Progress!

Number Two's had a language breakthrough in the last day and a half--last night he said what we are considering his first complete sentence, with subject, verb and object: "[Number Two] like ham." It seemed fitting (the ham to which he was referring had lately been served in macaroni and cheese, on a Hawaiian pizza, and in the below soup). Then, this morning he came out with "[Number One] watch TV" and "Mommy make toast," followed by many others as the day went on. We're also seeing development in how he recalls and relates things, and makes connections--it's so cool!

Number Two also got his worst owie to date today. We were at a friend's looking at pictures she took of the bebe, and as he was making his way over to the Duplos to build a tower, he lost his footing and fell into the coffee table. The look on his face was just awful--pain and shock and betrayal, all at once, more than he could get out in one cry. It took a long snuggle for him to recover enough to get back to tower-making. It actually looks a little worse in real life than in this picture (taken as I was getting him up from his nap):



I'm pretty proud of how much cooking I've done this week: only one takeout dinner (though, granted, Sunday dinner was at J&J's), two batches of cookies, and a good dose of planning and prep for tomorrow's book group brunch and next week's Chaos, with Turkey (tm). A few nights ago, we had this soup, adapted from a recipe in the Cook's e-newsletter.

Pink Soup

(It was only pink because of the red Swiss chard stems I included. It did also have some pink ham, but I think you could make a perfectly fine soup that tasted exactly the same but was not pink.)

6 C chicken broth (1 C homemade concentrated stock, diluted)
2 lbs potatoes (about half peeled-and-cubed russets, half marble-sized multicolored babies)
1 bay leaf
1 T unsalted butter
1 4-oz link country sage sausage, cut into 1/4" slices
about the same amount ham, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 medium yellow onion, cut in half polewise and then sliced thinly crosswise
1/2 bunch Swiss chard, leaves and stems separated, and cut crosswise into 1/2" pieces
1/2 C frozen corn kernels
a little flour-water slurry to thicken at the end
2 T balsamic vinegar
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1. Bring broth, potatoes and bay leaf to boil, then simmer until potatoes are tender. Mash the russets roughly, so some chunks still remain.

2. Meanwhile, melt butter in dutch oven and sauté onion, chard stems and sausage until getting nicely browned. Add chard leaves and cook just until they're starting to wilt.

3. Add potato mixture to sausage/onion mixture (removing bay leaf), deglazing pan as needed. Stir in corn kernels. Use flour-water to thicken as desired. Simmer a few minutes to blend flavors. Stir in balsamic vinegar, adjust seasonings and serve.