Sin and Redemption

Saturday started out beautifully. T was up early, and I had coffee and he had milk. He wanted to color. (I stepped out of the room while he was diligently working away with a pencil; some other random kid must have run in and made all of those scribbles on the wall next to him during that time.) I read a little. M got up soon after.

Later I went to the farmer's market and got lamb from a local farm for our friends Noah and Holly who were coming to dinner. The boys don't like lamb yet, and our hope was that we'd get them fed and to bed and eat our adult meal later. So I stopped at Wild Oats for some salmon for the boys' dinner; while there we ran into our friend Todd, who lives in the neighborhood and owns my favorite independent music store.

Unfortunately, Wild Oats is in the same strip-mall complex as a Burger King. It was lunchtime. M begged. I caved. Being more aware of what we're eating has been sobering; how can the execs at Burger King even pretend there's something resembling chicken in nuggets shaped like crowns?

Noah and Holly came for dinner and we had lamb with this great yogurt/cumin marinade Phil made. And local squash. And not-local-but-organic broccoli (that I made a cheese sauce for, this being the midwest and cheese being smeared on anything green), and couscous salad from The Barefoot Contessa cookbook.

While out, I picked up a chicken to roast on Sunday. I had visions of our Norman Rockwell evening repast with Phil carving the chicken and M and T, napkins tucked into their collars, holding utensils in both hands in anticipation. Didn't turn out that way. But I'll have to blog about that later.

Tip for Today: Phil ran out of cumin partway through making his yogurt/cumin marinade, so I ran out to get some more. If you don't already do this, pick up herbs and spices at a health-food store. They're super-cheap, and I like to think possibly prepared more naturally, although I don't know this for sure. And, at least for me, any time I'm in the bulk food health-food store near us, I come out with two pounds of some kind of grain or bean for us to try. In recent years, that grain has sat in a glass jar in our pantry for a couple years until I do a clean and chuck it, but this blog is going to change all of that, right?