Cooking Gluten Free for a Family: Spinach & Black Olive Soup

I am a Coeliac mother cooking for a family of mostly-normals, but with three children who are quite green-vegetable-averse (the toddler eats peas, the big kids eat broccoli, but other than that, green vegetable consumption can be a struggle). I'm always looking for recipes that are gluten free (or can be made so), nutritious, tart and salty-tasting, because those are the tastes that most appeal to our family palate - barring a shared dedication to chocolate, we're none of us particularly sweet-toothed.

When I find a recipe that is gluten-free by ingredient, yummy, salty-tasting without being actually very salty, and has a green vegetable base, AND THE FAMILY EATS IT, I quietly high-five myself for weeks.

This spinach & olive soup is one such recipe. Cut from a magazine column years ago and hidden in the back of my recipe file for ages, I unearthed it last year and started making it again. It's really easy, really delicious, and really nutritious. And it's greeeeeeeen!

(It isn't, I'll concede, particularly pretty - it tastes better than it looks by several orders of magnitude :-)

Ingredients
Olive oil
1 onion, roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
500g potatoes, peeled & diced
1 litre chicken or veg stock
1 large lemon, juiced
500g English spinach, stems removed, washed & chopped
¼ cup sour cream
1 cup Kalamata olives, pitted
Salt & pepper to taste

Method
Fry the onion & garlic in olive oil on low heat until onion is soft but not changing colour. Then add the stock & potatoes and bring to the boil, simmering it until potatoes are cooked. Remove from heat.

Add the lemon juice, spinach, sour cream & olives. Puree in a blender til smooth (you might have to do it in batches). Season to taste.

To serve, gently reheat. I garnish it with a teaspoon of sour cream and a few chopped olives.

On grief after the passage of time

sometimes
I think I see her. out of the corner of my eye
or from the side, her face turned away
an acute angle of vision.

Often, at the shops, it happens. coming and going
from the fruiterer we used to share, meeting
with wry smiles among the sweet smells of kiwi fruit and mango
both of us marshalling multiple small people away from destruction

and she would say: Why do they leave the grapes just where little kids can get them?
and laugh
And I'd say: Ty before you buy...
and we'd stop for coffee
the kids sipping milkshakes and eating sugared donuts

sometimes I expect to see her there still. sometimes
I think I do.
a face
half-caught in the sunlight
with a look of her. a woman
walking with a stick, limping
as she did, before
she could not.

I am always surprised
how much it hurts
when my mind catches up to the error
and reminds me
that I will never see her again.

that she is gone from the earth. gone
into whatever lies beyond,
if anything.

it doesn't seem any more possible
even now,
even now.

there is no justice in this. there never was
death does not play fair.
or fate, or random blind luck, or what-have-you
that which decrees
that this one will live to dotage, and that one, oh,
consign her body to the flames
before she's 40.

knowing this
understanding this
does not make me miss her less.

- Kathy, 28/9/11

Name That Object!

My kids love to visit $2 shops. With pocket money, chores money, and tooth fairy money, they've quickly worked out that the haul of junky but funky objects they can acquire is exponentially greater at these emporiums of the flotsam of capitalism than if we go somewhere like Target.

I myself find $2 shops oddly fascinating as well as vaguely repellant. They often smell odd - musty, mouldy, overscented with cheap soaps and knock-off deodorants - and they're usually stuffed to the gills with the most eclectic assortment of objects imaginable. I walked out of one local place recently with a photo frame, a canvas dog bed, coloured pencils, a plastic tiara, paper plates, a firelighter, a packet of scrubbing sponges and some spray hair colour, and that was by no means an exhaustive sample of what this shop had to offer.

Another thing that always astounds me about $2 shops is their casual approach to a) pricing and b) labelling of their merchandise. It's like haggling at a market in Hanoi sometimes; I've often gone in with a specific amount of money, say $15, and gathered up what I needed, then negotiated the price to match the available cash.

Every $2 shop I've ever been into also sports a hefty selection of Mystery Merchandise - objects, without packaging or labelling, whose purpose is obscure and in some cases intriguing. I've asked, on occasion, what a specified object might be, only to be met with a fine shrug from the staff. I get the sense that they themselves don't always know what the odder items in their stock are, or what they're for. This both puzzles and delights me.

On our last visit to the $2 shop, my 2.5 year old came racing up the aisles with a packet clutched in her hand.

"I wan' THIS!" she declared, pushing it into my hand.

I looked down at a clear plastic envelop containing 6 iterations of ...

"What ARE they?" I asked my husband in bemusement.

He examined them. He hmmmmed. "Stuffed if I know," he eventually replied.

We found the spot on the shelf that C had trawled her treasure from. It was full of unnamed objects in clear plastic packages. Some of them were obviously kitchen objects - a set of measuring cups, a sieve, a set of plastic spatulas. Some were bathroom objects - soap dishes in various lurid shades, toothbrush holders, toilet brushes. And some of them were just mysterious, their purpose unclear, left to the imagination.

C really, really wanted her "fing", and it was $1 for the packet of 6 Fings, so we bought it for her. She plays with them in her plastic-food kitchen, sitting them on her wooden stove, stuffing them with tissues to sit toy eggs inside. She loves them, but we still have absolutely no idea what they ARE.

So I present it to you:



Do you know what it is? Can you make a guess? (Funneh ideas welcome ;-)

There's no prize on offer here, just the satisfaction of knowing you can put me out of my curious misery.

I have a plethora of other $2 shop mystery objects hanging about, so until I run out (or get bored with it), I'm going to post a Monday Name That Object! for a few weeks. Hopefully some people will be able to resolve conundrums for me :-)

Things I Know

There are some things I know today.

I know that 8 year old girls can find life confusing and overwhelming sometimes, and that this can make them act like hormonal teenagers years before their time.

I know that managing sibling conflict is one of the most unrelenting and wearisome parts of having more than one child.

I know that when I am off my game, whether it's due to illness, or stress, or tiredness, or whatever really, that this disproportionately impacts the whole family dynamic.

I know that I find that a bit frightening sometimes.

But...

I also know that while my children fight, they always make up, with each other and with me and with the world.

I know that my girls are learning to use an emotional vocabulary that is making it easier for them to express their feelings non-aggressively.

I know that love-notes from children are beyond sweet, especially when they are also apology notes for spouting-off that the child herself has recognised as hurtful.


I know that I love them all immensely, even when they are hurting me or each other, and that the difficult times are teaching me things about the unconditionality of love that I could not learn any other way.

I know they are beautiful people, each one of them, and that I'm privileged to be a part of their lives.



For other things that people know, check out the links at Yay for Home!

Scene from a kitchen, after a long illness

(This is a vignette from late last week, when toddler had entered the highly querulous phase of her recovery from a severe flu).

Toddler, who has been grizzling and shouting alternately for past hour: "I wanna choc'lut! I wanna cuppa miiiiiiilk! I wanna yolly!"

Me, after deep breath, calmly, "No, C."

She, doing a frustrated little dance on the spot, bellows "I wanna APPLE then! APPLE! APPLE! AAAAAAAPPPPPLLLLLE!!!!!!"

Me, with sigh: "If I give you an apple, will you stop whining for 10 minutes?"

She, tipping her head to one side in contemplation: "I not sure. We 'ave to see. Won't we, Mummy?"

Me, smiling in spite of myself: "I guess we will, C."

She takes one bite of her apple, pulls a dreadful face, and shrieks: "It's YUKKY! I wanna STAWBEWWY! I wanna BIT A CHEESE! Muuuuuummmmmmeeeeee...."