Going vegetarian?

One thing I worry about with kids is that someone in the family is going to be a vegetarian. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course, but I don't want to have to conceive and prepare more than one meal for any one meal time. Call me lazy.

But it might happen. Because of Austin.

And not because he's squeamish -- it's because he's grossing me out. He asked Julie the other day if people ate cats. She told him no. He nodded and agreed that the fur would be awful in your mouth.

And then I roasted a chicken and he ate both drumsticks. And then gloated -- gloated! -- about it afterward: "I ate two chicken legs! The chicken has no legs! He has to bounce around on his belly! Bok bok bok!"

I felt a little ill.

New purchase: Grill

I'm on a roll, aren't I? I think I finally lost my entire readership by slacking off and suddenly I'm pumping lots of prose onto the Internets. Perhaps this proves how insular blogging is.

Anyway, we bought a new grill a few weeks ago and I'm pretty happy with it. Here it is; available only at Lowe's.

The point is not the grill, however, the point is the cooking! For a while, I've been thinking about posting more about food and cooking, especially easy/fast/healthy meals that children will eat in the hopes of encouraging my meager readership to send their own meal ideas.

Here are my meal priorities: Balanced (protein, carb, vegetable), trying to eat more fish and less meat (not for any particular reason, just that meat is easiest and thus if I don't plan vegetarian or fish meals ahead, it becomes all meat), not super expensive, relatively quick cooking time (although sometimes longer prep time if done the night before).

So, to inaugurate my cooking posts, here're some of the things I've cooked on the new grill:

A terrific salmon recipe that I got from Jeff (he got it from the Black Dog Cookbook). The key is the marinade and getting one (or two) of those 2-3lb boneless slabs of salmon from Costco:

Marinade for a big ol’ slab of salmon, marinate from 4 to 48 hours (overnight is good). Makes enough for two slabs. Can use plastic bags for the marinating and then put on the grill.

1 cup olive oil
½ cup fresh lemon juice
¼ cup red wine vinegar
1 tbsp chopped parsley
¼ cup basil
¼ cup fresh rosemary
8 garlic cloves
1 tbsp salt
2 tsps pepper

Jeff grills it over fire, i.e. top open. I kept opening and closing the top as I cooked. You'll have to flip the fish at least once and two spatulas are recommended. You can see it's done when the flesh is opaque and don't worry if the slab falls apart -- your guests will eat it so quickly no one will have noticed.

A great end of summer dish especially if you've been growing parsley, basil and rosemary in your garden. Serve with carbs (Julie made Near East couscous -- five minutes) and a salad.

Our kids love it.

I also did a beer can chicken. There are recipes for it all over the web. Read these two and you'll have the basic idea. This one takes longer and is a weekend meal -- a little over an hour on the grill. But the kids love it and it's a spectacle.

Serve it with bread and roasted peppers: quarter them (throw out the seeds, stems and ribs), toss them in olive oil and salt and then set them on the higher shelf for ten minutes and then turn them over for another ten (or just leave them).

Here's the hamburger recipe that I'm slowly refining. Measurements are approximate:

for 5-6 burgers
1 lb ground beef
1 egg
3/4 cup bread crumbs
half a well chopped onion
three tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

I read somewhere to jam your thumb into the middle of each patty so that it looks like a red blood platelet (it didn't mention platelets, that's my helpful and anti-appetizing addition!); then, when the burger shrinks a bit, it still looks like a patty and not a spheroid.

And to end (for now), I tried grilled pizza the other night. Again, read over a few recipes for the basic idea, which I'll now repeat.

Let your dough rise and then roll it out (I've been buying dough from Bertucci's lately). Brush (or dribble) olive oil on one side of the dough and put it on the hot grill, oiled side down. I did this once by putting the dough on a baking sheet and just flipping it out of the sheet; the other time, I tried to drape it down on the grill which stretched it out a bit but turned out fine.

Let the dough cook a few minutes, until the bottom is cooked and stiff. Then (got those two spatulas ready?), flip the dough back onto the baking sheet, cooked side down. On the "uncooked" top, lay down your ingredients -- sauce, previously cooked veggies, meats and cheese. My kids love carmelized onions, broccoli, mushroom and pepperoni (and I use spaghetti sauce from a jar and slice up mozzarella cheese -- not the super fresh kind, but the ones that come in solid balls).

Be prepared: it's not pizza as you know it, but a variation. A yummy variation!

Send meal ideas and recipes!

Favorite food

Last post on Toronto:

Our current favorite Chinese restaurant is Skyland de Shanghai on Silver Star Blvd in Scarborough. Yummy soup dumplings, really nice breaded and fried ribs, and lots of other delicious dishes. Check it out.

Queen Street West

It's become a tradition of our visits to Toronto that my parents graciously watch the kids while Julie and I have a day of shopping and eating out downtown. We usually go down to Queen Street to see what's new in the stores. Last time Julie bought something from Annie Thompson and we went to dinner in Leslieville.

This time we went first to Caban, a lifestyle store from the Club Monaco empire. How to describe it? Club Monaco is like Banana Republic for hipsters. One of my great non-buying regrets involved Club Monaco and a pair of purple pants (the other one involves Miffy, the mouthless bunny). Caban, then, is like ... Pottery Barns crossed with Urban Outfitters without the kitsch.

