Raising Foodies

And So I Leave You with Some Brownies...

2011-02-07T07:13:00.000-08:00

I've been putting-off this post for a while...avoiding the inevitable if you will, but after over three months of slakerdom in this space, I am officially retiring Raising Foodies (for now, because you just never know...)

I kept thinking I would come back, I did, but it just never seemed to happen. It didn't happen after a holiday filled with cooking (and eating)... It didn't happen after I made an enormous six-layer rainbow birthday cake for Millie... It didn't happen after baking spice cupcakes, a cake, and the best brownies of all-time on the same snowy, house-bound day.

So I finally came to terms with the fact that it was never going to happen, and this is my attempt at closure. (I'm a fan of therapy, can you tell?)

I am proud of what "Raising Foodies" was. I loved interacting with you guys in this space, I loved that it made me think about how we were preparing and eating our food... that it was the catalyst for the girlies to try lots of new things they may not have otherwise.

But I think what I'm most proud of is how it's changed the way we approach dinner every night as a family. Our meals now are very different than they were pre-"Foodies". They're less harried, more mindful, more wholesome. We eat out very rarely (a major change), all four of us preferring to eat at home most nights. Sure some of this can be attributed to the fact that the girls are older, more independent and amenable, making cooking easier, but I believe when you put a goal out there, when you invite others to be a part of it, thus feeling some accountability to those people, it will change you.

So thank you. Thank you for being a part of our little food adventure, for helping us change.

And as a token of my appreciation, I've leaving you with (literally) the best brownies I have. ever. eaten. (and I have eaten a lot of brownies). I made them last night, and I'm not going to lie...they were a revelation.

Oh and they were super easy too. Enjoy!

Alice Medrich's Cocoa Brownies with Browned Butter and Walnuts (via Bon Appetit)

Ingredients:

Nonstick vegetable oil spray
10 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 1/4 cups sugar
3/4 cup natural unsweetened cocoa powder (spooned into cup to measure, then leveled)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs, chilled
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon unbleached all purpose flour
1 cup walnut pieces

Preparation:

Position rack in bottom third of oven; preheat to 325°F. Line 8x8x2-inch metal baking pan with foil, pressing foil firmly against pan sides and leaving 2-inch overhang. Coat foil with nonstick spray.

Melt butter in medium saucepan over medium heat. Continue cooking until butter stops foaming and browned bits form at bottom of pan, stirring often, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat; immediately add sugar, cocoa, 2 teaspoons water, vanilla, and 1/4 teaspoon (generous) salt. Stir to blend. Let cool 5 minutes (mixture will still be hot).

Add eggs to hot mixture 1 at a time, beating vigorously to blend after each addition. When mixture looks thick and shiny, add flour and stir until blended. Beat vigorously 60 strokes. Stir in nuts. Transfer batter to prepared pan.

Bake brownies until toothpick inserted into center comes out almost clean (with a few moist crumbs attached), about 25 minutes. Cool in pan on rack. Using foil overhang, lift brownies from pan. Cut into 4 strips. Cut each strip crosswise into 4 brownies. DO AHEAD Can be made 2 days ahead. Store airtight at room temperature.

Some Grown-Up Food

2010-11-01T10:47:00.000-07:00

I spend a lot of time scanning menus, honing in on the items the girls will eat and enjoy (key to our entire dining out experience) while trying to avoid automatically resorting to the kid's menu dregs of chicken nuggets and buttery noodles.

In fact, I spend so much time thinking about what the girlies will consume that when I do find myself dining sans kids (it doesn't happen often), I still inevitably scan the menu for the "safe" choices. It's a hard habit to break.

A couple of weeks ago my hubby and I spent an weekend in Austin for our tenth anniversary -- with no kids in tow. We were (of course) excited about the alone time...the chance to hang out, meander in museums, go for drives without having to mitigate backseat dramas...but we were absolutely giddy with excitement about the food possibilities. We planned our meals with the precision of a general going into battle. (I even e-mailed this fantastic blogger for some restaurant suggestions, as while Bryan and I lived in Austin for many years, it was over a decade ago, and when we visit, we tend to frequent the same spots.)

While we ended up eating some admittedly "kid-friendly" fare -- namely lots of tacos (it was Austin after all) and a *huge* stack of pumpkin pancakes at Kirby Lane, we did revel in such adult indulgences as fresh arugula and heady gorgonzola pizza and an amazing, magical, wholly unique meal at Uchiko. It was maybe the best meal I've ever had...it lasted almost 3 hours, involved a genius French waiter, prosecco with grilled thyme and lemons and insanely delicious food that I couldn't pronounce.

It was definitely not a kid's meal.

We need to do that more often.

Friends There Was Sushi...

2010-10-11T07:42:00.000-07:00

I suppose I first have to address my utter and complete slackerdom when it comes to this blog. Honestly I'm not quite sure what's happening here...we shop for food, we cook food and we eat food (a lot lately in fact), but when it comes to writing about food, I got nothin, nada, zilch.

But here's the thing, I'm not going to overthink it, rather I'm just going to forge forward, as sometimes I think the best way to bust through a rut is to stop thinking so much and just do. Yes?

So now for our latest foodie adventure...as you probably gleaned from the title, it involved sushi (which is well...huge) and Millie, who it should be noted, is by far the pickier of my two girlies.

As I mentioned in my last post, one of our all-time favorite reads is The First Book of Sushi... Audrey was obsessed with it as a toddler, and now the tattered and torn little board book is a daily read for Millie. But here's the difference, while Audrey loved reading it, she never once connected the words and images on the pages with food she would actually want to consume. Millie, on the other hand, is obsessed with both reading about and (the idea of) eating sushi. So much so, that for the past couple of months, every. single. time. we'd finish reading the book, she'd sigh really dramatically and say, "I want sushi."

Umm...ok.

Now a good "foodie"mom (especially one that loves sushi as much as I do) would have taken her kids to eat it early on...to get their palettes used to the different flavors and textures, but here's the thing (and I know you know this) sushi is expensive. And I couldn't bear to throw down loads of cash only to have them whine and gag and partake in their usual "there's no possible way I'm eating that" dinner theater.... So I waited. But then Millie started asking for California rolls and miso soup and shrimp ebi, and it was officially go time.

I'd like to report that she loved it, that sushi has now become a go-to meal, that neither girl ended up eating giant bowls of cereal when we got home, but I can't. I can say that Millie was an excellent sport. She tried everything we gave her, didn't gag or spit anything out and seemed to be generally excited about the entire enterprise, which I have to say, is in and of itself a pretty big accomplishment...

Next up tripe. ;-)

Foodie Books

2010-09-07T10:53:00.000-07:00

It's been quiet on the foodie front friends. I suppose we've been on a bit of a hiatus -- pretty much "post our berry crumble video and bolt."

It wasn't intentional, really. I suppose matters of food have just been a bit on the back-burner. We've been cooking and eating (of course), but it's been awfully basic fare. Our current rotation consists of grilled chicken or steak, the feta roasted potatoes, roasted cauliflower, sauteed green beans, quiche, spaghetti and the occasional grilled Gouda with tomatoes and artichoke hearts. (That was the "exotic" night.)

There's no long-winded explanation...it's just been hot, and we've been busy, and, well I've been a slacker. Case in point -- I made chocolate chip cookies for Audrey's class from pre-made dough (Central Market has the best) and bought her birthday cake.

Bad I know.

We have, on the other hand, been reading lots of books about food. I've been pouring through Jenny's genius Time for Dinner like I actually plan to cook something, and Millie is obsessed with My Foodie ABC. (Audrey's favorite book at three was First Book of Sushi, so it's fitting really).

It's good stuff...she cracks up over the xuxu every single time.

Every time.

A Winner + A Raising Foodies Video...

2010-08-11T07:32:00.001-07:00

First up the winner of the Fanny at Chez Panisse giveaway... Congrats Elena!

I also owe you guys some truly heartfelt thanks, as I now have a slew of incredibly yummy looking sides to give a whirl. So thanks for that!

Ok now for something fun (and, well... a little vulnerable too). My dear friend Ben and my lovely cousin Erin filmed the girlies and me cooking up a little berry crumble* a few weeks ago and worked it into the very first Raising Foodies Video for your viewing pleasure.

Take a peek...

*When I first posted about the berry crumble it was a complete disaster...gag-fest 2009 for Audrey. But it is now one of her all-time favorite things. Amazing what can happen in a year.

Weekend

2010-08-06T08:32:00.001-07:00

I'm a huge fan of Debbie Carlos' photography (Millie is especially partial to her bunny poster), so I was jazzed to find her food blog, weekend (image above via Debbie). It's totally fantastic... definitely worth a peek.

Happy Friday friends...cook something yummy!

p.s. -- thanks for all the rockin' sides...you guys are the best!

Stuck... (+ A Little Giveaway)

2010-08-03T12:43:00.000-07:00

For some reason, the task of dreaming up good side dishes is vexing me lately. I keep going to my fall backs -- the fool-proof trifecta of goodness that is roasted asparagus, roasted cauliflower or roasted new potatoes with rosemary and feta (or a little salad; I do turn out formidable salads), but given our current heat wave, cranking the oven up to 400 is a death wish.

It's possible that I'm just not that inventive, but there's also the matter of how picky the girlies are when it comes to sides. There's just not much that they dig. I'm at a loss.

So I propose a trade...I'll give you guys the recipe for this crazy good corn salad that I made recently (but that the girls didn't like at all, sadly) and you give me the lowdown on your favorite side.

(For the record, I would have given you the corn salad recipe anyway...I just like you that much.)

So to further sweeten the deal, I'll pick one of you at random and send you a copy of one of my all time favorite foodie books, Fanny at Chez Panisse. Just leave your favorite side in the comments section of this post by next Wednesday the 11th and I'll announce a winner later that week!

Cool?

Herewith the corn salad. It's truly yummy; my girlies are nuts...

Ingredients

4 cups fresh corn kernels (from 4 ears)
1 jalapeño, seeded and thinly sliced (wear gloves!!! I didn't and burned the heck out of my hands...)
1/2 cup crumbled Feta (2 ounces)
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
kosher salt and black pepper

Bring corn to a boil in a large pot of water (do not salt water but you can add a pinch of sugar) and cook for six minutes once water starts to boil. Drain immediately and set aside to cool.

Once cooled, cut kernels from corn and combine in a large bowl with the jalapeños, lime juice, oil, salt and pepper. Sprinkle with the Feta before serving.

Family Dinner...

2010-07-26T09:11:00.000-07:00

"make dinner not war" sticker courtesy of the fantastic Jenny... and you could win one too...

We've had some pretty stellar family dinners of late...but they had nothing to do with the actual meals we've made.

Actually, they were in spite of the food, which has been pretty routine and uninventive... Let's just say our current repertoire is heavy in such mundane standbys as spaghetti and meatballs and "taco night" (and not "chic tacos", but the old school ones-- a little meat, a little cheese, a little lettuce, a crispy corn shell. The tacos of our youth. I'm not proud, but it is what it is.)

So the meals not so great, but the meal-time, pretty darn good.

We made a decision early on that we wanted to eat dinner as a family at the table at least five nights a week. It wasn't an easy decision to make or more accurately, it wasn't an easy decision to stick too; it was actually pretty easy to proclaim... See sticking to it means that sometimes we eat at 5:30, because the girls are going nuts with hunger, and if there isn't food on the table at exactly that moment (which we've affectionately dubbed "the witching hour") then surely all hell will break loose. Sticking to it also means that up until recently, (if I'm being perfectly honest here) meals are often...well, a total nightmare. Eating with small kids is hard, and messy, and hard.

Did I mention it was hard?

But, as with a staggeringly large number of kid-related experiences, one day you wake up, and well, it's not so hard anymore. All the gnashing and agonizing pays off, and it's suddenly how you thought it would be when you made that original (smug) proclamation.

And that's pretty much where we are when it comes to meal-time these days. On a typical night (and yes, there are still some exceptions when dinner is all world war II -esque) we wait for everyone to sit down at the table before anyone takes a bite (which is especially hard for Millie, but she still pulls it off sweet girl) and then we start off each meal with a little ritual -- a blessing, the clinking of glasses and a hearty "bon appetite." Everyone eats quietly for a few minutes (ok a few seconds) and then we go around and each say what was best about our day. I know, I know, it sounds a little Normal Rockwell, but it's happening. I promise.

Sure there's still chaos -- taco meat on the floor (the shop vac makes an appearance after every. single. meal.), someone screaming, someone getting up from the table repeatedly for more milk, a bathroom trip, an impromptu dance...It is not perfect, but it's good. In fact, so good, that with each passing meal I can see ever more clear glimpses of what dinner might look like in say five years.

And that I'm really excited about.

Cooking for One...

2010-07-19T09:09:00.001-07:00

I'm lucky to be able to work out of my house a couple of days a week.

And while it's nice to not have to make the commute into the office, to be able to work in my yoga pants and to occasionally walk or ride my bike to get Audrey from school, the best part of this set-up is, by far, lunch.

I love knowing that exactly two days a week, I get to cook whatever. I. want. I get to create a little meal that is 100% completely and wholly for me. On those two days, I don't have to worry that Bryan doesn't like olives or blue cheese or tuna or that the girlies don't like, well...where do I start with what they don't like. There are no other palettes to consider, no other diners to cajole or convince into eating.

It's bliss.

Even during my most persistent cooking funks, these little meals feel inspired. I throw things in with abandon and take ample risks, as I figure if the dish is a flop, I'm the only one who will know (+ if all else fails I can eat a carton of Greek yogurt and some fruit...)

My go-to solo-meal of late is either a simple pasta with whatever is in the fridge or pantry (and usually involving some olives or few capers, just because I can) or an omelet with lots of feta and sauteed veggies. I've eaten some variation of this for the past month, and it shows no sign of waning.

So I'd love to hear, how does this work in your house? Do you ever cook for just yourself? What do you make?

It All Comes Back to Cobbler

2010-07-06T14:23:00.000-07:00

I had intended to write an altogether different post today...one that lamented my absence from the kitchen and featured lovely photos of all the restaurant food we've eaten in the past few weeks. Yep, I was all set to write a post telling you that I was feeling about cooking pretty much how Millie looks in that photo above...blah. Oh and I was going to tell you that when we aren't eating in restaurants, we're just noshing on lots of cheese plates.

I was pretty much going to write that.

But then, lo, a holiday weekend rolled around, and, well... I cooked. I cooked a lot. Yes, hot dogs were one of the things I cooked, and clearly that doesn't count as cooking, but I also made a fantastic corn, jalapeno, feta salad and a yummy tomato, cucumber salad, and a nice pasta dish, and a really stellar (if I do say so myself) peach, raspberry cobbler. So alas, there will be no restaurant photos today.

At some point this weekend, I also realized that I stopped cooking right at my 100th post on this blog... Strange, no? And in looking back over the archives during a mild bout of insomnia, I also discovered that almost exactly one year to the day, I was making, wait for it, peach cobbler.

Hmm...

Really I have nothing to conclude from all of this, except to say, we're cooking again, which is good. Oh and I would highly recommend this cobbler.

