I love peeking in other people’s shopping bags and baskets. The other day a fellow Trader Joe’s shopper snagged my cart by accident and as I wheeled hers up and down the aisles, I marveled at what different groceries she found — it was as if we were shopping in different stores — but after I retrieved my cart, I paused at the cookie aisle to pick up a box of the maple leaf cream sandwiches I’d seen in hers.

At the grocery store, I like to imagine what’s on a fellow shopper’s menu based on what I see go down the conveyor belt ahead of my purchases. Recently, it was 4 white onions, a can of frozen limeade, and a bag of ice. Um, onion tart and margaritas? One can only hope. For me, the grocery store is more for last minute pick-ups than the big weekly shop, so I wind up with random assortments like this:

That’s a basket that says I’m really hungry (sushi & mojo bar), Eli is hungry and I’m too hungry myself to maintain high standards (Annie’s canned spaghetti-Os); but I have Ben on my mind, too: there’s a birthday cake to decorate (milk chocolate for the frosting; candles; colored sugar sprinkles); and I’m wondering if he might like adzuki beans better than cannellini (I’m trying to up his iron intake) so I grab a can rather than invest the time in dried.

But nobody asked me about my basket, because at the grocery store, it seems, that’s unseemly. Is it because at the grocery store we’re more likely to buy packaged foods — dump and heat things — rather than items we actually cook? Or is that just me? Maybe it’s just the atmosphere of the store which makes it a place folks don’t typically chat about their choices.

Regardless, it’s one more reason why I love shopping at the farmer’s market. Here, we’re all buying fresh ingredients, and both the other shoppers and the farmers are happy to share ideas about what to do with them. Don’t know how to prepare agretti? Ask the guy who’s buying a pound! We ate broccolini recently, and the boys studied the buds closely, unable to remember what a broccoli flower looks like. At the Sunday market, one of the farmers had both flowering broccolini and flowering arugula, which I’d never seen. What to do with them? Saute the first, salad the second, said the nice farmer from Marin Roots. So I bought bunches of each and the boys nibbled on the flowers like little goats. The verdict? thumbs up on the flowering broc, but the arugula flowers, while tasty in my salad, were too spicy for the boys’ taste. This time of year, the farmers are starting to pile up all sorts of new greens on their tables, and if you ask me, it’s fun to share what we’re doing with them.

Every summer, I feel torn. The grasshopper part of me (do you remember your fables?) wants to gorge on all the varieties of stone fruit, gorgeous red tomatoes, tender peas and sweet corn, all the bright colorful variety of fruits and vegetables that remind me that even when it’s cold and foggy in my neighborhood of San Francisco, not far away the sun is shining on warm and summery farms and orchards.

And then there is the other part of me — the ant part– who can’t help thinking ahead to the days when it is cold all over the bay area, and our produce selections are far more limited: chard and kale, apples and pears, oranges, oranges, oranges. That’s when I want to freeze the berries, turn the stone fruits into interesting jams, make gallons of pesto for our winter pasta.

I’m trying to do both. Instead of being a miser with berries (or any of the rest of it), I’m trying to buy plenty to eat now, cook with, and stock for later. If strawberries are $4 a pint at the market but $10 for three, I’ll buy the three pints and freeze two. Basil is a couple dollars a bunch, so I buy four at a time for pesto now and more pesto in February. I’m spending more money at the market than usual, but with any luck this will translate into some winter savings and, perhaps just as important, a bright taste of summer when we’re deep in our rainy winter.

And at the risk of getting more “how-to” and advice giving than I am comfortable with, here is the new way we’re keeping pesto. Our ice cube trays (a gift to one of the boys from a friend) happen to be small stars and penguin shapes, and while they’re excellent for lemon and lime juice cubes, they’re a little small for pesto. So in the midst of my all my muffin baking earlier this spring, Tony proposed we freeze cupcake-size portions of pesto. Works for me:

All of a sudden, it seems,  the stone fruit is in the market. We have peaches, plums, apricots–and big, sloping piles of bright red cherries.  The cherry season is short, and very sweet. And while we have a cherry pitter, and sometimes use it (ice cream, tarts, once in a red wine reduction for lamb), the cherries rarely last long enough to make it into something as complicated as a recipe.

