5 Fruits & Veggies a Day: Snap To It!

In our family we play a little game everyday that my four-year old son has dubbed "Five In." We count our fruit and vegetable intake to ensure we get five servings a day. It's quite easy to do actually. Luckily the boys are great eaters, we live in a city with an excellent farmers market, we have Farmer Tom's CSA, and I love to cook.

I swear we eat more snap peas than any household in America. I would add blueberries, anchovies, black olives, capers, smoked salmon, mangoes, and blintzes to that list. Not all mixed together, of course. But back to the snap peas. We nosh them raw, stir fry them with red onions, add them to salads, toss them into lunchboxes and picnic baskets, and now...

We have discovered a new way to jazz up snap peas, the ubiquitous green veggie to grace our crisper.

Zest a lemon and set aside. After rinsing off a colander full of fresh snap peas, toss them with some olive oil, the juice of one lemon, and sea salt. Roast at 425 degrees for about 20 minutes. While they are roasting, toss a cup of bread crumbs (I combined panko with sour dough bread crumbs.) with the zest of one lemon. Spread across top of snap peas and top with goat cheese crumbles. Continue to roast another ten minutes. Serve hot. You can substitute parmesan or feta cheese too. I assure you, this will be a family hit. We snacked on the cold leftovers while we cooked dinner the next night.

Now snap to it, folks!


Reposted from its original home at Foodie Mama.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

I know my neighbors. Not just the folks on either side of my house. All of my neighbors on the street. And the next street. And the street after that. I know more than their first names and approximate time they leave for work. I know them well; they are my friends. It's a lucky life to count your neighbors as your friends. For one thing, it saves gas since we're literally a hop, skip, and jump away. We never need to schedule playdates. All we do is open the door and let the kids run amok while we grownups enjoy a glass of cabernet, Blue Moon with a slice of orange for the tang, or Moscow Mule, depending on who's bartending.

I have four lots but just one house. Of course there are neighbors' houses on those lots. We literally just swing open the door, and the kid radar starts beeping furiously. All the children, ranging in age from 18 months to 11 years-old, run among all of our yards playing old school games. Freeze tag. Hide n' seek. Hopscotch. Blissfully, no batteries required. Our toys belong to the neighborhood. As long as bats, balls, sidewalk chalk, and jump ropes make their way to a toybox somewhere, it's all good. Bird and Deal are lucky to live in a true neighborhood. I grew up in a similar place. My folks didn't cart us around to activities or playdates. We skipped rocks in the creek in our backyard, sang the tunes from the remake of Sargeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band using the retaining wall as a stage, and caught lightning bugs in jars handed out by Tracy's mom next door.

My neighborhood is a genuine neighborhood that invokes images of the days of yore. If you want to start a story with "Back in the day..." it's my neighborhood that your listeners conjure up. I'm not talkin' an artificial neighborhood with a faux town square clock tower. I'm talkin' a community with off kilter sidewalks, a little post office, an anti-Starbucks coffee shop, and privately owned local drugstore, replete with diner in the back. We walk to run our errands. We walk to the park. We walk just to see who's out and about when we get cabin fever. Bird and Deal benefit in so many ways. For starters, they're walkers, not whiners who act as if they're lugging 300 pound steel boots around like some suburban kids I see. They play with kids of all ages and learn to listen and respect adults who aren't mommy and daddy. They don't watch much TV. Their best friends live right next door. We even have Yogi the neighborhood dog who exhibits gracious patience everyday.

Why My 'Hood Kicks Ass (and why the subdivisions with their back decks don't):

We all have front porches. And we use them.

I have the keys to five neighbors' houses, and they have mine. Someone's there to feed the ornery cat when we're gone. Because she's so ornery we have to rotate the duty.

We literally go next door to borrow a cup of sugar, or a couple eggs, or a gallon of milk.

We cook extra meatloaf, spaghetti, turkey stew, or lambchops and share the wealth.

For 6 weeks after my kids were born neighbors signed up to bring us dinner. I'm talkin' home cooked (and sometimes home grown) extravagant meals, with dessert, wine, and a pair of arms to hold the baby so Mac Daddy and I could eat.

We have parties in the street. Lots of them. We even have a neighborhood lemonade stand that doubles as a tiki bar.

I know someone is watching my kids if I have to run inside to stir the chili, swap a load of laundry, or get ready for date night with Mac Daddy.



Since we don't have family in town, we rely on our neighbors for the occasional babysitting (like when I went into labor with Deal or the times we've had to take one kid or another to the ER in the middle of the night), an extra set of hands to move a desk upstairs, or for a few rounds of Yahtzee and beers. We take care of each other, and no one keeps a scorecard. Well, maybe the kids playing Mother May I do.

Tell me why your 'hood rocks.

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