, however, the boys don’t mind it at all, and Owen has actually decided he prefers it to peanut butter [??!!!!go figure?!])
*“Crackers & Cheese Lunch” (a fav!): watermelon; baby carrots; “syrian bar” (K & O twinspeak for ‘cereal bar’ — they are absolutely obsessed with / addicted to cereal bars — their current favorite is the brand seen here– Health Valley Organic Apple Cobbler); assorted crackers; assorted cheeses: Parmesan (or, in K & O twinspeak, “CRUNCH” — a big old chunk of expensive Parmesan — this is their absolute favorite favorite favorite cheese and the more expensive the better), mozzarella cheese stick, Colby-Jack cubes, and a nice little brick of extra sharp cheddar (the sharper the better — this is their next favorite cheese after parmesan)
*grapes; “zucchini bread sandwich” (two pieces of zuch bread with cream cheese in between); a tomato; hummus & cheddar on wheat
*This is a rare lunch day — when I have the gumption to actually pack two totally different lunches according to their own separate tastes and preferences…. Here goes~~ KYLE’S LUNCH (ON LEFT): couscous with carrots, raisins, and chick peas; red peppers; hummus & crackers; grapes. OWEN’S LUNCH (ON RIGHT): steamed baby carrots & steamed broccoli with honey mustard dip; turkey and honey mustard on wheat (notice the honey mustard theme!); cheese stick; grapes.
I have always been a mediocre cook. And a terrible meal planner. Maybe this is due to my upbringing as a man, or maybe it’s due to my experiences around food as a child, or maybe I am not that creative, or maybe food is not how I sustain my family. I am not sure, and maybe it does not matter. I am just not a cook – and definitely not a chef.
As I see it, cooks are people able to execute a recipe that has been prescribed, whether for macaroni and cheese, or tuna nicoise. Cooks can open Fannie Farmer and generally get dinner on the table. Cooks are who you call when you are hungry and you need to eat. And don’t get me wrong, cooks make the world go round and without cooks we are lost.However, a Chef is a person who have a sense of food as art, life and love.For chefs, food is more than what comes together at the end and that you put on the plate, the things that you bless at the dinner table. For a chef, food is creation. There is magic there; the essence of life as it unfolds. There is a gift of the generous heart. The gift of love as the pan heats up, the oil bubbles, the garlic goes in, the lemon and parsley sizzle and shrivel and the air fills with an aroma to lift you up.
For a chef, it’s not about making dinner, it’s about giving of themselves to the act of creation, about giving to the ones they love. It’s about the love for humanity.Heather is a chef.When we were first together, fresh out of college, as it related to food, at the time, I had only one simple request: that the fridge always be full. There is meaning in that statement, and it did not escape her in the slightest. She could not cook, or even boil water, but that was a commitment she made to me. It was not that she was going to make me supper every night, or anything like that, it was a simple gift to me.Years later, after she had learned how to execute a recipe, something amazing happened. I don’t know when it was exactly, and never realized it at the time, but food for Heather became something much more. And she took it much farther. It had become life, a gift of love, and a creative expression of her engagement in the world. And this is on top of her other work.
People loved to come over for supper, and Heather always made something they would love. Something filling in the deepest way. Something that fed more than their bellies. Something that built a relationship, that crafted a friendship, that opened hearts and enhanced spirits. It’s what you wish for when you eat at a friend’s house. In fact, there has been only one other person with whom we have experienced that kind of feeling. Dinners at our house were nights to remember and nights of love and laughter and tears and hugs.And then with K & O, food took on an entirely new meaning.Sustaining life, building life, feeding the soul. Feeding love, baby spoonful, by baby spoonful, attempting to fill up a bottomless pit in need. Attempting to remedy so much that needed help. With time, thought, care a love, things got better. And although certain parts will never overflow, the shrinking bellies could sleep soundly at night, calmed, filled, loved and comforted.
Now in our life some of the gorgeous dishes of past have fallen to the wayside with the limits of time and energy. But in their place has sprung up something new. A new kind of sustenance, a new kind of meaning in food. The beauty of food has taken on a richer meaning, a whole life meaning.
In creating food, now with her children along side her, Heather has brought new meaning to keeping the fridge full. She is teaching her little boys (and soon will teach her daughter) how to give love through the creative expression of putting food on the table.
The essence of love in the full plate before us.
