Recipe for Happy Children

Posted on Friday 21 July 2006 at 11:08

This week's recipe has ingredients everyone will have at hand, garden or not.

Although our day didn't start out so well - a fall off a bike and a visit to the doctor for gravel removal from wounds - the rest of it just got better from there.

Here are this week's ingredients:

Somebody you love
Something you're passionate about
Time
Unexpected weather
A goal to meet

I had four somebodies, ages 4, 6, 8, and 10. First, we cleaned up the kitchen and got supper on together. Our goal was to get outside by 3:00. We did that. Then, we got the things we needed for putting together our TYDOS orders: Several 5-gallon pails, a big plastic half-barrel, and a few odds and ends.

We picked and talked and checked out the different things going on with our garden plants. We learned (well, the short people learned) how to wash the vegetables in the pails, then rewash them in the barrel, then tie them into bundles or put things like the snap peas into bags.

In the middle of it all, we got a little cloudburst. The kids said, "Oh, no!" I said, "RAIN!!" and put my hands up to the sky. Suddenly, it was all laughs and giggles and great excitement. Some of us hid in the sunflower rows. Some of us stayed working and got rather damp. Really, it was only enough to wet our hair and hold down the dust for a short time. But we enjoyed it.

We loaded up our deliveries - lettuces, peas, white radishes, beets, onions, and a small but spunky bell pepper for each customer. We drove into Brandon posthaste and met Daddy, who was done work. Then we took the veggies around to each house. We shared a snack on the way home.

When we got home, it was late, but the roast beef and potatoes smelled grand. We went out an picked a salad of our own, and one beet just to try. We found one more green pepper that had started to blush, and then - joy of joys - a first, small rosy tomato.

I can't believe how much my children enjoy eating the vegetables they raise. "Red Sails" lettuce tops all other kinds for the 10-year-old, because he planted it. It turns out they all like beets - our beets, anyway. Everyone had to try some salad.

"This is kind of like a Special Supper," the 6-year-old observed as we set the table. The 10-year-old chopped veggies, while the 8-year-old folded fancy napkins (a skill taught by Auntie-Down-the-Road) and the 4-year-old helped set cutlery.

"It kind of is," I agreed. We'd started Special Suppers back in the winter, when Dave was still home with his neck injury. But the return to shiftwork kind of snafu'd our weekly candlelight dinners.

"Why don't you go get the candles from my dresser," I told them.

"Oh, goody!" said the veggie-chopping goofball. He finished his dicing and went to get out the wine glasses we use for our juice on such occasions. We set a side dish for each person's salad, and six pillar candles on the big platter in the middle of the table. The one in the center went up on a candle holder.

"There's one for each of us," I told them.

"The middle one's for Daddy," said one of the kids, and my heart was touched. Daddy's the one on the pedestal in their wee hearts.

We had a delicious eight-o'clock dinner with the exhausted Daddy, who'd been up since 5:00 for work. Somebody broke a dish; nobody lost sleep over it. We sent them to get their pyjamas on while we finished cleaning up. Dessert was "Ice cream in pyjamas by candlelight." It was such a novelty!

Okay, so it was 10:00 before they hit the hay, but bedtime wasn't one of my goals today. We set out on a small-business adventure, then for an evening of fine dining and the discussion of world politics - Lebanon, Israel, the Balfour Declaration and World War II were all mentioned.

My goal was to be on a living adventure with four of the most beautiful, compassionate and interested-in-life people I know. It was a great success.

Peppers?

Posted by jackiebridgen on Saturday 22 July 2006 at 06:06 - Link

Hey Cathi - How'd you get Peppers in Canada already?! We've got ripe tomatoes here in the UK, but Peppers?! I'm impressed! My best bell pepper is about the size of a golfball!
PS Our delivery days go kind of like that, too!