great greens

I just made greens tonight with a recipe from the back of the Trader Joe's mixed cooking greens bag and they were really wonderful. The mix is collard greens, mustard greens, turnip greens, and spinach.

The (slightly modified) recipe:

1 lb. of mixed cooking greens
1 white onion, chopped
1/2 cup green onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 cup V8 juice (the original recipe called for tomato juice)
1 cup chicken broth (the original recipe called for vegetable broth)
salt, pepper, and marjoram to taste

1. Saute the onions and garlic in olive oil until the onions are translucent.
2. Add the V8 juice and broth, bring to a boil.
3. Add the greens and simmer, covered, for about 30 mins.

That's it! Very easy and very, very good. I've rarely been this excited about mustard greens.

Just one more...

I know I just posted "Beatrice, Month Eight" - but my good friend Amy Robb just posted a photo on her blog too cute to pass up. This is Beatrice with her friend Miller while Amy and Evan were very kindly babysitting for us the other night.

Beatrice, Month Eight

The eighth month was a big one. Beatrice is now standing up (with the aid of a piece of furniture). She stood up for the first time at Summer St. Pierre's house and has been perfecting her stance since - though since Beatrice can't walk yet, she will instead stand still for five or ten minutes while looking around with a "what next?" look on her face.

Beatrice has been spending a lot of her time lately with Summer and Summer's adorable almost-two-year-old Jack - they've been entertaining Beatrice twice a week while I work on writing. And Jack adores Beatrice - he calls her "my baby" and runs to bring her her favorite toys when she comes over. Beatrice loves Jack, too, and she doesn't mind being occasionally bowled over by his affections - in fact, the other day she managed to catch him off balance and knock him over. She always leaves Summer's house in a great mood (even if she often has too much fun to nap while she's there).

Beatrice is also perfecting her sitting, including sitting in the bath - and especially her crawling. She is crawling basically every moment she's awake. Unfortunately, she refuses to stop moving for anything, including nursing and diaper changes -even at night, she crawls back and forth in her crib until finally exhaustion takes her.

This month we started B on more finger foods, including Cheerios, cereal puffs, crackers, and yogurt drops, as well as non-traditional finger foods like cottage cheese and egg yolks. Egg yolks make more mess than you can ever imagine. Still - nothing occupies a baby like finger food. Mina and I enjoyed a leisurely brunch with all three babies recently while Beatrice was perfectly engrossed in eating five Saltine crackers in slow succession.

Beatrice encounters a cracker for the first time.

Beatrice and cottage cheese.

This month B also discovered a newfound love of swings. As you can see, she's perfectly fearless (though I'm not - I made Dev stop pushing her so high, I was sure she was going to fall out).

And now that she's older, she's beginning to appreciate things like the Zimmer Children's Museum, where she explored the water table and the "toddler bounce room," or the Cabrillo Aquarium where she sat in a fish tube.

Fish tube.

Beatrice plays with the water table.

Beatrice poses with some kosher play food at the Zimmer Museum.

Find more month eight photos on Flickr or Facebook.