K, O, and M each have their individual favorite foods. But if I had to say one favorite food for all three J-M bambinos combined it would definitely be YoBaby yogurt. Hands down. All of them love it. I mean, LOVE IT. The runner-up food would be pasta– specifically (if we’re narrowing the field to favorites for the whole threesome), Annie’s Peace Pasta. [little tidbit sidenote: we’ve just started this pasta with Meera recently and she loves it — it is the perfect first pasta for baby because of the shape of it; almost like Cheerios’s… would be very hard for baby to choke on it, which makes it a great starter pasta for babies!!!] Anyway, back to YoBaby!… I buy 3-4 six-packs of YoBaby yogurt each week. That’s a lot of yogurt. The threesome love every YoBaby flavor, including the “Fruit & Cereal” flavors. For Meera, YoBaby is a meal (breakfast, or sometimes lunch); for the boys YoBaby is a snack. But it is not uncommon for one (or both) of them to eat 3-4 over the course of one day. And… they have a YoBaby for “dessert” after dinner almost every single night these days. Once in a while I pack them “yogurt lunch” for school — but this involves a full-size yogurt (with ‘fixings’ to stir in: granola of some sort, cut up fresh fruit, and sometimes dried fruit). Kyle has recently begun requesting Brown Cow Cream Top yogurts for “yogurt lunch,” and he and Owen both love that stuff. But nothing, nothing, compares to YoBaby!Chocolate Chip Coconut Bars, just out of the oven
K & O love to cook and bake. They are good little ‘cookers’ and ‘chefers’ (as they call themselves)! As long as they are behaving, I actually really enjoy cooking with them. The clean-up is always extraordinary after they’ve been in the kitchen, and I’ve got to keep a very tight reign on them, but it is worth it (at least, most of the time). However, my preference, always, is to cook with them individually. Now that is really enjoyable. Owen is actually a very good helper in the kitchen (when –and really only when– he’s by himself, and Kyle is not around). He has an incredible attention span for doing menial tasks that I hate to do (like, de-seeding pomegranates or peeling shrimp). And he (Owen) really, really likes to cook… especially if it is something that allows him to be very hands-on (literally, hands in-on-in-in-in whatever it is, mixing things with his hands, squishing things, etc., etc., etc.; i.e., MESSY). Kyle does not have the same attention span in the kitchen, but he has a few traits that his brother definitely does not have… mainly attention to detail, desire to follow a recipe precisely, an incredible memory for flavors and smells, and a very strong tendency toward neatness and cleanliness. These traits make Kyle a wonderful helper in the kitchen in his own way. He’s always bending down to clean up the floor with a kitchen towel, or reminding me to add the honey, or fretting over the tiniest bit of egg shell that slipped into the batter (and Kyle is always the one running to get the aprons and reminding everyone to wash their hands). One of my crazy dreams for my boys is that someday they’ll own a restaurant together and Owen will be the Head Chef/Kitchen Manager and Kyle will be the Wine Sommelier/Floor Manager (this is, of course, after they’ve graduated from Howard and Harvard and spent at least a year living and training in the cafes and bistros of France… I dream big people, I dream big!)… so, from the time they were about 12 months old I have been joking about this dream of mine (how I’ll eat in their restaurant regularly, how I’ll financially invest in their restaurant venture, etc., etc., etc.)… and yes, we laugh and laugh about it… but, of course, I would be thrilled if this little dream of mine came to fruition. (wink, wink!) And if it ever does, and they’re being interviewed for Food & Wine Magazine someday, well, it is my hope that they’ll say, “it all started in our mother’s kitchen…”
Owen peels fresh poached tomatoes, preparing them for Tomato Soup
*Owen puts the finishing touch (fresh cracked pepper) on one of our family’s favorite pasta dishes –Penne, Turkey Sausage, and Broccoli Rabe
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K & O make “Special Frech Toast” (i.e., made with whole grain cinamon swirl bread) in their pajamas
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Owen dredges fish
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Kyle peels carrots
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Owen & Kyle sautee fresh baby spinach (in garlic and olive oil)
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Owen peels shrimp
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Owen shreds zuchini for Zuchini Bread
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Kyle & Owen make Yogurt Smoothies early on a Saturday morning
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Owen stirs up one of the boys’ favorites: Whole Wheat Rigatoni with Pesto
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Welcome to food week on the J-M Blog!!!This week all of our posts will be –in some way– related to the topic of food. Fun! Fun! Fun! If you have any questions, you can leave them in the comments section here and we will try to respond to them… but… they have to be somehow related to the topic of food!Happy Food Week!~~~p.s. Because we’re already getting more questions than anticipated, here’s what we’ve decided: we’ll collect all of your questions and give answers to them next week. So… go ahead and continue to leave whatever questions you’d like, but please be patient ’till next week for the responses.
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