Individual Mushroom & Spinach Pizzas
Feeds 2 adults and 3 extremely small toddlers (YMMV)
Ingredients:
4 small whole wheat pita (or “pocket”) breads
1/3 jar basic red spaghetti sauce (I use a generic-brand six cheese flavor)
8 mushrooms
12 oz. (approx.) shredded mozzarella cheese, aka “sprinkle cheese”
1/2 cup frozen leaf spinach
1. Place pita breads on a non-stick baking sheet and put under the broiler, on High, until slightly crisp on one side, or about the length of time it takes to rescue a toddler that has managed to wedge itself painfully between a footstool and a ride-on plastic zebra.
2. Cook spinach in microwave for approximately 1 minute or until mostly thawed.
3. Remove pitas from oven and turn over. Using a butter knife, spread red sauce over non-toasted side.
4. Slice all 8 mushrooms, plus one finger, while distracted by sudden high-pitched screams from next room.
5. Distribute a thin layer of mozzarella evenly over pitas. Reserve 3 small handfuls of cheese for toddler appeasement.
6. Distribute spinach as evenly as possible over pitas. Agree with nearby toddler that your fingers are now “g’een”. Alternately: Forget spinach, leave in microwave. This is fine; the toddlers never eat the spinach anyway.
7. Cover pitas with mushroom slices.
8. Liberally cover pitas with mozzarella to desired level of cheesiness. Appease demands for “sprinkle cheese” with reserved handfuls. Have a dog handy, if possible, to remove any discarded cheese form kitchen floor.
9. Put baking sheet under broiler on High until cheese starts to bubble and go brown. You may have spectators during this step; under no circumstances allow your audience to attempt chin-ups on the oven door handle, no matter how strenuous their objections to being removed to a safe distance.
10. Cut pizzas into quarters and serve! You may be required to “swap” pieces with toddlers; the proffered slices may be either (a) identical to yours, or (b) have had all toppings removed, and look suspiciously as though the red sauce has been licked off as well.
Bon appetit!
Rice, Black Beans & Fried Plantains
Feeds 2 adults and 3 extremely small toddlers (YMMV)
Ingredients:
3 tbsp (approx.) canola oil
1 clove garlic
1 1/2 cups long-grain rice
4 cups liquid vegetable stock (I made mine using 2 large Knorr’s vegetable bouillon cubes and electric-kettle-boiled water)
1 can black beans (I used a plain non-spiced version because allergies)
2 large plantains
3 tbsp (approx.) butter
Sea salt
1. Pour a hefty glug of olive oil into a large, shallowish pasta pot, over a low heat. Oops, that’s too much oil. Internally debate pouring some down the sink, but that’s bad for the environment. Shrug. Crush garlic, put into pot. Remove toddler from leg.
2. Add rice to pot, stirring in until rice is coated in oil. Separate toddlers engaging in impromptu cage match over Duplo rights, kiss scratches better and dry tears from tiny cheeks. This should take several minutes, at which point the rice will be ready for the next step.
3. Add vegetable stock to pot, fishing out scraps of foil bouillon-cube wrapper. Turn up to medium heat. Ideally, do this one-handed, while carrying a screeching toddler on the opposite hip. Cover rice with tight-fitting lid. Set kitchen timer for 15 minutes; cook for 13 minutes because three screaming toddlers can’t wait two more minutes for dinner, you monster.
4. While rice is cooking, slice plantains into thick diagonal-ish slices. Repeatedly explain “Not banana, plantain.” Ignore, then refuse, then give in to repeated requests for “nana”. Wait 20 seconds, then throw half-chewed slices of plantain in trash.
5. Melt slightly too much butter in a frying pan over medium heat. Place slices of plantain in pan. Step back from pan to allow toddler to push large empty cardboard box past you, then return to pan and flip plantain slices to brown on opposite side.
6. When rice is cooked (see step 3), drain can of black beans and add black beans to rice. Stir through. Forget to add the dried basil.
7. When the shrieking goes from mono to stereo to surround sound, dinner is ready! Spoon hillock of rice and bean mixture onto plates (tailor amount to size of person) and top with plantain slices. Sprinkle the adults’ meals with sea salt, then after indignant squawking, sprinkle the children’s meals with a very small amount of sea salt.
Tags: cooking with triplets, family, food
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! 🙂
TINY BB HANDS
Also, I am all over that plaintain recipe!
I am too, except for the part about “slightly too much butter” which, in my world, doesn’t exist. There is never too much butter.
This is great!
“toddler appeasement” is probably my favorite. That and forgetting the basil.
we often have to add a handful of frozen peas as a side dish to whatever is for dinner so they have something to eat while they wait for it to cool down, otherwise: screaming.
I’m sensing a theme here…
I’m technically in my 20s, and still require my mom to lay out handfuls of shredded mozzarella whenever I’m home and she’s cooking, so.
Mama, I don’t know how you do it. This is fantastic and I’m cackling at my desk.
Also, now I’m hungry. It’s 9am here. THANKS.
thanks love!
Unrelated, but I had a dream last night that I met @icebergmama on my honeymoon in Sri Lanka, because that’s where she lives. Is that where you live? Can Jen Doll tell me what this means?
Hahaha no! I live in the US. But my grandmother’s mother was born there, and there is a family rumor that there is a connected reason why my dad and auntie have jet-black hair uncommon amongst white folks.
Ok now I’m seriously freaked out at my dreams for divining this connection between you and Sri Lanka.
Jaya, clearly you are dream-psychic. Can we do an advice column that way? Ask Jaya’s Subconscious?
It would be a lot of me having sex dreams about weird musicians while also having six toes.