Peach Raspberry Cobbler -- Adapted from the Joy of Cooking

Filling

7 -9 medium peaches
2 cups of raspberries
1/4 cup of sugar

Topping

1 cup all-purpose four
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon vanilla
4 tablespoons butter softened
1/3 cup of sugar
1 large egg
1/4 cup buttermilk

Cut peaches into even slices and cover the bottom of an oval baking dish evenly. Top with the raspberries and evenly sprinkle fruit with the 1/4 cup of sugar. Set aside.

Wisk together thoroughly the flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon.

In a separate bowl, beat the butter, vanilla and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and then add half the dry ingredients and beat on low until just incorporated.

Beat in the buttermilk and then add the remaining dry ingredients until the batter is just smooth.

Spoon the batter evenly over the fruit mixture and cook for about 35 minutes on 350. Let cool for at least 15 minutes before serving.

Other People's Food

2010-06-10T10:45:00.000-07:00

I did not make these lemon bars.

No, it was Christine. She brought them to dinner at my house a couple of weeks ago, and friends, they were insanely good. She assured me they are both super easy and super quick, so I gave them a whirl last weekend, and, well...she was right.

A couple of notes here: first off, almost everything fantastic I've eaten of late somebody else has made. I need to get my culinary game on. I'm considering some cooking classes to freshen up the repertoire.

Second, I had already made dessert the night Christine and family came for dinner, so I put the lemon bars in the freezer to keep. This was a serendipitous move as the bars are killer "frozen"... sort of a cross between a lemon bar and a lemon ice cream-ish thing. (I actually let them thaw on the counter for just a few minutes, but not long.) Totally fantastic.

Christine's Lemon Bars (recipe from Martha Stewart)

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pan
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar, plus more for dusting
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled)
4 large egg yolks
1 can (14 ounces) sweetened condensed milk
3/4 cup fresh lemon juice (from about 3 lemons)

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter an 8-inch square baking pan. Line bottom with parchment paper, leaving an overhang on two sides; butter paper.

Make crust: Using an electric mixer, beat butter, sugar, and salt until light and fluffy. Add flour, and mix on low just until combined. Press dough into the bottom and 1/2 inch up sides of prepared pan; prick all over with a fork. Bake until lightly golden, 15 to 20 minutes.

Make filling: In a large bowl, whisk together yolks, condensed milk, and lemon juice until smooth. Pour over hot crust in pan; return to oven, and bake until filling is set, 25 to 30 minutes. Cool completely in pan.

Refrigerate until filling is firm, about 2 hours or up to 3 days. Using paper overhang, lift cake onto a work surface; cut into 16 squares, and dust with confectioners sugar.

The Summer Edible...

2010-06-09T11:24:00.000-07:00

is out, and I'm so excited to have an article in it about a new restaurant/catering company at the Dallas Farmers Market.

If you want to take a peek it's on page 16 here...

Our Go-To Meal (For Now...)

2010-06-02T10:40:00.000-07:00

Contrary to those photos above, this is not a post about asparagus. No, it's about quiche... We're having an awfully big quiche moment of late.

Specifically we're having a "quiche for dinner" moment, as I've fallen back on making it far too often than I'd like to admit lately.

It's ironic really, as quiche and I got off to an awfully rocky start, my first attempt was both comical and mildly infuriating. So after some searching, I've officially aligned myself with Rachel's classic quiche recipe (which is super easy and basic and maybe, slightly more virtuous, as she uses milk instead of cream), and then I mix up my toppings depending on our mood on any given night. My M.O. is to cut the richness of the quiche by serving it alongside a little light mixed green salad with vinagrette or some roasted aspargus and a few sliced tomatoes from our plants (above.)

The most exciting part is that the girlies. love. quiche. Especially a simple bacon or ham and cheese number (I use seaside cheddar, as it's utterly divine -- nutty + a little bit salty...perfection.) My favorite part of our quiche moment though is how whenever we have it for dinner (which as noted above is a lot) Millie chants ever so zen-like, "ohhh quiche, quiche, quiche" and then giggles hysterically like it's the funniest word she's ever said.

It's lovely.

So are you quiche peeps? What is your favorite combo?

Here's What Could Happen if You Grow Tomatoes

2010-05-26T11:12:00.000-07:00

It's altogether possible (but I'm not making any guarantees) that your six-year old daughter might visit the plants every single day to check on the progress of said tomatoes...

It's also possible (but again no promises) that when the tomatoes ripen, the same six-year old girl (who doesn't really even like tomatoes -- that is unless they are grape tomatoes and she's staarrving) will lovingly pluck them off the vine, carefully rinse them off and pat them dry and then gingerly place them in a bowl on the windowsill.

And that same girl just might also declare one evening during dinner that she would like to have tomatoes for dessert.

For. Dessert.

"You know", she'll say... "just sliced up, with a little salt on top."

And then she might eat them all...every. single. slice., so that you and your husband literally have to distract her so you can get just a teeny tiny sliver of homegrown tomato for yourself.

And then you might faint. I'm just sayin. It could happen.

Sweet Paul + School Lunch Update

2010-05-17T13:34:00.001-07:00

image via sweet paul magazine

Have you seen the new magazine from genius food blogger/ stylist sweet paul? It's completely inspiring and lovely and the recipes are seriously drool-worthy.

In (digitally) flipping through it, I was especially jazzed about the photo above, as it solved a vexing "snack" dilemma I've been wrestling with.

Tomorrow night, a group of other neighborhood moms are meeting at my house to talk "school lunch" and come up with some changes we'd like to see implemented at our elementary school. (I haven't talked about school lunch here in a while, but I'm pretty excited about the direction we're headed.)

Needless to say, I was a wee bit stressed about what kind of snack to serve a group of ladies while talking about putting healthier food in our kid's lunch rooms, so when I saw the picture above I had a sort of eureka moment... So easy, so pretty -- some pecans, some pears, a little cheese, some dried apricots, a few water crackers... Done and done.

I'm totally copying Paul. 100% copying... that exact snack box you see above. (except maybe on a tray and not a box, we'll see.)

Ok, back to school lunch. Several of these same ladies and I got together a few months ago to watch the excellent documentary 2 Angry Moms. (If you're at all interested in the school lunch issue, I would highly recommend buying this and hosting a screening for other moms, it's fantastic!) Since then, there have been several other group meet-ups, a meeting between one of the especially motivated moms and our district food service director (!), and I had a chance to chat with the head of the lunch program at Audrey's school. There's real traction and a strong sense in our community that folks are interested in making sure our schools serve healthy food, which is so incredibly encouraging, no?

The really exciting news though is that I think the stars are aligning and change is already happening...what seemed like an uphill battle just months ago now seems to be moving rapidly forward (maybe it's the changes to the Child Nutrition Act or the Jamie Oliver show and petition {have you signed the petition yet?} or public pressure...who knows, but something is going on.) For example, I got a sneak peek at the menu for next year and all white grains have been replaced with whole wheat, they're offering loads more fresh fruits and veggies (I was especially excited about the addition of snap peas), and they've eliminated pudding and processed branded meals (i.e. that Smucker's crustable pb&j currently on the menu.)

Progress friends, progress...

I'll keep you posted on how things shake out (both the meeting and that cheese box ;-)

Book Club Dinner (and "Easy" Beans)

2010-05-10T08:07:00.001-07:00

We hosted our couple's book club on Saturday with a little Mexican meal. We've been doing this book club with three of our closet couple friends for the past five years, and the person that picks the book hosts the dinner and makes something that matches the "theme" of what we're reading. This time around, hubby picked God's Middle Finger, so we decided to make a little Mexican meal to accompany us on our literary journey into the "lawless heart of the Sierra Madre."

Bryan whipped up a big batch of homemade chips that we served with guacamole, followed by flank steak topped with "magic sauce" and pork tamales with tomatillo sauce + beautiful rice and super easy beans...

I love these beans, and surprisingly (they're pretty spicy and feel a little "grown-up") so does Audrey. But I have to admit they are a bit of a cheat (maybe I should call them "cheater beans" instead of "easy beans"), as I use canned pintos and pre-made pico de guillo as the base.

I know, I know...

Before I share the recipe, I have to say that Mexican food is my favorite cuisine to make in the spring and summer -- it's easy, incredibly yummy and, well...(for lack of a better adjective) fresh. + there are the margaritas, which honestly might be the real impetus for all of this. I'm just sayin.

Easy (cheater) Mexican Beans (serves 6):

3 pieces of bacon
1/2 container of pico de guillo
2 cans of organic pinto beans
1 can of light beer
1/2 cup organic chicken broth
kosher salt + pepper to taste

fry the bacon, remove from pan and coarsely chop, reserve bacon grease and move pan off the heat.

Once the grease has cooled a bit, add the pico de guillo (be careful when adding as the grease will splatter) and return to medium high heat. Saute the pico until the onions are lightly browned.

Add the beans and the chopped bacon to the sauteed pico and stir together over medium high heat for a few more minutes.

Add the beer and the chicken broth to the bean mixture, turn the heat up to high and bring to a boil for about 7 minutes.

Turn heat to lowest setting, cover beans and let cook for about 30 minutes. Be sure to check beans frequently, and if the liquid gets too low add a little more chicken broth. You'll want the beans to be thick with a little liquid but not soupy.

Add kosher salt and pepper to taste (I also like to add just a bit of fajita seasoning.)

My New Favorite Food Blog

2010-05-05T13:49:00.000-07:00

Is Dinner: A Love Story...

It's serioulsy fantastic. (via the always genius design mom)

Because Complicated Is Overrated...

2010-04-30T08:07:00.000-07:00

For me, Spring always represents the start of simple, easy food...

Our dinner routine in these months usually consists of throwing some meat or chicken on the grill or pulling together a little pasta and then roasting some veggies or tossing together simple salads (I live for salad.) Luckily the girlies are down with this plan. They especially love (now after much consternation and cajoling...I don't give up easily friends) roasted asparagus and cauliflower and are nuts for lightly steamed broccoli drizzled with a little butter and lemon juice.

When we were at the beach last week my friend Julie (who is a master of this easy, fresh cooking) threw together some potatoes that seemed not only ridiculously simple but were literally the best potatoes I've ever had...sounds dramatic I know, but it's true...

So I set out to recreate them last night to serve with some grilled steak and (yep) roasted asparagus. They were fantastic. Definitely going into the regular rotation.

I would highly recommend giving them a whirl this weekend!

Roasted Potatoes with Feta Cheese:

Medium Red Potatoes (1-2 per person)
Kosher salt
Pepper
Olive Oil
Feta Cheese
Rosemary

Pre-heat oven to 400

Pierce potatoes several times with a fork and put into a microwave safe boil. Toss with a generous amount of olive oil, kosher salt and pepper. Cook on high heat for about 8 minutes or until the potatoes are tender.

Transfer potatoes to a cookie sheet and transfer to pre-heated oven for about 15 minutes or until the outside of the potatoes start to crisp up a bit.

Once slightly crispy remove from oven and make a little slit in the top of each potato, smashing open a bit with a fork, put a good amount of crumbled feta cheese, chopped rosemary and more salt and pepper in each opening and put back in the oven for 5 minutes.

Before serving, smash the potatoes open a bit more and stir around in the olive oil that has collected on the bottom of the cookie sheet.

In Praise of Al Fresco Dining...

2010-04-14T07:02:00.000-07:00

I complain a lot about the Texas heat.

A lot...

But with a warm climate comes especially lovely Spring and Fall weather. (And often winter -- we've been known to have 70 degree days in December...it's true.) Otherwise known as ample opportunities to eat outside.

Food tastes better eaten outside...it just does. And somehow, my otherwise unruly-at-meal-time kiddos seem to mellow out when we dine in our backyard. Maybe they're blissed out by the chirping birds or maybe they're just vibing off Bryan's and my decidedly more mellow demeanor. Either way, it's a game changer.

Last Saturday we had some of our dearest friends over for a little al fresco dinner. We served that super easy orecchiette with sausage, asparagus and spinach + one of my favorite "salads" -- a tomato hollowed out and stuffed with goat cheese and honey and then baked served over some lightly dressed arugula.

A perfect outside meal for sure...

our little friend Gracie surveying the meal...

And Now The Reality...

2010-04-05T09:41:00.000-07:00

Millie's first Peep, courtesy of her Grandmother...

There was lots of candy friends.

Lots more than I had planned for that is. I bought just a few things for the girlies' baskets, but then there was the school party and the school Easter egg hunt and the neighborhood Easter egg hunt and the ginormous basket that Bryan's mom gave each of them.

It was sugar-fest 2010...bigger than Halloween...epic even.

So I threw in the towel and let Sunday be a free day. Both girlies had the stomach flu a couple of days earlier, so I was feeling especially lenient (and they were especially hungry), and I just let them go for it, self-regulate. Honestly it wasn't as bad as I would have expected. They mostly wanted to taste everything, one bite and then they pretty much lost interest.

After they were in bed, I, well...(this is wasteful so I hesitate to admit it) discarded a good deal of what they had amassed, saving the best stuff in the treat bowl hidden way up in the pantry.

And then I ate the rest of it. Just kidding, but I did eat a lot, I'm just sayin...it was a bad scene.

I'm banking on the fact that one (incredibly) sugar fueled day won't kill us, right?

The Candy Conundrum...

2010-03-31T08:35:00.000-07:00

this vosges barcelona bunny (hickory smoked almonds + grey sea salt + deep milk chocolate) is my Easter candy of choice...

I've been feverishly working on pulling together the girlie's Easter Baskets (somehow Easter snuck up on me this year, it's early!), and I'm facing a candy dilemma.

We are candy fans. HUGE. So much so, that I have to severely limit what we buy so that the temptation just isn't there. If there's candy in the house, Bryan and the girlies (and if it's good chocolate, clump me in there too) can sniff it out...no matter how well it's hidden. That's just how they roll.

I fear if we go cold turkey I'll end up with kids that hide in the closet to eat Snickers bars, so my typical M.O. is to go quality over quantity. I try to make the occasional dessert from scratch or buy good gelato or ice cream to avoid the candy issue altogether. And when the occasion does call for candy (i.e. this Easter basket thing), I'll buy a few really good sweets (no peeps or waxy hollow bunnies in sight) and attempt to deflect attention from the lack of massive quantities of sugar with other goodies like books and bubbles and whatnot.

But deep down (and I know this is crazy given how strongly I feel about eating well and generally avoiding, well...crap) I feel a little bad. Like I'm somehow shortchanging the girlies if their baskets aren't overflowing with Cadbury Cream Eggs and Jelly Beans.

How do you guys handle the Easter basket. Are you all in or do you rein it in??

Eating Out With Kiddos -- Part II

2010-03-22T08:55:00.000-07:00

So I've written about this topic before, but recently we've had a couple of experiences (one bad and one fantastic) that has firmly put me in the camp that believes you can have a great meal out with kiddos in tow.

