Eating

Gastronomically, it was an interesting night.

I made this killer roasted chicken. I’m ashamed to say I had never tried doing so—it always seemed so intimidating, so I never bother. Three solid decades under my belt and I’m just now finding out how freaking easy it is. I found the recipe for it on Tammy’s Recipes, which I found through another blog I read regularly, Simple Mom. I’m now taking the carcass and simmering it to make chicken stock to freeze for later use. I’ve done this before (the chicken stock part—not the roasting!) and have had mixed results, but I found a more reliable (or at least reliable sounding) way of doing it, so I have high hopes for it.

Either way, the chicken was beautiful. And delicious. Although I might have inadvertently created a vegetarian in the preparation of it. Harrison watched me wash the raw chicken and pull the giblets out. He seemed ok with the fact that this pink lump was chicken, but when he asked where the head was I felt it disingenuous to lie to him so I told him that it had been cut off. Or maybe I was just too slow on my feet to think up some lie to tell him. Either way, he declared he was not going to eat any of that chicken because it was yucky with it’s cut off head.

He did, of course, eat it at supper—chicken is one of his favorites. But he also did an elaborate pantomime for his father showing how the poor fowl had had it’s feathers plucked and head chopped off. (Another topic we covered: “Mom, that doesn’t look like a chicken. There’s no feathers.” “Oh, um, well, they had to pluck them out.” “Like you pluck your eyelashes sometimes?” “Yeah, like I pluck my eyebrows sometimes.”)

In other, and quite frankly more ground shaking, food news, Laura ate solids tonight! I wanted to wait until Harrison’s birthday was out of the way, which we did. Other things kept popping up, though, that were keeping us from trying it. The biggest impediment was that I kept forgetting to put it on the grocery board, so Robert kept not buying it. (Can’t blame a guy for something that’s your own fault, can you?) I got some while out running errands, today though, so we went ahead with it after dinner. She drank about six ounces of formula and had about half an ounce left over to mix with a small sprinkling of rice cereal.

She was pretty receptive to it after she figured out that I was trying to feed her. Her instinct, because I was feeding her and she normally sucks her food from a bottle, was to push her tongue forward to try to get it. It took a little while to get the movements figured out and there was still plenty that ended up on her chin and bib, but I think she enjoyed the overall experience. When she was done with that bit, she still seemed hungry so I mixed her another tablespoon or so but made it just a tiny bit thicker. She ate probably two-thirds of this before she declared herself done by going red in the face and squealing at me. ‘Nuff said.

In non-food notes, Harrison and I went to the library today for story time. We have avoided this for some time, not intentionally but it was just never convenient to go. The library is across town and by the time I remember that A) it’s story day and B) it’s story time, it’s too late to get over there. I remembered today, though. Not sure if I’m going to try to remember it in the future.

Harrison sat pretty well for the stories (both about Texas animals, and both pretty awful—how does this crap get published?), but then he’s been busted at school plenty of times for goofing off during story time so I expect he behaved more out of fear than interest in the armadillos and wolves. I guess the fact that it’s labeled as toddler story time should have clued me in on how many other kids would be there and how young—and unruly—they were. It was like being in a toddler zoo. Kids squealing, jumping up and running around, pretty much doing anything but sitting and listening to the story. In retrospect, I have to ask—why did they have the stories they selected for such young kids? There are literally dozens of other, more well-suited stories for toddlers.

Anyhoo, we checked out some books—Tommy dePaola is still one of my favorites. It strikes me that Strega Nona is very similar to The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which we also watched today, oddly enough. Harrison was much disturbed by the little girl in The Legend of the Bluebonnets burning her beloved doll as a sacrifice for her people. I think he was worried that I was going to make him burn his Optimus Prime.