Arabesque: Prawns & Fattoush

Isabel and Owen are slowly warming to shrimp. I think Isabel ate two of Claudia Roden's Prawns with Garlic and Coriander. 

I think she picked one piece of toasted pita out of the fattoush, which was a giant Lebanese salad of lettuce, purslane, tomato, cucumber, green pepper etc. etc. tossed with a sumac dressing. 

I think she ate a single grain of the raisin-and-pine nut pilaf, left over from the other night. 

I don't believe Owen ate anything at all. I'm a little tense these days, so I'm picking my battles. I let this one go.

After dinner we settled in on our new couch to watch four episodes in a row of The Office. We're trying to catch up with season 4 so we'll be ready for season 5 which premieres on Thursday. I know. I'm an awful parent rotting their brains this way instead of reading them Dickens by candlelight. But it's really fun.

In the first episode we screened, the dorky central character, played by Steve Carell, takes a job as a telemarketer and works alongside an Indian man who brings in a Tupperware full of golden rice pilaf for dinner in his cubicle.

Abruptly, Owen jumped up and said, "That really makes me want to eat the rice stuff you gave me tonight. Do we have any left?"

Tipsy Baker: "It's in the refrigerator, it's cold, and you have to get it yourself."

Owen raced off and prepared himself a bowl of cold Turkish pilaf, which he ate avidly. Then he got another. Then he told me he wanted me to serve pilaf again tomorrow. 

Suggestible boy. I think he has a future as an eater if I play it just right.

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