First up our bad experience...a horrendous meal at a chain restaurant on our way down to Austin a couple of weeks ago. I won't tell you where we ate, as I dont' want to be a meanie girl (as Millie would say), but suffice to say it was very bad food...and it wasn't cheap. It had all the hallmarks of a "kid friendly" restaurant -- loads of crayons, a gimmicky menu, plentiful high chairs, but the food, oh the food was bad. Even the girlies knew it, which was actually the high point of the meal, the fact that we've gotten to the point with them that they know when they're eating crappy food. So that's the upside I suppose.

Now cut to our great experience. We took the girl's to Tillman's in Bishop Arts this past Friday night, which we'd only been to with other adult friends and on date night. This place is by no means "fancy", although I doubt many would categorize it as "kid friendly" either. But I was certain deep down that if we went early enough, the kids would love this place, and that it would be totally appropriate to bring them (they serve table-side s'mores for goodness sake...with homemade graham crackers and marshmallows, natch.)

We rolled in at the embarrassingly early 5:30 to find several other families with the same idea, and it was a huge success. The food (as always) was outstanding, the kids loved the fun, interesting, cool atmosphere, and they were totally accommodated. Tillman's has the loveliest kid's menu I've ever seen, filled with cool drawings and activities + the girl's meals were served on little wood grain print melamine plates and, of course, the s'mores were a rousing success.

The key, I've discovered, is embracing that embarrassingly early hour. I'm convinced (now) that we can take the girlies almost anywhere if we're willing to eat early (which truth be told, I'm always willing to do...) Now I'm busy working up a list of all the places we want to try with them. I'll report back here on all our successes.

Do you guys have any favorite "grown up" restaurants where you love taking your kiddos? Maybe we can pull together a little list of great spots across the U.S.

For Your Weekend Baking Needs

2010-03-12T06:44:00.000-08:00

I made the best. cookies. ever. all thanks to this lady who had the genius idea to morph the famed Neiman Marcus cookie recipe with one from Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc cookbook to essentially create, well...as I said, the best cookies ever.

The secret (I think) is the brown butter, which maybe the world's most tastiness-inducing (I know, I know) ingredient. Ever since I read Jeffrey Steingarten's article in Vogue about brown butter I've been drying to try it, and now I'm hooked.

the brown butter in all its glory...

So a couple of things about the recipe that threw me off a bit...When I poured my brown butter over my softened butter, it totally melted it. As a result, the butter wasn't creamy when I whipped it, rather it was just liquefied, which in turn made the batter was very soft and greasy. This worried me a bit as Shayna said it would be dry (so my guess is that she let her melted butter cool a bit) but never fear, it didn't effect the sheer amazingness of the cookies at all. Also the batter is dark (due to the brown butter, natch) so the cookies might look done before they're actually done. Don't take them out too soon (I cooked my in a convection oven for about 16 minutes...)

Ok that's all. Now to the important part, the recipe. Happy baking, and be sure you have someone around that will take some of these off your hands, otherwise you will eat every single one by yourself. I'm just sayin.

Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies (adapted from the lovely Shayna)

Makes 2 dozen cookies

1 stick unsalted butter, divided
1 cup brown sugar, packed
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 3/4 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon instant espresso powder
1 cup of chocolate chips (I didn't have chocolate chips, so I busted a bittersweet chocolate bar into shards)
1 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Line a baking sheet with a baking mat or parchment paper.

Set aside one half (4 tablespoons) stick of butter and let soften. Cut the other half in chunks and melt over a medium flame, swirling often, until it's light brown in color and has a nutty aroma.

Pour the melted butter over the softened butter and beat on high for about 30 seconds until the butter has a creamy texture.

Beat in both sugars until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until completely mixed.

In a separate bowl sift together the flour, baking soda and baking powder. Add this to the butter mixture and beat on low until just combined. Stir in the espresso powder, chocolate chips and walnuts and finish mixing by hand.

Drop the dough on to the cookie sheet about 3 inches apart. Lightly press down to flatten. Bake about 16 minutes or until lightly browned around the edges.

In Print Part II -- Kid's Cookbooks

2010-03-08T08:47:00.000-08:00

images via edible

A while back I collaborated with my friend, photographer Richard Adams, on a piece about kid's cookbooks for the Dallas & Ft. Worth edition of Edible magazine. I am a huge fan of Edible, as it focuses on local, sustainable food and the art direction and photography is beautiful, so I was honored to be asked to contribute...

+ Audrey loved being in the photo shoot ;-)

You can click on the image above if you want to read the piece.

A Scallops Phase...

2010-03-01T13:51:00.000-08:00

I'm a scallops fan. Huge. I don't eat them often and have (shamefully) never made them. But I had the occasion to eat them twice last week.

The first time was Thursday evening...a girls dinner at Urbano Cafe (I would highly recommend) with my friends Kristie and Christine. The scallops were seared and served over a little pool of lemon creme sauce and risotto. Incredible.

Then I had them again on Saturday at Smoke, this time served over white beans and brussel sprout chips. Equally incredible.

Now I'm officially addicted and itching to cook scallops at home...any tips?

Cooking Inspiration (And A Shameful Secret...)

2010-02-23T09:57:00.001-08:00

I’m about to admit something I’m not proud of.

When I was in college (and clearly not very smart) and would watch a movie in which the characters smoked a lot (say Next Stop Wonderland), I would then promptly smoke. Usually Parliaments.

Now just forget I admitted that….but there was a point in sharing this shameful secret. The same thing happens to the girlies (minus the gross cigarettes, of course) when they watch shows/movies heavy in cooking. A screening of Ratatouille always sends Audrey tearing through the kitchen drawers for various implements, whipping up a potion, the ingredients too gross to repeat here.

Recently we’ve been on a bit Little Bear kick (my girlies are addicted to that show), and as such, the girls are inspired to recreate all of Mother and Little Bear's various creations – the flying flapjacks, the cupcakes, and most recently, the homemade lemonade (there's an entire episode dedicated to making lemonade.)

We happened to get a dozen lemons in our co-op box last week, which came in handy when, after a Saturday afternoon viewing of said lemonade episode, they declared they wanted to whip up a big batch.

Out came the little juicer we received as a wedding gift a decade ago (and have used approximately three times.) Squeezing the lemons was infinitely thrilling to little Millie... We then added some cold water and sugar in the raw to the lemon juice. Again inspired by Little Bear, Audrey wanted to instead use mint and honey, which as tempting and lovely as it seemed, I nixed, as I couldn’t bear to waste all those lovely lemons if she didn’t like it (and there was a very high probability that she wouldn't...)

It was incredibly tasty and will be a perfect base for homemade popsicles once the weather gets a smidge warmer.

So, What inspires your kiddos to cook?

On Broccoli and Books...

2010-02-18T13:27:00.000-08:00

In matters of food I often underestimate the girls.

I often immediately assume I'll have to cajole, beg or bribe them to eat something healthy when, more often than not, it's what they really want. A recent example occurred just last night when Bryan and Audrey were outside grilling steaks, and I was in the kitchen tossing some steamed broccoli with a little butter and sea salt. Millie was hungry, or in her words, staaarrrvvving (my kids are nothing if not dramatic, no idea where they get that from), and we were still a good 15 minutes from sitting down at the table.

My first instinct was to offer up a few pretzels, but out of desperation (and proximity) I instead handed her a broccoli spear. She happily popped it into her mouth...and then another, and another, until she had eaten half the bowl.

I need to give those girlies more credit, no?

In other exciting news (yes, I'm the type of person that thinks a kid devouring broccoli is exciting...), my friend Lisa Greene just released her fantastic book, Processed Kids, A Real Mom’s Guide to Raising Natural Kids in a Processed World.

Prompted by her son's food allergies, specifically to High Fructose Corn Syrup, Lisa took a deep dive into food research and the impact of processed foods on health and behavior. She distilled all of her learnings into Processed Kids, which is full of information, guidance and easy recipes.

It is definitely worth a read!

p.s. Lisa is that genius behind the killer goat cheese polenta...I'm just saying.

Big Chocolate Cake (Or Breaking a Rut)

2010-02-15T07:48:00.000-08:00

Valentine’s Day was my “D-Day.”

See as of yesterday, (as you’ve probably surmised from all the posts about snacking and frozen yogurt and whatnot) I still hadn’t fully shaken off my cooking “rut”, otherwise known as my food funk, the stalemate with my kitchen, or my completely culinarily uninspired period of time…

So I drew a line in the proverbial sand and vowed, inspiration be damned, to cook something…anything (ideally somewhat elaborate and perhaps even a bit challenging) for Valentine’s Day. Really pulling out of the funk, dusting off the cookbooks and making something fantastic for Bryan and the girlies, seemed like the ultimate expression of love, no?

I decided first on the dessert -- it was Valentine’s Day after all. Specifically, inspired by Ruth Riechls’ ultimate expression of love through insane baking in her excellent memoir, "Comfort Me With Apples", I decided to make “Big Chocolate Cake”… with Audrey of course. And truthfully the cake killed two birds with one stone, allowing me to cross “make a chocolate cake from scratch” of my “list”, where it’s been sitting stagnate for a year and a half. A win/win all around.

From the name alone, I knew this project might be a bit of a bear, and I had a whole dinner to make too (more on that later), so we started working on the cake early in the day. Which turned out to be a good thing, as we were working slowly (+ sneaking in plenty of Olympics viewing, breaking for Bryan’s famous quesadillas + taking in a tivo’d Project Runway)… Let's just say Audrey placed the final raspberry on the cake at approximately 5:00 pm, right before I started dinner.

Friends, let me warn you, this cake isn’t for the faint of heart. There’s nothing especially “healthy” about this bad boy – case in point, it contains three sticks of butter and six eggs in the batter alone, but I view great desserts the same way I do eating meat lately -- we eat it less of it and make the best we can possibly afford. To that end, we used great chocolate and all organic ingredients.

I can honestly say it was a masterpiece.

Ruth Reichl’s Big Chocolate Cake adapted from "Comfort Me With Apples"

A couple of notes…this recipe makes a big cake and we were only feeding four, so rather than tinker with the amounts, I used ½ the batter for a single layer round cake and used the rest for cupcakes. Since my round cake pan was a little deeper than the sheet pans that the cooking times are intended for, I had to cook it closer to 45-50 minutes and I turned the heat down to 325 for the last 15 minutes.

Ingredients:

For Cake Layers:

1 ½ cups boiling water
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder (not Dutch process)
¾ cup whole milk
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
¾ teaspoon salt
3 sticks unsalted butter, softened
1 ½ cups firmly packed dark brown sugar
1 ½ cups granulated sugar
6 large eggs

For Frosting:

5 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped
1 ½ sticks unsalted butter, softened
1 cup whipped cream cheese
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 ½ cups confectioners' sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt

Make Cake Layers:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter two 13-by-9-by-2-inch baking pans and line bottoms of each with wax paper. Butter paper and dust pans with flour, knocking out excess.

Whisk together the boiling water and the cocoa in a bowl until smooth, then whisk in the milk and vanilla. Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt.

Beat together the butter and sugars in the large bowl of a standing electric mixer until pale and fluffy, then add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. On low speed, beat in flour and cocoa mixtures alternately in batches, beginning and ending with the flour mixture (the batter may look curdled).

Divide batter between pans, smoothing tops. Bake in the middle of the oven until a tester comes out clean and layers begin to pull away from the sides of pans, 25 to 35 minutes. Invert cakes on racks, remove wax paper, and cool completely.

Make Frosting:

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler or a metal bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water, stirring until melted. Cool to room temperature.

Beat together the butter and cream cheese until light and fluffy.

Add remaining ingredients and beat until well combined.

Assemble Cake:

Put one cake layer, rounded side up, on a cake plate and spread with 11/4 cups frosting. Top with another cake layer, rounded side up, and spread top and sides with remaining frosting.

So What I Said About Snacking...

2010-02-08T12:17:00.000-08:00

a photo of my current snack of choice taken with my blackberry...

Well, I might have to take it back.

Pinkberry has landed in Dallas...and it's close to our house.

Too close.

Now I know it's not especially novel to blog about Pinkberry (it's right up there with cupcakes and Anthropologie in oft-blogged topics), but friends, I can't help it. This stuff is good. In fact, it's so good (or I should say the coconut with toasted almonds and raspberries is so good) that it's forcing me to take back all of my "I don't really snack...only on nuts and cheese...but I don't really seek snacks out..." blah, blah, blah, because I sought out this very snack two days in a row last week.

So I might now be a snacker. I'm just saying.

But I also might be OK with that after reading all your insightful comments re: snacking. So thanks for that. Thanks for weighing in and forcing me to rethink some of my issues with how the girlies are approaching food rather than just blindly forcing my own (apparently former) eating habits on them.

+ it seems every time I start to obsess over some bad food habit the girls seem to be adopting, they surprise me with an altogether unexpected food moment. Take Audrey's Pinkberry experience: she ordered a small cup of chocolate (of course) with raspberries. When we got back to the car, Bryan and I asked how she liked it, and she said, "it was great, but next time I want to order just a cup of raspberries." "Is that cool?"

Cool with me...

The United States of Snacking

2010-01-27T14:01:00.000-08:00

my snack of choice...if, that is, I were a snacker...

I'm not so much a "snacker"... Sure I'll nosh on a handful of nuts, a few olives, maybe a sliver of cheese if I'm having a late dinner or (being totally honest here) if they're readily available, but I don't actively seek out snacks. I'm pretty much a three square meals gal...bare bones. I know, I know, snacks are healthy, they keep your metabolism going, ensure you don't get too hungry and eat like a deranged lumberjack during meal-time.

But I'm still not that into them.

My girlies on the other hand (you knew this was coming) are obsessed with "snacks." In fact, I'm not sure they really even eat meals at all. I think their caloric intake pretty much consists of a steady stream of snacks. All day long.

I am not happy about this.

Now in all fairness, some of this is out of my control. Audrey's school's kindergarten lunch time is (wait for it) 10:30...in the morning(!), and I think this somehow throws off her meal-time clock all day long. She doesn't like breakfast (I know...it's awful, I've tried everything), so her first meal is at 10:30. Then come the snacks. There's the 1:00 snack, the 3:30 snack, the 5:00 snack, dinner (which is pretty much a big snack) and then a small before bed snack.

Snack overload.

We roll pretty healthy, so snacks are usually fruit...my kiddos go through bananas, strawberries and blueberries like it's their job + some protein. We do lots of yogurt too. But still the snack thing is rather disconcerting. There has to be a better way.

To further stress me out, I just read this NYTimes article about the never-ending snack time.

So what do you think? How do you handle snacks? To snack or not to snack?

Oh Salad

2010-01-16T10:35:00.000-08:00

There's a passage in Alice Waters and Chez Panisse where Alice muses (and I'm paraphrasing here) that given her own immense love of salad, it would be unfathomable to her that her young daughter Fanny wouldn't just come out of the womb craving it.

Lucky for Alice, this is essentially the case, and she's able to make wee Greek salads to tuck into young Fanny's lunchbox, which she happily gobbles right up.

Let's just say that's not so much what's going down at my house.

