Dinner

I made one of my favorite meals tonight for dinner, salmon with orange & soy, pretty much not expecting my kids to eat it...I mean if it's not fruit, pizza or able to be dipped in ketchup I don't hold out too much hope...but to my surprise, not only did they eat it, but they liked it!

Little background info, when Hunter was little one of the first things he ate off my plate was salad with Dorothy Lynch dressing. My Grandpa in North Dakota has eaten it for as long as I can remember and it's easily one of the most delicious things I've ever tasted, if you can find it in your store...try it, please...for me, try it, you won't be sorry (I sound a little pathetic begging like this, but it's really in your best interest). Anyways...so when Hunt was little (little as in he hadn't mastered walking yet) he'd pull himself along the couch to where I was sitting and sit there with his mouth open like a little baby bird wanting a bite of my salad, as long as it had Dorothy Lynch on it. At first he wouldn't even chew the lettuce, I'm sure there is some rule about not feeding babies lettuce...but I'm not big on rules, especially when it comes to food...so he'd pretty much just suck the dressing off the lettuce, but eventually he moved on to actually eating the entire salad. To this day, "salad" (it's really just lettuce) with DL is one of my son's favorite foods. He's even gotten his sister on the bandwagon...she likes her "salak" too.

**side note, "salak" is one of the few words that Cierra will actually pronounce the "s" in...she goes to "leep" she likes to "wim" when she gets hungry she wants a "nack" she goes to "chool"...you get the drift"

Well if you remember Cierra's and my infamous trip to HEB last Friday, one of the other things we got (besides the aforementioned salmon) was a huge head of romaine and a Tuscan Melon. I made myself an awesome salad with green apple, Gorgonzola crumbles and glazed walnuts in an easy vinaigrette to go along side the fish and I thought I'd make the main course seem more appealing to my offspring by serving them a salad with DL along side...I even cut up the Tuscan Melon as more bribery (my seeds prefer fruit over anything else on the planet). The rule in my house is that they at least need to take one bite of something before they decide they don't like it. I fully expected them to take the obligatory bite and call it a night, but they took one bite...then another one, and one more...before I knew it, my kids ate all their salmon. It warmed my heart. I love the idea of kids that will eat more than chicken nuggets...so it may be baby steps, but they're branching out. Hunter even put some of the green apple from my salad on his lettuce!

Not that I blame them, the fish really is that good! I marinate the salmon in orange juice, soy sauce, minced garlic, dried oregano, fresh parsley and lots of black pepper....throw it the oven then under the broiler and you'regood to go (unless I'm eating it in a sushi roll, I like my salmon cooked through, so if you don't I'd skip the baking and just broil it).

I'm so happy about the food eating incident that I have half a mind to go get my kids chocolate shakes to celebrate...and it's not because I want a chocolate shake, it really is for them...I swear ;)

love in an elevator,
E