Anyway, Caban is going out of business (which is why I didn't bother to link to it). on the day we were there, the store had just initiated a 30% clearance on everything and had been diverting all merchandise in Canada to the Queen Street outlet. Needless to say, we found some nice bargains. I think the coup was the $69 pants that were tagged $5 -- and then the cashier took another 30% off. Yes, $3.50 for pants. Yes, that's 95% off the original price. Crazy.

We then drove west past Bathurst and went to Kolkid, a fun store with toys, books and clothes for kids. Julie thinks it might be better next time to shop at the designer cooperatives just down the street. They're neat and it's fun to buy from the designer (Annie Thompson had come from the back of the shop to show Julie all the features on her skirt last time).

We also spent money at Morba, another lifestyle type place, but with more furnishings, including lots of Danish modern and other vintage pieces.

We looked but didn't buy at Timmie's Doggie Outfitters. The website as of now is not live, but the blog has some nice pictures.

Then it was time to eat. We decided to graze and sample a few places. First we had a beer and appetizers on back patio of Squirly's. I may have overdone it, because after that I wasn't hungry anymore.

But we went on to Banu, an Iranian place for some salad.

And then we got to Habitat. Habitat is an interesting restaurant where they served "kaisekis"; essentially tapas inspired by ... anything. You order 3, 5 or 7 kaisekis and they come out beautifully presented.

We had 5 of these bite sized tastes and Julie's first reaction was, "Is that all there is?" and then after the food was explained to us, her reaction was, "Do we have to eat all of it?"


Here's what we had, clockwise from the bottom: foie gras with white beans and fried onions; a sardine on gazpacho; frog legs wrapped in bacon; a ravioli with two sauces and potato foam; and, in that egg shell, an oyster with mushrooms. An experience!

We had told the waiter that I have a mango allergy; Julie wondered if we should have mentioned that she has an aversion to amphibians. (I have to admit, the legs were tasty although a bit fatty.)

That's it for our night out!

Organic food

I don't always buy organic food for the family, with some exceptions. If the price difference isn't great, I'll get the organic, but it's not a rule even though I know it's better for us and the environment.

We always buy organic milk for the kids, though, since they drink a lot of it and we worry about the growth hormones. John also told us to get organic raisins because the chemicals used on grapes get concentrated when they are dried out.

In other words, I'm a cheap pragmatic about organic foods.

There was an article in the Boston Globe this Sunday about organics that may help me decide how to buy other foods. The Environmental Working Group has found that

"peaches, nectarines, berries, cherries, apples, pears, spinach, potatoes, bell peppers, celery, and imported grapes are consistently found to be the most laden with pesticide residue."

By the way, this is taking into account regular washing. At the other end of the scale are foods that have the last amount of contamination:

"asparagus, avocados, bananas, broccoli, cauliflower, sweet corn, kiwi, mangos, onions, papaya, pineapples, and sweet peas."

The other caution is that if you eat a lot of the same food -- broccoli every night, for example -- you may want to buy organic so that you are not building up particular contaminants in your body.

So there you go. Here's the EWG's Food News website. And here's the page that lists the foods that are most and least contaminated (with links to a wallet sized guide and an explanation of methodology).

Pacific Catch -- Yum!

Yay! We had lunch at the newest Pacific Catch restaurant in the Corte Madera Town Center (keep going -- it's right around the corner from the Safeway). According to this page today, the restaurant ranks as #8 in popularity for San Francisco eateries among TripAdvisor respondents.

I'll admit to bias upfront: we know Aaron Noveshen, the chef, and Amy Shimm, who helped design some of the elements in the restaurant.

That said, we love this place. The location in San Francisco was nice -- a little tight, but the Corte Madera restaurant had lots of seating when we showed up around noon on a weekday during the holiday week. By the time we left an hour later, the place was pretty full, though.

Julie had the salmon teriyaki rice bowl that she talks about all the time (the last time she had it was two years ago). I shared the mixed catch with Austin in part because I love the coconut shrimp (the sweet and spicy dipping sauce is half the joy). Aaron had told us on our last visit that the coconut shrimp was a challenge put to him by one of his partners -- could he make a version that tasted fresh and interesting and wasn't just a cloying pander to an American palate for sweet fried nuggets of food? Done. The fried fish and oysters were also delicious as were the fries (this early review singled out the delicious sweet potato fries and asked for regular fries which have since been added to the menu). Bill was kind enough to share his excellent tuna poke -- delicious chunks of sushi grade tuna in a tasty marinade.

Do you have kids? The staff was so friendly -- they handed out chalk boards to all the kids to doodle on while we waited, and when we asked for an order of fries to hold off the kiddies it appeared very quickly.Here's Mari, looking concerned that her "twin cousin" Maia is already writing Chinese (albeit with a Hungarian lilt to her brush strokes).

Aaron tells us that the place is a kiddie madhouse from 5:30 to 6:30 so if you have kids, swing by. They're more than tolerated here and you can eat decent food. And if you don't have kids, maybe you should come after 7 pm. The prices are pretty fair -- you can have a good meal for cheap or a better meal for more, but it's not going to break the bank even if you go for the gusto. (On this page, one guy says he thought the food was expensive but a few others called it cheap.)

Oh, and I have to mention the dessert. This one Julie and I have both been talking about for two years: mochi balls with chocolate sauce. Yes, chewy, sweet Japanese rice dough covering ice cream and served with a warm chocolate dipping sauce. Austin loved it as much as we did.

We have only two words for Aaron: Atlantic Catch! Atlantic Catch!