From The Book Of Virtues:Kindness to Animals

Little children, never give
Pain to things that feel and live;
Let the gentle robin come
For the crumbs you save at home;
As his meat you throw along
He'll repay you with a song.
Never hurt the timid hare
Peeping from her green grass lair,
Let her come and sport and play
On the lawn at close of day.
The little lark goes soaring high
To the bright windows of the sky,
Singing as if 'twere always spring,
And fluttering on an untired wing -
Oh! Let him sing his song,
Nor do these gentle creatures wrong.

From The Book of Virtues, Edited by William Bennett (Simon and Schuster)

The Rundown

I am in the process of trying to organize my clothes. I removed EVERYTHING from the dresser drawers so I could reorganize and sort the jumble and rotate out the summer stuff and bring out all of the sweaters etc. You know...

Geez what a huge pile of clothes I have. So many skirts , random shirts and funky jackets. So anyway I am organizing all the wild scarves, of every silken , velvety , feathery , knit, madness of colourful rainbows that is my scarf and wrap collection and I come across a couple of my son's ties. And it dawns on me. I am envious of these things. I mean these guys, all these men walking around wearing ties. And I am thinking, I want to make the transition, make the leap from scarf to tie. I want to wear a tie so I am going to tomorrow. I have absolutely no sense of fashion anyway so why not. I thought the tie looked cool while I was playing clean up/dress up/ hang up or fold.

Anywho....Lessons went well today.I had a lot of fun talking to my son tonight after dinner. We talked about a lot of things. I was actually talking to him a lot about my childhood. Especially about my chickens , geese and ducks and when I used to play in the woods and the field. And about how I used to be afraid of the hallway at night when I was really little.Just random things about random things. But he is a good conversationalist. A good listener and he articulates very well when he speaks . .He has a very positive energy about him.

I went food shopping and random shopping tonight. I bought more socks because there seems to be a sock vortex in the house. The same one that's in every one's house. The one that sucks up single socks and leaves you without pairs.

I also bought a gallon of apple cider. YUM!

Well to be honest, I am just procrastinating right now over the HUGE clothing mountain that I have created and must sort before all meanings of the word 'organization' are lost amongst the leather boots and velvet jackets. Someone come to my house and organize and fold my clothes for me. I will bake you cookies.

It must be some form of culinary Karma

I am so confused. See I seem to have on my hands a picky eater and I cannot , for the life of me comprehend why. I was raised by a chef and literally spent half my childhood in a restaurant after school. I have had so many different foods passed under my nose that I can count on one hand the foods that I either dislike or won 't try. I am NOT a picky eater by any stretch of the imagination besides the fact that I don't often care for 'cheaply' made foods, Doritos are excluded from the category of cheap food because I DO enjoy junk food.

But on to the wee picky eater in the house. Oy, it does frustrate me at times. There are so many foods that he does not like. Chicken must be a certain way. Soup , we are down to only a few that he will eat. Vegetables must be disguised or he would only eat corn and potatoes. I could go on but this is basically your average picky eater story. Here is where it gets weird............

He likes food from different cultures. He is picky against AMERICAN food. Ok I can't say that I totally blame him. But it makes shopping confusing. Ok he will eat Japanese Edamame(steamed Soy beans) but won't eat string beans, Won't eat certain types of fried fish but will eat sushi, Loves Chinese food, Loves spicy food, and adores East Indian food. Adores the Indian shops alone even. Again I can't say I blame him. But what I mean is that the cultural food is often more adventurous and even then if I don't make the Chicken Yogurt Curry and Saffron rice EXACTLY right , he won 't go for it. The recipe has to be just so.

For lunch he had a spiced Onion Indian bread and a large bowl of cottage cheese which he liberally spread on the bread. Last night he out right refused to eat turkey and stuffing lol. So I am going to once again attempt a transition from American Cuisine to a more Asian/ Asian Indian cuisine.

I am not the best chef but I have some experience . I just have a hard time getting the hang of Asian cooking. It is really an art. But I have a enough Basmati to feed the whole block,and a cabinet chock full of exotic spices/and growing, on top of a growing collection of Indian recipe books that I can maybe make a stab at the semi transition once again. For the sake of my strangely picky little boy and his suffering limited palate.

Macaroni and Cheese , Roast Chicken and Mashed potatoes and corn are all well and good, but like I said, I grew up in a chef home and picky I am not, adventurous palate I am. Oh did I mention he likes flounder baked in cream and dotted with onion and butter. So yeah , he also like French food a great deal.

So maybe his palate is not so much picky as it is overtly sophisticated. He seems to enjoy dinner the most when I slave over the stove a minimum of two hours. Cookbooks open, fingers a mess, apron askew, hair in a bun.The more prep the better haha.

The bottom line. Action must be taken and an intense meal plan must be created.