Well, we’ll be starting solids (! How did such a thing happen? Isn’t he a newborn still?!) with Ilan this week but it sure won’t be Waffle House. Instead we’ll probably be starting with some butternut squash or sweet potatoes, and then next week we’ll probably move on to some greens or broccoli (I’m actually quite eager to see if he enjoys greens since I ate a metric ton of them while pregnant). This is actually lovely because all of these things are in season right now so he will be getting prime, delicious bites. While he is incredibly interested in food and showing all readiness signs (though his pincer grip still needs some work), I don’t anticipate he will eat a whole lot yet. With Wren, I followed my gut with solids and never did “baby food” specifically; rather I always gave her a bit of what we were eating, just cooked softer and smaller. She wasn’t much interested in anything but “tastes” before around 9 months (when, interestingly enough, she also sprouted her first teeth and then began eating her weight in food) and we never pushed it. I am a big proponent of this method. I like things to happen organically and this felt like a really natural progression. My parenting strategy, if I have one, is “meet my children where they are” (in all things), and it’s worked for me. With Wren at least, she became and stayed a very “good” eater. Though she was more adventurous as a toddler than she is as a preschooler (which is developmentally appropriate, and I don’t fret it much), she self-regulates very well. Some days she won’t be interested in anything but carbs but two days later will eat half a head of broccoli. I once read Dr. Sears advice to look at weeks rather than days when evaluating your child’s diet and it has always served me well and kept me sane and calm with regard to all things feeding.

But I digress! Let’s go over the roundup of last week’s meals. The only new thing to review is the root beer baked beans meal, which was, alas, one of those disaster kind of meals where nothing goes your way. The beans didn’t cook properly (I started from dried), for one. Then we all discovered we are none too partial to acorn squash, which I kind of knew already but refuse to believe because the acorn squash at Souen is so incredibly good. The dressing was excellent though, and the best brussies were as always, well, the best.

Oh, actually, I lied. The coconut vermicelli dish I cooked up was also new and was a very, very nice and QUICK meal. I will tweak this recipe and eventually post it. And while we had planned to make the garlic soup, we ended up eating pizza with some friends instead so it’s up this week! Stayed tuned: I am eagerly anticipating it.

And here’s what we’re eating this week:

Wednesday: Chilaquile and the quickest apple crumble of all time. I promised Wren apple crumble and I delivered, despite running late and then getting stuck in the rain on the way home from the gym. But I managed, and it was delicious. The Chilaquile was good too though a little bland for my liking, and Wren is inherently suspicious of casseroles so she mostly add individual beans and some corn on the cob. It did use up a load of leftover tortilla chips from a party with threw Saturday night though, which was aces.

Thursday: Was supposed to be soup tonight, but as it’s a balmy 75 degrees out I’ll probably go with spanakopita (Wren’s favorite, which she has dubbed “mamakopita”), my most excellent blackened tofu, and roasted butternut squash.

Friday: Honey baked lentils (another of Wren’s favorites, and so easy! It’s an amazing go-to meal) and baked rice, best brussies again.

Saturday is our Coop playschool’s Autumn party, which we are hosting! I’m making this awesome chili (though I generally use kidney beans, not chickpeas — and more than is called for — and only barley, which i also increase) and my equally awesome fall salad, which I blogged about here.

Sunday: We moved family day to Sundays since we were always doing family things on Sundays anyway. This time it’s Halloween, obviously, and we’ll probably grab some pizza while we’re out and about.

Monday: Mushroom Kasha burgers, homemade whole wheat rolls, broccoli, sweet potatoes

Tuesday: Garlic soup meal I mentioned last time.

Sneaking in here under the wire for my Wednesday meal planning post! I know I said I would probably fail you, but failing you after only a week would just be embarrassing. So here I am!

So before I share what’s up for this week I thought I would review the quick egg and rice dish I made last week (the only recipe from last week that I hadn’t ever made before). Actually (and probably surprisingly for those of you who know me) this was my first time making poached eggs — I’ve always been intimidated by them. I am proud to announce, however, that I have now successfully poached eggs! Which is good news indeed, since I love me a good poached egg. The dish itself was very simple, very quick, and very delicious. For some reason our kitchen was chaos that night though and both children were screaming at various points while we ate. And Wren was insistent that the black rice was actually beans.

