I will upload a photo here tomorrow.

Promise.

Update (Feb. 22, 2012):

Oliver pulling the “steam whistle” at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Thankfully the rope activated a speaker with a muted whistling noise instead of a real steam whistle.

*There were many good things that happened today as well, but those two incidents really stand out.

I’m going to talk Oliver down off the windowsill now, he’s on the look-out for our dinner: “see pizza? no see pizza yet.”

Hopefully we’ll have an early night.

*I know calamari has tentacles, but usually they’re usually not quite so pronounced.

I don’t mind, I got a beautifully wrapped gift which Oliver got to open.

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A friend of ours came over and we baked cookies lemon thumbprint cookies with jam. She brought a balloon for the boys, and Oliver spent much of the afternoon running around hollering “ba-oon!” Patrick was also enthralled by the shiny thing that floated high above his head.

We are enjoying a quiet evening in and “that’s not bread pudding!!!” chocolate strawberries, we are saving our night out for later when things aren’t so busy.

Oliver is fascinated by the “diggar!” and spent a large portion of Tuesday afternoon in his observation tower watching the progress. He insisted on holding Howie so that he could see too. “See Howie! See Diggar!”

We’d probably been married just over a year at that point as we were living in Sebastopol and I’d brought down some dish (probably a cheesecake, torte or sticky buns), and he was quite impressed by my culinary masterpiece.

I did not start out being able to cook, I started out being able to follow a recipe VERY WELL, which is more important than one might realize. Sure all it takes to make bread is flour, yeast and some water, but how much of it, and what you do with it is very important.

So where did I learn to cook? At the time I think my reply was “too many hours of Food Network,” but that isn’t entirely true.

To be honest, I didn’t learn to cook in just one place and most what I learned was NOT from the Food Newtwork. 

I learned how to chop, dice, and mince from my dad. How to slice watermelon, buy beans (he had a half-hour lecture on how to read labels on cans of beans), make chicken salad, and scrounge out of the fridge for dinner.

I watched my mom “dirty every dish in the kitchen” and then refuse to use the dishwasher (I love my dishwasher, it is so much more efficient than my Gavin at doing 98% of my dishes, Gavin does an amazing job on the remaining 2% of large pots that really need a good scrub). Prepare “planned-overs,” and host large groups for waffle breakfasts with grace. There was always space for one more person at “tea time” which was as good a reason as any to have friends over and indulge in a little something in the middle of the afternoon.

I hated tea then (and still prefer not to drink it now), but I miss the sense of community that accompanied the sharing of a plate of cookies (carefully rationed out), and a mug of something hot.

I learned very little from my middle school “cooking” class that I didn’t already know. I learned that group work partners were unreliable, and that when left to their own devices, middle schoolers make a mess in the kitchen. Hardly new stuff.

I picked up a few tricks from friends: a jar of tomato sauce, a pound of ground beef makes a decent meat sauce (although now I know it is not dinner, just a starting point). It helps if you thaw the chicken all the way before you cook it. Turkey from Thanksgiving will get freezer burn by February. Stoffers makes good lasagna if you want something for two, frozen broccoli keeps indefinitely in the freezer, and there is nothing wrong with the occasional box of mac-n-cheese (although now I go for the organic, instead of the electric-orange). And tasty food is better than amazing presentation.

My grandmothers also influenced my cooking. I have worked to reverse engineer Oma’s amazing rouladen with some success, but Oma still makes it better. Oma is also a huge proponent of tea time and makes her special blend of leftover loose teas put into one container. I have learned to politely sip, leaving it full enough to avoid refills. I have inherited several of Grandma Humphery’s cook books, my favorite so far is the Whitehouse Cookbook, although most of the recipes I’ve made from it have been dubious at best, culinary techniques have come a long way since Ford was in office.

I rounded off my cooking education watching countless hours of America’s Test Kitchen as I puttered around our little apartment in Somerville waiting for the temp agencies to call back. I also spent many hours in the kitchen which led to many failures and some successes. This was due in part to the horrible oven which wouldn’t (couldn’t?) maintain a consistent temperature, and my novice-level skills.

Thankfully by the time we moved to Sebastopol and I finally got an oven that worked decently well it turned out that I’d gotten pretty decent at cooking and baking. Then I went on a baking spree which led to Gavin’s co-workers putting out a tip-jar.

