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Henry's diet leaves much to be desired. Still. Last year I decided that I was going to, at the very least, make real food versions of the stuff he likes. Instead of instant Maple Syrup and Brown Sugar oatmeal, I'd make it for him from scratch with old-fashioned oats, real maple syrup, and brown sugar. Instead of Campbell's tomato soup, I'd make him real tomato soup. (For the record, even though Dave and I loved it, that one didn't go over so well, and Henry now refuses to eat any kind of tomato soup.) You get the general idea.

In October we joined a winter CSA. I love it. I'm much more a "winter" than a "summer" when it comes to vegetables. We've been using up everything we get (except for beets, blech) which is practically unheard of for us. One of the vegetables that's been frequently popping up is parsnips. Did you know parsnips aren't a member of the onion family? Because I didn't until I actually saw one. For my entire life up until October I assumed parsnip was some kind of onion simply because it sounded like the name of something that would be some kind of onion. Don't even ask me what I thought a leek was. Anyway, I asked a friend what she was doing with them and she said she was mashing them up with carrots and that it was really good. Operating as I do with the personal opinion that carrots are truly disgusting, I put them in mashed potatoes instead, and gosh-darned if they weren't the best mashed potatoes I've ever made. I haven't made them any other way since then. And you know what? Henry happily ate them because he couldn't tell there was a root vegetable lurking in his innocuous looking side dish. Dave and I have shared many a fist bump over this particular triumph.

Remember that part up there where I mentioned that carrots are disgusting, because they are? Well, we've also been getting a lot of carrots in our CSA and they've been piling up. I usually slice them up and put them in soup because they taste a lot less carroty when they've been bobbing around in chicken stock for a few hours, but there's only so far you can go with that on a weekly basis. On Saturday while perusing allrecipes.com for something, anything that uses up a significant quantity of carrots without actually tasting like carrot I came across this recipe for Golden Carrot Buns. A few of the commenters mentioned the fact that these buns do not, in fact, taste like carrot despite the large amount the recipe requires, and that was good enough for me. Sunday I made them, had Dave taste-test them while I prepared myself for disappointment, but then he said they were good, that they didn't taste like carrot at all. I tried one, and he was right. Then, the ultimate test, Henry nibbled one, declared he liked it, then gobbled it down. Of course he has no idea there are vast quantities of carrot in them, but he's on a need to know basis, and he doesn't need to know.