What is our 23-month old son Lulu doing these days?
Motor skills:
- he taught himself how to skip a couple months ago
- he likes to climb up and down the ladder at the playground, rather than go down the slide
- but he still loves the slide, which he calls "bagon" (short for toboggan). He should actually say Boggan for short, but early on I incorrectly taught it to him as "tobAgon".
- he dangles himself from any bar he can reach, and he swings like a monkey
- he tries to somersault but falls to the side
- we have started potty training (kaka only), because he can't enter preschool in September unless he is propre (clean)
Eccentricities:
- he likes to rub the nub in the middle of his upper lip, when he is thinking, daydreaming or falling asleep
- he often comes to me while I am cooking/washing up and tells me something in a strange gibberish-language, with few recognizable words, and laughs hysterically at what he said. It's hard not to laugh with him.
- he loves to pretend to make tea and coffee and make me "drink" it, and to cook, as he says, "poisson" (fish)
- he blows on his pretend food and drink before I taste it and says chaud (hot)
- while pretending to use the phone, he says the names of everyone in Hubbie's family, his favourite being Memere Monique
Food and Drink:
- Lulu still uses a sippy cup
- he likes his milk warm and his juice watered down
- his favourite food is poisson (fish), as cooked by his Papie Dèdè (grandpa)
- he loves kiwi fruit and strawberries, and in the winter he loved litchi but he struggled to digest them
- when he is tired, he is more likely to play with his food and put it in his hair. Hubbie and I have a drill now for when that happens: We pull his chair away from the table, I grab a hand, he grabs a hand, and we hope there are paper towels nearby.
- he reeeeeally likes Maman's moroccon tagine -- yay! (anytime he can eat what we're eating, it's a big win)
Sleep patterns:
- Lulu takes a two hour-nap after lunch
- he sleeps about 11 hours at night
- he likes to have his Lumilove Panda near him at night
- we play Bach concertos for him whenever he sleeps; but if he doesn't want it he says, "No tiano" (piano), in which case he gets soothing French comptines (like lullabies)
We spent New Year's in Perpignan, where it got up to 18 C (65 F)
Monday 27 April 2009
Saturday 4 April 2009
Eating my words
A popular question I used to ask people was whether they lived to eat, or ate to live. Ie., is eating pleasurable for you? As a student, it was easy to answer that. If anyone else did the cooking (and of course, if it did not cost me much), eating was certainly pleasurable. Then as a young upwardly-mobile professional with expendable income, I found my answer becoming more and more a function of how good the chef was (because I always ate out or take-away or delivery). I still remember that era with fondness. My favourite delivery service in 2001 was Afghan House #5. Being single in New York and having neither the time nor inclination to cook, it was on my speed-dial. I comforted myself with the thought I might be keeping their business afloat (plausible, as this was just after 9/11).
After getting married to a Frenchman and having resolved to save money for the future, the question became a function of the taste-to-cost ratio. I have to admit, even if he had just thrown together what was left in the fridge, it seemed like everything Hubbie cooked turned out so very nice. After all, he was born and bred in la cuisine ! Okay okay, morelike in the same house as one. But me, on the other hand? In uni, I had been guilty of stealing my dorm-mates' food to survive because I (literally) couldn't cook to save my life. I was able to cook spaghetti bolognese, but you can't survive a semester on that. I was a one-dish wonder relying on students for food!
It's true, early in our marriage, I tried as much as possible not to cook. I tried to get Hubbie to cook all the meals because I hated cooking, and I hated what ended up on our plates when I was done.
It was only after I saw Hubbie cook a 4-course dinner for our friends, that cooking started to look interesting. And challenging. It looked so challenging that I swore I would never cook for guests. Especially not French guests.