I read (and still read) food blogs, cook books, magazines, and articles (both print and online). I subscribe to Cooks Illustrated and have subscribed to Martha Stewart Living, Better Home & Garden, and Entertainment Weekly (yes, they occasionally cover food). I have a shelf full of cookbooks and cooking-related books filled with sticky notes and bits of paper to mark pages. I print out and photocopy frequently used recipes and helpful guides and keep them in a binder for quick reference.

I am not afraid to google or ask questions when I find myself in over my head. I also tend to take the “what’s the worst that could happen?” approach… so far the worst has been a small oven fire, but that happened within the first month of our marriage so I figure things can only get better. To be fair, we’ve also ordered a fair bit of pizza, and opened our share of annie’s mac-n-cheese on nights that dinner didn’t quite turn out as planned. Not every night hosts a culinary masterpiece.

I am slowly branching out and starting to improvise more, what can I tweak and where? Can I swap out wine for chicken broth? Pear sauce for apple sauce in place of butter? What if I want to cut the amount of sugar?

I am also trying to make more Oliver-friendly meals. I figure if he helps make it, maybe he’ll be more willing to expand his horizons. Sometimes it works. Does it matter how the vegetables are cut? If not, I can have O assist me. Is the exact amount of flour or sugar vital? No? Then O can scoop. Does it require exact precision timing? Then please keep O out of the kitchen.

I am also hoping including O in the kitchen early will give him skills that will be useful later in life. How to follow a recipe exactly, when and how to improvise, how to cook, set the table, and chop vegetables. After all, one day his future FIL might ask his significant other “Did you know he could cook when you married him?”

I really hate those overalls.

I like the “later gator” feet, and the “chomp.” The dragon socks that accompanied the dragon robeez from Auntie Leslie, and the sheep receiving blanket. The little cars onesie came from a set gifted to us by my college adviser and her husband, Abbie and Kurt. O found his first Halloween costume, and P’s first Halloween costume – who wore it better? I’ll let you decide.

So many happy memories were evoked as we spread clothing across the table. I’m looking forward to eventually starting the project, and the chance to cut my old maternity jeans to bits.

For now, the clothes are neatly folded back in the bin. I’m going to try and hold off until both boys are done with 12-24 month sized clothing before I start cutting into things. There are still so many more cute outfits for P to grow through!

Up until about two months ago our home had been a zucchini-free zone, then P started to eat, and eat, and eat. So I started making my own baby food, which led to me reverse-engineering his all-time-favorite jar of mush “organic summer vegetables.”

Organic vegetables are easy to come by so I read the label: potato, carrot, green beans and zucchini.

Zucchini?! Really baby, can’t mommy get a break?

Being the nice mommy that I am, I went to the store and bought organic potatoes, carrots, green beans and zucchini. Then I peeled, chopped, steamed, and pureed the vegetables much to P’s delight.

I’ve slowly been working my way through my baby-and-kid food cookbook, some of the recipes translate nicely into food for the whole family. This afternoon we did some make-and-freeze cooking for P: lentils with carrot and coriander, and sweet pepper sauce for pasta. Then O and I made some no-bake oatmeal cookies, and I made a batch of sauce for us for dinner as well.

The sweet pepper sauce contains red bell peppers, chopped tomatoes (canned, no salt added), leeks, and zucchini. Yes, zucchini. The sauce isn’t the most amazing, but it isn’t bad, and there are far worse ways to eat zucchini.

The recipe calls for the sauce to be simmered and then pureed, and as the child gets “older” soft chunks can be left in for them to “practice” chewing.

I am going to respectfully disagree with the authors at this point. I have been working hard to introduce P to a variety of foods, colors, flavors and textures, and I appreciate what they are trying to do, but some food combinations, like zucchini in pasta sauce, are really best pureed.

P did not have bow-ties for dinner, he had lentils with carrot, potato and coriander thinned with orange juice for dinner. I still need to buy him some tiny pasta.

In the evening as the sun goes down it becomes time for “night.” In the morning, when the sun comes up and the darkness is replaced by light, there is voice, inches away from my face which enthusiastically announces “No-night mommy! No-night!”

The baby does not “sleep.” P is either “awake” or “no-awake.” No-awake is usually easily resolved by being poked at which point baby is “awake!” again. The baby does “nap” but when nap time is over, baby enters “no-nap” time, sometimes with a helpful poke.

There is also “no baby!” but that is reserved for when P gets into something of O’s.

More of O’s fine work is now up in an album entitled Oliver’s Perspectives at my picasa.