A single Brussels Sprout, Big Flavor Rice + "I Do Not Like French Toast!!"
A Cub Street Diet from Heather Sperling of LA's Botanica Restaurant
Hi friends,
Notwithstanding the fact that it is, unfortunately, still January, we are thrilled to present this week’s post: the third installment of The Cub Street Diet, our monthly column devoted to what other people are feeding their kids.
Here to recount four days in her family kitchen is Heather Sperling, dear friend, incredible cook, and the owner of Botanica, a beloved LA neighborhood restaurant that she co-founded in 2017 with Emily Fiffer. Before she began running a restaurant, Heather spent a decade as a restaurant-focused editor for culinary publications—and on the side, served as a writer for dozens of others and a consultant for chefs, markets and culinary brands. Heather is also a founding board member of Regarding Her (or RE:Her), a national nonprofit dedicated to accelerating the growth of women entrepreneurs and leaders in food and beverage.
Most importantly however—for the sake of this column, anyway—she is the mother to a four-year-old daughter, Marina, and two-year-old son, Hammond. She takes us on a rollicking ride through the highs and lows of someone who lives for food finding herself consistently foiled by a pair of, in her words, “pint-sized tyrants.”
If, at the end of Heather’s account, you’re feeling hungry for more, you’re in luck: she’s published dozens of delicious, wholesome recipes on Botanica’s site and you can peruse them here and follow her here.
Before diving in, remember: Heather is an actual professional! Her access to pristine ingredients? Sublime! Her flavor combos? Superb! Her culinary skill set? Vast and profound! So, no—don’t necessarily try the below at home, but do let the fresh, beautiful flavors of her family kitchen inspire you to jazz things up a bit in your own. “Big Flavor Rice”? Don’t mind if we do.
Fanny + Greta
“I own a restaurant; I’ve been cooking since before I could walk, and was an enthusiastic and precocious eater from the start. My entire creative and professional life (and a majority of my social life) revolves around creating memorable food experiences. Imagine my surprise/bewilderment/confusion/frustration, then, when I discovered that I had birthed two petite humans who were EXTREMELY PARTICULAR about eating. They don’t really do sauces. They are skeptical of any dip other than Botanica’s hummus. They do love sumac (I’m part Lebanese, so they’re genetically predisposed, I guess) and they like to eat a spice mix I concocted for Botanica called Magic Spice straight from the jar. But they’ve been known to recoil—occasionally screaming, no less—from simple pleasures that are usually no-brainers for kids, like whipped cream, chicken nuggets, or a dollop of almond butter atop a blueberry (heaven forbid!). They require 75% different meals (from each other) 95% of the time (and obviously will almost never eat what we’re eating). They will only accept Rancho Gordo black beans, and only on every 4th day that includes the letter T. The morning that Fanny and Greta emailed me about writing this, I had screamed “I’M TRYING MY FUCKING BEST HERE, PEOPLE!” at my children, thrown a purple snack cup across the room, and sobbed.
You get the picture; it’s been a journey, and not one I have navigated with consistent grace. My husband and I are not above tactics anathema to current modes of conscious parenting (bribes and threats, baby!). I serve these most precious twerps of mine very good food from very good ingredients—but it is simple food, pandering to their tastes, as I have yet to see a hotter mess than my kids when hangry. (Reading The Green Spoon has made me realize that I’ve given up on creativity a bit when it comes to these pint-sized tyrants; but who wouldn't feel thwarted by years of rejection?!)
I know this will change. My daughter deigned to try whipped cream literally yesterday and of course adored it. I also know that there are pickier kids out there, of course—and I fully recognize how game-changing it is that we don’t have any major allergies to deal with. That said, being not just a food lover but a bona fide food person and having every meal be a struggle has worn on me. My 4-year-old occasionally mutters a conspiratorial “Fucking shit, Mom,” and you best believe she learned those words in the context of dinnertime.
This diary actually comes at an unusual time in my feeding-kids journey: I’m fresh from five whole days off of kid duty, thanks to an extremely cushy work getaway (a guest chef gig at a spa/hiking retreat near San Diego). And, to my surprise, I’ve been totally chill about my kids’ eating since I returned. Who is this easy-going person? I don’t recognize myself. No idea whether this unexpected shift will last, but I’m grateful for the chance to document it so that future me can remember this perspective, should the WWE cage fighter EVERY MEAL IS A BATTLE THAT I MUST DOMINATE instinct return.