You see, a 4-course meal takes a lot of preparation and timing. Two things I'm not good at. In the kitchen, Hubbie becomes a tornado (Tasmanian Devil-size), well before the guests arrive, and you don't want to get in his way. "What is he doing in there?" "Oh no, he's cursing at the sauce." It all appears to be going horribly wrong. But at the right time, out comes the steaming entrée, and it tastes divine. Then the main dish with a flourish, then the salad with a cheese platter, finally the pretty desserts in glass cups. And he still somehow finds time to follow the conversation and, well, to eat.
After the guests had gone home, Hubbie was typically pleased with his efforts and wanted me to critique his cooking. I marvel at his ability to watch the time and cook most things "live" during an evening. Cooking "live" means cooking the dish just before eating it, rather than simply re-heating something that he already cooked.
So I was inspired to learn, because I knew timing was not my thing and also to take some pressue off of Hubbie. What helped to a large degree were the British cooking shows on Saturday mornings. Yes, it's true! Through them I learned why some foods were better grilled than pan-fried, why you had to fold egg whites in rather than squash them in to a mixture, and just general basics. It was a brave new world of cooking that would bring me back to "live to eat" rather than "eat to live".
So I finally cooked for real French people a couple months ago. However, it was a bit of a cop-out because I cooked Moroccan food rather than anything close to French. I made a Harissa soup a la Nigella Lawson ahead of time and re-heated it for the starter. For the main, we had lamb tagine with apricots over couscous with an orange relish on the side. One of our guests brought a galette for dessert, to my relief, so it wasn't in fact a 4-course show, or even a 3-course one for that matter. But it was a start, and now I've had to eat my words.
After getting married to a Frenchman and having resolved to save money for the future, the question became a function of the taste-to-cost ratio. I have to admit, even if he had just thrown together what was left in the fridge, it seemed like everything Hubbie cooked turned out so very nice. After all, he was born and bred in la cuisine ! Okay okay, morelike in the same house as one. But me, on the other hand? In uni, I had been guilty of stealing my dorm-mates' food to survive because I (literally) couldn't cook to save my life. I was able to cook spaghetti bolognese, but you can't survive a semester on that. I was a one-dish wonder relying on students for food!
It's true, early in our marriage, I tried as much as possible not to cook. I tried to get Hubbie to cook all the meals because I hated cooking, and I hated what ended up on our plates when I was done.
It was only after I saw Hubbie cook a 4-course dinner for our friends, that cooking started to look interesting. And challenging. It looked so challenging that I swore I would never cook for guests. Especially not French guests.
You see, a 4-course meal takes a lot of preparation and timing. Two things I'm not good at. In the kitchen, Hubbie becomes a tornado (Tasmanian Devil-size), well before the guests arrive, and you don't want to get in his way. "What is he doing in there?" "Oh no, he's cursing at the sauce." It all appears to be going horribly wrong. But at the right time, out comes the steaming entrée, and it tastes divine. Then the main dish with a flourish, then the salad with a cheese platter, finally the pretty desserts in glass cups. And he still somehow finds time to follow the conversation and, well, to eat.
After the guests had gone home, Hubbie was typically pleased with his efforts and wanted me to critique his cooking. I marvel at his ability to watch the time and cook most things "live" during an evening. Cooking "live" means cooking the dish just before eating it, rather than simply re-heating something that he already cooked.
So I was inspired to learn, because I knew timing was not my thing and also to take some pressue off of Hubbie. What helped to a large degree were the British cooking shows on Saturday mornings. Yes, it's true! Through them I learned why some foods were better grilled than pan-fried, why you had to fold egg whites in rather than squash them in to a mixture, and just general basics. It was a brave new world of cooking that would bring me back to "live to eat" rather than "eat to live".
So I finally cooked for real French people a couple months ago. However, it was a bit of a cop-out because I cooked Moroccan food rather than anything close to French. I made a Harissa soup a la Nigella Lawson ahead of time and re-heated it for the starter. For the main, we had lamb tagine with apricots over couscous with an orange relish on the side. One of our guests brought a galette for dessert, to my relief, so it wasn't in fact a 4-course show, or even a 3-course one for that matter. But it was a start, and now I've had to eat my words.
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