What To Eat Week

it has been quiet around here because late last Tuesday we got a placement of two boys, C., 7 and K., 8. In the chaos of getting everyone settled, dealing with all the legal requirements, paperwork and appointments that a foster placement entails and getting them back to school, the blog has taken a backseat, but I'm more or less back. The boys are doing great, and are truly sweet, wonderful kids. They've had a really rough time, but everyone is really getting used to each other and having a blast. They'll be with us until at least mid-June, so we are in for some spring fun with six boys (6, 7, 8, 8, 10 and 12),. Despite being city kids, they fit in perfectly to the farm - they love bugs, snakes, mud, water, baby goats, rabbits, dirt, collecting eggs, chasing chickens and did I mention mud? It is raining today here, so I'm anticipating some deep happiness later when they get back from school.

I had planned to spend this week writing about food. Particularly, I've often been asked, but I'm not sure I have ever really answered, exactly what it is we eat during a week. A number of readers have asked me to provide a week's menu, and I've never gotten around to it.

At first I was tempted to put off doing it, because right now we're not eating exactly what we've been eating. The transition to foster care is incredibly tough for kids, and in this case, the kids had had real experiences of going hungry. Right now, we're just trying to make sure everyone feels that there is ENOUGH food, rather than pushing hard on adapting to a local and homemade diet. While the boys are great eaters and reasonably adventurous, right now there is way more processed food and out of season fruit in my home than there normally would be, simply because that's what's familiar to them, and they've had so much stress and change that I don't want them to make a stark dietary shift. So this is gradual, and I'm willing to buy some junk food in order to give them comfort.

Thinking about it, however, I think this is probably a good time, because in some ways it is probably closer to the dietary habits of a lot of people out there than my normal diet. After all, I've had close to a decade of eating mostly from my own kitchen, growing my own and sourcing food locally, and I live on a working farm. I've done most of the accustoming and adaptation, and I had the huge advantage of doing it when my kids were too little to complain - now at 6, 8, 10 and 12, they expect to eat kale.

The picture of my diet with two kids who didn't grow up with me and who still regard kale as suspicious, who go to public school and have to deal with the comments of their peers, etc... is actually probably much closer to real life for a lot of us, so it seems like a good time to spend a week on food.

In addition to talking about what we eat, I'll tell you where we got it, who ate it and with what comments ;-), also pass on some recipes. I also want to do some reviews of new food books (there are a lot of really good ones out there), and some other material on food. So lots of good things coming - after all who doesn't want to talk about dinner?

Sharon