I’m all about simple, these days, and letting my children experience food in its whole, pure state, so when the cherries come home on Sunday I pour them into a big glass bowl and set them in the middle of our home’s Command Central (aka the Kitchen Table) with a small bowl of water for rinsing and a smaller bowl for pits.  We have an open floor plan, so all day long the kids & their friends & Kory and I pick, dip, & eat.    On Memorial Day they were ravaged before, during, and after dinner as the kids carried the three bowls back and forth from appetizer to dinner to dessert table.

They’re  a snack, of course, but because we eat only what’s in season at our local market things like cherries feel like a rare treat.  This is one of the great things about eating locally and seasonally. On the one hand, things taste the way they should–& impeccably fresh–but it’s also exciting every time something new shows up.  And yes, they are expensive. At $5-7/lb they cost us. But I think it’s worth it to have such an excellent snack to binge on for a few days, and in the long run, that $7 is teaching the kids about many, many things besides how great cherries taste.  And it’s keeping them healthy.  With seasonal eating, we appreciate each crop all the more, we look forward to each new harvest, and we really do celebrate every mouthful.  Even Ella and Finn know that they’re getting something special.

The cherries, on the other hand, are lucky if they see Tuesday morning.

Or:  Surviving 3 months of Migraines.

Or: Surviving Afterschool without Insanity.

Or: Getting Dinner on the Table. Fast.

Or: What to Do About Dinner When You and/or Your Children Just Can’t Cope.

The adjustment to first grade was hard for us.  Ella loved school–more than ever, really–but she was also completely exhausted by it.  She’d emerge onto the blacktop each day looking about as disheveled and worn down as it’s possible for a child to look without having a 103 degree fever.  Then she had to do homework–not a lot, mind you, it was truly a very small amount–but early on, anything that involved sitting upright was, well, rough.  This situation was compounded by the fact that during these months I was beset by several migraines a week, for which I was prescribed heavy doses of medication which made thinking impossible, cooking difficult, and any amount of added stress nearly unbearable.  It was not a good time for our family.  My husband had started a new position, too, which required longer hours, so help at and with dinner and bed wasn’t forthcoming either.

In the clear-headed, quiet moments (there were a very few),  I had to figure out how to feed my very tired, very hungry children with a minimum of stress and preparation. The difficult part was that my daughter especially needed the most attention and care and supervision during the witching hours, between 3 and 5 pm, when I would normally prep  dinner.  But back then, spending more than 15 minutes on dinner was pretty much out of the question.

And while we do have some good places for take-out (delivery, not so much), that would have involved piling the kids in & out of the car and driving–which was out of the question.   If you can imagine back to how you felt during those first days of bringing your newborn home from the hospital, when even defrosting the meals you & your friends had painstakingly stockpiled in the freezer, you can get a pretty good idea of my exhaustion during this time.

I knew that part of surviving these early days and adjusting to the new routine would involve keeping Ella rested and well-fed, and developing a calm routine. Devising how to do this was a major part of feeding my family in the last months of ‘08.  Now that my health has returned, and Ella manages school swimmingly, I can still use the general principles I developed back then on those days when things run late, or spin out of control, or the best laid plans run amuck. Which, of course, they sometimes do. So, for what it’s worth, here are my emergency strategies and plans for those busiest, terrible days.

My first strategy:  The Snack.  Right after school, I sat Ella & brother down for a good snack. Sometimes this would be a cookie or two & milk. Sometimes it would be whatever fresh fruit we had from the farmer’s market. Sometimes it was fresh almonds or pistachios, which we also get from the farmers market in all sorts of great savory and sweet flavors. Sometimes it was fresh popcorn.  I pretty much let her eat a small amount of whatever made her happy.  Happiness is good and so, I believe, are most things, in moderation.

For dinner, planning is essential.

