Maybe I’ve given the wrong impression here. Looking back over my first few posts, I may have implied that Iris spends her days leafing through cookbooks, selecting the most challenging and intriguing recipes, saying things like, “Dada, make tournedos Rossini,” and then chewing thoughtfully and asking for seconds.

In real life, Iris is a toddler. That means she spends most of the day making demands, and not tournedos-style demands. It also means that often she doesn’t eat anything before 4pm, and while she is easily impressed, it’s not usually by the same things that impress me.

That’s the foreshadowing.

When you have a person of few teeth in your house, you make a lot of stew. Luckily, Laurie and I love stew, and I’ve been perfecting my techniques. One thing I’ve learned, for example, is that one of the best and easiest ways to take a stew from ordinary to ass-kicking is to strain out the vegetables, reduce the sauce, then cook some more vegetables and add them as a garnish.

That’s what I did last night. I braised a chuck roast in barolo (an intense Italian red wine) with some vegetables, thyme, parsley, and pancetta. I strained the braising liquid and boiled it down until it was an insanely rich and savory sauce. Then I turned to a method I learned from All About Braising. I peeled a bunch of baby carrots and browned them in butter and olive oil. I added some of the sauce from the meat, a bit of red wine vinegar, and some minced sage and parsley. I covered the pan and let the carrots cook until tender, then uncovered and cooked until glazed. At this point, you can throw the vegetables back in with the stew if you want. In this case, since it was more of a pot roast, I served them on the side.

While all this was happening, I had some polenta cooking in the oven. Each place got some slices of beef, glazed carrots, a dollop of polenta, and sauce over all of it. Iris took a look at this and said, “Father, what a marvelously hearty meal! A votre santé!”

Actually, she cried because she didn’t want to stop reading her Blue’s Clues book.

She did end up eating a bunch of polenta, once she noticed that it looked a lot like cornmeal pancakes.

Iris has a little cold, which is very cute and pathetic. Yesterday I convinced her to go for a walk to Trader Joe’s. The whole way, she kept weakly pointing out patches of snow in a squeaky voice. Being sick has made her uninterested in food in the same way I am when I’m sick. If she’s really like me, when she starts feeling better she’ll suddenly get a craving for peperonata.

Once we got to TJ’s, two things perked Iris up. First, she got to ride in the cart. Second, they had a free sample of corn cakes with pumpkin butter. Iris liked them so much that I got the ingredients (a box of cornbread mix and a jar of pumpkin butter) and made them for the whole family for afternoon snack.

There’s nothing to it. Get a box of cornbread mix–Joe’s has corn kernels in it and is pretty tasty, but I’m sure Jiffy would work fine too. Mix it up according to the directions on the box, with a little extra milk. Heat a nonstick skillet and brush it with a little vegetable oil. Pour out small cakes, cook them like regular pancakes (they’re more fragile, so flip carefully), and spread them with pumpkin butter, apple butter, regular butter, or whatever you like.

Oh, we were at Joe’s buying a bottle of Barolo for making *brasato al barolo* (beef braised in Barolo), which will be dinner tomorrow. I’ll let you know how it turns out. On the way out of the store we were entertained by a woman at the customer service desk complaining interminably about the fact that she left her wallet at home and the store wouldn’t let her just punch her credit card number in manually. The way she was telling it, you would think John Ashcroft got a new job as manager of the Capitol Hill Trader Joe’s.

I’ll be posting about my cookbooks of the year separately, but here are a couple of food-related gift ideas, from cheap to not. Before you ask, yes, this is a transparent attempt to score with Amazon, affiliate-style.

##### Stocking Stuffers

* Exoglass spoons are like wooden spoons but made of some kind of space-age polymer that makes them dishwasher safe, hard to melt, and impervious to discoloration and odors. Plus they come in purty colors. I have a bunch of these and they’re great. About $7.

* Cuisipro measuring spoons. These are the best of all possible measuring spoons. They sit on the counter without tipping. They’re oval shaped to fit in a spice jar. And the top of the bowl is flush with the handle, so you can level them off easily. Other measuring spoon MCs should just retire.

##### Cookware

* All-Clad MC2 saute pan. This is just about the most versatile piece of equipment you can have in your kitchen. It also costs almost $200, and even though I’m giving you the Amazon link, I think you’re better off buying it in person, because this pan often has a distinct hump in the bottom which makes oil pool around the edge. To avoid this, take the pan out of the box and hold the bottom against a flat surface, like the edge of a shelf, and look for a gap. I use my saute pan for making French toast, chicken marsala, braised dishes, and pretty much everything else. It’s dishwasher- and oven-safe.

The reason it’s worth dropping a buttload of money on this pan is that when All-Clad talks about a lifetime warranty, they are serious. I also have an All-Clad 12-inch nonstick skillet, and by the time it was nine years old, the nonstick coating had gotten feathery and ineffective. This will happen to any nonstick pan, usually in less than nine years. I called All-Clad and spoke to a nice sales rep who gave me an RMA number, no questions asked. I shipped the pan back and swiftly received a brand-new pan. I expect to do this again in 2014, although presumably by then I’ll be able to just teleport the pan to them over the Internets or something.

* Emile Henry Le Potier 1-Quart Oval Baker. We have four of these (in blue) and they’re perfect for baking and serving baked pasta, apple crisp, and other one- or two-serving gratins. They’re not cheap, but I can break anything, and I haven’t even been able to chip these over the course of two moves and six years.

##### For kids

* Wooden Play Food Cuts. This is a stupid name for an awesome toy: wooden fruits and vegetables with a wooden knife and cutting board. The fruits and vegetables are held together with velcro, which you can sever with the knife, making a satisfying crunch. In fact, forget the kids–I could have hours of fun with this thing.

* Mini Kitchen. There are lots of enormous plastic toy kitchens. This one is wooden, and it’s the only one we’ve seen that will fit well in a small apartment. That’s why we’re getting it for Iris’s birthday.