Conclusion: It’s way more simple to make poached eggs than people make it out to be; your child may be intimidated by “the emperor’s forbidden rice”; overall this is an easy weeknight supper I’d definitely recommend.

And now for my meals this week:

Wednesday: Leftover night for Andy and Wren while I go out to eat with a friend (luxurious!). I am told they ate pierogies and chili (not together!) so, uh, we can call this international night.

Thursday: Thursdays is family outing night (or family movie night if the weather is crappy) so we always rotate homemade pizza with Spaghetti and “meatballs,” which is thus up this week, and which I will pair with salad (I have perfected vegetarian meatballs and it’s a good thing too because I have such fond memories of making meatballs with my grandmother that for years I fretted about how I could properly nurture my children without a decent meatball recipe. How’s that for my Brooklyn Italian side coming out? Meanwhile, the salad will be romaine and a yellow pepper — both still in season, hooray! — with roasted butternut squash, goat cheese, and sunflower seeds — the same salad I made last Thursday and which was *amazing*. Wren will likely just eat the roasted squash, however. Preschoolers are not generally known for their salad consumption but I just keep offering assuming one day she will try it.).

Friday: Poorjee. Poorjee is a Pakistani dish of spinach, eggs, and potatoes. I will serve this with rice or roti. It is one of Wren’s absolute favorite meals.

Saturday we are eating dinner with some friends (twice in one week! Positively decadent for us.)

Sunday: Garlic soup, quinoa skillet bread , sauteed broccoli.
I’ve made the skillet bread before — it’s lovely. The soup is a new recipe to me.

Monday: A meal inspired by a dear friend. Root beer baked beans (made veg), chili lime acorn squash, best brussies

Tuesday: I am obsessed with this Vietnamese restaurant in Pittsburgh called Tram’s. And on Tuesday I am going to attempt some kind of noodle dish that will satisfy my cravings for their coconut vermicelli. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Fondue Night! (Yes, my child’s feet are on the table. We are barbarians!)

There are two things you should know, and maybe already know, about our eating habits:

1. We are diehard meal planners. I started meal planning in late 2003, when I realized that in order to successfully feed one graduate student and her then-unemployed partner, you have to get organized. Like seriously organized. As in, set a budget, plan a menu around that budget, go shopping only with a list, and never deviate from set list. And I’ve been meal planning ever since. Truly, I am not sure how one (especially if one has a family) even approaches dinnertime without a set list of meals to choose from. This fact probably betrays my lack of imagination and ability to think on my feet, but just the thought sends me into my own truly spooky witching hour. Indeed, our meal planning and grocery shopping has reached such a compulsive level that we have a print-out grocery list, organized by aisle, wherein I can just check off what we need and so Andy (who is the designated shopper) can get in and out in 1/2 hour flat.

Sometimes I like meal planning and sometimes I don’t. I really enjoyed it pre-kids, when I could sit down with a cup of tea and a stack of cookbooks, and do it in a leisurely way. Now I often resent it for eating up all too much of my kid-free time (generally after they go to bed on Tuesday nights, when all I want to do is curl up with some hot chocolate, knitting, and “Six Feet Under”). But I must admit it is entirely indispensable.

2. As of Spring 2009, we eat according to the seasons and what’s available locally in terms of produce. This was motivated by a combination of environmental beliefs as well as gut feelings (backed up by some research) about wellness, paired with my own propensity to make things hard on myself. (That last part is — mostly — a joke.) We have been aided in this plan by our membership at the truly amazing Park Slope Food Coop, which updates its in-stock produce every morning as well as the produce’s point of origin. (The PSFC defines “local” more broadly than we do but since they generally give more specifics than “locally grown” we pick and choose according to our own definitions.)

