Last night I had Luke in stitches recounting an incident earlier in the morning at the gym. We took both girls to the gym for Family Day. It’s become our favorite weekend routine to bring Chiara to the pool, and we’ve already started to do this with Jemma, who stays in the water for all of two minutes before it gets too cold to be safe.

Chiara has made quite a few friends among the other families, and yesterday, the first weekend back since Labor Day, there were a lot of families present. One girl in particular reminds me of Chiara, though she is three years older. She has the same exuberance tempered with a great deal of affection. She and Chiara can often be found hugging each other and sometimes have to be told not to hug others, because they have such strong embraces and don’t always know their own strength.

Anyway, this friend, her father, Chiara and I were all in the pool together when the friend called Chiara and me to attention. “Watch this,” she cried, and did a forward flip in the water. Then, still treading water, she cried, “Watch this,” and did a backward flip in the water. It was very impressive. I asked her father if she took swimming lessons but she hadn’t, she just taught herself through sheer enthusiasm.

My daughter, despite was wearing a dayglo pink swimsuit with built-in flotation devices to keep her head above water, was not to be outdone. “Watch this!,” she cried, and then turned clockwise while paddling her arms and legs. Her head remained perfectly dry. There was more. “Watch this!,” she cried, then paddled herself counter-clockwise, too.

“That’s easy,” her friend said, with some disdain in her voice. But Chiara didn’t notice or seem to care. She was very pleased with herself.

Getting Chiara to go to sleep takes a bit of coaxing. Recently Luke and I hit on a new theme, telling Chiara to look for us in her dreams. It really seems to comfort Chiara and enable us to leave her when she is still awake. Before we leave her darkened room she calls out, See you in my dreams!

But I had never actually followed up on the theme. So this morning I asked her whether she saw me in her dreams. She said she didn’t.

“Did you see anyone in your dreams?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“I saw Jemma.”

“What was she doing?”

“She was smiling at me.”

This may have been our finest meal from the farm so far.

Insalata Caprese
(farm-fresh tomatoes, mozzarella di buffala and opal basil with olive oil and balsamic vinegar drizzled on top)

Salad of Roasted Golden Beets and Fennel with Orange
(dressing made from sherry vinegar and olive oil)

Sauteed Swiss Chard and Chickpeas with Whole Wheat Fusilli
(just sauteed onions and garlic with olive oil, added chopped chard and a can of chickpeas, then squeezed a lemon and generously sprinkled parmesan on top. delish!)

Semolina Bread with Black Sesame from Amy’s Bread

We used the following vegetables from our shares this week and last:
Chard, onions, tomatoes, basil, beets, fennel

What will we do with the many eggplants and zucchini we received this week? Tomatoes are no problem. I can eat them all day long. We received three pounds of beautiful ones today.

The most interesting thing we received today were several branches of edamame. I picked the pods off today and stored in the fridge. I’ll clean them tomorrow and boil them up and we’ll see how they taste. They are awfully small though — seem like a lot of work for what I expect will seem like a small payoff.

Gazpacho!

The weird thing about making gazpacho for dinner from the CSA ingredients is that the base of the salad/soup that is gazpacho is tomato juice from a bottle. I wasn’t expecting that. I thought I was just going to puree the vegetables I had and that would be it. But I only had three tomatoes, if large ones, so I ended up finding a bottled organic tomato puree when I was at Citarella and it made a great base with some added water. Luke was surprised to learn that one of the ingredients in gazpacho is bread, soaked in water, and pureed with the rest of the veggies.

With sliced avocado on top, and toasted bread with olive oil drizzled on it, it made a meal and was delicious.

Mondays are the last full day of the CSA veggies because we get the new vegetables for pick up every Tuesday afternoon. So sometimes the meal has a kind of sad air about it, the dregs of an installment, or sometimes tired vegetables. Usually, though, since they are delivered fresh from the farm the produce holds up quite well throughout the week. I’m pleasantly surprised at how delicious a cucumber is one week later, and especially the lettuces we’ve been getting.

Tonight, though, I basically had a bunch of rat-tail radishes and zucchini. The radishes were a major bust the week before, and last Tuesday when we went to pick up our week’s share, the giveaway table was positively bursting with rat-tail radishes and nothing but. When I said the radishes were apparently unpopular, one of the women picking up her share said, “In fact, they were distinctly disliked,” or something to that effect.

Remember, though, that I was one of the few who actually liked them. But then, I also love radishes and eat them with some seasoned salt as a snack. I decided to make the same dish I made almost two weeks ago, the Indian curry with rat-tail radishes and potatoes. But this time, I would throw in zucchini, and because I had some on hand, add a smattering of lentils, the last bits of a container that hadn’t made it into some soup or dish a while ago. I must admit that I didn’t have fresh tomatoes on hand, so I used the crushed tomatoes leftover from a can that I used to make fennel and tomato soup. The whole dish took on another dimension. The curry was more tomato-ey, and the lentils gave it greater body. The coriander and turmeric were more subdued since they were jostling with canned instead of fresh tomatoes.

The rat-tail radishes were better this time because I learned my lesson and trimmed both the head and tail of each of them, to reduce the odds of getting a chewy, inedible fiber in your mouth with no genteel way to discard of it.

The result was that both Luke and Chiara liked the dish this time. Luke said it tasted better to him, and Chiara had just a classic mature comment. She said, after taking a few bites, “Apa, thanks for making a delicious dinner.”

Luke replied that he hadn’t cooked, I had.

To which Chiara replied, “Oma, you make delicious dinner every night.”

I was beaming of course, but also at her maturity and grace. I can only imagine how she will speak up when she’s someone’s dinner guest years from now and speak so beautifully to her hosts. How did I get so lucky to be Chiara’s oma?

