On the way to the airport this evening, my husband checked his Blackberry only to find that his outgoing flight to Vegas was delayed by a couple of hours. Not knowing what else to do, we headed over to this nice outdoor mall in the area. We stopped into Anthropologie, a store I never really gave much thought to. Cute stuff, but I always thought I was more of a “J Crew” girl. That was after a long bout of college deep in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. It was all about horse races and tailgating and I dressed for those occasions. I drank gin & tonics and smoked cigarettes and pretended to be a good little WASP. Not much personality, but that’s OK. My mother, I’m certain, was still relieved, after watching me test the limits of what was acceptable in my sophomore year of high school, when I worked the punk rock look to within an inch of it’s life.

Anthropologie was adorable, but not in an overly adorable way. Does that make sense? Soft tee-shirts (of which my husband bought me this one by Splendid) and pretty summer dresses and… who knew… this cookbook Kitchen for Kids that my 2-year old tossed at me while checking out. Of course, being a sucker for an afternoon in the kitchen with my girl, I could not resist. I have two cookbooks for kids, a Dorling Kindersley book called First Meals and The Petit Appetit Cookbook that I found years ago, that we’d been working from, but they were more of an introduction to food – homemade purees through easy meals for toddlers. We’d pretty much worn them out and had long ago moved on to “grown-up” cookbooks, as my oldest daughter will eat virtually anything. One afternoon, I was even tempted to ask her if she’d like a glass of Pinot Grigio to go with her smoked almonds and gruyere. Not a joke. She definitely takes after me when it comes to preferred snack foods of choice.

So we are going to start working our way through her new cookbook this week, since her Daddy is away for a few days. It makes me hope that this awful rain that’s been inundating us for weeks will continue a little longer so we can hole up and make homemade pizza dough that she will decorate with pepperoni & shredded cheese. I can’t imagine a more perfect way to spend a few hours with Pea than in the kitchen watching my little gourmet foodie pound out the dough.

A rainy Sunday, Pea never got out of her pajamas…