Monday Menu - kids cooking, funeral edition

I will be away for a funeral later this week and so the girls are on for cooking. At least Chibi is as she is the more natural cook.

With just the two of us tonight Chibi and I ate baby lettuce green salad with goat cheese and pine nuts.

Tomorrow, I will cook a Chicken and root vegies in a terra cotta roaster. We now have two such cookers because we're crazy about them and I find them at good yard sales. Somehow the clay really brings out the juices and flavor but nothing we cook in (including cast iron)is so flavorful.

With the left overs, Chibi will make Chicken Wraps with lettuce and cheese, and Mr. Greenjeans makes wonderful Chicken Enchiladas. Ni-chan will be away some at Girl's state so the meat dishes will be clumbed while she's away.

Chibi likes to make soba with garlic broccoli and shredded carrots.

I suspect there will be take out one night while I'm away and I'll make yogurt before I go and I may cut the rhubarb for the first time and make a strawberry/rhubarb pie. We aren't seeing any strawberries (not one) in the stores but I suppose that will change as June progresses, but the pie will come from last year's frozen berries.

Not the most inspirational menu, but it's good that sometime the girls get relied on for cooking while I'm away. Two day's driving - one day full family on-sought. There is a newborn second cousin I haven't met yet.

I made a commitment to myself that I'd go to this Uncle's funeral when the time came. He was an amazing man and I could blog about him for a long time. He lacked common sense: his family refused to ride with him driving, but he never had an accident.

As a very young child I remember cross bows for Christmas and practicing in the back yard (very large city neighborhood). But he was a genius - and I don't use the term lightly. He did things like invent a pacemaker for himself and have it installed in his chest because in the 1970's the official technology wasn't what he could build. Obviously he was a well respected Dr. as were his fathers and brothers and Uncles before him. He was a fine study of mushrooms and would send us around the neighborhood in the early dawn of the morning collecting mushrooms out of lawns which he'd cook for breakfast. He used his genius in ways I will never fully appreciate, in advances in medicine.

He had a heart transplant 14 years ago on a night when he would have died from heart attack. His heart was giving out as they did the transplant. At that time he stopped practicing medicine. That new heart never did fail - but the rest of the organs wore out from the transplant meds. The list of his adventures goes on and on and I'm sure the family will have a wonderful time telling stories on him this week.

He was also a man of God. After he stopped practicing medicine, he took up Stephens Ministry, visiting people in his congregation on hard times and praying and studying scripture. He gardened and snuck vegies everywhere there was a chance. He had a hard end - organ failure, but he lived a good life, a full life, a life in service to others.