CHEESESLAVE

Yes, cheeseburgers are healthy!

This is a burger made with grass-fed beef (from Organic Pastures in California), with raw milk cheese (from the Amish in PA), organic fruit-sweetened ketchup and organic mustard, and homemade lacto-fermented pickles. I cooked the burger in a little duck fat.

No bun. Kate doesn’t eat grains yet. I’m not going to give her grains for a while — probably until she’s 18 months or even 2 years old.

Babies do not have the enzymes to digest grains — not until their back molars start coming in. Makes sense, because those molars are for grinding. When she does get grains, they will always be properly soaked/fermented. I’ll even give her healthy versions of chocolate chip cookies and brownies (made with soaked or sprouted flour) and coconut oil and butter.

She thought the burger was just okay. She didn’t really know what to make of it. She’s accustomed to liver and duck and chicken and eggs. She’s had ground beef a lot — but I guess she’s just not used to the mustard and ketchup. She preferred the dill pickles, which she is used to.

She’ll get used to the burger in time. She didn’t like pickles at first, either. In fact, she reacts this way to all new foods. Even ice cream. It takes a few tries before she embraces it. (The one food she liked at first bite was tallow-fried french fries.)

What I always do is anything she doesn’t eat, I just put it back in the fridge and then I warm it again for another meal. She eats it eventually — and the more she tries it, the more she likes it!

So don’t give up on trying to give your little ones new foods (especially organ meats). Get them used to it when they are young.

Also, I think it’s important that it tastes good. If it doesn’t taste delicious to me, I can’t expect her to eat it.

Kate loves kefir. She loves all sour things — sauerkraut, pickles, creme fraiche.

Oh how weird! I’m watching “The French Chef” right now. The moment I was typing the words “creme fraiche”, Julia Child said the words “creme fraiche”. Isn’t that eerie? Must be a good omen.

Don’t you love how much you appreciate being home after you’ve taken a trip? Don’t you love how much you appreciate your life after having been away from it for a while?

We just got back and we are relaxing with a fan blowing and all the windows open. And watching Muzzy (our favorite show).

I was so happy to come home and see my dehydrator and the raw nuts that needed soaking, and my freezer full of milk and meat, my cupboard full of kombucha SCOBYs, and my sourdough starter and kefir grains in the fridge.

I was happiest most of all to find all my plants in my garden thriving.

I have 5 kinds of peppers: chocolate bell pepper, red bell pepper, jalapeno, habanero, and anaheim.

Here’s an Anaheim chile pepper (for salsa):

And here’s a jalapeno (my favorite pepper — for salsa and nachos):

Here’s my radicchio — I grew this from seed!

All my citrus trees are starting to bear fruit. I have Meyer lemon, lime, and blood orange.

Here’s the Meyer lemon (can’t wait to make lemon tart):

These are russet potatoes:

And just look at these tomatoes — the first tomatoes of summer (well actually, I had a few cherry tomatoes already but I didn’t count those):

I have 20 tomato plants, and probably 4 or 5 varieties including these (some kind of heirloom) as well as Roma and cherry tomatoes. They are all from seed.

Here’s some basil — I have a lot of it growing:

I just planted this zucchini a couple of weeks ago:

It’s already 6 o’clock for us (New York time). We had to get up at 6 (ugh — that’s 3 am California time) to get to JFK for our flight.

We’re ordering in Chinese and going to bed early. I defrosted chicken livers and my homemade baked beans for Katie. And she will have sauerkraut and cherry coconut milk ice cream.

PS: Kate has EIGHT new teeth coming in all at once! EIGHT! Four on the bottom and four on the top.

I thought she was a little cranky this week… but honestly, she wasn’t bad at all. I mean, for her, cranky is not really cranky at all. She is the best baby!

Oh, and she’s completely given up crawling now. She walked up and down the aisle on the airplane about 100 times. Okay, I’m exaggerating. It was only about 50 times.

We’re on vacation at Grandma’s house. Kate and I took our first walk without the stroller.

Stopping to chat with the neighbors.

Gotta go — see ya!

I got Kate her first pair of real shoes yesterday at Stride Rite in the mall. I was so proud.

She loves her big girl shoes.