I don’t see a problem
Iceberg, you are hysterical. <3
In the way that means funny, not in the way that means wandering womb sickness.
Haha, thanks! I’m done with the womb though so I don’t mind if it wanders off.
I always imagine a wandering womb with its hands in its pockets, whistling and kicking up pebbles.
The Whistling Wombs would be a great band name for a very specific type of band.
ICEBERRRRG! Oh this is all the cooking advice one ever needs! “Oops, that’s too much oil. Internally debate pouring some down the sink, but that’s bad for the environment. Shrug.”
Shrugging features heavily in all my recipes 😉
ICEBERG! Hands of Bergy Bits! These recipes were so hilariously (and relatably, in the ‘too much oil/slightly too much butter’ parts) written. Keep ’em coming!
Haha thanks!
“Step back from pan to allow toddler to push large empty cardboard box past you, then return to pan and flip plantain slices to brown on opposite side.”
Suggested Variation, for Chefs with Cruisers: Peer at plantains until you feel repeated, insistent smacks on your thigh. Step back to let toddler scoot past on the oven door. Realize the oven is on. Enthusiastically say, “Yes! It’s warm!” when your toddler doesn’t react strongly. The door must not be that hot.
I can’t be the only person who was disappointed with the fact that this post wasn’t about cooking an actual child.
paging evil melis
Guys I WORK HERE now, I can’t just come be evil in the comments all the time
I was actually hoping evil melis would write that article, really.
they are extremely tender… Hmmmm.
You and the Hannibal fandom.
Tell me more about this ride-on plastic zebra.
Yes, I have ah, uh, many friends with toddlers and I want to get a gift (I have no friends with toddlers).
it’s this guy (just googled it; we were given ours by a friend whose child had outgrown it)
also ours doesn’t have batteries in; we don’t need any more electronic beeping shit.
I just had a panic attack for you, at the thought of the chaos and the screaming and the sharp things and the hot things and the little people and the….everything. You, madam, are a superhero.
thank you! you know how they say first time parents are very nervous and by the third child you’re like “ehhhh” – yeah, so, I am on my third child 😉
You are hilarious and also Superwoman. Continue to write these articles, they are staving off any desire I had to have children. So much screaming. So much.
Researching sterilization options now…I’m the auntie kind, not the mommy kind!
There may come a day when I willingly become a mommykind . . . BUT TODAY IS NOT THAT DAY.
(I would make the meme, but I do not know how. Kindly imagine Aragorn looking hella fierce.)
mmm…Aragorn…
Haha Ohhhhh the tales I could tell, girl.
All desires! For me it’s the licked-clean pizza…
But iceberg, you’re wonderful and these are so great.
This is outstanding and very much like our house between the hours of 5 and 6:30. Except, thank God, we only have the one shrieking toddler. Especially this:
“Set kitchen timer for 15 minutes; cook for 13 minutes because three screaming toddlers can’t wait two more minutes for dinner, you monster.”
Yep.
Okay, seriously, what is that? We have dinner every night, basically at six. You see us making food, small person – putting things on the table and such. You know we are going to feed you. Why are you circling the dining room table, alternating between crying and making that noise you make that means “I want that thing that I can’t reach. Now.”? We have never once forgotten to feed you. Can’t you trust that we know what we’re doing? That the food is coming any moment?
If you figure out how to communicate this to your small person, let me know, because I deal with the same thing with the dog.
I wish that I could say that it goes away, but my small person is 7 and I still hear whines of “I’m hungry….I want food now….I’m starving to death….Can’t you just hurry up dinner…What can I eat right now?!?!?!” I’m alternating chopping things up, stirring things on the stove, and checking what’s in the oven and you’re asking me for something else to eat while I am finishing up dinner? And seriously, didn’t you just eat a bowl of cereal an hour or so ago? And a giant bowl of watermelon an hour before that? (My small person is not so small. Skinny, somehow, but quite tall. My 5’2″ self will be looking up to him in a few more years.)
Right? I find a handful of frozen peas works well as an appetizer 🙂
Icebergmama, just when I think I can’t fall in love with you anymore, I do.
aww thanks! I <3 u too!
Those chubby little toddler paws are killing me. Also, I giggled a lot at the “Oh, you want a bite of this thing I told you that you won’t like? OK, enjoy!” plantain thing, cause I’m the worst.
Right? “I TOLD you!”
(also, my son’s hands are like little wombat paws, made for digging and burrowing.)
Can I substitute 1 1/2 twins for 1 set of triplets in these recipes? Need to know before I start cooking, I’m terrible at fractions and I don’t want to get toddler all over my kitchen again for nothing.
Your Milage May Vary!
I can’t imagine how you get anything done with three toddlers in your life. Although I just had drinks family friends including with a Dad of an 11 year old and fie years old twins and he was saying they’ve just hit a threshold where it does not take two of them to do every. single. thing.
Yeah sometimes we divide and conquer – I usually take one to do the weekly grocery shop – but mostly we make everything into an event. They’re still young enough that walking 3 blocks to the supermarket for a gallon of milk is exciting (but old enough that we often have to bribe them by buying something to eat as well).
basically.
As a mother of twins plus a younger brother, I think you’ve omitted the step where you open a bottle of wine “for deglazing”, drink a glass during cooking, skip the deglazing, and put the bottle back for “deglazing” tomorrow.
Hey, I said it was for deglazing. I didn’t say it had to be for the PAN, rather than my eyes.
dang, you had twins and went back for more? mad respect, lady!
I'm technically in my 20s, and still require my mom to lay out handfuls of shredded mozzarella whenever I'm home and she's cooking, so.
bergie, I love your comments on the pin, but I love this so much more.