1. Many side dishes can all be prepped and ready to go hours ahead:

I work from home, so it’s possible for me to get one or two things started at lunchtime, or right after lunch.  I still do this all the time. I can wash and prep vegetables and set them in their pots to simmer/steam. This might involve broccoli, spinach, green beans–whatever is in season.  I left little pots of carrots or radish or celery in the refrigerator to set out before dinner. If I’ve made a batch of homemade Thousand Island dressing, I throw that on the table too. It’s delicious, and it keeps. The principle is to get as much done when a) I’m not so tired and b) my kids aren’t both home and tired and doing homework and cranky.  Getting side dishes ready to get frees me up to be with them and cook a really simple main dish right when it’s time to eat.

• Since we eat whatever is seasonal and fresh from our farmer’s market, digging into my vegetable bin for a side dish or two is really, really simple.  Vegetables can be simmered or steamed in a matter of minutes, or very quickly sauteed with garlic, add olive oil, salt. I add a squeeze of lemon juice or drizzle a balsamic or red vinegar, and we’re all very happy.
• Use canned white beans, add olive oil, maybe a small amount of garlic (you can even crush a clove and let it sit, it will flavor just as well; just take it out after a few hours),  sage, a sprinkling of salt. You don’t even have to heat them up.
• If you can remember to put potatoes in the oven, there’s not much simpler than a baked one. But I often forget even to do this.
• Rice. Prep and start the rice cooker early. In a pinch, I have been known to rely on TJ frozen, precooked rice. It’s fast and good.
• Nothing beats a good loaf of bread.  I always keep some in the freezer to heat up with dinner if nothing else inspires.

2. Main Dish.

Eggs are your friend. Especially if you buy excellent eggs directly from a farmer, there’s not much better or faster than a good omelet or plate of scrambled eggs.  My kids both love to make/eat eggs, and when eggs are freshest (right now) they’re a real treat. Even if you pay $7/dozen, it’s still one of the cheapest sources of protein you can find.  For the grown-ups, pair it with a salad, crusty bread, and a glass of wine.  You can also fry them in a mix olive oil/butter +garlic + herbs and serve over pasta. It’s delicious.  Right now, eggs are coming into markets and if you’re lucky, you’ll find the ones from Happy Quail Farms whose yolks can be nearly red.  They’re amazing.

Simple Spaghetti. Many of these exist. We like canned tuna + olive oil + capers + lemon zest. Cacio e pepe=spaghetti + lots of finely shaved grana padano + pepper.  Fresh tomatoes (though they weren’t in season most of the fall, so this didn’t work) + black beans + olive oil + balsamic + basil + fresh mozzerella (a raw sauce). The list goes on.

Quiche. You can make this hours ahead and reheat or serve room temperature.

Precooked sausages.  You can do a lot with many of the “natural”, uncured sausages & kielbasas available these days.  They can be heated in your convection/regular oven in a matter of minutes, paired with white beans, added in the final minutes to a roast of apples & onions.   I use a very small amount of meat, and add sides.

Ham steaks. Niman ranch makes an excellent uncured hamsteak that cooks in about 5 minutes.  After you cook it, you can deglaze the pan with hard cider or beer or or just water, add some honey, mustard, shallots if you’re inspired, and you have a nice sauce. Ham is great with a baked potato and salad.

Fish tacos. For these, you can use frozen, breaded tilapia or cod filets, or, better, use an inexpensive fresh fish from your fishmonger, like red snapper. Salt the fresh fish, drizzle with lemon & olive oil, & broil in about ten minutes.  Salsa, sour cream, cilantro, mayo, and lime make a good baja-style sauce, and you buy fresh or precut cabbage, avocado/guacamole, etc. The kids can assemble their own with some help.

Frozen Tamales. There are several great, organic brands on the market these days. Keep them and some prepared guacamole in your freezer. Always

Trader Joes Maryland Crabcakes. Like tamales, we always have some of these on hand. They’re really, really good. Serve Sponge-Bob Style on a roll, with lettuce and tomatoes, or naked with faux aioli made with smashed up garlic, salt, lemon and mayo.

