I'm sure we all remember the great stuff we used to make ... or make our parents make, as a kid. Peanut butter and banana sandwich, grilled cheese with a pickle in it, some potato chips on top of our bologna sandwich.
That last part was important. It was the only way I could choke down the bologna sandwich on wonder bread that went with me to school for lunch on occasion. (Sorry, mom.)
Well, Colleen has been experimenting for herself lately, and using most of the same materials I'm sure we all used. Except that the other day, she took it one step further.
This is Colleen's banana dog. It's a banana with peanut butter and grape jelly on a hot dog bun. She pretty much ate all of it. In fact, I'd say it might not be that bad.
MINNEAPOLIS -- Coleman family insiders were stunned Sunday night when Cate Coleman ate shrimp, for reportedly the first time in her life.
Coleman, 35, partook of the seafood dish as part of a Coleman family outing to Let's Cook, a store near downtown Minneapolis that offers cooking classes and events for groups. Mom volunteers there for other people's classes and brought the group of family adults down for a private class, focused on handmade pasta.
The shrimp was an hors d'oeuvre.
"Once I got past what it looked like, I tried it and it actually tasted good," she explained later in the evening.
Cate has actually cooked shrimp before, for me, as I was the only one in the family who would eat it. But she has often expressed a desire to not be able to recognize her food when it's on her plate, if you know what I mean, and a cooked shrimp is shaped a lot like the thing it used to be.
During the evening, she also tried the spinach filling for tortellini. And there were other things but I don't remember what she tasted at the table.
It was a fun evening, kneading dough, cutting it into strips and forming it into shapes, or tortellini, or ravioli ... man, getting hungry just thinking about it again. The chef had some incredible sauces to serve with the various pasta. Cate did draw the plain pasta, while other Colemans made tomato-flavored pasta and spinach pasta, but it was neat to knead the dough and roll it out, etc.
Plus, it was just nice to get out without the kids.
We haven't ordered out for pizza in a while -- part of an attempt to cut our food budget back as well as our calorie budget. But I found some pizza crust mixes on sale at Giant earlier this week and we cooked up a couple of homemade pizzas for dinner tonight.
When we used to order pizza, everyone would have pepperoni and I would have a sausage and onion or mushroom or something vegetable-like. But of course, I've swayed Elizabeth over to the light side and she joined me in making a veggie pizza.
Part and parcel with that is trying something new. We had a can of black olives and I convinced Elizabeth to try one. She liked it.
Of course, when put on the pizza, she was less enthralled. But she still had pizza with onions and red pepper on it. And I got her green peppers and olives to put on my slices.
But put black olives on the list of food Elizabeth likes!
We spent most of the day waiting for Lowe's to deliver the new fridge and washing machine. Waiting and waiting. And since we kept the fridge rather empty, we were light on dinner.
They arrived at 5:15 and were out by 5:45.
We went to Wegmans to replenish the milk supply with the intent of coming back home and cooking, but the kids were rapidly losing patience. So instead of bringing food home, we decided to cut the trip short and just eat there. Wegmans has a good amount of take out options, as well as an extensive salad bar and hot bar, so we got half a rotisserie chicken with roasted rosemary potatoes (Elizabeth's choice) and steamed vegetables.
I put Elizabeth in charge of getting fresh fruit from the salad bar with explicit instructions to come to a consensus with Robert on choices. And I got a couple things from the hot bar, nothing too heavy. Colleen started getting fussy as I was completing my dish (some rice noodles, a couple of mini egg rolls and some breaded fish) but I was chalking that up to the hour (after 6 on a long day).
She got even more fussy as we checked out. Wegmans has some seating upstairs that I had thought we would use but they didn't allow shopping carts up there, so we ate outside.
I set the food on the table and started cutting up the chicken, and Colleen is getting rather insistent about my food. I keep telling her that I'll eat my food when I'm done serving everyone else.
Finally -- and you parents know how it is -- I actually get to eat for myself. So I lift a piece of fish out of the container and Colleen points, and says, "Dad, eat your food!"
And it hits me. She doesn't want me to eat it. She wants to eat it herself. It looks just like a breaded chicken tender.
So what the heck, I give her a piece. She snaps it up.
I give her another. And another. I got one bite. She ate the rest.
So Colleen ate fish.
I'm sure we all remember the great stuff we used to make ... or make our parents make, as a kid. Peanut butter and banana sandwich, grilled cheese with a pickle in it, some potato chips on top of our bologna sandwich.
