Chickpeas a la Leslie

Tate, who used to be the fattest and happiest baby on the block has sadly become quite the culinary connoiseur. Where he used to shovel anything that he could fit his chubby little palms around into his mouth at incredible speed, he now prefers a few select items. Avocados. Yogurt. Fruit. Bread (toasted, please, light on the almond butter.) And cheese. Lots of cheese. Or in Tate-speak, "cheeeth, cheeeth, cheeeth."

I figure it's part of his quest to be independent. He wants to pick things up himself and is so over mama feeding him anything on a spoon anymore. Yogurt he can navigate on a spoon himself because it's sticky, but everything else needs to be bite-sized and not too messy. So today I am trying chickpeas. They are small enough to grab but not big enough to choke on. They are protein packed and as fun to pop in his mouth as M&M's. (Not that he's had any to date.) So here's what I put together today, from stuff lying around the kitchen:

Ingredients:

1 TB olive oil

1 medium yellow onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 12 oz can of chickpeas (garbanzos), drained. (Or you can soak, boil, and drain dried beans if you have the time)

1 tsp garam marsala

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 cup raisins

salt and pepper to taste
water

OK, so you put the oil in the skillet and get it simmering hot. (Not piping hot.) Add the chopped onion, stir it around, let it "sweat" for a few minutes. Add the garlic. After a pinch of salt and pepper. Now add the chickpeas and the spices. After cooking for a few minutes, reduce the heat to low. Add the raisins. Add a few tablespoons of water so that it won't burn but has a nice sauce to cook in. Cover. Go do something for about 20 minutes. When you come check on it again, your kitchen should smell awesome. Like Christmas mixed with Mona's in New Orleans.

If adults are eating this (or nut-eating kids), add a handful of chopped almonds.

Serve over couscous, or eat alone.

SIDE NOTE, POST-TATE EATING: These beans are also very fun when thrown into the air and squished into the vent.

Flowers for Tate..

Yesterday afternoon as we were driving back from a camping trip on the coast, we entered a beautifully shaded old growth forest. It was cool and green, with tall lovely stalks of purple flowers dotting the roadside. I mean, really lovely flowers. Like I wanted to have one in our car lovely. So, Chad slowed down the car and I leaned my torso out the window and snapped one off. It was so much more delicate than I had imagined it would be. The little purple bells were speckled with white and yellow, and the stalks and leaves were fuzzy and smooth, peach-like.

"Tate! Look!" I handed him this magical wand of a flower. He gave it a half-hearted little wag in the air and dropped it on the ground. Hmm, OK, that's OK, I'll just keep it by me. I stuck my fingers and nose in the little bells, I made everyone peer into it until they agreed that YES, it was a-maaaa-zing, I held it by the tail and let it dangle outside my window, catching air.

About an hour later, after stopping for lunch, we saw something move. Chad saw it first. Then our seven year old car-mate, Mia, spotted it. The most amazingly beautiful and freakish white spider with translucent legs and red splotches creeped its way along the dashboard. I don't like spiders, but it was really actually quite pretty. But who knew what it could be? Was it poisonous?  Sadly, the spider was not so enchanting to our seven year old friend, and she wanted it disposed of, fast, in anything. So, Chad did.

When we got home later last night and all 15 of our household guests were in their beds, I sat down at my computer and researched our little treasures. First, the spider. A very rare Flower Spider. Non poisonous. Totally harmless. Actually, all it wants to do it sit on pretty flowers all day in an attempt to blend in and live to see another day. Like all of us. And we squished it dead in a Brawny after it hitched a ride into our Volvo on a lovely little flower that I plucked from the Oregon woods.

Which brings us to our gorgeous purple flower stalk, which up until recently was sitting on my kitchen window sill. Also known as Foxglove. Or Witch's Glove. Or Deadman's Bells. Or Bloody Fingers. Notice a theme developing here? Like, um, this beautiful flower just might KILL YOU?? Allow me to share:

The entire plant is toxic (including the roots and seeds), although the leaves of the upper stem are particularly potent, with just a nibble being enough to potentially cause death. Early symptoms of ingestion include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, wild hallucinations,delirium, and severe headache. Depending on the severity of the toxicosis the victim may later suffer irregular and slow pulse, tremors, various cerebral disturbances, especially of a visual nature (unusual colour visions with objects appearing yellowish to green, and blue halos around lights), convulsions, and deadly disturbances of the heart.

