Awwwww. Please share gumbo pics when it’s done!
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Ragda (stewed white peas) and very orange sweet potato patties tonight, topped with various chutneys, diced onion, and sev (fried chickpea noodles) for crunch.
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will do, tomorrow night!
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You’re getting some nice color on the roux!
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thanks! i’m so afraid i burned it - it’s a tad bitter! last time i did it via the oven method, which worked great, but our oven is out right now. we shall see…
so glad it worked! I wish I’d known my son when he was that age…he’d be eating differently now for sure. The receptive language ability starts so young, so watch what you say, even if (or especially if) he doesn’t seem to be listening.
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After a cooking hiatus, last night I made butter/wine/herb poached cod with mashed sweet potatoes, roasted green beans and a cucumber salad. Even the baby ate the cod! Yay!
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Do you find them easily in France, naf?
Very rare to come across them in the UK (even in the expensive supermarket we shop at from time to time)
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Cans, yes. Fresh, rarely too. Here, they prefer selling French or Spanish tomatoes.
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Not so fast, @Madrid. I ate my usual foods while pregnant (eg, spicy and otherwise big flavors) and presumably so did spring onion in utero. We gave him all sorts of seafood, Korean food to no avail. Master spring onion is still as picky as most other American kids are. And it drives B and I to the brink of madness. But we keep trying.
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Are you familiar with Ellyn Satter’s work? It helps keep me sane…
Basic gist: you select the menu and set the meal times, your child decides if and what to eat. As a rule of thumb, try to have something familiar and liked on the table to help them lower their guard and be more accepting of new/less favorite foods. And keep offering! Until you turn blue! 
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We made more progress with the peer pressuring tonight🤣He’s bound to catch on soon, so I’m squeezing in as many foods as I can while I still can. LOL.
Tonight we made mall-food-court style General Tso’s chicken over cauliflower quinoa. Used up some lingering broccoli and fennel and tossed in frozen leek and ginger along with hot bean paste, chili black bean oil, and the last of some jarred “Kung Pao” sauce. It was good in a “guilty pleasures” kind of way - and fast.
The baby ate: un-sauced chicken tenders, cashews, cauli quinoa mixed with cottage cheese, avocado, and some baby mozarella. He was not buying my line about the broccoli🤷.
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if only…
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Some treats that were by-products of a shopping trip for tonight‘s dinner - chicken sfeeha (hand pie) and mini lahm bi ajeen (aka lahmacun) from the bakery next to the spice store, plus crab and spicy pork xlb from a place on the way back to the subway. Supplemented by more of the steamed skinny asparagus.
Plus a fun time at the spice shop, a kitchen store, another middle eastern grocery that looks like it stopped in time (or is a front), and an asian vegetable shop on the same block that had most of my usual chinatown stash. All set for a while!
Now to decide what to do first with my new haul of aleppo and urfa peppers… adana kabab is high on the list.
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I am so obsessed with Urfa pepper. It has that great umami quality and is not too hot.
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Those are some significant by products
Love me some lamah bi ajeen
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I’m very excited - I generally try not to buy more spices because I am overloaded with every variety of indian spice, but decided that urfa isn’t similar to anything I own, and maras or aleppo were probably different enough that I could justify it.
What are your favorite uses of urfa? I know a lot of people use it as a finishing pepper.
Haha indeed, they were part of the plan. I do love lahmacun, but there isn’t a good version near me (that I’ve found).
I mostly just use it as a topping along with sumac, Aleppo pepper, and dried mint over yogurt and butter sauce on pasta, beans, or ravioli. It would be great on eggs.
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