Roast Chicken. For me, this is one of the easiest things to cook. If I’m home, I prep & start it roasting at lunch or late afternoon, then it’s ready to serve for an early dinner.  OR–I’ll roast a larger chicken on the weekend, with extra potatoes, carrots, onions.  Then, with the help of a frozen pie crust & a quick bechamel I can make chicken pot pies.  These can be made in about 20 minutes prep time at lunch: divide the ingredients, make the bechamel, top with crust. Then you can refrigerate until it’s time to cook or bake right away and reheat.  I use individual serving dishes for the kids, and to the already cooked chicken and vegetables, you can add a handful of frozen peas, frozen green beans, fresh spinach–these days, Ella & Finn decide what they want.  The kids adore these, and like to put action figures and princesses on top of their crusts for presentation.  Or the kids can just eat leftovers, reheated in the pan sauce, and my husband and I can eat a composed salad, with the dressing made from the drippings.

Shrimp. Fresh, frozen, fresh frozen from my fisherman. Nothing cooks more quickly.  Add rice + vegetable+ soy based dipping sauce=easy Japanese style bowl. Or sautee in butter + lemon + wine for a scampi, server with bread and salad.  There’s also this Grilled New Orleans Style Shrimp (you don’t actually have to turn on your grill, just pan sautee)  if you like hot–not for most kids.

Fresh fish. Petrale sole can be cooked a la meuniere (dredged in flour and pan fried in butter) in a matter of minutes then topped with lemon/caper butter.    I can sometimes get fresh albacore tuna from my fisherman and it can can be grilled or broiled or pan seared and served with a Korean soy dipping sauce and rice. Very, very fast, clean cooking.  Scallops, same thing, but served with caper/butter/lemon sauce.  But they’re not cheap.

Pancakes. I was not above serving pancakes and fruit for dinner. Not the good kind. The kind from a box.  Of course, a big, big hit.

A good meatloaf can be made ahead–at lunchtime or even the night before.   Mine is never the same, but maybe I’ll blog this soon.

Pesto. I made, during the summer, in the height of basil season, dozens of batches of pesto and froze them, enough in each bag to dress pasta for one family dinner. This saved me many, many times.   It’s still saving me.

3.  Use your freezer. I also learned to rely on a few decent, frozen prepared foods that my kids loved, and we kept these in the freezer.  I have never in my life done this, and it does sort of horrify me, but many times these things saved me.

• Instant Miso. Add tofu, a side of rice (fresh or frozen), and potstickers.
• TJ Potstickers
• TJ (frozen) Organic Jasmine Rice
• TJ Teryaki Chicken  (This comes in a bag, and I sort of think it’s gross, but for a few months, my kids loved it. Now they’ve gone off it, but if you can bear to buy non-organic chicken, it’s worth trying as an emergency supply)
• TJ Frozen, Cooked Edamame, makes a terrific side dish
• TJ Maryland Crabcakes. See above.
• Tofu + premade simmer sauce
• Tamales (see above)
• Pesto (made fresh in the summer and stockpiled….)

Generally speaking the trick is to get the freshest produce you can find, which you can cook very simply.  Stock up on canned beans and rice and freeze a really good baguette or two. Decide on a few main dishes that you know your family really loves that you know can be cooked very, very quickly.  Keep a few things in your freezer for emergencies–not what I keep, necessarily, but things like these that your whole family will like.  Let me know, too, what you’ve found that’s uber fast and (mostly) fresh.

Sometimes I think about this phrase, “learning to eat” quite literally: who first learned how to break through all the artichoke plant’s thorny defenses and found the fleshy ends of the leaves, and the sweet, tender heart? How many people became ill from eating rhubarb leaves before someone learned that the stems are the edible part of that plant?

Then I think of the various food combinations that delight me, and I wonder about their origins. Did someone sprinkle salt, instead of sugar, on their caramel by accident one day? Who first thought to pair figs with cheese, and then hit on the particularly transcendent match of fig jam and manchego? Did two people, one nibbling a chocolate bar, one with a jar of peanut butter, really collide, as the old commercial would have it, to discover the happy  marriage of chocolate and peanut butter?

