We’re off on a road trip.
We did it. We packed the car and took off down the road, the three kids in the back. We followed the road out of our pine forest on the coast of Argentina where the kids were on winter vacation and I was working. The road led us to Tandil on a weekday, on a workday, on a day with things to do, on a day we decided to call our own. We went. We drove. The landscape of farm fields flowing past and our minds relaxing from the pressures of the week and a hard year. We played I Spy and stared out at the cows and the horses and the road running into the distant hills. Up a steep hill we drove into a nature reserve to see donkeys, hares, llamas and even a puma. We walked, we looked and we smiled. We climbed to the top of a craggy hill and gazed out at the expanses below, far and wide to horses and cabins, a town in the distance, green fields and brown fields, trees and hills and rivers and a lake. We looked and we chatted as a family, the five of us and just us. We walked down the hill to see the boars, the owls, the peacocks and the quails. The nandus stood tall and then suddenly they darted. They chased away a fox out to snatch an egg, maybe. Down we drove to the lake and lunch, then the playground where the kids raced, climbed and slid, us parents watching, keeping mind and laughing. Happy. Then the car, the road and the setting sun. We drove into the dusk of a crisp winter day and into the dark and down the road and back to our home on the coast and into bed.
It was a good day of our very own.
Coconut milk does a body good. Ask my son.
My son is loving his dairy-free superhero diet, which we started last week. I put coconut milk and water into his porridge and he wolfed it down, asked for seconds, polished it off and then ran to Mummy – quick as lightening – and said, “Mummy, Mummy. I had coconut milk in my porridge. Look at my muscles.”
He gave a big flex.
Mummy oohed.
Watch out Brutus! There’s a new Popeye in town and he’s found that coconut milk does a body good.
“Yeah, no cheese, please. I want to be a superhero too.”
We’re preparing for a big change in our diet, at least for my son. The six-year-old may have an allergy to milk and dairy products, from cheese to chocolate and dulce de leche, a sort of caramel that he likes to scoop out by the spoonful. Milk, in its powdered form, goes into many products, from biscuits to cereals. And it contaminates (for my son, possibly) the ham cut with the same machine used for slicing cheese.
It’s a big change.
My son likes milk.
What to do?
My wife came up with a prep talk, telling him he’s going on a superhero diet of fruit, vegetables, juices and homemade bread, among other delicious foods. The stress being on the delicious. But no milk or cheese or even Honey Grahams, his favorite breakfast cereal. Our son didn’t hesitate much, or protest. He liked the idea, and that very day he asked for water instead of milk for his nightcap. He told me to prepare the oatmeal for the next morning with water and not milk. A glass of juice to drink along with it, please, he said. The superhero diet caught on with him and he’s keen. [continue reading…]
