Foodie.

I love food.  If you know me, then this is not a surprise for you.  I love to eat food, cook food, think about food, talk about food, watch tv shows about food, read books/magazines about food...You get my point.  Food with Chase has been a little bit challenging given his [cow's] milk allergy.  How ironic that MY child would end up with a food allergy?  (I truly don't know anyone in this world who loves cheese, milk, butter, cream and any other milk product more than me.)  At any rate, it's been hard because he's not a huge eater (more of a 'grazer') and pretty much a little, skinny-minny runt-weighing in at a whopping in 20.5 lbs. at 15 months.  So it's a big deal when we discover that he likes to eat something...Particularly something new.  Yesterday I discovered that he loves edamame.  Very exciting since there's so much protein in those tiny little beans and I found them already shelled in the frozen section at Trader Joe's-also at a very cheap price, I might add.  Betty Ann said that he LOVED chicken lo-mein the other day so that was exciting as well.  Never did I think I would get such sheer pleasure out of watching my son eat when I know that it's good for him. 

Tonight I spent about 3 hours steaming and pureeing spinach, roasting and pureeing sweet potatoes, making brownies (that's for dinner at a friend's house tomorrow.  not for Chase), and making sweet potato pancakes (well, the mix anyway) for breakfast tomorrow morning.  I mentioned a while ago that I have a book called "Deliciously Deceptive" and it has all kinds of creative ways to add fruits and vegetables to recipes.  Chase has 16 teeth right now so you might be wondering why I was pureeing everything.  Well this book has recipes that calls for adding pureed fruits and veggies so that they blend in more 'deceptively'.  It's still really important to let the child see 'real' fruits and veggies but for me it's just an easier way to ensure that I'm adding something good to what I'm already making.  So since we have a long weekend- and I an obsessed with food and cooking- I decided to take advantage of the free time to make some of the recipes to try out on Chase (and Matt...).  Yes, I know...  I'm pretty wild.  What a crazy Friday night...  I did have a couple glasses of wine while I steamed, pureed, roasted, and baked.  Does that make me more fun?  (Just in case anyone's wondering what Matt's been doing during this 'crazy' Friday night, here you go:)