Without further ado, a few days in the edible life of Hammond (aka Hamm, 2.5), Marina (4.5)—and occasionally me and John (husband). Thanks for reading! What this lacks in culinary inspiration it hopefully makes up for in useful product endorsements!
SATURDAY
Marina + John retrieve me midday from aforementioned cushy work adventure, and are thanked with a box of the spa’s ginger cookies; Marina eats three and gets a sip of a San Pellegrino orange soda because this is a festive reunion moment and I am racked with mom guilt for my absence.
Dinner:
Marina: roasted halibut (olive oil*, sea salt, garlic), leftover blanched green beans (olive oil, sea salt), a few nibbles of fennel from our salad.
Hamm: Something I’ve branded “Big Flavor rice” (rice with olive oil, sumac, Botanica Magic Spice). Shout-out to the Zojirushi rice cooker I’ve owned and loved for 14 years! Hamm refuses to try anything else on the table; we supplement with organic string cheese, apples, sweet potato crackers, walnuts, raisins.
Us: Halibut rubbed with Magic Spice, grilled and plopped over store-bought kale-lentil soup; shaved fennel-apple salad.
Dessert: More ginger cookies, plus delicious little kishu mandarins I brought back with me (my favorite variety of mandarin for its concentrated flavor, easy-off peel and darling, diminutive size).
Marina is wound up from cookies and mom retrieval mission, so the prospect of sitting at the table and eating beautiful fish that her father caught last summer (heaven forbid!) is just too much to fathom. Dramatic declarations—“I do not even want dinner! I did not even want fish!”— abound, along with tragic sighs and the occasional sob. I am still in zen mode after the aforementioned spa experience, so am uncharacteristically able to roll with this. It works in my favor: Instead of running away screaming as I wield threats to bring her to the table, she colors for a few minutes, then hovers around as we eat and eventually finishes every single thing on her plate. Granted, she’s standing the entire time and I feed her, 75% of it while she does little dances, but still—success!
It occurs to me that this un-phased, roll-with-it version of myself is the parent I imagined I’d be before having kids, and have succeeded in being less than .01% of the time in the past 4.5 years. This is cool! I’m so calm! Zero power struggles or cortisol surges—and it only took 120 consecutive hours at a spa to achieve it! Fuuuuuuuuuuuhk. I contemplate how to extend this state of mind (CBD? microdosing?) as I eat my ginger cookie.
Later: I remember I have a bar of Moire date-sweetened chocolate in my closet (yes, I occasionally hide my special chocolate); we have a glorious reunion. A bit later: another glorious reunion with lentil turmeric crackers—they give wholesome Dorito vibes.
*A word on olive oil: I stash a restaurant-style, 9L box of Seka Hills California olive oil in my cupboard, and fill a 750ml glass bottle with a pour spout for daily use. Fanny introduced me to this oil; it is really the perfect balanced, mild olive oil, and very reasonably priced; I glug it with abandon.
SUNDAY
Breakfast:
Marina: Two leftover pancakes—ILYSM, These Are The Days pancake mix. I have always prided myself on making a great wholesome pancake, but this mix is just the tops, as far as I’m concerned. Made by a mom in Topanga, with stone-milled whole grain flours, flax, etc etc. We literally travel with it.
We counterbalance the pancake wholesomeness with a syrup triple-threat: maple plus Just Date date and pomegranate syrups (sweetened only by dates; highly recommend!).
Hamm: Leftover overnight oats from our favorite local coffee shop, some pancake, 4 or 5 persimmons—I genuinely lost count. I’m aware that this excessive ratio of persimmon to body weight might backfire (literally), but: zen mom.
Snack: An hour or so later, Hamm spies a loaf of whole wheat sourdough on the counter and requests a bread snack. In the spirit of “fun mom reunion!”, I offer toast with jam (Crofter’s fruit-juice sweetened); two enthusiastic takers.
Lunch: The kids request another bread-centric meal—almond butter (somehow I got them to start eating it two weeks ago) + jam on Dave’s Killer Bread—and, being the relaxed cool mom that I am now, I roll with the carbo-loading. I give them slices of red bell pepper sprinkled with sea salt; Marina rejects, but I get Hamm to eat them by playing a game of “How loud is that crunch?” and having him take bites next to my ear. He eats them all—gotcha, sucker! He also gets cauliflower crackers (loud crunch), apple (medium crunch), organic cheddar cheese (breathy, smacky… having someone masticate cheese directly next to your ear canal is an oddly intimate experience).
