The Return Of The Pudding

Like many parents, we worry about the amount and kind of food that our offspring consume. Freya has been not so eager of late to eat food, and our liberal approach of asking her just to taste everything before she declines is starting to get to me a bit, since it is not reaping the rewards I wish it to. In fairness, the recently introduced “three more mouthfuls” tactic has worked, and I’m happy for that small blessing.

Today we made Sneaky Dad’s Pudding, a mixture of strawberries, banana, avocado, peanut butter, flax oil, carob powder, soya milk and orange juice. Now, I know it does not sound like the kind of thing that would be tasty, or be appreciated by children, but it is actually very nice. Everything gets whizzed up in a food processor, giving it the consistency of half-melted ice-cream, and has lots of minerals that any child would benefit from.

Both Freya and Zelda tucked in, and Freya even had three portions of it. She wasn’t so enthusiastic when she was little, but now she claims she wants it every day. I’m not sure just how long it’ll take before they get bored of it, though for the first time in a while she is eating very well.

Being Amongst Vegans

The family went to Vegomässan 2009 today, a vegetarian/vegan fair that is now in its second year. While the location reminded me of an underground parking, it was reasonably cosy and there was a fair bit to do/see/eat. In fact, we had difficulties deciding exactly what to eat there, with soooo many delicious-looking buns, cakes, burgers, hot-dogs and other comestibles to consume. In the end we made our choices, and they were good.

Vegan food has, not surprisingly, come on a long way since my last foray into animal rights fairs. Vegan grub is at a far more acceptable level, and I would have been happy to take a no-vegan there, assured that there was not a lentil in sight (not that lentils are a bad foodstuff).

Freya loved the fair. There was a small, but (judging by Freya’s comments after we came home) pleasing kids’ corner where she stayed a while. She enjoyed walking around the crowded locale, and she liked the food. She even asked us, a few hours after we got back, if it was still open. I reckon that counts as a success.

A great day out for us all, even though we did not get to hear the lectures that we wanted to. And we even got to buy a Christmas ‘ham’ that apparently tastes very nice. We shall see.

Humanity Towards Others

I inherited a Dell Pentium 4 – with barely minimal memory (256MB) and a laughable hard drive (40G) – the other day. It had a corrupted Windows XP Pro running on it, and it was S L O W. I mean really slow. So I unsuccessfully tried to reinstall Windows (in retrospect, why?), clean up the hard drive and test for malware, all without any hint of success.

I took the “radical” decision to uninstall Windows and install the popular Linux OS, Ubuntu. At first it did not want to get past 55% installation before it crashed, but a quick CD clean and disk/hard disk check proved to be just the ticket. I now sit here writing this entry on a new, faster machine. The interface is unusual, but logical and user-friendly.

I almost have a feeling of pride at getting it all to work, whilst rescuing an otherwise damned PC; best of all, I have a non-Windows computer.

Posted in Jon

Wise Freya

The family were in the car today, listening, as usual, to Freya’s music. A song from the popular children’s program, Lazy Town, came on. It was sung by one of the characters who is known for being a greedy little tyke, and he was singing, quite fittingly, that everything was his. Freya piped up midway through the song that not everything was his. The forest wasn’t, for example. She added that the forest was the property of the Earth. In fact, according to our wonderful daughter, everything was owned by the Earth.

A Turd in The Hand…

Zelda is currently very helpful around the house: she helps us with the laundry (taking clothes out of the washing machine), she gives us things that she is carrying around at any given moment, she hands over things that she finds on the floor.

Today Zelda was ambling around the flat naked and disappeared into the spare room. It was no surprise (well, a bit) when she came out a few minutes later holding a turd in her hand. It was perfectly formed for her hand, and, thankfully, of a consistency that did not cause too much smearing.

She walked calmly up to me, and stretched out her hand for me to take it. How sweet.