A brief rundown of the way it works is this: On meal planning night, I look at the PSFC website and see what’s around. I plan meals around those vegetables. Over the summer, I preserve a good amount of vegetables as well as some fruit (particularly berries, which freeze well, and a few bags of peaches for smoothies or pie) to supplement the cruelest winter months (February and March being the only months where basically *nothing* is in season). Our meals thus follow a certain natural rhythm not only according to what’s available but also according to the season itself: heavier, starchier foods in winter and lighter food that can be prepared without turning on the oven in the summer. While I miss salad in the winter, fruit has never tasted as good as when I have had to wait for it, and there is a certain mammalian pleasure to letting the time of year naturally determine what I am eating and how it is prepared. It was very interesting to me to notice that contrary to when I was pregnant with Wren over the summer and wanted only to eat salad and fruit, my pregnancy with Ilan (which took me through the winter months) centered around soup and an alarming amount of collard greens.

We are not purists, however, and we do buy certain non-local produce: for example, while we are lucky to have local onions and garlic for most of the year we don’t always, and ginger is not something this Pakistani girl will do without. Likewise, we do buy dried fruit for Wren to snack on as well as lemons and limes for cooking, which are of course never local. And we do allow ourselves the occasional non-local fruit, particularly during winter months (I won’t ever buy, say, a banana when the coop is overrun with local peaches and plums and melon, but I will allow Wren clementines here and there, particularly in the winter months when we are eating our 28982978297298728927th apple of the year. And I don’t think I could ever wean myself off pineapple and mango entirely, even if the mangoes here leave much to be desired, especially because pineapple in a savory dish is one of my true joys!).

Now why do I bring this all up now?

At various iterations of my blogging “career,” I’ve attempted to record my weekly meal plans on my blog. And I have failed, every time, recording them for a few weeks and then forgetting. Generally, my (failing) efforts have been motivated by friends repeatedly asking me to do so. Occasionally it occurs to me that maybe it would be useful to have a “meal planning” tag and to be able to quickly see what I was cooking at a specific time in years previous, but yet here I am, still flipping through my old datebooks for ideas instead. They take up space, sure, but I must admit it always makes me smile to look at old datebooks and find the various notes to myself or to remember what I did on the 21st of December in 2005 (had dinner with my Intro to Africana Studies class at the now-out-of-business Zen Palette).

Yet recently it’s been requested of me to share my meal plans again, by more than a few people, and so I am attempting to comply, AGAIN, with the disclaimer that if I fail, AGAIN, you’ve been warned. That being said, I’ve also realized in the past year that our meal plans might actually be useful because of the seasonal element. Now, I don’t purport to be any kind of food blog expert, but I can say that I subscribe to what might rightly be called a ridiculous amount and have been generally amazed at how few are seasonally inspired. Sure, you’ll see people mention their CSA boxes during the growing season, but you will also see more than your fair share of asparagus from Chile in the middle of December. Which is fine, of course, but not helpful if you are attempting to avoid doing this. I am sure there are foodblogs that are locally-themed and that, because it is not physically possible to read everything on the vast interwebs, I don’t know about them, so please don’t read this is as my claiming some kind of innovation on my part. I did, however, think that it might be helpful for others to see what’s cookin’ over here in Brooklyn throughout the year.

So, with that disclaimer, here’s what we are eating this week. I have linked recipes wherever possible but am happy to provide more detail to ones that are not online — just ask!

W: Creamy Vegetable Millet Casserole, corn on the cob (we are attempting to eat a metric ton of this before it goes out of season!), baked potatoes
Th: Homemade whole-wheat Pizza with various toppings according to whose slice it is (broccoli rabe, olives, roasted butternut squash), salad
F: Poached Eggs over black rice
Sat: Pierogies, Cabbage, Applesauce
Sun: African Pineapple Peanut Stew (see, there’s a pesky pineapple! We haven’t had this dish in 2 years and of course it would appear on the plan this week, by special request.)
M:Korma (with Cauliflower, Potatoes, Carrots), Roti
T:Leftover night

Let’s see if I remember to do this next Wednesday! If I do, I’ll review any dishes here that I hadn’t tried before (which I think in this case is only the poached egg dish) and then write out the plan for next week.