One

Last night as I put my little girl to sleep, a tear fell on her sweet face. I sang Amazing Grace to her as I have done every night of her life. I prayed over her and thanked God for her life and her health. And then a tear fell. She didn't know tonight was any different, but tonight she was no longer a baby.

Her toddlerhood has been rapidly descending upon us in the month or more since she started walking and talking. This morning I put away all the baby things that still cluttered her closet--the Boppy pillow she fit so snugly upon when she was just days and weeks old; the size small sleepsacks; the remnants of a struggle with nursing. I realized it had been overtaken with size 18 months clothes and shoes with real soles. How and when did this happen?

At one, she says fish, duck, cheese, socks, shoes, yes, no, push, eyes, head, hair, ears, diaper. She holds the phone (her hand) up to her ear when the phone rings. She points to her toes. She sings to her babies.

We celebrated Lindsay's first birthday with our family and closest friends and Lindsay's little playdate buddies. I arduously baked some vanilla cupcakes with strawberry buttercream frosting for the big day. When it came time to put the birthday girl in her chair for her first experience with buttercream, she relished the attention. We lit the little pink candle in her mini cupcake and she watched with wonder as the flame flickered. What is all this? We sang happy birthday, dear Lindsay, and she clapped at the end. A little politician in the making?

We love watching her grow.

Update: At her 1-year check-up, she weighed 21 lbs. 4 oz. (50th) and measured 32 inches (99th).

Generations of Cooking

I relish the advice of my elders–one aunt in particular. Once a year four generations of women get together for three days of conversation, knitting, and eating. This year it involved a disproportionate amount of chasing toddlers, rather than knitting, but we still sat down to meals together–not just any meal, but a luxurious beef stew, a garlic and feta stuffed chicken, an orange glazed cake. The menu goes on.

I was a self-taught cook—mainly by trial and error. Most cooks learned from an older family member who knew their way around the kitchen blindfolded and had all their treasured recipes in their head (with no quantities, they just knew). My mother will admit that she is not the most enthusiastic cook, and I didn’t live near enough to my grandmothers growing up to learn in that manner like so many women do. My sister wasn’t into it until much later, and so I was pretty much on my own.

I envy that, for my aunt (who learned much of her cooking from my grandmother), putting a delicious home-cooked meal on the table for us is not only an expression of love but also she makes it look effortless. So I asked her what her secrets are.

Make ahead. She takes full advantage of a spare freezer in the garage and pulls out what she needs when she needs it. She made ahead the stuffed chicken breasts so that she didn’t have to spend quite as much time cooking on our weekend together. She baked them on a cookie sheet and they were magically ready at dinnertime (this is the seemingly effortless skill to which I referred). Same for the beef stew and the cake. I’m sure it was hard work for her, but to the untrained eye, she seemed to whip it all up in a matter of an hour.

Avoid tending to something on the stove. I watched her chop a few sweet potatoes and throw them into a crock pot with some butter. She could then set the gadget on high for 6 hours and avoid babysitting a pot. This is one trick I will surely try at home. The mashed sweet potatoes were perfectly creamy and melted in my mouth.

Canning and freezing fresh fruit and vegetables when they are in season. This deserves its own post.

See what I learned in a few short days of watching a more experienced cook? These lessons are invaluable.

My sister, whose husband is half Italian-American, tells me that her mother-in-law is her primary go-to source at holidays. And both of us have been known to call upon our step-mother, who also cooks by heart, for those big-piece-of-meat type dinners.

We always seem to call on those who have trodden the road before us, and they always seem to have the answers–because they learned from the generations before them.

Who do you look to for lessons in cooking?

Girlfriends' Guide to Fooling the Husbands (er, Cooking)

Girlfriends will find any excuse to get together. And what better way to spend a cold Saturday than with food and friends. In order to justify our absence from our husbands and kids, we decided we’d better find a way to benefit them as well.

And girlfriends trust each other. Girlfriends share their opinions about everything–recipes and food are no exception. Most women I know are always looking for their next batch of great recipes, so we decided to get together and test some out.

The ultimate goal was to come home with four meals to enjoy throughout the week (or stash in the freezer for a busy night).

We accomplished several things during our three hours together this weekend: quality time, trying new recipes, and preparing meals to take home for our families. Here is how it went.

I invited 5 girlfriends who, like me, are busy moms who are into cooking and trying new recipes but are short on time. Six people was the perfect size. The dads planned on staying home for some quality time with the little ones.

I looked through my recipes on Plummelo for a few important criteria: little to no cooking on prep day; highly freezeable; no more than about 10 ingredients each; and using relatively inexpensive ingredients. We narrowed it down to 4. We wanted to start out with an attainable goal.

Our Recipes

• Steak Fajitas from Real Simple
• Turkey and Roasted Red Pepper Meatloaffrom Real Simple
• Chicken Marbella from Simply Recipes
• Spinach and Prosciutto Lasagna from Martha Stewart

I saved these 4 recipes to My Recipes on Plummelo and emailed them to my friends so they could save them into their recipe boxes as well. I put the recipes into My Plans and then into My Shopping List.

Here was the part where Plummelo really saved the day in this planning process: Once the recipes were in my shopping list, Plummelo adjusted the servings for me!

For 6 people, we needed everything times six (for a grand total of a lot of food). The recipe showed number of servings as 4, so I entered 24 (4 x 6), and the Plummelo shopping list automatically changed all the quantities for me (for example, 1 1/2 cups of ricotta became 9 cups of ricotta).

I then hit “Email Shopping List” on Plummelo and sent the combined list to my friends. We divvied up the shopping by section of the grocery store (which was also easy because the Plummelo shopping list is divided by category, such as Meat, Produce), and each went grocery shopping on our own schedule and planned to arrive with the assigned items.

One friend and I hit Costco for all the meat, and the others went on their respective treasure hunts. I was surprised at how little effort went into the shopping when we divided and conquered.

The day of, I packed it up the food and a few essentials (including my favorite knife), ready to take to the hosting friend’s house. We allowed 3 hours for our cooking adventure, with some time built in for girl talk and munching on freshly bakedmuffins.

We started out with the Chicken Marbella. One team of two trimmed the chicken thighs, another team minced garlic (of course, with the garlic gadget!), and another team measured spices, olives, capers, and prunes. In no time our chicken was marinating in the bowl, and we divided the massive quantity into 6 Ziploc freezer bags for each family to pull out on the designated night.

The routine went like this for the remaining recipes. Chopping and dicing, dividing and conquering (and washing some dishes in between). Meal prep is much more fun when it is organized in advance and shared with good friends. It’s also more fun digging into a huge bowl of ground turkey when wearing plastic gloves! We had a lot of laughs about food favorites and not-so-favorites, cooking blunders, and each other’s techniques, and fed each other bites of blueberry muffin while we worked. It didn’t seem like work at all.

It took us two and a half hours and $37.50 per family (that’s less than $10 per meal) to make 4 delicious meals that are ready for our loved ones to enjoy. Economies of scale definitely pay off!

Now we each have 4 new recipes in our repertoire and 4 new meals for the week. And after receiving a big thank you from more than one of the husbands, I know we have a hall pass for another girls’ afternoon out.

Try planning a cooking day with your friends. Let us know how it goes.