Marketing and eating with kids has me think about these questions all the time. Although at dinner we make one meal and sit down together to eat it, at breakfast and lunch I tend just to list a few of the available options and let the kids decide what combination of foods will make the meal. Their palates are different from mine, and also changing much more rapidly, so they need to learn what they like. For awhile this meant Ben’s breakfast was a bowl of yogurt with some graham crackers and sun dried tomatoes on the side. Eli’s lunch today was edamame and yogurt. A little weird, but perfectly nutritious. We don’t really aim for balanced meals around here (except at dinner); we aim for a balanced day.

Today at the market, Ben spied kumquat marmalade; he’s been on a bit of a kumquat kick lately, and loved the marmalade taste he was offered. On the drive home from the market, we talked about ways to incorporate the new jar of marmalade into his lunch, since I wasn’t going to let him just spread jam on bread and call it a meal (a mom I do lunch duty with at Ben’s school goes so far as to call jam on bread “cake.” I’m not that tough, I just suggest my kids eat some carrots on the side).  “Peanut butter,” I suggested, “some slices of cheese, veggie bacon…” I was tired, and sort of forgetting the main player in the sandwich. “Veggie bacon!” called Ben from the back seat; “Kumquat marmalade and veggie bacon sandwich!” Well, I thought, maybe this would be the new fig jam and manchego.

The combination of salty and sweet, crunchy and sticky, has some definite appeal. I’m not sure we’re setting a new food trend here, but you won’t know until you try it.

One thing I’ve learned doing this blog: food styling is hard. So don’t let the slipshod photo above deter you. This is an amazing recipe that came together one rainy afternoon last weekend.  This is done with beef ribs, but I suspect the flavors would be just as good if you substituted some rich porcini mushrooms for the beef.

I was inspired by a new cattle farmer–Holding Ranch–who’s shown up at our weekly farmer’s market.  They’re a  terrific small operation, and right now they’re carrying beef and chicken. In the spring they’ll have lamb and pork–at the time when the sheep and pigs are actually ready to slaughter. Yes, it’s true, meat should be seasonal like everything else we eat.  To give you an idea of scale–they butcher one steer a week to bring to market. The beef is terrifically expensive, so a difficult purchase even for me to make these days. However, I’m committed to buying from them, which will mean less meat, less frequently, which is a good thing, of course.

The first of my purchases, one rainy Sunday, was about a pound of beef short ribs. I think I paid around $13 for them, and I wasn’t really sure what I would get inside. When I opened the package, I found 4 good sized ribs, which was easily sufficient for our family.  Beef ribs have a good amount of meat and fat on them, and when they’re braised, with other things you really don’t want to eat a lot of them. (Okay, you might want to, but you don’t need too.)

I took stock of my garden and refrigerator and the ribs, which were just crying out to be braised–which is basically a slow, long cooking in liquid after browning the meat and aromatics on the stove top. What I came up with:  Guinness Braised Beef Short Ribs with Wild Mushrooms, Tomatoes, White Beans. Actually, I had cooking a big pot of cranberry beans, but I forgot about and they burned, so at the last minute I added a can of white beans instead to give body to the stew.

The meal was an enormous hit with us and the kids. And the meatless leftovers provided over 3 lunches for me over the week.  Pretty good for $13 + the cost of the vegetables.

Guinness Braised Beef Short Ribs

For each 1 lb of short ribs:

medium yellow onion, cut in half crosswise, then lengthwise into 1/4  inch slices (you don’t want the onions to dissolve in the braising)

4-5 medium carrots, cut crosswise into 2-inch pieces

2 cloves garlic, smashed

1 can plum tomatoes, drained and chopped in quarters

2 sprigs rosemary

beef broth or stock

1 can Guinness

1/4-1/2 oz dried wild mushrooms

8 oz white beans

olive oil

1. Reconstitute mushrooms in boiling water.

2. In a large (enameled) cast iron pot brown short ribs in olive oil until nicely brown all over. Remove from pan.

3. Add a few tablespoons or so (as needed) to the pan and sautee onion, garlic, bay leaf and carrots until the onions are soft.

4.Add about 1/2 the can of Guinness and stir until most but not all of the liquid evaporates. Drink the rest of the Guinness.

