What a whirlwind it’s been over the past week: our wee one has arrived! A bit ahead of schedule, but all is well, and we’re home and settling in. I was convinced I’d stay pregnant through the month of October and at least a week into November, but instead, we welcomed our baby last weekend. There’s a lot to process, and we’re in a bit of a sleep-deprived blur, leaning heavily on my sister and the make-ahead meals with which she’s stocked our fridge. Somehow, I managed to pull the final details of Charlotte’s fox costume together, and we were out and about in the neighborhood for Halloween (something she has been looking forward to for weeks beforehand).
Here’s what I’m reading and eating this week:
Weekly Menu Plan (in case you need ideas or inspiration):
Sunday: In the hospital, trying to choose high-iron options (which tonight, was the cheeseburger)
Monday: Back at home! Again, the focus on high-iron foods, we ate a pot roast made by my sister Claire, mashed potatoes, and green beans
Tuesday: Halloween – we ordered pizza and went trick-or-treating, which was the plan even before the arrival of the little one
Wednesday: pot roast leftovers with mashed potatoes and roasted veggies
Thursday: Sausage & cabbage with mashed potatoes (again, made by Claire – thanks Claire!)
Friday: Creamy butternut squash pasta, broccoli, pan-seared salmon
Saturday: Leftover pasta, salmon again, and roasted carrots
And the menu plan from last week, which wasn’t posted because I was busy having a baby:
Sunday: Pumpkin ravioli in a cream sauce with green beans on the side
Monday: Leftover Minnesota hot dish (from Food & Wine)
Tuesday: Simple fish tacos, carrot-cabbage slaw, cauliflower
Wednesday: Maple-roasted tofu with squash, rice pilaf (from Dinner: Changing The Game) – we used butternut squash, and this was excellent
Thursday: Bolognese with lentils and roasted broccoli (From Dinner: Changing The Game)
Friday: Leftovers
Saturday:
What I’m reading and loving this week (at 2:00 a.m., obviously):
So excited to start cooking from the new Smitten Kitchen cookbook, and I liked this article on Deb, the cook behind the blog.
Trendy parenting worries as represented by The New Yorker
I liked the book A Practical Wedding and found this article on the difference in cost between a modern and 1970s wedding by the same author pretty interesting.
A catalogue of old-school antique cookbooks
Books I read this week:
Title: Feed the Resistance: Recipes + Ideas for Getting Involved
Author: Julia Turshen
Date: 2017
Format: Hardcover
I reviewed and liked Julia Turshen’s cookbook, Small Victories, earlier this year and really liked it. Her newest book isn’t a strict cookbook, though it does have a few recipes. Instead, it’s a slim volume that stems from Turshen’s processing the 2016 election. At first adrift in feelings of dismay and overwhelm, Turshen rallies behind the idea that her unique contributions to activism, in the form of food and nourishment, are valuable, and readers who are floundering in identifying meaningful ways to contribute to causes that matter to them can find inspiration and camaraderie here.
The book is a quick, enjoyable read. While there is concrete, useful information included in terms of ideas for getting involved (as in websites and resources), I found the book and recipes didn’t have much sticking power for me. While reading of her experience, I was totally immersed in her narrative, but after putting it down, there aren’t a lot of action items I’m moving forward with. She’s an excellent writer and it’s an enjoyable, motivating read. The recipes are practical and hearty, with a focus on simplicity, feeding and nourishing others, and scalable enough to feed a crowd.
Some of my favorite quotes include:
“Change, it’s been said, is the only constant. In that moment, we were reminded so clearly that resistance must always be change’s companion. Complacency was no longer a privilege any of us could continue to afford. In this new world, which in so many ways isn’t new at all and is just old without the guise of false security, resistance is the new normal” (pg 9).
“To think deeply about food is also to think deeply about the environment, the economy, immigration, education, community, culture, families, race, gender, and identity” (pg 12).