Oh, the horror of this discovery! I gave this flower to Tate, to play with while in his carseat. It is a true miracle that he did not stick it right into his mouth, like he does with nearly every other object he encounters. My sweet neighbor actually alerted me to this one when she visited our house this morning and saw that in addition to fresh organic peaches that I was serving up Tate for breakfast, I also had some fresh poison as decor in our breakfast nook.

SO, the lessons for today are:

1. Be nice to strange white spiders that aren't doing anything to hurt you and just might be rare and exotic.
2. Don't give the most precious thing in your life POISON to play with.

Wishing for machines that pushed buttons for other machines.

Last weekend on our way home from Coeur d'Alene, we stopped at an outdoor bistro in Hood River and noshed on salmon burgers with spicy mustard and full glasses of Gerwurtraminer on the patio. In typical fashion, after one glass I was toasty enough to realize that I could no longer drive our little family the remaining 60 miles home, and so Chad and I switched seats. He was now driver, I was now passenger, and our ergonomics were way off. I was laid-back gangsta-style in his seat, staring at the car ceiling almost with cold air blasting me, and he was sitting prim and proper with a straight back, chest pressed against the steering wheel and his knees angled out awkwardly. "Ugh," he moaned. "We sit so differently. I wish that this car had that memory function where it knows who is sitting in what seat and adjusts accordingly." Silence filled the little Volvo. Crickets chirped. Tate burped. We wished that our lovely, brand-spanking-new, company-betrothed Volvo with leather seats, pop-up GPS, Bluetooth capability, blind spot alerts and ninja-like headlight sprayers would be could be a tad more user-friendly. "Did I just say that I wished I had a machine to push a button?" he asked. "Um, yes." Maybe our one redeeming quality is that we know at times just how crazy we are.

I am trying to turn the corner from a lifestyle of dependence on things that are sold to me to a lifestyle of realizing that I can actually do most of it - or at least a lot of it- myself. I mean really, what on earth are we here to do if not live authentically, without machines pushing buttons for other machines for us. Do we ultimately just want to sit on couches and have our lived fulfilled for us so that we don't have to put forth that awful effort of exertion? There is a threshold in this discussion...if you go too far in one direction you risk losing true progress that society has made. But if you go too far in the other direction, then we lose the skills and traditions that men and women have honed over generations. They made things with love, imperfectly but as best they could, because they had to. It's just what you did. It seems that we should continue this tradition even if we don't necessarily have to, but because if we don't then we un-evolve as skilled humans. My great-grandmother knew how to sew a quilt out of old flour sacks. I know how to buy one made in China by going to www.bedbathandbeyond.com. To me, that does not at all seem like real progress. So, there's a choice over what technology to keep, and what to do pass up on. Case in point:

When I was back home in Louisiana a few months ago, I talked to my mom about a sewing machine that I have been saving up for. It's a Singer Featherweight 221, glossy black, made in the '40's, and a blast to sew on. It's beautiful and hums and it just makes you happy to use. "But don't you want a new model?" my mom asked, "You know, that has a button-maker?" "No," I said smugly. "If it has a button-maker then I will never learn how to sew them myself." "Well then," she quipped back, "Why don't you just go spin and dye your own thread, too, so you can learn that too?" Touché, mama, touché. So where to draw the line? Why is it good to learn how to sew a button myself, but ridiculous to spin my own thread?

But then why hand-knit Tate a sweater when I can buy one for cheaper?

Why bake my own bread? Or make my own yogurt?

Why grow my own vegetables?

Or pick and can berries?

Why should Chad make our furniture? Or renovate houses that still have integrity to them despite years of neglect?

Or is this all just romantic nostalgia for a time long since passed?

No, there is value in learning to do these things. An evolution of the individual and a continuation of skills learned and perfected over generations is something that I have to think would be stupid of us to forgo. We saw firsthand during Katrina that technological advances can truly be turned off like a switch and then you sit, in the dark, trying to figure out how in the world to sew a button on.

Wendell Berry wrote an article once on why he would never buy a computer. (By the way, if you don't know Wendell yet, please meet him.) In it, he came up with this little list of how to decide if a purchase is necessary and good. It's something worth considering:

1. The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces.
2. It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces.
3. It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than the one it replaces.
4. It should use less energy than the one it replaces.
5. If possible, it should use some form of solar energy, such as that of the body.
6. It should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence, provided that he or she has the necessary tools.
7. It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as possible.
8. It should come from a small, privately owned shop or store that will take it back for maintenance and repair.
9. It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and community relationships.

--Wendell Berry, 1987, New England Review and Bread Loaf Quarterly