5. Return the meat and any juices to the pan.

6. Add the tomatoes and mushrooms.  Carefully pour the mushroom-soaking liquid into the pot–but be very careful not to dump in the grit.

7.  Add the rosemary springs and then pour in enough broth or stock to cover everything.  Okay, so this part makes it more like a stew and less like a braise….

8.  Cook for a few hours, until the ribs are tender and nearly falling off the bone.  Before serving, stir in the beans and heat through.

Not long ago, on a family trip to San Francisco, Ella, Finley, and I found ourselves staring at the counter of a French bakery, at a pile of croissants.  They didn’t know what they were, and as I explained to them the wonder that is a croissant, I found myself telling them not about croissant, exactly, and how good they can be, but about the summer I spent working in the French Alps at  a summer camp.  They know many stories from this time, including the fact that no one, not a soul, spoke even a word of English, so I was forced very quickly to abandon all pretense of speaking, looking, or acting even vaguely English-speaking.  They know that we ate baguette and cheese, or sugared candy or chocolate every day for afternoon snack.  They know that my first night, on the all night train, the youngest child, an adorable little 4-year old, looked up at me and said, “But you don’t speak French” (in French, of course), when I had uttered what I thought was a perfectly comprehenisble sentence in French.  Things changed quickly and by the end of the summer, I could enter the mountain village store and be served and local restaurant and be served without disdain; I dreamed in French, and upon my return to Paris functioned like a native speaker. Sadly, this is no longer true.

France was also the place where I learned to eat meat again, but that’s another story. The anecdote I found myself telling my children a we stared at that golden counter was about breakfast.

On the counselor’s mornings off, we got to order from the bakery, which meant croissant–plain, chocolate, etc.–and whatever we wanted would be brought to our room, with our choice of cafe au lait, chocolate chaud, etc…It was quite wonderful to wake up to perfect croissant and eat them and go right back to sleep while the French children screamed.

And every morning we drank big bowls of cafe au lait or chocolate, too, which Ella and Finn found really funny.

Not long after, as I was marketing I spied a box of frozen TJ chocolate croissants, so of course I bought them, and for some reason had the impulse to sneak them into my cart so Ella didn’t see.  Of course, Caroline and her family were fortunate enough to travel and eat in France last summer, and you can read about it all beginning here, but for the forseeable future, I’m going to have to recreate a little bit of France in our California home, so I bought the box.

We were in the midst of a rainy long weekend, and while many were away on ski weekends, I had been baking, and braising and nesting and so that night, I planned a petit dejeuner. The croissants are frozen, and you place them out on a cookie sheet overnight to proof, or rise.   I did this, set the table, boiled some eggs, set out bowls for the chocolate and coffee, prepped the espresso machine, and filled a bowl of fresh fruit.

I also left a sign that said “Do Not Touch! Not Cooked!” on the croissants, since Ella and Finn are known to be curious when it comes to food, and they were bound to be up first.

The next morning, Ella was exuberant: “I can’t wait to taste my first croissant!” she said, and while they were baking, I made the chocolate and coffee and whipped some cream.  They thought the bowls of chocolate chaud were hysterical, but they happily slurped them up just like a child should on a cold, rainy holiday morning.

When the croissant came out, Finn knew right away he was on to a good thing, because the moment he picked one up–before putting a single bite near his mouth– he exclaimed, “Mmmmm!  They’re so buttery and warm!”  And even though they are not the best croissant you will ever have, they were lovely, and that is all you really need to know.

Sushi for Change

In the spirit of the day, we took a vote on our celebratory Inauguration Day dinner, and sushi won. It’s one of those modular meals that everybody likes because each can tailor it to his or her own taste. Of course in this house, it’s all vegetarian sushi;  all I can tell you about the fish is go to the best fish market you can, ask them what’s freshest, and have them cut it for you. The main thing is to make the rice (recipe below) and then slice up and lay out whatever filings you like. It’s not fancy here — cooking with kids is always a bit of an art project — but it’s always tasty.