Snack: I take Mari to “band practice” (if you’re in LA, I can’t recommend Kid Row more enthusiastically), and afterwards we convene at Botanica to treat her pals to chocolate milk. Our mocha/chocolate mix is sweetened only with dates, resulting in a genuinely less aggressive sugar high—but nonetheless screams (of joy and rage), tears, and general little kid sugar-enhanced mood swings ensue. Decaf mocha with our fresh cashew milk for me.
Dinner: I bang out a serious spread in under an hour motivated by getaway guilt. Hamm and I pick cilantro and kale from our container garden in the front yard.
Us: Cucumber yogurt; kabocha, delicata and red lentil dal; seared kale (smashed garlic and leaves seared hard in olive oil, finished with lots of lime).
Marina: roasted chicken breast & ketchup; steamed Brussels sprout—yes, singular (olive oil, sea salt); cucumber yogurt (Persian cucumber, greek yogurt, sea salt).
Hamm: Botanica hummus and cucumbers; broccoli (olive oil, sea salt), but only after I turn it into a game in which Hamm eats the florets and I beg to eat the stem.
Both: Avocado toast—lime, minced cilantro stems, sumac on sourdough (served on Permanent Collection half-moon board NOT SPON JUST LOVE); Hamm asks for Magic Spice on it halfway through. We discuss how coriander is the seed of cilantro; I give Hamm whole coriander seeds from the Magic Spice jar. His review: “Crunchy!”
We attempt to enforce a rule that the kids need to try one new thing at every meal. Marina takes one bite of delicious roasted kabocha squash (declares she doesn’t like it), gingerly licks a piece of kale (then rejects it). Hamm refuses to try anything new. The threat of ginger cookie withholding falls on deaf toddler ears. We cave; cookies for all.
MONDAY
Breakfast: It’s a holiday, so I approve Marina’s request for french toast with blueberry syrup. Hamm declares: “I DO NOT LIKE FRENCH TOAST, uuuuuuuuuugh!” but I remind him that he in fact does, and miraculously he accepts this. I whisk eggs with whole milk and cinnamon, and soak thick slices of whole wheat sourdough. They get cooked in ghee in my 12” Lodge cast iron (most-used pan—I have two!), while frozen wild blueberries simmer with a bit of maple syrup.
I present the slices whole, with a cascade of maple blueberries, and am rewarded with an unprompted “Thank you, Mommy!” from Hamm (and soon after: “This is yummy in my tummy.”). As the kids eat their breakfasts, I take the tough bottom crust pieces from their servings, plop them into the pot with the meager dregs of the blueberry syrup, and eat this awkwardly with a spoon. Ah, a tasty metaphor for the deprioritization of self in parenting for breakfast!
Snack: Solely mango-guava gummies (just fruit & vitamin C!)
Lunch: A mishmash free-for-all. I spy some Goodles leftovers of questionable age in the fridge; reheat those and hope for the best. The kids were introduced to Annie’s mac at a friend's house recently, and loved it so much that I decided to accept fate and allow the occasional boxed mac treat—our house brand is the Parm version of Goodles, often with blanched peas stirred in. In addition to the pasta, Hamm awkwardly dips a whole Persian cucumber (refuses to let it be cut) into hummus, and (miraculously) eats some lentil soup. Marina has 1.5 leftover Brothecary chicken dumplings, leftover roast chicken with ketchup; I’m not sure if anything vegetal managed to make its way into her body because I had to take off.
Snack: Marina requests a bar, weeps when I present it (it’s Cerebelly; she wants Yumi). Instead of delivering a lecture on gratitude (or lack thereof), the unflappable new me offers a smoothie. She accepts but weeps about having ONLY a smoothie, so I give her free reign of the snack drawer and she packs a bowl with Annie’s bunnies, Cookbook curried cashews, a dried fig, a prune, and some dried blenheim apricots.
We stay pretty stocked up on local dried fruit from the Hollywood farmers market (Avila & Sons and Arnett— they both ship! Order some!), but always have plenty of grocery store organic dried fruit on hand, too—fruit juice-sweetened cherries and cranberries, mango (Go ManGo is the absolute best!), golden berries.
Marina and I make a smoothie together (Straus organic yogurt, frozen organic mango, frozen wild blueberries, a few handfuls of spinach, some leftover canned pineapple in its juice). Hamm wakes up from a nap, downs smoothie and frozen mango.