So, it’s hard to believe, but the rat-tail radishes were a hit!

One of the best things about being a parent is having a front-row seat watching a little person develop a sense of humor. What Chiara finds funny is punctuated by an infectious, gleeful laugh. And recently, she has started to make jokes that crack her up, but puzzle the rest of us. Then of course, she says something inadvertently funny.

Last night at dinner, she declared, “I love tofu, Apa loves tofu, Oma loves tofu!”

Luke replied, “We’re a tofu family!”

Chiara (gleeful laughter): “You crack me up Apa.”

Luke: “No, you crack me up!”

Chiara: “i’m cracked!”

Tonight’s dinner was one I would like to revisit from time to time, with some important changes. We had an Indian-themed dinner that centered on rat-tail radishes, an unusual vegetable that is a pod, like a green bean, that has a distinctly radish flavor and even some of the bite. What I am enjoying about the CSA is the discovery of unusual vegetables and the need to find new recipes to cook them. What i’m not enjoying is how often vegetables or more likely the herbs they send, go bad and I have to throw them out. But tonight I found a recipe that looked good for these radish pods, and it was:

Moongre ki Subzi (from a blog called Mad Tea Party)
(Radish pods)
Serves 4

250 gms fresh radish pods
1-2 potatoes
1 T grated ginger
5 garlic cloves, crushed
2 tomatoes, chopped
1-2 T oil
1 t cumin seeds
pinch of hing
1/2 t turmeric
1 1/2 t coriander powder
1 t red (cayenne) chilli powder
salt
coriander leaves (cilantro) for garnish

Rinse the radish pods. Top and tail them. Snap into 1-1 1/2″ lengths. Peel and cube the potatoes.

Heat oil in a heavy bottomed pan. Add the cumin seeds followed by hing, then garlic and ginger. Once the garlic is fragrant add the chopped tomatoes. Stir and cook till the tomatoes turn to mush and the oil begins to surface. Add a pinch of salt if the mush starts to stick to the bottom of the pan. Add turmeric, coriander powder, and red chilli powder, in that order. Give a stir and let fry for a few seconds till the spices are cooked, taking care to not let the chillies burn. Add the prepared vegetables. Sprinkle salt and mix. Cover and cook till potatoes are tender, about 20 minutes.

The only problem with the dish was the rat-tail radishes themselves. I loved the flavor but found the vegetable too chewy for enjoyable eating. Luke just flat-out didn’t like the radish pods much at all. The flavor of the sauce was excellent though so I think we’ll maybe consider making this dish with green beans in the future.

The rest of tonight’s menu was a Jodhpur dal (a snip-and-heat pack from Trader Joe’s), basmati rice, and a tossed salad with our house dressing, which is a balsamic and mustard blend. It doesn’t quite fit with indian food, but it wasn’t clashing either, just a little odd.

I was just sitting and reading the paper online when I heard little Jemma cough in the other room. Could it be that for about an hour I forgot I even had an infant daughter? How different it is to have a second child! I cannot remember ever having a moment to think of myself almost three years ago when I was a new first-time mom.

But what has come back intensely are the feelings that come over me when I hold my baby, and having the emotion of deep love soak into my every cell as I look at my baby’s face. It still happens now, with Chiara, who is growing more and more beautiful and charming every single day. And it happens with Jemma, who is sweetness personified.

So, even though today was a terrible, strained and strenuous day. Even though Chiara overturned her dinner on the floor and then told me she was still hungry. Even though Jemma woke up, at the tender age of six weeks, with congestion and a wracking sneeze that frightened and saddened me (but miraculously seemed fine by the afternoon). Even though I had to fill out form after form today for my maternity leave that began with me stating the nature of my disability was pregnancy. At 10:30 pm tonight, or whenever it is right now, I feel grateful to have these two beautiful babies in my life. I’m so full of curiosity and hope for them and their shiny futures. I wish I had a crystal ball; but I know that it’s better to have life unfold on its own time. I’ll try to savor all of it and not be undone by the small things. Like almost everything that happened today!

Now I think I’ll go check on Chiara maybe even lie down next to her for a minute. She’s grown so big. Time is so elastic.

Tonight we received more bok choy and chinese cabbage from the CSA! I had gone to the grocery store yesterday and bought a few different kinds of seitan and some tofu and tempeh so that I had options for all these cabbage-y vegetables.

We had a stir-fry of tofu, bok choy, chinese cabbage and a little mizuna for good measure. It was actually one of my better stir fries. I hate how the liquid always cooks away when I make these so this time I doubled the liquid part of the recipe and added more liquid as needed. I like my rice to get all soupy when I eat stir fry!

The stir-fry recipe came from Epicurious.

The thought I had today about this CSA is that 1. I should invest in a good asian cookbook to give me more varied and creative ideas for using these asian vegetables, and 2. maybe once I’ve done this I can write my own cookbook! I would love to write a cookbook.

On Sunday, the 24th, we celebrated Luke’s mom’s birthday by having dinner at her place. Unfortunately, since Michael was out of town, she had to cook her own birthday dinner. And did she cook! She made two desserts and had the sweetest most beautiful cherries on the table too. We had brought her a gorgeous white porcelain double serving bowl as a gift and the cherries were luminous in it. Dinner was her “company special”: polenta with ragu, a delicious potato salad with vidalia onions, avocado and cucumbers, and a tossed salad with enoki mushrooms and red peppers.

Before eating, we held up our glasses for a toast. Luke called out to Chiara: Pick up your glass so we can have a toast.

Chiara looked confused for a moment, surveying the sippy cup in front of her and the glasses we were holding. She said, “Apa, this is not a glass; it’s a plastic.”

So, Luke, Nana, Monica, Melanie and I held up our glasses and Chiara held up her plastic and we toasted to many more years for Grandma Mimi.