Here’s what we use:
sheets of roasted seaweed (“sushi-nori”)

1 sweet potato, cut into sticks and roasted with a bit of sesame oil and soy sauce

spinach, cooked, excess water squeezed out, and tossed with a splash of rice vinegar and sprinkled with sesame seeds

1 avocado, sliced

3-4 carrots, cut into matchsticks; raw, steamed, or roasted with the sweet potatoes

1 pound of tofu, sliced and fried

2 eggs, beaten with a little bit of rice wine, cooked into an omelette, and then sliced

cucumber, shitake mushrooms, and any kind of pickled vegetables are also nice if you happen to have them.

To make the rice, first cook 2 cups short grain rice in 3 cups of water. While it’s cooking, combine in a small bowl 6 T rice vinegar, 2 1/2 T sugar, and a pinch of salt. Let the rice cool a bit after it’s cooked, just by spreading it out in a large bowl, then stir in the vinegar mixture. Keep the rice covered with a damp cloth to keep it from drying out while you’re making the sushi (we never have this problem).

It’s helpful (but not essential) to have a bamboo rolling mat; a small kitchen towel will do in a pinch. Lay your sheet of seaweed on the rolling mat or towel. Spread the rice on a sheet of seaweed, leaving a slight border at top and bottom but getting it all the way out to each side. Lay your fillings on top of the rice in a small pile. Roll the seaweed up over the filling, and then continue rolling into a tight cylinder. Slice and eat!

I didn’t take very careful pictures of our process, but here’s how it looks:

Sushi ingredients, plus a banana (I don't recommend banana sushi)

Eli demonstrates how not to arrange the fillings

Eli likes to make train tracks with his tofu slices; we admire, and then rearrange.

Eli likes a super-protein roll of egg & tofu

Ben's tidy avocado roll in progress

A finished roll

With the economy in freefall, and no real end in sight, many of us are thinking about money and our weekly budgets, and how to save where we can.  I’ve heard people talking about bundling phone, internet, cable, getting rid of their landlines, adjusting their car & homeowners insurance–all in an attempt to get rid of waste, money being spent that doesn’t really need to be spent.

But what does this mean for our food spending?

Lots of food bloggers have already written about this, and about food deals and shopping tips, and related topics like how to make dinner for a family of four on $10 or less.  And in a recent conversation with one of the farmers I buy from every week, she mentioned that fast food sales are up.

But for me, the change in my food spending patterns has been negligible.

I think about food and money a lot, in part because it feels like I spend so much money on food.  In any given week, I spend between $90-$120 at Trader Joes, and depending on the season, between $40-$80 at the Farmers Market.  At the height of summer, when I’m buying to freeze for the winter, and loading up on stone fruit, berries, and tomatoes, it’s at the high end. Now, when I have a freezer full of produce and the market goods are much more reasonable, I can get away with $40, including my weekly supply of fish.

It is true that for a small family–in size as well as stature–with children only 4 & 6 years old, this is a lot of money.  But Ella and Finn are terrific eaters, they eat exactly what we eat, and overall, we eat a lot–really a lot of fresh food.  Aside from extra water, some judiciously chosen canned goods, extra peanut butter, & crackers, and energy bars that we keep on hand for earthquake supplies (a necessity where we live, just in case) we have no processed food in the house.  The kids snack on fresh fruit, some cheese, some crackers, fresh nuts from the market, etc.  At the end of the week, all of the farmers market produce is gone.

I have certainly cut back in many ways.  I no longer buy three kinds of olives on a regular basis. We eat very little meat, and very small amounts when we do.  There was a time when I would have 2 kinds of prosciutto in the house, or specialty cheeses from Whole Foods, three or four kinds of olive oil, etc.  Now these kinds of things are reserved for dinner parties or special occasions.  We eat out less frequently.  And I don’t know what I would do without Trader Joes, where I can get lots of local products (masked as generic TJ brand) at terrific prices.

