Conversations with my daughter.

[rivka]

Alex: Why do we always do the same old thing? I want you to make me a fancy lunch.
Me: What did you have in mind?
Alex: A little pig that looks like it's alive and has an apple in its mouth.
Me: You're planning to eat an entire roast suckling pig for lunch?
Alex: Half. (beat) The front half.

Comments

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Has she seen piglets up close? They're pretty big for a single meal.

That said, I totally think you should make a roast suckling pig for her sometime. And, by that, I mean, you should totally do a project based on dissecting a piglet, learning about the organs and how everything fits together, then cooking and eating it. And that you'd have to ALL cook it together as a family, and learn about how proteins change when they're cooked, and why you cook, and how, and what cooking does.

[ailbhe]

Did you ever mummify that chicken?

[naomikritzer]

This made me laugh out loud.

My older daughter typically has a "cheese plate" for lunch -- a selection of three or four fancy cheeses, with water crackers. Also a cut-up apple. She will eat plain old orange cheddar in a pinch but she REALLY likes her cheese plate, which was originally provided by my husband on a whim / as a treat and quickly became the Expected Lunch.

It's my younger daughter who would flip over a roast suckling pig for lunch, though. ::dies laughing again::

Have you ever made a roast suckling pig? I've never had one, and have seen them only in books.

[naomikritzer]

Ooooh, I found an actual picture of one.

You know what? That's actually a little creepy-looking. I may stick with pork roasts.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

But no apple... Joy of Cooking relates an anecdote in which the cook, misunderstanding the instructions, initially refuses, but finally resignedly marched to the table with an apple in her mouth.

[tchemgrrl.livejournal.com]

This (http://www.flickr.com/photos/kickinthehead/3018015970/) would probably be less work than the suckling pig, but is certainly fancy.

[matthewwdaly.livejournal.com]

Is there anything worth eating in the front half of a pig? The shoulder isn't too bad, but the ham and the bacon is in the back!

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

All the good cuts are in the back.

B

[nolly.livejournal.com]

Of course there is.

The apple.

[matthewwdaly.livejournal.com]

I bow to the superior intellect.

[berkeleyfarm.livejournal.com]

The bacon is actually the middle - pork belly. Although with a piglet it's all kind of small.

The guy who taught me pork butchery says that the cheeks are very, very tasty. When he does a pig roast, he and the host get them.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

http://homecooking.about.com/od/beef/ss/hdoctopussbs.htm

B

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

She might enjoy this concept: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entremet

[wcg.livejournal.com]

You could make her a bacon pig.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

There's a restaurant in the Plateau where they'll do you one for the table, with an apple in its mouth, but you need to have 10 people and order in advance.

We haven't done this, because one of those people needs not to be Z's A, who is horrified at the thought. And none of them can be vegetarian or keep kosher.

But I could totally do this at Farthing Party with a bit of prior organization.

You can buy plastic (but looking lacquered) Japanese bento boxes for a couple of dollars, and put different things into each compartment. Even if they're things like a handful of raisins or some carrots, rather than whole roast sucking pigs or wild boar, it can make school lunches a lot more fun.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

I was kind of fascinated by these http://www.laptoplunches.com/ when pegkerr and minnaleigh got them. I love multicoloured plastic things. But I never got one, since my preferred style of lunch is a lot of one thing shoved in my backpack.

[columbina.livejournal.com]

I love all these conversations-with-Alex entries more than words can say.

[(Anonymous)]

My two and three year old love "butterfly" sandwiches a la Jeremy Fisher. Take any sandwich and cut in diagonals, I usually do two cuts to make four triangles. Then put the points of two triangles together to make the butterfly's wings, add strips of carrot, thin slices of pickle spears etc for feelers and raisins or other dried fruit on top of the wings for spots and patterns. These are always a hit