Dinner: The kids play a sweet game of “Marina’s restaurant” while I prep, in which Marina pretends to make pork dumplings and then they dance around. An unfortunate head bonk on a cabinet pull ends the fun, and I plop them in front of an episode of Rosie Rules while I finish cooking.
Them: It’s that wonderful 5% of the time where both kids eat the same thing! Specifically, a spinach-onion-cheddar omelet, plus assorted bites from our dinner—soba and cucumbers (Hamm), fennel and carrots (Marina). For the omelet: I sauté spinach and onion, chop that all up extremely well, finely chop organic cheddar cheese, and stir everything into beaten eggs. It’s served cut into small squares and is usually successful as long as they’re quite hungry and moderately distracted while eating. They each score an Effie’s almond cookie after dinner, plus some fruit and plain popcorn.
Us: Soba salad with greens/chicories/shaved veg. I make a dressing in my Permanent Collection suribachi (NOT SPON JUST LOVE) with garlic, soy sauce, rice vinegar, olive oil, orange juice, toasted sesame oil, South River organic white miso, and lots of silky, sweet saikyo miso (one of my current favorite ingredients).
We pack lunches for tomorrow: omelet, carrots, cucumbers, leftover veg from our soba salad, berries, curried cashews, dried strawberries, a bit of bar.
(I head out to a Botanica staff party and have a delightful second dinner of a Bub & Grandma’s tuna sandwich and potato chips.)
TUESDAY
Breakfast: Marina & John are leaving today for a trip, and she is losing her mind with excitement. I’ve been wanting to get the kids back in the habit of having oatmeal for breakfast, and I see this as an opportunity for some tactical spin. We explain that oatmeal is a VERY important breakfast to have on the day you’re leaving for a trip.
Extremely successful breakfast ensues: steel-cut oatmeal (soak it overnight and cook in its soaking water, 1:3 oats to water, so it cooks in 5ish mins in the morning) with some whole milk stirred in after cooking, topped with frozen blueberries warmed with a little maple syrup. Leftover smoothie on the side.
Hamm gets raisins* and Seven Sundays maple sunflower cereal (this stuff is really tasty; I buy it primarily for my own snacking purposes) for his car snack en route to school.
*A word on raisins: If you live in LA, I urge you to seek out K&K Ranch and/or Peacock Farm raisins, and then send them to all your friends with kids who live in sad raisin states. These raisins redefine the genre! They are legitimate delicacies—especially the XL, jewel-toned K&K beauties. (Peacock is at the Santa Monica market & sold at Cookbook, though they have the most varieties at the market; K&K is at the Hollywood farmers market and sometimes in stock at Botanica.)
Lunch report: Hamm ate everything except for the omelet, alas.
Dinner: Hamm: Green bean quesadilla (delicious Tehachapi Grain Project flour tortillas, organic mild cheddar, blanched green beans, lime), broccoli (olive oil, sea salt), a California winter fruit plate (passionfruit, persimmon, pear).
Me: Some leftover sautéed greens and a fried egg, the remainder of Hamm’s quesadilla and broccoli, then 487 snacks throughout the night, because…life.
Post Hamm bedtime, I cook Rancho Gordo black beans (soaking since yesterday) with leftover onion, a few garlic cloves, and lots of fresh bay leaves. If you’re a bean-lover, I highly endorse planting a bay bush/tree—which grows as happily in a garden as it does in a pot on a fire escape. I cook a pot of beans weekly, and the fresh bay makes them so delicious.
I also make Hamm a batch of overnight oats (which he loves and Marina refuses to touch, natch) with a base of this great grain/seed mix called Qi’a—oats, chia, buckwheat groats, amaranth, hemp, quinoa. Nevermind that I have each of those things individually bagged in my pantry; I just love the thrill of a crunchy natural foods store product! I thin organic yogurt with water and add the oat/seed mix, chopped raisins, smushed raspberries, cinnamon, a little maple syrup and some date syrup.
While making this, I contemplate how my career as a professional nourisher is not powerful enough to overcome the human-garbage-disposal mode that seems to go hand-in-hand with parenting young children. Part of it, for me, has to do with not wanting to waste food—but an inability to care for oneself while caring so considerately for your dependents is just part of the experience for so many. I don’t know how to rectify this in my own life, but it feels like a step that I am examining it without judgment or despair… and after only 120 consecutive hours at a spa! I contemplate CBD/microdosing again (while eating more chocolate).”