If my kiddos liked certain foods solely based on the fact that I liked them, there would be no need for this blog. They'd be happily lapping up any number of delicacies that they currently (vehemently) refuse, like, yes, salad.

I love salad in ways that a mere blog post can't adequately describe. Like Jora, I could eat it every day. In fact, if I had a pick only one thing to eat if stranded on a desert island, it would most certainly be salad...+ it's a perfect meal for when you're stuck in a post-holidays cooking rut (thank you for all your great suggestions/support for crawling out by the way, I just picked up a slow cooker cookbook, and I'm using that until inspiration strikes again...)

But the girlies, well the girlies won't touch salad.

I realize it's largely a component thing, as they like tomatoes and carrots and celery and any number of other things you'd put on a salad, but they just don't like them all tossed together with dressing (oh God no, not dressing...) oh and and stinky cheese. I think salad is infinitely better with some stinky cheese perched on top.

So for this one, (and truth be told, many others I'm sure) I'll just have to live vicariously through Alice, but I'm hoping the girlies will come around to my beloved salad... One day.

The blood oranges are gorgeous right now, so I built a salad around a couple I picked up at Whole Foods this weekend. Super simple and v. yummy.

Blood Orange Feta Salad

One small head of butter lettuce washed and torn into small pieces
1/4 cup Feta cheese
One blood orange thinly sliced
1/4 cup salted macadamia nuts, lightly crushed
(this weekend I used sesame garlic SASS dressing, which is pretty much the only bottled dressing I'll buy, but my favorite dressing is below)

Dressing

1 cup walnut oil
½ cup chardonnay vinegar
1 tsp. sugar (or more, to taste)
1 shallot finely minced
Salt and pepper to taste

A Wee Bit of A Rut...

2010-01-11T10:11:00.000-08:00

Aran's gorgeous photo + recipe via design * sponge

So (in an attempt to go easy on myself) I'm going to chalk my forthcoming statement up to a sort of holiday food hangover...ok?

I'm not in the mood to cook. At all.

Not inspired, not dreaming up recipes, not thinking about what to make this weekend. Just plain not into it.

And yes, I really think it's partially due to all the heavy food we cooked in December. We were in the kitchen a lot the past couple of months...hosting Thanksgiving, dinner parties, Christmas Eve dinner, a Christmas day feast. Maybe I'm just burned out...oh and my jeans are awfully tight, so there's that too.

So we're not "cooking" a lot, rather we're preparing food. Simple pasta, lots of salad, big pots of easy white beans, hummus with crackers and celery, scrambled egg sandwiches, nothing worth blogging about, but it does the trick.

I'm trying to pull out friends, I am...I even spent Sunday afternoon pouring through kid's cookbooks with Audrey trying to drum up some inspiration.

So anyone else feeling this? Any tips for getting out of a January food funk?

Oh the Progress

2010-01-06T14:07:00.001-08:00

It all started with a loaf of pumpkin bread.

Albeit it was incredibly good pumpkin bread, and it was delivered in the most magical, Normal Rockwell-esque way (by two kind neighbors, in a basket, on Christmas morning), so there was all sorts of good stuff happening with that bread before we even sliced it open. But really, other than cornbread, I’ve never seen my daughter devour something with such unabashed gusto as she did this bread. And she’d never tasted pumpkin bread before. + (and this is the big part) there was no cajoling, no begging, no “I promise you’ll like this, just try it for God’s sake…”

She just popped a bite into her mouth, and then another, and another…until half the loaf was gone.

That was the start.

A few days later during our New Year’s week trip to New Orleans, she also ate (for the first time with very little cajoling) and loved the following items, in no particular order:

Jambalaya
Dirty rice
Cabbage (in full disclosure, she didn’t love the cabbage, but she tried it without gagging, so that’s something…)
Black eyed peas

But wait, there’s more. That photo above, that corn, roasted red pepper and edamame succotash. Yep, she tried that too.

Honestly I’m not sure what’s happening here friends. I fear aliens have abducted my kiddo and replaced her with a pint sized epicurean.

So...any new foodie milestones on your front?

Edamame and Corn Succotash

1 bag frozen organic sweet corn
1 bag frozen organic edamame
1 small shallot
2 tbs butter
1 marinated roasted red pepper
salt and pepper to taste

Completely thaw the corn and edamame. Sautee the shallot in butter. Add corn and edamame and sautee until cooked through. Dice red pepper and add to the pan, cooking for a few more minutes. Salt and pepper to taste. Especially good with pork chops!

The Polenta...

2009-12-22T12:09:00.000-08:00

This polenta is literally my favorite thing to make of late. It's ridiculously easy (you make it in a slow cooker), but it reads complicated and special (which is really the best combination, no?)

I'd love to be able to report that my girlies love it (or would even try it for that matter) but (because they are clearly nuts) sadly, I can't. But I can attest to some level of kid friendliness, as (sans the mushroom and leek topping) my four-year old friend Gracie lapped it up.

The polenta easily stands alone (it's rich and hearty) but it's great as a side with roasted chicken or tenderloin for a more special meal...

Slow Cooker Polenta with Leeks and Mushrooms (from my friend Lisa Greene)

1 cup organic polenta (I like Bob's Red Mill)
2 tbs. butter
3 cups organic chicken broth
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 small log goat cheese (room temperature)
2 cups sliced baby portabella mushrooms
1 medium leek thinly sliced
a bit of white wine

Coat the inside of your slow cooker with cooking spray, then add the polenta and 1 tsp of the butter. Bring the chicken broth to a boil on the stove and add to the slow cooker, wisk together until slightly thickened.

Add parmesan cheese, salt and pepper. Stir well and cover. Set slow cooker to low and the timer for 3 hours.

At the 2.5 hour mark, add the room temperature goat cheese to the slow cooker, stir well and cover.

While the polenta is cooking, heat the remaining butter in a sauté pan and saute the leeks for a few minutes until slightly browned, add the mushrooms and continue cooking over high heat until softened and deeply browned. Deglaze the pan with a splash of white wine. Set mixture aside.

Serve polenta immediately when ready with a generous scoop of the mushroom/leek mixture.

What Do You Cook For Christmas Day?

2009-12-15T11:51:00.001-08:00

image via dwell studio

I posed this question over on my other blog last year, as I was seriously torn about what to cook for the big day. After much angst, I eventually decided on a sort of Thanksgiving redux, and I'm pretty sure I'm going there again this year. (I love the Thanksgiving meal so much it seems a shame to only have it once a year.) We'll do a very small bird, + boursin mashed potatoes from the Neiman Marcus cookbook (amazing), green beans sauteed with almonds and fresh cranberry sauce. Simple, yummy...

For Christmas Eve we're planning some sort of meat, this salad + the most amazing goat cheese polenta topped with sauteed mushrooms and leeks. (I had this polenta at my new friend Lisa Green's house and have made it multiple times since. Seriously friends, this polenta recipe will change your life.)

I love hearing about what other people make for their big holiday meal, as rather than following a "prescribed" menu, meals tend to be more a nod to heritage, family traditions and favorite foods... We have friends who do lasagna every year, others that have tamales, and some that do lobster. You get the idea...

So, before I give you that polenta recipe (soon I promise), what do you cook for your Christmas/Holiday meal?

Putting the Meyer Lemons to Work...

2009-12-09T08:50:00.000-08:00

Despite the fact that I'm a huge fan of Christmas baking, we're a full week into December and I've yet to turn out a single thing. I even showed up to a cookie exchange party Saturday empty handed (shameful I know, but it was largely due to being stranded in Cincinnati overnight the day before...but that's a whole other story.) So itching to bake and needing to put the two (precious) Meyer Lemons from my little tree to use, Audrey and I cranked up the Christmas tunes last night and set to work...

We decided on Lemon Bars...or more accurately "I" decided to make lemon bars, as she was skeptical* that anything delicious and dessert-like could be made of lemons, but given the fact that she was about to get to crack multiple eggs, she was in, despite her doubts.

* which in turn made me skeptical of the fact that she was actually my child, as I just don't see how someone who came from my womb (sorry to be graphic) could not love lemons with every ounce of their being...but I digress.

We went with this recipe, and the bars were pretty divine, although I think I was a bit heavy handed with the salt and, refusing to taint my backyard lemons with shoddy store-bought ones, I could have used more lemon juice... but otherwise perfection.

I even managed to convince Audrey to take a big bite of one of the bars and she didn't gag, didn't spit it out, and declared them..."pretty good."

Nice.

What do you love to bake during the holidays? I'd love to try something new!

The Divine Leftovers

2009-12-02T10:55:00.000-08:00

Suffice to say, I ate a lot of turkey last week. A lot.

Even Audrey partook in the customary bird despite her earlier protests… (I didn’t pressure her, I promise.)

There was of course the big meal, which went quite well for our first time if I do say so myself ;-) but then there were the turkey sandwiches after.

Oh my, the turkey sandwiches.

My go-to was turkey, cranberry sauce, arugula and brie with a smidge of honey mustard on toasted wheat bread. It was incredibly yummy… I ate no less than four of these sandwiches last week and nearly cried when we ran out of leftover turkey. I think I might cook another (much smaller) bird just so I can continue making these sandwiches.

So spill it…what’s your favorite meal from the Thanksgiving leftovers?

It's Almost Time...

2009-11-23T10:34:00.000-08:00

We're hosting our first ever Thanksgiving this year, and friends I think I'm ready... I think. We'll have my family + several dear friends for a total of 11 with the kiddos. I've planned the menu, made the shopping list, ordered the turkey, washed the wine glasses, and yes, even "practiced" the table setting (above) -- sad I know... it's my way, it can't be helped.

I love the Thanksgiving meal in ways words can't even describe. In fact, I might go as far as to say it's my favorite meal. I took this pretty far as a child, when I requested "thanksgiving" for my birthday, which happens to fall a mere week and a half after turkey day. My mother is a good, good woman (or I was a bad, bad kid ;-)

My plan this year is to keep things pretty straightforward. My guests are bringing all the appetizers and desserts (although I am planning one simple appetizer of brie stuffed dates wrapped in bacon and baked...incredibly simple and ridiculously tasty) so we're focused on the core meal. Bryan's on turkey, and my mother, sister and I will turn out the stuffing, mashed potatoes and cranberries. But to mix things up a bit, I'm going to start with the Alice Waters carrot soup and serve the celery, pecorino "salad" as a side.

I love the ritual of being in the kitchen, cooking together, with the parade on the background. Audrey and I have been talking about it for weeks and I'm so excited to share the experience with her...although she did inform me a few nights ago (while eating chicken for dinner I might add) that she wouldn't be eating the turkey, as it's just too, too sad. I didn't point out the feelings of the chicken she was currently consuming as I'm not ready yet to deal with a full-blown vegetarian.

So, what traditions do you have for the big meal? Do you cook anything special or unusual or just stick to the basics?

Oh The Breakthroughs...

2009-11-16T09:11:00.000-08:00

During the past couple of months, I've eased up a bit on my attempts (i.e. begging, bribing, etc...) to get Audrey to try new things. The string of failures was getting to me, and I was starting to tire of what felt a bit like dinner-time drama. Meals should be fun, right?

So I laid off. I still put new things on her plate, but if she turned her nose up, I didn't sweat it. Things felt mellower at mealtime, but I was starting to worry about stunted palettes and carb overload (I'm a worrier...it's my way.)

But as with most things in life, the less I cared, cajoled or stressed the more willing she was to do what I wanted her to do ;-) , and I'm happy to report that this weekend we had a string of major food breakthroughs.

Friday evening we stopped by our local Central Market to pick up some wine for dinner with lovely cousin Erin and boyfriend Ben, and Audrey, starving (this could have contributed to her food adventurousness too I suppose), happily popped a grape tomato that I offered up from our cart into her mouth... and the child hates tomatoes. She then proceeded to eat the entire container and asked me to buy another one for tomorrow. Success.

Then a few aisles over a lady was offering samples of tofu and veggie friend rice, which Audrey happily lapped up as well. What was happening here? I was beginning to think my child's body had been temporarily taken over by the spirit of some gastronome.

It was odd.

Fast forward to dinner, and she looks up from her plate to tell boyfriend Ben that his mashed potatoes are "delicious". Now I realize mashed potatoes aren't exactly a stretch, but these had the peels mixed in, plus a nice dose of sour cream and rosemary. All things that would typically make said potatoes a deal breaker for my daughter, but not on this magical night.

Progress friends...progress.

Online Cooking Group – Week Eight (Sort of)

2009-11-11T13:17:00.000-08:00

Oh what a cooking group slacker I’ve been...late with recipes, missing weeks altogether and then phoning it in with something like pancakes (geesh, pancakes, oooh how adventurous, how exotic, how risky…)

I don’t blame you at all if you’ve been secretly cursing me behind my back.

And this friends, for you is week eight. Eight. That means, we’ll we’re done. Or at least you are, as technically, due to the pesky swine flu, this is only my 7th recipe, so I’ll post one more time next week.

I’m so happy we did this (my slacker tendencies aside)… I loved seeing what you guys cooked each week and how your families responded to the meals. I now have a little folder of new things to make and a slew of new blogging friends to check in on as we collectively attempt to expand our kiddos palettes, so thank you for that!

And in keeping with highlighting some of my favorite cooking club recipes, be sure to check out Ali’s insalata caprese, Antonia’s frittata, Dora’s artichoke stuffed chicken breasts (I can’t wait to make this!), Keely’s tortilla soup and Tara’s pork chops.

Ok onto the recipe. Looking back over what I’ve made during our little adventure, I’m clearly obsessed with all things involving a pie crust…I regaled you with tales of quiche and apple pie, so why not go for a triple and pull out a pot pie.

Buoyed by my success when I'm not a slave to the recipe, I called my mom who walked me through her quick and easy pot pie. I tweaked it a bit with things I thought the girlies would like and dove it.

Overall it was a success, (in fact I made two, froze one and we’re having it again tonight) despite the fact that Audrey insisted on picking out all the veggies, only eating the chicken, pie crust and "sauce"… But looking back I have to say it was actually a surprise success, given my kids' disdain for all their foods touching. A pot pie is the very definition of a food mash-up, it was a total risk…see I’m trying to redeem myself for those pancakes.

So without further ado, the pot pie recipe. Thanks for hanging in there with me friends. I’ll be back next week with my last cooking club recipe.

Quick Chicken Pot Pie

2 organic frozen pie crusts (I like the whole food brand a lot)
1 rotisserie chicken
1 can of organic cream of chicken soup (I like Health Valley)
1/2 cup organic chicken broth
1 cup of shredded Monterrey jack cheese
1 bag frozen organic peas, carrots and corn
5 small new potatoes
2 tablespoons of olive oil
Kosher salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 350.

Dice the new potatoes and put them in a pot to boil until just al dente, drain and set aside.

In a large skillet heat the olive oil and sauté the frozen veggies until almost cooked, add the diced new potatoes and continue cooking until lightly browned. Add salt and pepper to taste and move to a large bowl when down cooking.

Cut the rotisserie chicken into cubes and add to the bowl with the veggies, add grated cheese, cream of chicken soup and the chicken broth. Add any spices to taste and mix all ingredients well.

