Saffron Sweet Potato and Red Pepper Soup

These are great flavors together! My son is practicing using a spoon with a bowl that is suctioned onto his high chair tray. He loved this.

I adapted this recipe from one that I found in the New York Times. Saffron can be a little pricey, but it makes all the difference. Plus, sweet potatoes and bell peppers are inexpensive in the fall, so the whole meal works out to be affordable.

Serves 8, 30-45 minutes to make

3-4 red bell peppers, quartered lengthwise, stemmed and seeded
2 T olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
3 thyme sprigs
2.5 lbs sweet potatoes
4 cups of soup stock (I added 2t Better Than Bouillon to the water used to boil the sweet potatoes)
Pinch of saffron threads

1. Heat broiler to high. Arrange red peppers on pan, skin side up, and broil about 4 inches from heat, about 10-15 minutes. Remove from oven and cover pan to steam skin loose for another 10-15 minutes. A little skin is fine--just take off the skin that is easy to peel off and then coarsely chop the flesh.

2. Meanwhile, scrub the sweet potatoes, peel the skin if it doesn't look good, and then chop in 2" cubes. Boil for about 10-15 minutes, or until soft.

3. In a soup pot, heat olive oil. Add onion and thyme. Cover and cook over low heat, stirring occasionally until the onions are soft, about 10 minutes. Add sweet potatoes, bell peppers, stock, 2 cups of water and saffron. Cover until it boils, and then uncover, reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer for 15 minutes.

4. Discard thyme sprigs and purée soup with either an immersion blender or very carefully in a normal blender.

Serve with toast and chevre. Finish off with cardamom ice cream.

Pumpkin Patches

Today we went to the pumpkin patches up in Petaluma, as we do every year. But this year we had our little guy who got to explore farm life. We got him his first pair of shoes, and then he walked among the pumpkins, stopping from time to time to thump one like a drum. There were green ones, bright orange ones, pale and delicate ones, and even dappled ones. He also got to see newborn calves and mini-donkeys with long fuzzy ears.


It is such a treat to leave the city and see the countryside. For babies, getting to actually touch, see, and smell a farm is a great experience since so many board books feature farm animals.

Now we have four pumpkins of various sizes, shapes, and colors adorning our dining room table.

For those in the Bay Area, here are some north bay pumpkin patches:
http://www.farmtrails.org/find-farms-products/find-farms-by-products/#P

The site is tricky to navigate, but it includes other farm outings like apple picking.

Mashed Sweet Potatoes

This recipe was a hit with our little guy!

Serves 6-8

2 really big sweet potatoes, in 2" cubes
1 teaspoon cinnamon
4 tablespoons butter
juice from one big lemon or Valencia orange

1. Put sweet potatoes in a pot half-filled with water. Boil with lid on until they can be easily pierced with a fork, about 30 minutes.
2. Drain and mash in a large bowl with the remaining ingredients.

And that's it. Serve with black beans, tortillas, and avocado.

The Very Busy Spider

Orb spiders are weaving their webs around our yard, setting up sticky nets with silver dollar sized arachnids to avoid. My son has been interested in spider watching, so a good thematic book for the season is EricCarle’s The Very Busy Spider.

The Very Busy Spider builds upon a common board book schema of introducing various farm animals and their sounds. Added to this is a story about a spider who cannot play with a line-up of barnyard friends because she is too busy quietly building her web. This industrious protagonist ultimately (spoiler alert! ) reaches her goal, catches a pesky fly, and rests peacefully after a job well done.

Like many other Carle books, this one stands out because of its tactile engagement—the spider web and fly wings are raised. However, the third dimension is subtle; even though I model rubbing the page, my son still has not copied me. He does enjoy and respond to the art and the animal sounds that I make. But given our current eight-legged neighbors, the book’s biggest draw is the intriguing big spider on every page, weaving her web a few silk strings at a time.

Seasons Change

The Japanese maples and municipal trees that line our neighborhood streets are changing colors. All seasons are a time of change, but fall seems especially so. Sometimes a wistful feeling blows with the wind. Dry leaves scatter, orb spiders set up their morbid webs, and summer is ushered out in increasingly vivid sunsets.

Change is on my mind lately—today was the first day I did not go to my son’s school to nurse him. Our first big goodbye was when I returned to work. That was preceded by minor goodbyes—our first date away from him, my first quick coffee or lunch with a friend; it will be followed by other goodbyes and firsts—first sleep over, first weekend away. All of these farewell milestones build up to bigger ones—traveling without us, moving out, going to college.

Instead of feeling wistful, though, I am trying to think of how exciting it is that he is becoming less dependent on me as we wean. Because we have a good foundation of complicity and secure attachment, he can trust that our goodbyes are not permanent, and I can trust that in the future when he moves on into adulthood, his goodbyes will not be permanent. Change cannot be stopped, but it is reassuring that we can rely on spring cycling back to us.

In the meantime, I celebrate having a free lunch hour. What to do with my time? Eat lunch with friends, read a book by myself in the sun, squeeze in some shopping, and ease back into a routine that is more balanced.