Ryan has a favorite song

You should know that we have made a point not to play kiddie music around Ryan. No Wiggles or any of the other kid musical acts, the idea being that if he never hears it, he will instead grow to love classic rock and the like, like Mason and I. Even in the womb, we played him The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and other stuff we liked. Brilliant planning, if I do say so myself.

Well, the best laid plans…yeah. Tonight Ryan repeatedly made his Fisher Price piggy bank sing its song. Over and over again. I know he was purposefully playing the song because the pig does multiple things when you hit its nose, including sneeze, oink, and sing. Every time, he would hit it quickly so it would get to the song, then kick his feet and grin. When I danced to the song, the grin progressed to laughing. Oh, it was incredibly cute. The only thing is that now I foresee these lyrics being stuck in my head for quite some time:

Oh-oh I’m a piggy bank

With coins big and small

There’s lots of colors, you can learn them all

We’ve got red and yellow, we’ve got orange and blue

It’s your favorite colors, we’ve got green ones too.

Let’s count the coins from one to ten

When we’re all done, we’ll count again!

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven

Eight, nine, ten!

Oh, Ryan. You got mommy and daddy good.

Read Full Post »

This week’s menu

One of the many things I love about Texas is that while most of the country is slipping into winter right about now, we are still getting a bounty of summer vegetables mixed in with some fall/winter crops. This week, we got Corno di Toro sweet peppers, red onion, yellow beans, gala apples, turnips, dill, red potatoes, bibb lettuce, white mushrooms, radishes, and a winter squash I thought was a globe eggplant at first. I’m making:

Summer vegetable cianfotta — with several substitutions. I used my unidentifiable squash in place of the eggplant, red potatoes instead of the Yukon golds, and added mushrooms.

Acorn squash and chicken stew (I know she calls it chili, but I don’t think so.)

Marinated London broil

Honey-roasted root vegetables

Stuffed pepper casserole — adapted from my friend Jess’s recipe. I used all the Corno di Toro peppers plus two green peppers and a red pepper from last week, seeded and chopped. Brown 1 lb of ground beef or lamb and season with salt and pepper. While meat is browning, boil two bags of Uncle Ben’s whole grain boil-in-bag rice. Mix rice with 16 oz of tomato sauce, and season with Italian seasoning. Preheat oven to 350. In a casserole dish sprayed with cooking spray, layer half the rice mixture, the peppers, the other half of the rice mixture, and top with 1 cup of Italian-blend cheese. Cover with foil and bake for 30 min. Remove foil and continue baking another 15 minutes until cheese is browned.

Read Full Post »