Put mixed ingredients into bottom pie crust, top with second pie crust, crimp edges together and make a one inch slit in the top crust.

Cook for one hour at 350, you can cover the top with foil if it gets brown too soon. Let cool for about 10 minutes before serving.

The Right Tools for the Job + The Long Overdue Cooking Club Recipe

2009-11-09T12:57:00.000-08:00

Have you ever had one of those "how could I not have known about this fabulous thing" moments when you discovered something that made a particular task (i.e. cooking) so much more enjoyable that you may have even said out loud, "Oh my God, this (insert magical item here) changed my life."

Or maybe it was just me... and I can't believe I'm about to say this, but a griddle changed my life. Can you believe I just typed that?

I can't.

I've mentioned before that we're big pancake people+ grilled cheese sandwhiches and quesidillas are on regular rotation at our house. (Lest you think all we eat are carbs and cheese, and you're becoming worried for our health, rest assured, as we typically stuff the bread or tortillas with all sorts of yummy/healthy things like goat cheese, chicken, artichokes and tomatoes...) And up until now, I've been turning out these mealtime staples in a Caphalon non-stick fry pan that isn't, well... so non-stick anymore.

There were so many downsides to this situation, I won't bore you with all of them here, but let's just say (among other issues) we typically ate in shifts due to the fact that I could only cook two small pancakes at a time.

Enter the griddle.

A while back the kind folks at cookware.com* asked me if I'd like to try out one of the products from their site, and my pancake situation instantly sprung to mind. I suggested a griddle (this one to be exact), they sent it my way, and well, the rest is history.

*Now let me just pause to say that if I didn't like the griddle, I wouldn't have told you, because I'm nice like that... BUT, (and this is the important part) I wouldn't have said anything at all. In fact, I would have sent the griddle back, as I would have lost sleep due to feeling so flipping guilty for taking the product and not writing about it.

But that didn't happen. I love this griddle. I love it, love it, love it. I love it so much I want to marry it and have a million griddle babies with it.

Whew.

Ok, now onto the recipe (almost a full week late...I'm clearly a major Cooking Group slacker, and I'm sorry for that.) Inspired by the griddle, I started searching for new and exciting pancake recipes. I settled on this one and those pancakes were rather divine, if I do say so myself.

Buttermilk Pancakes (Adapted from Martha Stewart Living)
Notice how Martha just assumes you already have a griddle ;-)

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons sugar
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
3 cups buttermilk
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, plus 1/2 teaspoon for griddle

Heat griddle to 375 degrees. Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and sugar in a medium bowl. Add eggs, buttermilk, and 4 tablespoons butter; whisk to combine. Batter should have small to medium lumps.

Heat oven to 175 degrees. Test griddle by sprinkling a few drops of water on it. If water bounces and spatters off griddle, it is hot enough. Using a pastry brush, brush remaining 1/2 teaspoon of butter or reserved bacon fat onto griddle. Wipe off excess.

Using a 4-ounce ladle, about 1/2 cup, pour pancake batter, in pools 2 inches away from one other. When pancakes have bubbles on top and are slightly dry around edges, about 2 1/2 minutes, flip over. Cook until golden on bottom, about 1 minute.

Repeat with remaining batter, keeping finished pancakes on a heatproof plate in oven. Serve warm.

Eating Out…With Kids

2009-11-04T09:50:00.000-08:00

After too many sub-par meals at “kid friendly” restaurants, I:

A) came to a conclusion

and

B) made a vow

First up the conclusion… As harsh as it sounds, I’ve come to equate restaurants calling themselves “kid friendly” as typically some combo of a dumbed-down and often dirty atmosphere, broken crayons, sticky highchairs and offensive “kids” menus. The only consistent exceptions are a stable of Mexican food restaurants in Dallas that we frequent (specifically Mi Cocina and Gloria’s), which seem to have the combo of kid appropriateness and stellar food down pat.

Now for the vow… Until my conclusion is proven otherwise (really, why is this such an elusive concept??), we’ve vowed to only go out to eat if it’s a restaurant we really want to go to for the food (not because it’s “kid friendly”.) Otherwise we stay home.

Needless to say, we’ve been eating at home a lot.

We have had some surprising success at a few spots though. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not frequenting restaurants with multiple course menus or that serve a little amuse-bouche before the meal. We know our limits and try to stick to them.

We’ve had two great meals with the kiddos at Park, and Audrey and I had a great lunch recently at R+D Kitchen. Our formula is to go at a wickedly early hour (think senior citizen dinner hour in Florida.) Yep, we show up at restaurants at 5:00 pm… but ya gotta do what ya gotta do. We also come armed with our own bag of “special treats”, which is essentially a little stash of goodies like fresh crayons, new coloring books and a few small toys that don’t see the light of day unless we’re going out to a restaurant (the thrill of the new inevitably buys us at least a few minutes of mellow, content kiddos.) We’re also totally on board with the idea of aborting mission. If we sense the girlies melting down, we make it easy on everyone and ask for the check and everything gets wrapped up to go stat. Granted we’ve only had to do this once, but it’s in the arsenal if we need it.

So…spill it. How often do you go out to eat with your kiddos? Where do you take them? Do you have any strategies for a great meal out?

p.s. yes I know I still owe you my cooking group recipe for the week. It’s coming. I promise!

Sunday Dinner is My Favorite (Even When Scary Mustaches Are Involved)

2009-11-02T08:37:00.001-08:00

I love the ritual of sitting down to a meal with family and friends on Sunday evening.

Lovely cousin Erin and I try to do it as many Sundays as humanly possible, and no matter if things get chaotic or if Audrey insists that I NEVER make chicken pot pie with vegetables again (just chicken! no vegetables!) or if Millie refuses the entire meal in favor of buttery pasta and lil' smokies (don't ask) and then plants herself on the bench behind the table or if boyfriend Ben shows up sporting a seriously scary 1970's mustache... Sunday dinner still rocks.

More on what we ate tomorrow.

A Breakthrough + Something Lovely

2009-10-30T10:02:00.000-07:00

Amy and Ann's lovely new calendar

So I'm realizing that most of my tales of new food attempts (and rejections) over here revolve around Audrey. I rarely talk about how Millie responds to our culinary adventures, but I think most of that is due to the fact that she's only two, and I tend to write-off most of her food pickiness to evolving taste buds.

When Audrey was two she was a little foodie rock star. Her favorite dish was crab claws in butter and garlic. Needless to say she evolved...backward. So I tend not to put too much stock in Millie's current food preferences (or rejections) knowing that they will likely change.

That said, I am completely reveling in her current absolute favorite food. Wait for it...

Roasted asparagus.

The child eats it like candy. She can't get enough. She calls it green beans, so really she doesn't even know what she's eating, but no matter. It's a beautiful thing. Truly.

Now onto pretty things. My friend Amy, along with her talented partner and crime Ann, has just added an incredibly lovely calendar to their shop. A perfect Christmas gift for all your foodie friends. Take a peek!

Happy weekend. Cook something fab!

Online Cooking Group Week Five... A Pie

2009-10-28T12:56:00.000-07:00

my pie before baking -- friends it was divine...

We had so much going on this past weekend that I didn't really have an opportunity to try and make a new full-blown meal (I do most of my big cooking on the weekends), so I opted to make a "quick" dessert for my weekly recipe.

Before I get to the pie though, I have to pause to wax a bit about my lovely cousin Erin's quick quiche from our Sunday brunch. Watching her throw this bad boy together from memory made me seriously reconsider how I agonize and pour over recipes. I think all my attempts at precision might be getting in the way of the spontaneity and fun (for me) in cooking. I've seriously struggled with the last few things I've cooked obsessively from a recipe (i.e. my eternally raw quiche from a few weeks ago.) Surely there's a happy medium.

When I grilled Erin on the exact measurements + ingredients in the quiche, here's what she said:

"seven eggs...no wait eight, Audrey made me let her crack another one."
"A splash of milk" (me, "how much is a splash?") Erin: "I don't know, like this" (mimics pouring a splash)
"Some cheese -- you know, like a nice handful"

And friends there you pretty much have it. There was no recipe, no precision, no real measurements. She first put some asparagus (I roasted it earlier and cut it into one inch pieces) and a bit of sliced ham into a pre-made pie crust. Then she poured in the mixture of 8 eggs, the "splash" of milk and "some" cheese (shredded mozzarella , a little herbed goat cheese and some parm and asiago...we were cleaning out the fridge.) The whole lovely, haphazard thing went into the oven at 350 for about 40 minutes and voila...perfection.

So channeling this vibe, I used the second pre-made pie crust and made an apple pie.

I started by peeking at a recipe I'd seen and wanted to try (this one to be exact) and then I set it aside and sort of went for it. I omitted the cranberries (both dried and frozen) as I really wanted the girlies to like it and I thought this would help my chances (it didn't), added a little more orange juice (the juice of 2 small oranges instead of one) but omitted the zest and used less sugar in the filling.

The pie was killer, and I felt sort of like a rock star throwing it all together so confidently, barely glancing at that recipe.

It felt good. Maybe I'm onto something.

What You're Cooking -- Week Five

2009-10-27T08:48:00.001-07:00

First up, what you've been cooking this week, as I'm way behind on posting these. In fact I've been generally slacking in this space overall -- but I'm getting my cooking mojo back and will amp up things over here soon. I promise.

In the meantime, take a peek at...

Amy's Sweet and Spicy Popcorn Balls

Kate's "Tuna Melt" -- This one is calling my name...seriously.

Antonia's Veggie Stir Fry

I'll be back later today with my weekly recipe!

Online Cooking Group Week Four...Cooking it Out

2009-10-20T08:44:00.000-07:00

I realize that this is technically week five of the cooking group, but since I was struck with the Swine flu, I totally skipped last week, so I'm a week behind...sorry.

Honestly I've had a bit of a cooking hiatus I suppose. I could blame it all on the flu (and the fact that all I wanted to eat for a week was oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, go figure) but truth is, save a few batches of killer pancakes thanks to our rockin new griddle (more on that later), I've been in a cooking dry spell for a couple of weeks.

It's taken everything in my power to churn out one measly new thing a week for our cooking group, so thanks for your virtual peer pressure, otherwise my family would literally be eating nothing but the aforementioned pancakes and quesidillas.

So I'm happy to report that last Sunday was my turning point. I channeled my friend Kristie, who is a formidable cook and as such, anytime she's in any sort of major funk, has a seemingly unsolvable problem or can't get going on a project, she "cooks it out".

So Sunday morning I pulled out the cookbooks and old issues of Gourmet (sigh) and started flipping through for inspiration. We've had blissful Fall weather, so I knew I wanted to make a soup of some sort and bake a bit, but it's not too cold yet, so I also wanted something "fresh" to sort of temper the "warm" Autumn food.

I decided to ease in with a couple of things I've made before (Alice Water's cornbread and carrot soup) and a new salad from an old Food and Wine to serve on the side.

It was all divine. I love the salad (it's definitely going into heavy rotation this fall), and really I can't say enough about how amazing (and super easy) the carrot soup is. It's definitely one of my favorite.dishes.ever.

As for how the girlies liked it all, well...they wouldn't touch the salad (no surprise there), gobbled up the corn muffins (again no surprise) and each took a single bite of the soup and promptly gagged, which frankly was a surprise as they both love carrots. Oh well, I'll try again at some point. That soup rocks my world.

Celery Salad with Walnuts, Dates and Pecorino -- adapted from Food and Wine

1 1/4 cups walnuts
1 small shallot, minced
2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
2 tablespoons walnut oil
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
2 bunches celery (2 pounds), thinly sliced on the bias
3/4 cup dried pitted Medjool dates, quartered lengthwise
3 ounces dry pecorino cheese, shaved with a vegetable peeler

Preheat the oven to 350°. Spread the walnuts in a pie plate and toast for about 8 minutes, until lightly golden and fragrant. Let cool completely, then coarsely chop.

In a small bowl, combine the shallot with the sherry vinegar. Whisk in both oils and season with salt and pepper.

In a large bowl, toss the toasted walnuts, celery, dates and pecorino. Add the dressing and toss. Serve at once.

Alice Water's Carrot Soup -- Adapted from The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters

1/2 stick unsalted butter
2 onions, sliced
1 sprig thyme
2 pounds organic carrots, peeled and sliced
6 cups organic chicken stock

Melt the butter into a pot set over medium-low heat. When butter has melted add the onion and thyme. Continue cooking on medium-low heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the carrots and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Pour in the stock and turn the heat to high. Bring to a boil and then reduce the heat, add the salt, and simmer for 30-45 minutes.

Puree the soup in a blender or food processor and return to pot. You may need to do this in several batches and be careful, as hot liquids will expand in the blender.

Serve plain or with a dollop of creme fraiche and a sprinkle of crumbled bacon.

Fair Food

2009-10-19T10:45:00.000-07:00

For the most part, we're pretty darn healthy eaters. The girls eat loads of fruit, mostly drink water and prefer wheat bread. We never buy soda or juice, rarely buy candy (minus good chocolate) and hardly ever eat fried food or fast food or, well junk food in general. Our issue has never been so much about the girlies being "unhealthy" eaters so much as the fact that they are supremely picky and so my mission has been to try and expand their palettes a little bit each day.

But a few times a year we throw all caution to the wind. We're not really strict when it comes to birthday parties or Halloween or Easter -- the girlies take to the treats with abandon and then the next day we go back to business as usual -- and so far, it's been a good system for us.

Our annual visit to the Texas State Fair is one of those "all wheels off" days. So enamoured we are with the culinary bacchanal that is the fair that we actually spend a lot of time plotting our food strategy beforehand. We all have our favorite (incredibly bad for you) fair food and our own little rituals for eating it. Bryan and I always go for the giant corny dogs... always. He likes his plain, I get the jalapeno cheese one -- it is spectacular, and I'm not even a big fan of hot dogs, so this is saying a lot. I also love the frozen, chocolate covered cheesecake. I know, I know... I told you, this is insanely bad for you food friends.

Audrey's go-to treats are those crazy battered chicken strips with loads of ketchup, she and Millie both beg for a giant bag of cotton candy, and we end up going home with a year's supply of peppermint saltwater taffy.

Last Friday was our yearly fair trip and after a week battling the flu, we all held back a bit on the food front. (Audrey and Millie couldn't even finish half their shared bag of cotton candy.) We were lightweights.

We'll have to make up for it next year...

What You're Cooking Week Three

2009-10-12T13:48:00.001-07:00

First up Melissa’s Gingered Butternut Squash and Carrot Soup... I just found out I have H1N1, so I'm all about soup right now...

Then there's Nicole’s Pomegranate-glazed chicken...

And finally Pittsy’s Almost Pantry Pasta with Sausage, Tomatoes and Peas... Seriously great name, no?

Some of my favorites from your kitchens this week...

When in Rome…

2009-10-09T07:31:00.000-07:00

images by Roland Bello for Gourmet... Bello's gorgeous work is one of the many reasons I'm so, so sad Gourmet will be no longer. sigh.

