Look, Ma, a normal dinner!

My go-to recipes have titles like "Egyptian Kusherie," "Red Lentil Dahl," and "Pakistani Kima." They are heavy on cumin, curry, and turmeric, and are usually one-pot meals served over rice or couscous. Oh, and they're often vegetarian. Not because we're vegetarians. We're budgetarians. Once we decided to go organic with the vegetables and dairy, we had to cut something, and meat usually gets scratched.

 So a dinner like this sticks out at our house. "What IS this, Mommy?" "It's a chicken leg." (Which, I might add, is breaded with homemade bread crumbs. It's one of my nerdy food things to save every heel, extra roll, stale loaf, etc. in the freezer and then bake them into homemade breadcrumbs. Why is that so satisfying? I just get such a kick out of using up every last thing. Like I said, nerdy.)

So here we are enjoying an all-American meal: chicken, mashed potatoes, and broccoli. Totally normal! Oh right--except that the mashed potatoes are pink. That's because the locally grown, organic potatoes we've gotten from our CSA this year are purple! We've eaten purple cauliflower, purple peppers, and now purple potatoes. How perfect for a family of Baltimore Ravens fans. And it is really cute to hear the girls exclaim about the anti-oxidants in naturally purple or blue foods (to think I lived so long under the impression that blueberries were the only blue/purple food! Seems our grocery stores have been holding out on us. Kudos to the brave, local, organic farms!)

And yes, these girls put away ALL that broccoli. They make the clean-plate all-star team!