The Feeding of the 5000

I used to have an album called the Feeding of the 5000. Crass was the name of the band. They were big fans of swearing. The line I remember off the top of my head was a song, "Do they owe us a living, of course they do, of course they do, Do they owe us a living, of course they fucking do." No wonder I'm a poet.

Facebook gave me no love on the news that Zoe will eat Tom Ka Gai so I'm repeating it here. A whole bowl of it. We ordered it only "2" hot, but still, she slurped it up and wanted more chicken. Once, when Erik and I were at the Emmy award show (I like to name drop that although it was indeed the regional Emmy's and we did not, in fact, win), Zoe's grandma and aunt took her to Thai food and she ordered a Thai Iced Tea, telling them that of course I let her order that. The caffeine plus sugar equaled seventeen running trips around the downtown. Still, it's very good news that we can take Z to Cuban food, sushi, Thai, dim sum, and pizza (my niece does not like pizza. This would kill me I fear.)

I wanted my sister to start a food blog that listed all the amazing food she made for the book release party. Everything had, or was supposed to have, eggs in it since the title of the book is This Noisy Egg. I remember homemade crackers, cobb salad in cups of bibb lettuce, and caviar but she made so much else and if she doesn't write it down, we'll all forget it.

I didn't like to eat much when I was pregnant so I didn't cook often or very well. But when my mom came to visit right after Max was born, I cooked in that week more enthusiastically than I cooked all year. It might have helped that my mom bought all this meat and I was prompted to do something with it all. The best were the too-many lamb chops with a ground rosemary rub and fennel butter. I made a apricot and almond rice as a side. I made brisket with onions, juniper berries and apple cider vinegar. I made pork tenderloin with chipotle mayonaisse. It truly was a meat fest.

When, after the egg party, and you would have thought we were entirely saturated with food, we met for a goodbye dinner, my mom brought even more caviar. Rick made bratwursts from Colosimo's, grilled and then stewed in beer. We took the caviar and put it on top of the mashed potatoes. Now, I'm afraid I'll never enjoy fish egg free mashed potatoes again.

The meat market isn't open on Sundays or Mondays and we didn't plan ahead. Therefore, tonight will either be meat-free or oven-fried chicken (because I can almost abide grocery-store chicken) with jalepeno roasted potatoes. And, because I'm lucky that I have an eating daughter who tries (although mostly fails) to eat 9 different colors of fruits and vegetables a day, we'll have green beans and shallots and count those each toward our goal (green and white). And maybe the jalepenos and potatoes (green and white. See why we fail?). We had carrots for lunch. But for the most part, we're behind today. Perhaps we can import some of the ingredients from the Tom Ka Gai--galanga root and lemongrass--to fill out our food color wheel.