Recently, Erin from of the blog Villa Pacis e-mailed me with a peek into her kitchen in Rome. Specifically she shared her family’s seven staples, which I plan to copy immediatamente…

Here’s what Erin's family can’t live without on the food front:

Riso Giallo (yellow rice, which is actually risotto alla milanese) the kids LOVE this. we normally serve it with prosciutto after and parmesan cheese on top.
Lentil Soup served with parmesan cheese on top and oil
Polpettine con Sugo (little mini meatballs which I lace with grated vegetables and serve with a fresh tomato sauce.)
Pesce al Forno (whatever pretty fish we find at the market in a pan in the oven with cherry tomatoes sliced potatoes rosemary salt pepper to taste and olive oil baked together.)
Pollo Arrosto (roast chicken, stuffed with garlic, lots of lemon wedges, bay leaves, rosemary, salt and pepper to taste, olive oil and a splash of beer:-) we also add potatoes, carrots, fennel and garlic bits around in the pan.
Milanese (fried or baked but when fried only in extra virgin olive oil. served with steamed greens on the side and lemon juice on top.)
Minestrone (a Sunday night staple when we take every single vegetable we have in the fridge, cut them into bit size pieces, throw in a pot where we browned 1/2 and onion, garlic and celery, cook until waters come out of veggies, stir, cover with water to level of soup desired and cook for 30 minutes on low flame. we serve it with grated parmesan cheese on top and a drizzle of fresh olive oil.

Inspiring no?

So I’m curious, what are your staples?? We’ve talked a little about go-to meals in the past, but I’d love to hear more about what you always have on hand. I really believe there’s a science to stocking a pantry and if I could just get our staples worked out and have my ten go-to meals set in stone then I think I’d have this dinner time thing beat…

Online Cooking Club Week Three – Component Meals...

2009-10-06T05:39:00.001-07:00

image via the NYT -- suffice to say, my end result looking nothing like this, no, it was kinda ugly, not strikingly beautiful as Bittman promises (proof below), but it was still incredibly yummy...for what it's worth!

When it comes to food, my girlies are purists.

One of my biggest challenges in getting them to try new things is their squeamishness at dishes containing multiple ingredients, which as you can imagine is a pretty major hurdle. They (like my husband, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree on this one) prefer their food one flavor at a time…they don't even like the different foods touching on their plates, which is pretty much, well…the total and complete opposite of me. (I once concocted a dish of Thanksgiving leftovers aptly named “Bowl of Thanks” that was sublime if I do say so myself. As you can imagine, Bryan did not agree.)

I’ve learned to deal with this challenge by falling back on (for the girlies, Bryan thankfully has *mostly* grown out of this unfortunate affliction) “component meals.” My typical system is to make something with multiple ingredients for me and bryan (like the pasta with asparagus, goat cheese and sausage) and then set aside the things the girls will eat and make a more palatable (read fewer ingredients) meal for the girlies…

What I decided to try for this week’s cooking club easily fell into this category. I made Mark Bittman’s Roasted Sweet Potato salad for the grown-ups and separated out some of the black beans and roasted sweet potatoes for the girlies.

The salad was a major win, and I think it could easily stand on its own, as it’s hearty and incredibly satisfying. We ended up serving it with some sliced grilled chicken, but the chicken felt like the side dish and the salad the star, it was so flavorful.

The only complaint is that it didn’t save well. I packaged some up for lunch the next day and it was average at best. I would highly recommend eating this right away, slightly warm. I also didn't add the red bell peppers, as we didn't have any on hand, so the consistency was very soft -- like a true potato salad. I think the crunch would have made it even better (and far prettier)...so I'd highly suggest following Bittman's recipe below.

Maybe your kiddos will be more into it than mine ;-)

Roasted Sweet Potato Salad with Black Beans and Chili Dressing – adapted from Mark Bittman

4 medium sweet potatoes (about 1 1/2 pounds), peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
1 large red onion, chopped
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 minced jalapeño
1 clove garlic, peeled
Juice of 2 limes
2 cups cooked black beans, drained (canned are fine)
1 red or yellow bell pepper, seeded and finely diced
1 cup chopped fresh cilantro.

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Put sweet potatoes and onions on a large baking sheet, drizzle with 2 tablespoons oil, toss to coat and spread out in a single layer. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast, turning occasionally, until potatoes begin to brown on corners and are just tender inside, 30 to 40 minutes. Remove from oven; keep on pan until ready to mix with dressing.

Put chilies in a blender or mini food processor along with garlic, lime juice, remaining olive oil and a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Process until blended.

Put warm vegetables in a large bowl with beans and bell pepper; toss with dressing and cilantro. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary.

Serve warm or at room temperature.

What You're Cooking...

2009-10-05T08:17:00.000-07:00

Kristine’s Potato and Boursin Frittata

I'm still planning to post my weekly Online Cooking Group meal on Tuesdays, but I've decided to feature some of your recipes on Mondays instead of Thursdays... in case you're wondering ;-)

You guys whipped up all sorts of goodness last week, and you certainly seemed to have better luck than me and my raw quiche!

Here are some of my faves from last week. I can't wait to try Kristine's fritatta. Eggs haven't scared me off... yet.

Lucy's butternut squash soup. Loving the little bit of bacon on top...YUM.

Keely’s Steak with Potato-Parsnip Mash...

In Print...

2009-10-01T12:20:00.001-07:00

My first ever piece for an actual magazine. Pretty fun stuff! Take a peek...

Online Cooking Group Week Two -- The Magic Quiche

2009-09-29T09:28:00.000-07:00

We had some of our dearest friends and their kiddos over for dinner Friday, and I wanted to do something totally casual, quick and easy, so I settled on breakfast for dinner. I have a couple of Vosges milk chocolate and bacon bars that I’ve been dying to use in pancakes, so I figured this was the perfect excuse.

I also wanted to try my hand at making a quiche for this week’s cooking group… I know, I know, I’ve never made a quiche -- crazy, no?? On a different occasion, I would have gone with Rachel’s grown-up recipe and thrown in asparagus and goat cheese and all sorts of yummy goodies, but half our dinner party consisted of four mildly picky kiddos (+ my girlies have never had quiche) So I thought it would be best if I eased into things and went with a classic bacon and cheese quiche, with heavy cream.

Seriously I was making a heart attack in a pie dish.

The actual assembly was easy, things went smoothly, and Audrey even got into the action. So far, so good. But then I cooked it for the prescribed 45 minutes, let it cool, and it was completely raw in the middle – pure liquid. So another mimosa, a little swearing and back it went into the over for another 15 minutes. Yep, you guessed it, still raw. I was perplexed, frustrated and swearing profusely (don’t worry the girlies were all in the other room, well out of earshot, playing dress up.) Back in the oven for another 20 minutes, and it was finally done, but I was feeling like a massive failure – I mean seriously how hard is it to make a quiche??

I’m still not quite sure what went wrong, but I wouldn’t recommend the recipe I used, as I think there must’ve been something wrong with the ratios (or at least I’m telling myself that so I’ll feel better about the whole enterprise.) So I’m not even going to include it and instead suggest that you go with Rachel’s, as she’s an aficionado of the quiche.

The good news is that despite all the cooking challenges, the quiche was rockin (thus the "magic" in the title, but really how can you go wrong with eggs, heavy cream, loads of cheese and bacon in a pie crust…) The girls loved it, and Millie spent the rest of the weekend requesting leftover quiche for every meal, which was pretty freakin cute if I do say so myself.

Can’t wait to check out all the things you guys whipped up this week!

What You're Cooking

2009-09-28T13:52:00.000-07:00

This pretty much represents the gist of our weekend meals after a rather unfortunate incident with a quiche on Friday night... More on that tomorrow.

Let me just say, you guys have been busy whipping up pretty awesome new meals for the online cooking group...I know I promised to post some of my faves on Thursdays, but last week kicked my butt a bit, so I'm a bit behind.

So without further ado, a few of your meals that I'm dying to try.

Ann's corn chowder

Melissa’s Goat Cheese & Basil Soufflé

Jill’s Won Ton Raviolis

The Online Cooking Group -- Week One Crispy Chicken

2009-09-22T12:08:00.000-07:00

image via Cookie... while I managed to cook something new this week, clearly I didn't have it together enough to actually photograph it too.

So here we are cooking "together"... fun, no?

One of our weekly staples is Bryan's crispy chicken. It's easy (he just dredges skinless chicken breast in egg and breadcrumbs and then fries it outside in our little fryer), and the girlies love it...but it's not exactly the healthiest thing on the block. Did I mention it was fried??

I wanted to try and recreate something similar but baked to eliminate all that fried food guilt, so I scoured my big recipe binder and found this recipe I'd saved from an old issue of Cookie (summer of 2007 I think...) I just made the chicken (no oven roasted tomatoes on a baguette, just chicken) and served it with oven roasted rosemary potatoes and steamed broccoli.

The girlies dug it, Bryan liked it, but he prefers the fried, as he says the chicken is juicier. Overall it was a success. I'll definitely make it again!

So I can't wait to poke around and see what you all cooked. I'll post a couple of my favorites from your blogs over here on Thursday!

Happy cooking.

Oven Baked Crispy Chicken -- Adapted from Cookie

4 four-ounce chicken cutlets, pounded thin
2 cups plain low-fat yogurt
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 cups unseasoned bread crumbs
Zest of 2 lemons, grated
2 tablespoons fresh rosemary, finely chopped
8 tablespoons grated Parmesan

Place the chicken and yogurt in a resealable plastic bag and refrigerate for at least 3 hours.

Preheat oven to 425° F. In a shallow pan, combine the bread crumbs, zest, rosemary, Parmesan, olive oil, and more salt and pepper.

Remove the cutlets, shaking off any excess yogurt, and press them firmly into the bread-crumb mixture.

Transfer to a pan lined with nonstick foil and bake until browned and firm, 15 to 20 minutes. Remove and let cool.

Making Lunch...

2009-09-21T13:39:00.001-07:00

I loved watching Beastie Boy, Mike D busting out his sons' school lunches on his wife's online cooking show... He's so incredibly famous and cool, and yet his morning routine is strikingly similar to mine. Nice.

I mentioned a while back that I'd abandoned the plan to let Audrey buy lunch at school after volunteering in the cafeteria. (Basically, I was completely freaked out when my otherwise fruit loving daughter passed-up both orange wedges and a bananna and selected a hamburger, french fries and chocolate pudding for lunch.)

The situation at her school is decent in that the kids have healthy items to choose from like the aforementioned fresh fruit + little cups of broccoli and baby carrots with ranch, etc...but the main dishes are pretty crummy -- lots of fried foods, lots of processed foods, and they consider things like apple juice and pudding a side dish, which to me is completely unacceptable.

What left me so bummed out and demoralized though was this notion that no matter how much you reinforce with your kids the importance of making healthy food choices, (and I truly believe many parents do just that) they will still pick pudding over baby carrots 9 out of 10 times if given the choice. This was exactly the case that day I volunteered in the cafeteria -- every. single. kid. picked the pudding. And most kids LOVE oranges... I'm just saying.

The easy solution would be for the school NOT to offer pudding as a side dish, no? Seems so very obvious, but in the meantime, the plan is to pack Audrey's lunch four days a week and let her buy once a week. We look at the menu together on Sunday evening and decide which day looks best. She usually goes for pizza day, but enchiladas are a close second.

Now my daughter is a major creature of habit. I went into the packing lunch exercise with the goal of mixing things up each day to keep lunch exciting, but she's happiest with a core lunch of peanut butter (I buy organic) on wheat bread (she loves really dense wheat bread, which is great!) with no crusts. I do try to change up the sides a little bit. She gets fruit or some organic apple sauce, a little yogurt or a cheese stick and some pirate's booty or a few organic pretzels. + she has a little Sigg bottle for water. I also throw in a Newman's Own cookie, so she doesn't feel totally deprived of anything fun.

We pack it all in little reusable containers in an insulated lunch box with a sweet note and a fun napkin. My little budding environmentalist puts the napkin back in her lunch box if it's not too dirty. I of course promptly threw it away every night until she informed me Friday afternoon that she's trying to save the earth here (her words) and that she's been trying to give me clues, but I'm just not getting it.

Clearly I'm not hip to the ways of my six-year old über tree hugger... My bad.

What's Your Favorite Cookbook?

2009-09-17T08:18:00.000-07:00

Big Sur Bakery Cookbook -- Currently at the top of my list...

Now that we're gearing up for the Online Cooking Club, I've been poking through all my cookbooks for new recipes to try. My current go-to is Alice Water's The Art of Simple Food + The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook -- an über practical book given to me by my friends Julie and Tim, both excellent cooks.

But I'm hankering for a couple of new cookbooks, less practical and more inspiring... killer photos, great text... the whole deal.

Here are a few more on my wish list.

Falling Cloudberries

Baked: New Frontiers in Baking

River Cottage Family Cookbook

Miss Dahl's Voluptuous Delights

So, what are your cookbook faves?

It's Time... The Cooking Group

2009-09-14T10:18:00.000-07:00

image by roland bello via gourmet

Just as I was thinking that it's time to officially kick-off our little online cooking group, my friend Tiffany sends me this great article. The gist is that kids love repetition, and if you have 5-10 foolproof, kid-approved recipes in your arsenal , dinnertime is pretty much done and done.

So with that as our guiding principal, I've rejiggered the guidelines for the cooking club a bit. Rather than dictating an ingredient to cook around each week, I'm proposing that we just try something new, perhaps slightly out of our comfort zone, but with kids in mind. (This also helps those of you participating that are vegetarians.)

That doesn't mean we have to dumb things down, but this isn't an exercise in extravagance either. The goal is to impress our kids not each other -- although impressing your kids with good food is awfully impressive...

I think I have a good record of everyone that "signed up" from the original post. I've created a side bar on the right with all the participants. Let me know if you're listed and don't want to do it so I can remove you, OR if you want to be added.

I'll add participants through the end of the week and close it on Friday.

So, here's the deal... For the next 8 weeks (schedule below) we'll all create one "new" dinner per week and post the recipe and results on Tuesdays on our own blogs. In addition to posting my recipe here on Tuesdays, I'll also post three of my favorites from the rest of the group on Thursdays.

Once we're done, hopefully we'll all have 5-10 new rockin new recipes ,and all our dinnertime woes will be solved.

Happy Cooking!

ONLINE COOKING CLUB SCHEDULE

Week One -- Tuesday, Sept 22nd
Week Two -- Tuesday, Sept 29th
Week Three -- Tuesday, Oct. 6th
Week Four -- Tuesday, Oct 13th
Week Five -- Tuesday, Oct 20th
Week Six -- Tuesday, Oct 27th
Week Seven -- Tuesday, Nov 3rd
Week Eight -- Tuesday, Nov 10th

An Exceptional Dip + Some Pesto

2009-09-09T09:35:00.000-07:00

image via martha stewart.com

(Tiff this is for you ;-)

My friend Sharon came to dinner a couple of weeks ago toting along this insanely yummy dip, and now I'm obsessed with it. I like it best with pita chips, but it's also good with veggies... Heck, I'd even put it on a baked potato.

