When Iris started school, I figured she’d get colds all the time. It didn’t occur to me that she’d bring them home and give them to me. It took a whole week and a half for this to happen. By the time Iris graduates from high school, I am going to look like a patient on House. Maybe I could get her to wear a face mask to school and tote a box of latex gloves. That would be totally cool, right?

While moping around, I noticed something mildly interesting. When I have a cold, I lose the ability to tell whether I’m hungry. This morning I only knew it was time for breakfast because I heard my stomach growling. But it’s not that I lose my appetite, either. I had a bulgogi sandwich for lunch. When I finished, I felt no more or less full than before. I don’t know whether this has to do with my sense of smell being impaired or what. If anyone wants to turn it into a satiety research project, just give me a byline on the paper and 10 percent of the grant and we’re cool.

This week on [Serious Eats](http://www.seriouseats.com/):

Cooking With Kids: School Lunches

> Personally, I can see the storm cloud of chicken nuggets gathering on the horizon, but my daughter Iris, 3, just started preschool, and her school doesn’t serve hot lunch. So I have to send sack lunch, and if it’s no good, I have no one to blame but myself.

I’m getting better at making lunch, but the real test of my mettle will come next week when I have to send snack for *the whole class.*

I’m at the Tully’s Coffee on 19th. I ordered a tea for here. At this Tully’s, for some reason, their tea-sized mugs are a random assortment like you’d see in an office lunchroom.

This time they did something that has never happened to me before in hundreds if not thousands of visits to Seattle coffeehouses. They gave me my tea in a mug *from a competing coffee chain.* (Verite, to be exact.)

I think this is the very definition of confidence.

Iris could spend a whole afternoon tasting jams at the Woodring Orchards stand at the Broadway farmers market. You can taste any of their products, using the same little plastic spoons they have at the ice cream shop.

Woodring doesn’t actually have an orchard. They buy excess product from local farms and turn it into preserves. I mean it with the utmost respect when I say that Woodring is like a fungus: they convert discarded organic matter into something delicious to eat. In addition to the jams and chocolate sauces, they sell a variety of pickles; the spicy green beans are my favorite. They also maintain a stand at Pike Place Market, open every day.

Last week at the market, we told Iris she could choose any jar she wanted. She only had to taste a couple to alight on a selection: lavender jelly. “Are you sure about that?” Laurie asked. Iris was sure.

The lavender jelly is seriously pungent. I could see it working as a glaze on a rack of lamb. But Iris likes it on toast and considers herself especially lucky if her bite of toast features a big glob of jelly.

I was also surprised by Iris’s choice, but it’s not like she took the spicy green beans.

As I wrote a couple months ago:

> There’s an odd vacuum in the local hamburger bun market. You like sesame seed buns, right? I do. What I don’t like is a bun so large that it dwarfs my patty or forces me to make a gargantuan meat disc. When I go to the supermarket, however, all I ever see is normal-sized plain buns or huge sesame buns, such as Franz BBQ buns.

Today Iris and I made a remarkable discovery: you can convert a non-sesame bun into a sesame bun!

Make a loose egg wash by beating one egg with a couple tablespoons of water. Brush this on the top of a sadly seedless bun. Sprinkle liberally with toasted sesame seeds. Place on a foil-lined baking sheet and bake in a 300°F oven for 7 minutes. (You don’t need to bake the bottom bun.) The bun will get slightly welded to the foil from the egg, but I was able to detach it without too much damage.

I let Iris eat one of these for snack. The rest are for tonight’s burgers.