Dragon Fruit Vampyr, A Big Batch Of Banana Pancakes + Lots Of "Nom Nom Nom"

Yossy Arefi's Cub Street Diet

Hi Friends,

This week, we are so excited to share the Cub Street Diet of

Yossy Arefi

, bestselling cookbook (and Substack!) author, food stylist and food photographer.

We’ve been fans of Yossy’s work since she started her blog Apt. 2B Baking Co. in 2010 (were we ever so young?!) and immediately fell for her delicious, fruit-forward recipes and gorgeous photography. In the intervening years, Yossy has contributed countless recipes to the likes of NY Times Cooking and Food52 and has published three beautiful cookbooks: Sweeter off the Vine, Snacking Cakes and Snacking Bakes. (Greta’s copy of Snacking Cakes is among the filthiest in her kitchen library: a profound testament to how wonderful the recipes are.)

She is also mom to a ravenous and energetic 17-month-old son and a dog, Arlo, who is relishing his newfound job: vacuum cleaner. Read on for a few days in Yossy Arefi’s family kitchen!

Greta + Fanny

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My 17-month-old son has loved eating from the moment we introduced solids and so far he’s been game to try just about anything we’ve given him. There are certain foods he likes more than others, but even if the first bite of a new food is surprising, he’ll generally make a face and give it another go before complete rejection. I know this probably won’t be a forever thing so I’m enjoying it while it lasts. The algorithm recently served me a video of a parent recommending you top your kids’ food with herbs or pepper or something green so it becomes normal for foods to mix and have garnishes, suggesting they’ll be less likely to push against it down the line. It seems logical, but I’m under no illusion (delusion?) that things will go that smoothly longterm. I’m ready for our buttered noodle era if and when it comes.

In the meantime, my son is a truly delightful mealtime companion. When he really likes something he’ll hold it up like a prize and ask “THIS?!” like it’s the most exciting thing that’s ever happened, and will occasionally give a piece of food a warm hug. He’s also not shy with the “yums”… which seem to be instinctual? Either way, I feel like he really appreciates my cooking. When he’s finished eating he signs “All done” or starts rubbing food in his hair.

Cooking is my actual job so I do a lot of batch-cooking for him (and me and my partner.) I spend so much time at work dreaming up and cooking interesting recipes, but the truth is we eat very simply at home most of the time and there are a lot of repeat meals. We also try to feed him the same food we’re eating, while it lasts! I thought about jazzing up the menu for this diary, but I didn’t, so I hope this isn’t too boring. It’s real!

I haven’t bought any kid specific dishes (I feel very against divided plates for some reason, there are too many to choose from, I can’t decide between bamboo or silicone or stainless steel), so we either put food on his highchair tray, a silicone table mat, or just use our regular dishes and make sure he isn’t tossing them. This will probably change too. In short, we play it fast and loose with the plateware. I’m open to suggestions!

Sunday

Baby usually wakes up around 6:30 and is READY to start his day. Once we free his feet from his sleep sack and tickle his toes he’ll take a few laps around the apartment then start saying “nom nom NOM” at increasingly louder volume until someone feeds him breakfast. Sometimes it feels like living with a cartoon character. I truly have no idea where he got it from. Does anyone else’s kid do this?

The batch of banana pancakes in question.

Once a week I make a big batch of Sam Seneviratne’s Banana Pancakes or Melissa Clark's waffles from NYT Cooking to keep in the freezer for easy breakfasts and snacks. NYT Cooking has been an incredible resource for me and I’m not just saying that because I contribute recipes and food style for them. Sometimes I make the pancakes or waffles 100% whole wheat and sometimes I’ll use a mix of AP and whole wheat flour—it just depends on what I have around. If it’s my morning to get up with him I usually drag his highchair into the kitchen (a Tripp Trapp with the most annoying straps on earth, but we committed and I am nothing if not stubborn) and post him up with his breakfast while I mainline a giant cup of coffee with whole milk. My partner and I alternate who gets up with the baby and makes coffee and who gets up to take the dog out. He has been bringing me coffee in bed lately on his days and I cry a tear of joy every time.

This was a pancake morning and he had banana pancakes with peanut butter. He has had a monster molar slowly coming in for weeks so we’ve been giving him frozen fruit to gnaw on and he had some of that too. Thank you Costco for the reasonably priced 3 pound bag of frozen blueberries, and also thank you Fresh Direct (sponsor me!) for your giant bags of snack-sized pieces of hot pink dragon fruit. Baby loves them so much that when he sees the bag he starts stomping his feet and cheering. While he eats them the fluorescent juice drips down his chin and I can’t resist calling him “Vampyr!” I also made some scrambled eggs for me and my partner and Baby had a few bites too.

Baby is a great eater so we just give him water to drink with meals. We were giving him milk a few times a day for a little while after he turned one and weaned, but we phased it out and he didn’t seem to care.

He had a midmorning snack of ½ of an avocado with lemon juice, a Babybel cheese which I also buy in giant quantities at Costco, and a satsuma orange leftover from a photoshoot.

Lunch was some roasted acorn squash left over from dinner last night, some Banza “rice” with chopped broccoli, cottage cheese, and pepper. The “rice” is basically orzo made from chickpeas so there are probably some health benefits? I usually make a batch of something like this for his lunches every few days. Sometimes I use rigatoni which fits perfectly over his little fingers which makes all of us laugh. I hope to pass on my deep love of leftovers for lunch, and breakfast—so far it’s working. What is meal prep, if not just eating leftovers with better branding?