We've got a bunch of basil in the backyard that has to be cut back tomorrow, so I'm planning on making some of the dip, plus a big batch of pesto. The girls have yet to try pesto, so my plan is mix a couple of spoonfuls into some angel hair pasta, give it a groovy name and serve it up this weekend. We'll see how it goes...

I like this simple, straightforward pesto recipe from Martha, as it calls for only one clove of garlic, and I tend to prefer things that are light on the stinkin rose.

Basil Parmesan Dip

1 pint organic sour cream
1 clove of garlic
juice from 1 organic lemon
4 cups loosely packed fresh basil leaves
1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese
kosher salt + fresh ground pepper to taste

Put garlic and basil in food processor and pulse until chopped.

Add sour cream, lemon juice, and parmesan cheese. Blend until smooth and bright green, salt and pepper to taste.

Classic Basil Pesto -- adapted via Martha Stewart

Makes 1 1/4 cups

1/2 cup pine nuts, or walnuts
4 cups loosely packed fresh basil leaves
1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese
1 clove garlic
Salt and pepper
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spread nuts on a rimmed baking sheet; toast in oven until golden and fragrant, tossing occasionally, 5 to 8 minutes. Let cool completely.

In a food processor, combine toasted nuts, basil, Parmesan, and garlic; season with salt and pepper. Process until finely chopped.

With machine running, pour olive oil in a steady stream through the feed tube; process until smooth.

The Birthday Dinner

2009-09-04T06:12:00.000-07:00

Growing up, part of our birthday celebrations always included dinner of our choice cooked by my mother. My hubby's family had the same tradition -- he always picked crab cakes and I requested beef stroganoff, which is funny as neither of us ever eat those meals anymore, but I digress...

Today is our oldest daughter's 6th birthday, so in carrying on the tradition, I asked her earlier this week what she wanted for dinner tonight at our family party. She requested white beans and sausage pasta, which is technically two meals, but it's her day, so she can go wild.

Let me pause here to say how proud I am of her choices. Despite some evidence to the contrary on this blog, we've made progress friends, as I'm certain her request last year would have been pizza or nuggets and Annie's mac and cheese.

The white beans are just a simple pot of navy or great northern beans that we cook all day -- we just sauté some celery and onion, add pre-soaked beans, chicken broth + spices (usually some Tony Chachere's , kosher salt, some fresh ground pepper, a bit of sage...), bring to a boil and then simmer for the rest of the day. Served over brown rice, this is one of our all-time favorite meals... We love it, the girls love it, it's easy, healthy and cheap. A major win!

The sausage pasta is a new favorite we make about once a week and is pretty much a simple combo of orecchiette, turkey sausage and loads of Parmesan. I serve it with just the meat and pasta for the girlies + a side of steamed green beans, and after I remove their portion from the pot, I add sautéed spinach and asparagus for Bryan and me. Maybe by next year she'll be eating that too...

I can dream ;-)

Orecchiette with Sausage, Asparagus and Spinach

1 pound orecchiette
4 sweet Italian sausages (about 1 pound), casing removed and crumbled
Small bunch of asparagus, trimmed into 1 inch pieces
1 pound spinach, washed, trimmed, and cut into pieces
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
¼ cup organic chicken broth
1 teaspoon organic butter
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Place sausage in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Brown for about 8-10 minutes, transfer to a bowl.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook until al dente, 8-10 minutes; drain, reserving about ½ cup of the cooking water.

In the same skillet that you cooked the sausage in (don’t wash it out) add the olive oil and once hot, sauté the asparagus until almost tender, then add the spinach and continue sautéing until wilted.

Add sausage mixture to sautéed spinach and asparagus and mix together.

Add the orecchiette to the mixture. Stir to combine, adding chicken broth plus the cooking liquid if pasta seems too dry; add the teaspoon of butter, sprinkle with cheese, salt and freshly ground black pepper and serve immediately.

Yes, We Still Cook...

2009-08-31T10:49:00.000-07:00

a meal I didn't actually cook but thoroughly enjoyed nonetheless!

Seems I’ve been so preoccupied with Audrey starting school (and therefore eating school lunch) that I haven’t had much time to blog about the actual food the girlies are trying and (sometimes) actually eating at home.

So I’m going to go back to my roots for a bit a blog about what we're cooking around here...

(+ I volunteered in A’s school cafeteria on Friday and was so freaked out by the experience that I’m going to have to back off the whole school lunch thing for a while so I can process and plot my next steps… Let’s just say that I’m abandoning my original goal of having her buy lunch at least three days a week. She gets to buy once a week and I’m packing her lunch every other day. And that’s all I’ll say about that…for now ;-)

So onto what we’re eating or better yet, what Audrey’s eating of late. Her new favorite food is, wait for it... chicken satay*, which as you can imagine is quite thrilling. She specifically requests "those chicken curry sticks”… The kid digs the taste of curry. Yay!

On the flip side, at the stellar brunch that lovely cousin Erin and boyfriend Ben made for us yesterday (photo above), I begged her to try Ben’s homemade beignets. I mean seriously what kid doesn’t want to try a homemade sugar covered donut? Mine apparently. No dice, it just wasn’t happening.

Oh well.

Any major food adventures/wins in your world of late?

* Audrey loves the ones from our neighborhood Thai restaurant, but when I make them at home , I always use this recipe

Chicken Satay -- adapted from epicurian.com

2 lbs. white meat chicken, cut in 1" strips
Bamboo satay sticks
2 cloves garlic
1 tbsp. curry powder
1 tsp. coriander powder
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. butter
3 tbsp. light cream
1/2 c. coconut milk

Combine marinade ingredients and add chicken to mixture. Marinate for at least two hours.

Thread chicken pieces on one end of satay sticks. Broil or much better, barbecue and baste with marinade.

Small Bites

2009-08-26T07:19:00.000-07:00

I was so honored to contribute to perfection that is the Autumn Small Magazine.

Take a peek at my recipe for "blueberry dessert" (original name, no ;-)

The Sad State of School Lunch -- Now We're in The Thick of It...

2009-08-25T08:47:00.000-07:00

groovy lunchbox by Goodbyn

Yesterday my oldest started public Kindergarten, and it was a rousing success. Despite our excitement about every aspect of her new school, we're officially in the thick of the school lunch juggernaut.

Prior to this year, Audrey attended a private pre-school where hot lunch was served every day. Packing a lunch wasn't really an option, and while there were a few items on the menu I wasn't so jazzed about (I'm never happy about hot dog day), overall the menus were nutritious, and the cook made as many things as possible from scratch. But we're entering new territory here, so I had planned to pack Audrey's lunch most days to ensure she's eating the healthiest meal possible.

Then I read this over on the stellar School Lunch Talk...

"Many parents pack lunch for their children because they don’t consider chicken nuggets a healthy meal. I don’t either. But before you resolve to pack lunch for your child every day this year, think about this: one of the best ways to get better food into public school cafeterias is to put away the lunch box and become a loyal lunchroom customer...

Yes, it’s easy enough to pack a lunch for your child if you don’t approve of what’s offered at school. But every packed lunch means less revenue for school lunch programs, and less revenue means less healthy food for the students who do eat lunch in the cafeteria. What’s more, the parents who pack lunch for their children out of health concerns are precisely the parents who care about good food. Without their voices, there is nobody to speak up for school lunch change.

School cafeterias operate by giving customers what they want. Right now, we’re allowing kids to be those customers. If parents can take back that buying power, we’ll take one huge step to improving school food in America."

full story here.

So despite the fact that I'm not loving the lunch offerings at Audrey's school (think pizza, pizza sticks, corn dogs, hamburgers, etc... although they do serve nice sides -- steamed broccoli, apple slices, corn), we're going to buy lunch in the cafeteria at least three days a week, and in the meantime I'm going to try my hand at organizing something with the parents to see what we can do to improve things.

We'll see how it goes...

Detox Recap

2009-08-21T12:05:00.000-07:00

photo via nibs

After all my whining over cheese, I thought it only fair to do a little recap of my two week detox to let you know how it actually went down.

My initial goal for going into this craziness was to "recalibrate" my diet a bit -- I've been indulging, well... a lot this summer, in fact so much so that I'd abandoned the concept of "special occasion" eating (dessert and/or wine had become the norm instead of the exception...) I thought going spartan for a couple of weeks would help me cleanse my body a bit and get me back on track before the bacchanal otherwise known as the holidays.

So for 14 days, I didn't consume any alcohol, dairy, sugar, caffeine, red meat, processed foods, flour, gluten and soy... for the most part. I did indulge in a small (4 ounces or so) cup of coffee every morning, as I didn't want to contend with a raging headache, but I was almost "perfect", staying full on brown rice, veggies and fruit, raw nuts, beans, organic chicken and pork, fish and oatmeal. I also consumed quite possibly the grossest drink on earth every morning -- 8 ounces of unsweetened cranberry juice with a big scoop of green "super food". Friends, I can't tell you how awful this was. It took every. single. ounce. of my resolve to get it down without gagging, but I suspect it contributed to the major upside of this experiment -- my super human energy.

Now honestly I'm not sure that some of my newfound energy wasn't psychological, but during the 14 days spent detoxing, I woke up about an hour earlier every morning (without an alarm clock) and didn't fall into my typical mid-afternoon slump. I also generally felt better, and yes (in case you're wondering), I also lost a couple of pounds.

So all in all, it was worth the monotony of of my meals and the absence of cheese. I think I'm going to try and do it a few times a year...maybe ;-)

Eating On The Cheap...

2009-08-14T06:02:00.000-07:00

I'm totally addicted to W. Hoddington Carter’s Extreme Frugality series on gourmet.com. I woke up at 5:30 this morning and read every. single. one. I think that detox is giving me super human energy... Seriously.

Carter's focus isn't on organic or local food, rather his goal is to feed his family of six good food, while spending as little money as possible. Their progress has been fascinating (and funny.) It's a must read.

Happy weekend...only three more days before I reunite with cheese!

I Miss Cheese

2009-08-12T14:03:00.000-07:00

image by michele m. waite via lovely morning

Only four more days left of this (*&#@*) detox, and I can 100%, unequivocally, without a doubt say:

I. Want. Cheese.

Otherwise, it's going great.

Salad Rolls Are Simple!

2009-08-11T08:41:00.000-07:00

If forced to name my top five favorite foods, fresh (or salad) rolls would definitely be on the list. (These also happen to fall into the category of what I am eating, although I'm not sure the rice wrappers are 100% detox friendly.)

For years, I only ate these when we ordered or went to our favorite Thai place, but in the past couple of months, I've realized that with just a little practice, they are insanely simple to make. I don't have a formal recipe, as we kinda wing it every time, veering toward some combination of romaine lettuce, matchstick carrots + cucumber, bean sprouts, mint, cilantro, basil and sometimes shredded chicken or halved shrimp.

But I will share my tips for making foolproof, tight, restaurant style rolls:

Work on a completely. dry. surface. (dry it off with a clean towel between rolls, as any extra water makes the rice wrappers hard to deal with)
Use two wrappers per roll overlapping the circles about 60%
When assembling, err on the side of less filling, as they'll be much easier to roll
Make them about 10 minutes or so before serving so the rolls firm up a bit

Now my mission is to make the girlies love these as much as I do... Based on Audrey's response to last weekend's rolls, it's going to be a challenge.

What I'm Not Eating...

2009-08-07T08:42:00.000-07:00

While we've definitely been eating well (fresh local veggies, homemade meals, organic meat), it's possible I've been eating perhaps... a little too well. There's been an awful lot of indulging of late, so I bit the bullet and decided to team up with my cousin Erin on a 14 day "mini detox".

We're currently on day five of not consuming any alcohol, dairy, sugar, caffeine, red meat, processed foods, flour, gluten and soy, and it hasn't been as bad as I feared. I'm not ever really hungry, as it's easy to stay full on the things we can eat like brown rice, veggies and fruit, raw nuts, organic chicken and pork, fish and oatmeal.

But I am getting a bit bored, and I'm missing cheese dreadfully...

My biggest challenge has been how to work the detox into our family eating without letting the girls know that I'm doing it. Regardless of how healthy my motivations are, I don't want to introduce either of them to anything that remotely feels like a "diet" for fear of accelerating the body image, eating disorder nightmare that they'll eventually encounter in one form or another.

So far it's been very easy to explain why I'm not having dessert, as I want the girls to know those things aren't necessarily healthy (although indulging in a quality, homemade dessert occasionally is certainly a "healthy" way to eat) but the dairy/bread questions are a little harder. I've avoided most probing by serving us all the same meal at night, and luckily many of our go-to meals (white beans with brown rice, chicken with veggies) are totally detox friendly.

Now I head into the weekend and bigger challenges -- it's always harder for me to avoid goodies on the weekend. So wish me luck and let me live vicariously through you...

What are you cooking this weekend?

The Go-To Meals and Our "System"

2009-08-06T14:53:00.000-07:00

I'm rather addicted to Jenny's genius lobotoME notepads... love. them.

For every three or four meals Audrey turns her nose up at, we get an epic, lip smacking win.

She's every cook's dream that one, as when she does like what you've made for dinner, she tells you over and over and over...and says mmmm a lot. It's rather lovely.

When we do have one of these meal successes, I tuck it away into my go-to meal file. These make up roughly 75% of our weekly "meal plan", with the other 25% coming from "new" dishes for the girls to try. My goal is to expand their palettes a bit but not have an epic food battle every single night.

For the new things, the girls have to try one big bite. If they hate it, they don't have to eat the rest, and I try it again in a few weeks. If they hate everything else on their plate, they get one option for an alternative meal -- a bowl of cereal and a piece of fruit. That's it. Perhaps that makes me an indulgent parent, but I can't help it, I want them to eat something, and I want them to have a healthy attitude about food, to be allowed to dislike certain things. I think that's part of the evolution of our taste buds -- it just is what it is.

So do you have a "system"?? What are the go-to meals in your house?

Jamie Oliver is My Hero

2009-08-04T13:12:00.000-07:00

image via penguin

Ok, admittedly Jamie is rather easy to love, what with his sort of mellow, punk rock approach to cooking and farming and well food in general… But it’s the school lunch thing that’s moved him (along with Pollen and Waters and Bittman) to my hero status -- You gotta idolize anyone who uses their celebrity to push forward the cause of improving school lunch.

Jamie first tackled school lunch in the UK through his show Jamie’s School Dinners to pretty great results:

“So Jamie took over school meals in Greenwich and tried to persuade the Government to improve standards. With dinner lady Nora Sands he showed that kids could be fed fresh, nutritious meals. And after a huge campaign, newspaper headlines and delivering a 300,000-signature petition, Tony Blair agreed to set new standards for school meals, and committed £280 million for proper ingredients, equipment and training.”

Now he’s headed to our neck of the woods (West Virginia specifically) to try and reform school lunch in the U.S. -- A challenge to say the least.

While I’m mildly encouraged by all the current information and activity around school lunch reform, we still have so far to go. Right now our children’s school cafeterias are essentially another fast food venue filled with HFCS laden, processed foods and their school hallways are yet another spot for soda and candy vending machines.

