Cooking with Kids

I read on some blog somewhere about how to get kids to love vegetables, and one of the suggestions was to have them help you cook. This was not news to me, I do involve my boys in cooking, but a lot of the tasks are above their skill level, or so I thought. But this blog post mentioned how she had her young daughter peel potatoes or carrots. So when George was bored this afternoon and asked to help me peel the carrots, I said, "Sure!" It took him longer than I would have done it, but in that time I was able to chop up most of the other veggies. He didn't peel off any of his skin, and he did a pretty thorough job of peeling the carrots, not missing too many spots. He did take a few bites while peeling, and took two of the carrots out of the kitchen, one for himself and one for his brother. They ate half of them, the other halves were left on the floor and the dog finished them off. The boys also ate a good amount of cauliflower while I was chopping it up. If it's visible, it's more likely to get eaten!

My morning run

Sorry, this post has nothing to do with food, but I felt I needed to write these thoughts out and thought this would be a good place.

This morning I rolled out of bed and went for a run. I didn't get out the door as fast as I used to back during the RunSwimBikeCook challenge, but I got out the door. And saw snow on the cars. It was still lightly snowing during the couple miles I ran. I licked a big snowflake off my upper lip at one point. And yet I could still hear the birds singing Spring. The frogs have also come back to life; I heard them the other night when I took the dog for a quick walk.

As I was half way through my run, I thought of my friend, Lizzie, who was about to run her first Boston marathon. I thought of my Vibram FiveFingers, how once we're well past snow season, I'll start running in mine again. Maybe next month. I thought of how my friend inspires me: to run, and to do it not just to check it off your to-do list, but to enjoy it. Maybe in a couple years I'll work up to running a marathon myself.

Then later today, I saw the news of the explosions at the Boston marathon. My thoughts raced through shock, worry, then reassuring hope. A couple hours later, I did find out my friend was fine. But so many people are not fine. Lives were lost. Limbs were lost. Will those people ever be able to run again? Even if they are physically able, will they be able to handle it emotionally? I don't know really what to say, what to do. I just continue to hope and pray. And keep on running.