He eats some of the rice and broccoli and all of the squash, plus more. We shared a sumo orange (I bought a flat of them from my friends at Fresh Direct) and I cut his half into little bits. He alternates between sucking all of the juice out of each piece then letting the fibrous bits fall into his bib and actually eating the oranges. I joined him and ate some Banza and broccoli with oranges, along with his leftovers. Our wonderful dog Arlo, who before the baby's appearance, had eaten very little human food, except for the peanut butter I use to bribe him into the bath, has turned into a very lovable vacuum cleaner, and for that I am grateful. He cleans up any errant rice on the floor when we’re done.

Afternoon snack was a banana, another Babybel cheese, and a few cheddar bunnies. I bought the cheddar bunnies to give Baby as an “exciting snack” while we were on a long flight a few weeks ago, but he didn’t seem to care about them much. He did however enjoy crushing my empty beverage cup and walking up and down the aisles saying hello to his fellow passengers. The bunnies also made a huge mess so they have been relegated to a highchair food.

Dinner was a little late because our cousin just moved to Brooklyn (yay!) and we were out and about with her for most of the afternoon and into the evening. So, Baby had a few snacks on the road to tide him over until we got home. He had another banana and Babybel which are our go-to on-the-go snacks: individually packaged and not too messy. When we got home I roasted a piece of salmon so he had that with some broccoli. We eat a lot of broccoli.

After the baby went to bed I made baked buffalo wings that I had intended to make for the Super Bowl, but we were all sick that week so I saved them for another special occasion. I sliced up some carrot and celery sticks with a yogurt-based blue cheese dressing cobbled together from bits and pieces in the fridge and made some oven fries by slicing some russet potatoes, tossing them with olive oil salt and pepper, then roasting the shit out of them. It’s not a very scientific method. We ate all of that at the coffee table while watching Severance.

Monday

We have pancakes with peanut butter and scrambled eggs for breakfast, this time with fresh blueberries because I scored some for super cheap at our local produce market. We used to have a Mr. Berry by us, but they got kicked out by the landlord, and replaced with a smoke shop that closed a few months later *sob*. The other place that’s still open is fine, but it’s no Mr. Berry. I had coffee with milk, a protein shake and some pancakes. Arlo licked the peanut butter off of the baby's water bottle which had been tossed on the ground at the end of breakfast.

Baby has a part time nanny during the week and she is an angel sent from heaven. She feeds him lunch and snacks on the days she takes care of him. We usually have an assortment of leftovers from dinner and foods that I’ve prepped throughout the weekend/week that she puts together for lunch. That day he had a bit of salmon leftover from last night with Banza rice and broccoli, some frozen blueberries, and a few carrots and celery sticks from the night before. She reported that he had a great time mowing down the carrot like a little bunny, but didn’t really eat any of it, and loved crunching on the celery. The limit does not exist for the amount of blueberries he would consume in a sitting so we alternate between fresh and frozen to semi keep the grocery budget in check. Plus, it’s winter and there are not a lot of great fresh fruit options.

In the afternoon he had a slice of Dave’s Killer Bread with ½ of an avocado and some frozen dragon fruit chunks. Vampyr! I usually buy the thin-sliced Dave’s bread which seems to be the perfect size for him. We keep that in the freezer too.

I have always loved eating dinner early, even before I had a baby with a 7pm bedtime, so depending on our work schedules we try to eat together at 5:30-6ish. For dinner, I made some accidentally extremely salty chicken because I was not paying attention when I added the soy sauce. We had basmati rice, and more broccoli on the side. I make big batches of roasted sweet potatoes or squash with smoked paprika and garlic powder so we each had some of those too. I mixed some Greek yogurt into the baby's rice to make it easier for him to pick up/fork into his mouth. I rinsed off some of the chicken in an attempt to make it less salty, but he wasn’t into it. Probably for the best. Instead, he excitedly alternated between fistfuls of rice with yogurt and bites from a fork. Rice and yogurt is a huge comfort food for me and I am thrilled that he likes it too. He asked for more so he had more sweet potatoes after the first round. I stubbornly ate salty chicken while chugging water.

Tuesday

More pancakes and peanut butter with fresh blueberries for breakfast. He spotted an avocado in the fridge when I opened it to grab some coffee for my milk [that was an accidental typo, but I am leaving it in!] so he had that too. The avocado, not the coffee. I used to keep a big bowl of fruit on the dining room table, but if Baby spots a banana or avocado, that’s all he wants to eat. So I’ve taken to stashing those foods out of sight. He would eat 4 bananas a day if they were on offer.

He was with his nanny for lunch and she made him scrambled eggs with roasted squash and broccoli and red beans on the side. Snack was a banana with peanut butter, some cottage cheese (we all love Good Culture!) and frozen dragonfruit. Vampyr!

I was testing recipes for my Substack and made a big pot of lentils with sweet potatoes and carrots, cumin, coriander, and kale so I ate that for lunch, then heated it up again for our dinner. I wasn’t sure if he would like the lentils so I sprinkled some mozzarella cheese on top for safety. The pieces of kale were a little too long and he was pulling them out and waving them around before trying to eat them so I grabbed my kitchen scissors and cut the kale into little pieces. Turns out I didn’t need to worry about him liking the lentils because he used his spoon, my spoon, and his hands to eat most of a bowlful after he stopped flinging the kale around.

I was also testing a recipe for soda bread with cornmeal and raisins so we each had a slice of that too. It was soft and crunchy and chewy. Baby hugged his slice of soda bread and asked for more so I knew it was a hit.

You can see a sliver of Arlo camped out under the highchair, but he is definitely supposed to be sitting on his bed. He dutifully cleaned up whatever was left on the floor. For my fellow dog lovers, he did not eat any of the soda bread with raisins, but he did thoroughly lick the highchair after we took the baby out.