But I won’t compromise on the farmers market, nor on buying organic, local meats, nor on shunning processed and premade foods–with a very few exceptions.   Michael Pollan wrote recently in the New York Times that household spending on food has gone from 18% to less than 10%, which made me feel better when contemplating the fact that by far the largest part of our weekly budget goes to food.  There was a time in this country when it was normal to spend a good amount of money on good quality food.  I’m certainly not saying one has to spend a lot of money, nor that bargains can’t be found–just that what we put on our tables should be compromised as little as possible given the family budget.  I’m not so sure it’s a good idea to aim for spending the least amount possible on food (just as I think it’s no longer a wise choice for most of us regularly to splurge at specialty markets).

It’s our argument here that food and eating is a central part of family life, and that how we feed our young children has an impact not simply on their health, but also on their lifestyle, now and for the rest of their lives   For me, though some weeks I sigh as the food bills climb, the payoff is mmediately visible when we sit around our table. The lessons of how we eat are legion–eating fresh, eating locally, eating seasonally, supporting farmers, eating sustainable food, knowing the origins of their food, knowing how food makes its way from farm to table, understanding growing seasons, understanding the real cost of food, knowing that our economy directly supports the farm economy, knowing the animals they eat were raised humanely and sustainably, etc.

These are lessons that will resonate in my children’s lives for years to come.

Let us know what you think. How do you balance food and finances?

Lisa probably has her own Part II for her  great post about marketing, but I’m sneaking mine in while I’m thinking of it. I, too, am more of a big weekly shopper than a daily shopper. I like to get in, fill the cart high, and get out fast. I like to have a well-stocked pantry so that we’re never at a loss for dinner, and always have the ingredients we need for muffins. The farmer’s market is the place to linger and chat, but I don’t get there as often as I’d like, so for now I subscribe to a CSA (and also, more recently, pick up Mariquita Farms’ fabulous mystery box), get the bulk of our groceries at Trader Joe’s, and fill in the missing odds and ends with a walk to Andronico’s, our lovely (but pricey) local market.

Over the last year or so, Tony and I have gotten our TJ’s shopping down to a science; we keep the list on the computer, updating as necessary, and it’s arranged in order of where the items are shelved, so we can cross things off as we go.

So here they are, the items that anchor our food life. I can’t quite resist the urge to annotate and explain, but for the most part I’ll just lay it out there:

Pantry staples
Capers
Olives
White beans
Black beans
Chick peas
Lentils

Pasta
Quinoa
Rice

Olive oil
Canola oil

Breads
Sandwich bread
Tortillas

Dairy
Yogurt
Regular nonfat
Fage nonfat
Milk
Butter

Peanut butter
Jam
Honey

Dried fruit and nuts
Cashews
- Roasted, unsalted
- Roasted 50% salt
Dry roasted unsalted almonds
Peanuts, Roasted, unsalted

pine nuts

Dried mango
Chili spiced mango
Dried Apricots
Raisins
Dried Cranberries

Granola fixings (I make granola every week)
Almonds, Raw, sliced or slivered
Sunflower seeds
Pumpkin seeds
Ground flax
Whole flax seeds

Baking
Vanilla
King Arthur Flour (all purpose white; whole wheat)
organic brown sugar
organic white sugar

Freezer
Frozen garlic (I know, I know. We use the real stuff, too. This is just very handy)
Frozen pizza
Ice cream
Frozen edamame
Frozen organic Raspberries (for smoothies)
Veggie Bacon

Chocolate chip cookies (TJ’s makes great, addictive little chocolate chip cookies. Sadly, the organic variety is not as delicious. Too crispy.)

Vegetable stock

Eggs
organic tofu

Cheeses
Grana Padano
Jack (Organic)
Mozzarella (logs)
Cheese sticks

Cereals:
O’s
Puffins
Hearts & O’s (this Kashi cereal has a different name which I now forget; this is what we call it)
Oatmeal
Multigrain cereal

Snacks

Golden Rounds (apparently discontinued –we haven’t seen them for months — but we love these Ritz cracker knock-offs too much to take them off the list!)

Kashi crackers
Luna bars
Z Bars
Honey Wheat Pretzels
Sesame Sticks

Household
Dishwasher detergent
Dishsoap
Laundry detergent
Tom’s of Maine Toothpaste
Vitamins

Wine
Beer