After I pick the kids up from summer camp every day at 4, I still have an hour of work to do (at least). If the kids want to watch some tv, they have to spend some time with their workbooks. So our afternoons frequently look like this, with all of us working at the kitchen table together. 
I wish I could say they smiled all the time while working. Heck, I wish I could say that about myself.
With a sunflower chaser.
I spent a weekend on the Columbia Gorge recently, and happened to buy a copy of The Skamania County Pioneer, the local paper, in a Stevenson, Washington. 
1. There are still local newspapers in small towns; isn’t that good to know?
2. This paper has a Sheriff’s Incident Log that is pure, unadulterated GOLD.
Out-of-towner subscriptions are only $35 per year. If you want to help support local papers, and can spare the cash, you can call (509) 427-8444 to subscribe and keep up to date on the happenings in the Gorge. If you also like to use story prompts for writing exercises, you’ll be quite pleased with the Pioneer’s Sheriff’s Incident Log, as you’ll see in the photos below.
I really like eating vegetarian lunches, to cut down on my meat consumption, and also because most vegetarian meals are high in fiber and low in calories. This usually means that I cook a big pot of something over the weekend that I eat for lunch all week. It might sound like a lot of work, but when you tend to forget to eat lunch until you’re starving past the point of thinking straight (cough), it’s really nice to know exactly what you can eat to fix that calorie deficit, pronto.
Andrea’s Lunch Dish is also handy for getting my fix of foods that the rest of my family doesn’t much like. The kids aren’t about to start eating spicy Thai red curry anytime soon, and it would just be a misery for us all if I asked them to. So last week, my pot-of-lunch was a cauliflower and rutabaga curry, over wilted spinach and quinoa. A friend mentioned wanting the “recipe” and voila! a blog post is born.
This dish is dead simple, if you have the ingredients handy. I started with 1 whole cauliflower, cut into florets, and 3 rutabagas, peeled and cubed to about a 1/2 inch size. I minced up about half a small onion and sauteed it in about a 1 tbsp of vegetable oil, until it was soft. Then I tossed in the cauliflower and rutabaga and sauteed on medium for about 5-10 minutes, until it was starting to soften. Then I tossed in about a tablespoon of red curry paste — Taste of Thai is easy to find at most grocery stores, but that’s an affiliate link if you need to mail-order; it keeps forever and is very versatile — and move that around for a while in the pan to try to coat the veggies with the paste. This is just to avoid having big chunks of curry paste hiding in the dish, ouch. You can use more or less curry paste, depending on your heat preference. 🙂
Once the paste has kind of melted around the veggies, toss a can of coconut milk on top — can be light or full-fat coconut milk, as you prefer (I prefer regular coconut milk; the light version tastes thin to me), and mix it all up. Simmer until the veggies are tender. Hopefully the veg was mostly cooked before you threw the coconut milk on, but if you underestimated and you need to simmer it for 20 minutes longer, that’s fine. When the veg is soft enough for you, take the whole thing off the heat. I let it cool on the stove for an hour or two before I put it in the fridge, to keep my fridge from having to work too hard.
I happened to also make a big pot of quinoa on Monday of the week that I was eating this, so this week I ate the curry over that. But it could have been nearly any kind of starch — rice, noodles, etc. When it was lunch time next, I just put a few handfuls of fresh baby spinach on about 3/4 cup of cold quinoa, and microwaved that for about 2m to wilt the spinach. then spooned about a cup of curried vegetables with sauce on top of that, and then microwaved another 2m or so until hot. Toss some chopped cilantro on top if you want to be SUPER fancy.
You can make this same kind of curry with practically any vegetable. Cubed butternut squash with broccoli, cauliflower with potato, rainbow carrots and kale, japanese eggplant and snap peas maybe. If you keep a few cans of coconut milk in the pantry and curry paste in the fridge, you also have the base ingredients for a delicious coconut curry soup made from pureed squash, potato, cauliflower whatever. Many yummy dishes await you! Enjoy.
I had a nice solitary walk around the neighborhood of the house where we spent the weekend in Bend. The light at sundown with so much snow on the ground is pretty magical, all glowy and diffuse. 
Family selfie before we head out to sled at Wanoga Snow Park. Amelia, who did not wish to be included in a family selfie: “Mom, did you notice how I didn’t smile?”
Sprightly! Cassis and blackberry with some wispy tobacco and snazzy violet or some other floral notes. Light and acidic on the palate — maybe some orange? –so it’s a nice thirst quencher, or would be great with a spicy pork or salmon dish. Find it and drink it up!
I so enjoy waking up before everyone in the house, and enjoying a quiet cup of tea in the light of the tree. My favorite thing about ereaders is that you can read in the dark.
