Is it a one-off?

Caro lettore (dear reader)-

What a hiatus! As you probably read in the last post, we were getting closer to expecting a daughter, and indeed she arrived back on the 5th of May. Amelia was born at 4:44pm, weighed in at 6 pounds 6.5 oz, and was 18.75 inches long.

Her cuteness:

Needless to say, she has been a time consuming but wonderful addition, which is why this blog has been dormant for so long. I'm hoping to avoid that blog phenomenon, which is the inspired post after a long absence, followed by a complete shut-down. Fingers-crossed.

In some free-time, I've been really honing in on the cultural aspects of eating, including working with a student to peruse the popular bookshelves for answers about why we, as Americans, are doing so poorly in preventive health respective to our eating and activity habits. I don't think the answers will shock anyone, but the details really make for quite a story. I hope to get into more of this in future blogs, but suffice it to say that the perfect storm of policy decisions and marketing genius certainly haven't hindered it.

As a family we are looking forward to making our own baby food as the various seasonal vegetables come onto the scene, as well as doing our best to live out a mantra that seems simple enough, and was proposed by Michael Pollan: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." On the surface it seems silly -- of course we should eat food. What else would we eat? Chairs? Toys?

What Pollan means by this, however, is that we should stick to real (whole) foods that our great-grandparents would recognize as such. Again, this should be easy, but how difficult is it to give up soda (or diet soda), non-butter products (i.e. spray butter), and processed, easy foods like frozen meals and mac-n-cheese? It's not easy. But like anything, we should do our best, and over time I think the payoff will become evident. If nothing else, eating lots of veggies in season allows us to get the tastiest food possible.

Tonight we are having guests over, and I'll probably play it safe with an old reliable. Chicken with some rosemary and garlic from our farmer's market, in foil packets cooked on the grill, vegetables (local summer squash, potatoes, onions, garlic, and olive oil) also in foil packets, and the Cucina Viola original salad - with apples and tossed in balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper and spices.

-C