Lunch on July 25 - El Cholo leftovers

Juju's birthday was last Friday and I forgot to take photos of the dinner as I mentioned I would last week.  Everything kind of came together at the last minute.  But, I did take a photo of the cake!  It was a dark chocolate recipe from Donna Hay's book Off the Shelf that my friend Billy gave me many years ago.  I would post the recipe here but honestly, it wasn't that amazing.  However I do recommend the book because her other recipes are delicious, easy to make, and nothing is ever ordinary.

It was a great birthday indeed:

Last night we continued the celebration and ate dinner at El Cholo where Julian was serenaded in Spanish and given her first taste of flan.  (She preferred the whip cream and caramel sauce to the actual flan).  I am serving the leftover rice, beans, and taco meat for lunch along with strawberries and watermelon.

As I watched the family next to us at the restaurant feed their 10 month old drops of Coca-Cola from a straw I couldn't help but wonder what would happen if we implemented a plan I read about in the New York Times on Sunday morning proposing we tax soda and other junk food while subsidizing vegetables.  It's an extraordinary idea even if it does have a few flaws (for example it's all well and good to make whole grains cheap and widely available but in addition to price a lot of people prefer fast food because it's fast - waiting 20 or 30 minutes for your quinoa or millet to cook is a luxury a lot or people, especially poor people, don't always have) but still really encouraging.  I love the idea of subsidized vegetables and a plan to give cooking tools and lessons to those who need them.  I also especially liked the line that has us imagine being able to buy whole grains at the library for 50 cents a pound.  Now that would be convenient!

Lunch on July 22 - Happy Birthday Lunch!

Happy Birthday Juju!  My little luncher is 3 years old today and has come a long way since her first meal on a sunny morning in Santa Monica.  So, today we'll celebrate with some favorite foods.

We greeted Juju this morning with the Happy Birthday song and a plate of favorites for breakfast - lox and cream cheese on a bagel.

Her lunchbox meal included some more favorites - orange slices, carrots, and sushi!  Also served but not shown is pasta in the shape of Arthur, (one of her favorite characters from the book and PBS show) and a smoothie made with Greek honey yogurt, milk, bananas, and strawberries.  I wanted to do something fun like write something with food or put a note in her lunchbox but since Juju can't read, I figured it was a wasted effort.

After lunch we'll join Juju in her classroom for a treat and a story.  Loyal readers are already familiar with the strict food rules at Juju's school so I opted for an inoffensive snack of fruit skewers.  Well I suppose the pointy ends of the skewers could be hazardous but we'll be careful.

A word of advice if you plan to make fruit skewers -- buy the fruit well in advance.  I bought a lot of it last night in a rush and didn't pay attention to what was ripe and what wasn't.  The result was a lot of hard fruit I couldn't serve to kids.  Oh well, at least the strawberries and oranges are sweet.

Dinner completes the day of favorites.  We'll have corn, broccoli, mahi mahi and lamb chops.  I'll try to post photos later.  Happy Birthday!