It's a bad scene friends.

There are all sorts of reasons school lunch has gotten so bad (school lunch talk, does a good job of summarizing here), and the root of the problem seems to be that cafeterias are incented based on the amount of food they sell, and as well all know kids love to buy junk food...

So while there’s an activist portion -- a piece of this school lunch juggernaut that requires us to take action, to be informed, to lobby and to make sure our leaders know that we want the current system to change, there’s also the piece that requires us as parents (or aunts and uncles, godparents…heck even friends) to introduce our kids to great food.

Maybe instead of taking the kiddos to McD’s for a “treat” you could make meal from scratch together… I’m a huge believer that the only way to get kids to shun such “delicacies” as frozen French fries and “French” toast sticks is to make sure they understand (and pardon my French here) what shit that kind of food is, no?

Weekend Food...

2009-08-03T09:04:00.000-07:00

Despite a full and fun weekend (or maybe because of it) we didn't cook much of anything beyond some homemade cornbread and some comically cursed brownies (think forgetting the egg, then forgetting to turn on the oven and wondering why after 35 minutes the brownies were totally raw...)

We did have an excellent Sunday Dinner at lovely cousin Erin and boyfriend Ben's house. Not only was it incredibly tasty, but both girls LOVED it...cleaned their plates, ate every. single. bite. and then asked for more. It was a huge, huge win friends.

The Menu:

Chicken Adobo -- recipe below
Simple Parmesan risotto
Sauteed green beans with pine nuts

Chicken Adobo (adapted from Serious Eats)

serves 4

6 boneless chicken thighs with no skin
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
10 whole peppercorns
1 whole head garlic
2 bay leaves

Separate the cloves of garlic from each other and smash them lightly with the flat side of a knife to easily remove the skins. Add them with the rest of the ingredients—the chicken should be half-submerged—to a heavy pot. Bring to a boil, then turn the heat down to a simmer. Cook, covered, for 15 minutes, then uncover and continue cooking until the chicken is tender, turning the pieces occasionally.

If desired, remove the chicken pieces and reduce the sauce to a thicker consistency, adding the chicken pieces back in near the end to reheat. Remove the bay leaves and serve.

p.s. there's a great Michael Pollen article in NYT magazine this Sunday about the rise of our obsession with cooking shows, but our decline in actual cooking...

"Sometimes Spaghetti Likes to Be Alone…”

2009-07-30T15:39:00.000-07:00

Image from The Big Night via npr (Kobal Collection)

The title of this post bears what is perhaps one of the great cinematic food lines... It's from the excellent, lovely and hilarious movie, The Big Night.

Similar to my obsession with gastro-lit, I love food movies -- love Eat Drink Man Woman, (which I haven't seen in years but my cousin Lauri recently reminded me of in an e-mail), love Chocolate, love Like Water for Chocolate and Ratouille and even the food scenes in Spanglish... and I can't wait to see Julie and Julia.

A couple of nights ago Bob Mondello did a great piece on NPR about food on the big screen. It's a must listen!

When the girlies get a bit older, I'd like to watch a great food movie every Friday night and then cook dishes inspired by the flick for the rest of the weekend. I'm thinking a weekend of French Food following Babette's Feast -- you get the idea.

What's your favorite food movie?

Collaborative Cooking, More Leftovers Love and Some Recipes

2009-07-28T11:22:00.000-07:00

I love collaborative cooking -- cramming into the kitchen with friends (especially if their cooking skills surpass mine, which is definitely the case with two of my dearest friends, Julie and Tim) drinking wine, bumping into each other and chatting while everyone works toward the shared goal of enjoying a lovely meal together... of creating a memory.

Our Saturday evening birthday dinner for my friend Achlee was one of these nights. Bryan made his famous fried shrimp and homemade chips and salsa; I whipped up some yummy sides (the guacamole, mango salsa, beautiful rice + spicy black beans and a cabbage/jicama slaw) and threw together a simple marinade of canola oil, cilantro, lime, Ancho chili powder and a jalapeno for the tilapia, which our friends Julie and Tim then expertly cooked.

We set up a little build your own taco bar on the island, drank lots of homemade margaritas and then finished everything off with Julie’s perfect chocolate cake.

If it had ended there, it would have been more than enough food happiness, but it turned out to be the meal that kept on giving. Sunday morning, leftover tortillas and queso fresco were scrambled up with a few eggs and served alongside the black beans – quick migas. The beans surfaced again the following day combined with the remainder of the beautiful rice and topped with the cabbage slaw and Bryan’s salsa for easy veggie tacos. And each of those meals was just as yummy as the first one.

Here are a couple of the recipes should you want to mimic this at home!

Bryan’s Homemade Salsa
This is a sweeter cilantro based salsa…one of our favorites!

1 bunch cilantro (tops plus 1/2 of the stems)
¾ large sweet onion (preferably a Vidalia)
1 poblano roasted on the grill and peeled
5-7 medium jalapenos de-seeded
28 oz can Muir Glen organic fire roasted whole tomatoes
½ Lime squeezed
1 ½ tsp salt

This makes A LOT of salsa… A. Lot. So you could easily half the recipe. We like the texture best if you blend in a food processor, as the blender tends to make the salsa too “mushy”.

Cabbage and Jicama Slaw

½ head of green cabbage -- shredded
1 medium jicama – peeled and cut into matchsticks
¼ cup cilantro -- finely chopped
1 cup plain yogurt
½ teaspoon hot pepper sauce
Juice of one small lime
Kosher salt and pepper to taste

Combine the above ingredients in a bowl and refrigerate for 30 minutes before serving. I added a bit more hot sauce, as I like this with a bite…it was just as good the next day!

How Much Are You Willing to Pay for Food?

2009-07-24T06:46:00.001-07:00

This passage from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back for me:

“Grocery money is an odd sticking point for U.S. citizens, who on average spend a lower proportion of our income of food than people in any other country, or any heretofore in history. In our daily fare, even in school lunches, we broadly justify consumption of tallow-fried animal pulp on the grounds that it’s cheaper than whole grains, fresh vegetables, hormone-free dairy, and such. Whether on school boards or in families budget keepers may be aware of the health tradeoff but still feel compelled to economize on food – in a manner that would be utterly unacceptable if the health risk involved an unsafe family vehicle or a plume of benzene running through a school basement.”

So I (like almost everyone else who has read this insightful, compelling book) am officially starting our family’s mini food “revolution”. In fact, you can read all about it here.

I’m starting slow, as I want to get this right. I’m trying to balance organic and local, making sure nobody feels "deprived" and re-working our household budget to accommodate any food cost increases (although I believe they’ll be minimal when we move away from frequent eating out and processed foods…albeit organic ones, but still) and move to making more items from scratch. I think the additional “cost” will come more in the currency of time than money, but responsible eating is time well spent -- I firmly believe that.

I’m curious about what others are doing. (I love this account from our green nest on how their family of three affords to eat 100% organic on $100 a week!) What percentage of your food budget is spent on organic food, local food? Do you have a garden? How often do you go to the farmer’s market? What do you always buy conventional?

Eat Well Guide

2009-07-22T09:14:00.000-07:00

My friend Sharon turned me on to this BRILLIANT site. Just type in your zip code and find all the sustainable food options within a particular radius.

I discovered a new organic restaurant that we're going to try out with the girlies this week and a farmer's market that's open through December, so it'll be easier to procure local food well into fall. + It would be especially helpful in avoiding the fast food wasteland on your next road trip.

I'm addicted. Check it out!

A Slight Delay and Food Confessions

2009-07-21T10:41:00.000-07:00

I promised I'd post an update on our online cooking club, and after discovering that many of you have vacations planned before the school year starts, I thought it would be best to officially kick-off our little culinary adventure on September 1st.

I'll continue working out the details and will post a full list of participants and "rules" the week before. Then we'll post our first recipe on the 1st. Sound ok?

Now onto the confessions. I was reading our latest book club pick, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, last night, and while tucked into the chapter about our massive consumption of corn and corn-based processed foods and big agribusiness, I was mindlessly munching on a bag of microwave popcorn and sipping (wait for it...) a Diet Coke.

Yes, I know, shameful. But admitting a problem is the first step, no?

So spill it. What are your shameful "food" vices?

Mango Salsa

2009-07-20T10:27:00.000-07:00

Amidst all the hoopla of the weekend, we did manage to eke out one home cooked meal. Tired from our little road trip, I didn't want to try to make anything too extravagant for Sunday dinner, so I had Bryan throw some chicken from Whole Foods on the grill (maybe it's psychological, but I think organic, free range, hormone free chicken tastes so. much. better. than conventional chicken... I'm just saying.)

While he was grilling, I made a quick pot of beautiful rice, this time adding slivered almonds, and threw together my mom's famous mango salsa, since I had all of the ingredients on hand. This is incredibly easy and is good with chicken, pork, fish tacos, or on its on as a little summer salad.

Mango "Salsa"
Serves 4

Mix together the following in a medium size bowl and let sit in the refrigerator for one hour before serving.

1 large ripe Mango -- diced
1 pint grape or cherry tomatoes -- quartered
1/4 cup finely chopped cilantro
juice from one small lime
sea salt + pepper to taste

I also like to top with a little crumbled feta, goat or queso fresco, depending on what I'm serving. Alongside last night's chicken and rice, I went with goat cheese.

Audrey totally dug the chicken, but sadly refused the beautiful rice and mango salsa, and instead had a piece of corn on the cob and some orechiette with parmesan... Oh well.

Weekend Food

2009-07-17T06:36:00.000-07:00

Sadly, there won't be a lot of cooking around our place this weekend. We're headed to a block party at the museum tonight and to an all-day birthday/house cooling party tomorrow + we have a fridge full of leftovers to plow through.

Funny, a few months ago a couple of days out of the kitchen would have been a relief, but now I'm a bit sad...I always look forward to weekend cooking.

So let me live vicariously through you. What are you whipping up this weekend?

In other news, my Friday post is up on Renegade Bus. Go pick some berries this weekend and then put them on top of Alice Water's 1234 cake!

Alice Water’s 1234 Cake with Lemon Curd and Blueberries

Adapted from “The Art of Simple Food” by Alice Waters

Yield One nine-inch, two-layer cake

Ingredients

4 eggs, separated
1 cup milk
3 cups cake flour (sift and then measure)
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsweetened butter, softened
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter two 9-inch baking pans and line the bottom of each with parchment paper. Butter the paper and dust the pans with flour, tapping out the excess.

Stir baking powder and salt into cake flour.
In another bowl, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the four egg yolks one at a time. Add the vanilla to the mixture.

Add the flour mixture and milk alternately, starting and ending with one third of the flour. Stir just until the flour is incorporated.

In another bowl, whisk egg whites to soft peaks. Stir one third of the egg whites into the batter, then gently fold in the rest. Pour the batter into the prepared pans and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 30 to 40 minutes.

Let cake cool and then spread lemon curd between the two layers. Serve with slightly crushed fresh, local blueberries and loosely whipped cream.

Sitting at The Table

2009-07-16T06:35:00.001-07:00

We make every possible attempt to eat dinner as a family around our little breakfast room table five nights a week. Sometimes we fail. There are nights that the girls are so hungry and so ornery after school that we serve them dinner immediately at the little island in our kitchen. They sit on barstools and eat while Bryan and I finish making our dinner. But the intent is still the same; we're all in the same room together, sharing a meal and mitigating melt-downs while vainly attempting dinnertime conversation (i.e. how was your day, what was the most interesting thing that happened to you at school) with a two and five year old.

It's usually pretty comical.

Monday through Thursday, things are pretty casual. We don't really formally set the table, rather it's more about balancing speed with some semblance of civility. On Fridays and Saturdays, it's wheel's off -- we let them have picnics on the floor, or (gasp) eat in the den around their little wooden table while watching tivo'd episodes of Olivia. I know, I know, BAD mom.

Sundays are formal (or as formal as you can get with my girls). We typically have Sunday dinner with lovely cousin Erin and eat in the dining room complete with a fully set table and candlelight. Audrey always kicks off a toast and ask all sorts of mature dinner time questions. As the girls get older, I'd like to work this set up into one or two additional week nights, as it's really nice.

SO, what's dinner-time like at your house?

p.s. I'm thrilled about all your enthusiasm for the online cooking club. I'll leave it open to folks that want to sign on and get back to you guys next Tuesday with a full list of participants and how will work things...

Want To Cook Together?

2009-07-14T07:52:00.000-07:00

Recently Kristine of the excellent blog Waiting for Kids asked if I wanted to start an online cooking group for moms. I was immediately intrigued by the idea, and after a few e-mails back and forth sharing ideas, we came up with the following approach.

We’d form a group of like-minded folks that want to cook new, interesting things and test them out on their kids (or if they don’t yet have kids, someone’s kids…i.e. nieces, nephews, godchildren, the neighbor's kids -- really any willing tot will do), honestly sharing the results with the rest of the group. It's key that we’re totally candid about how the dish went off with the kiddos…I know it’s tempting (trust me) to only blog out our culinary “hits”, but understanding the misses and why they didn’t work is key.

The group would cook around a specific, pre-determined ingredient or type of dish each week and can use a new recipe, something of our own creation, something from a magazine…no restrictions there, except that it has to be something you haven't made before.

Each member of the group would post their recipe and results on Monday, (that way folks can work the good ones into their weekly meal planning) and (this one is especially important to me) try to use as many local, organic ingredients as possible in the recipe. Also I’d like to try and focus half of the recipes on vegetarian options since there are so many good reasons, especially environmental, to keep our meat consumption limited.

Now granted every kid has different tastes, so there are no "one size fits all" recipes, but my hope is that a few recipes will surface each week that feel like sure fire winners, and at the end of the experiment, we can create a compilation of the “kid-approved” ones. My dream is to cobble together a little cookbook that we could sell online and donate any profits to the groups trying to fix the abysmal school lunch program in America!

I’d like to start on Monday, August 3rd and go for 10 weeks. I’ll link to everyone’s blog who is participating.

Right now, I’m thinking the weekly “plan” could go something like this:

Week one – Vegetarian
Week two – Poultry
Week three – Pork
Week four – Vegetarian
Week five – Dessert
Week six – Seafood
Week seven – Vegetarian
Week eight – Red Meat
Week nine -- Casserole (no ingredient requirement)
Week ten – Vegetarian

So what do you think? Who’s in?

Beautiful Rice

2009-07-13T08:42:00.000-07:00

We had a great dinner Saturday with our new friends Lucia and Peter and their adorable girlies Eva and Felicity.

There was guacamole with feta + Bryan's "homemade" tortilla chips (he cuts up corn tortillas and fries them in our little backyard fryer -- not so healthy but so yummy.) He also turned out a mighty fine green chili chicken casserole. A few of you have asked for this recipe, but he literally does it different every single time, so he's promised to work up an actual recipe to share soon!

I had a particular weakness for the homemade margaritas and the beautiful rice though...It was my first time to make this rice; it's my dear friend Kristie's recipe, and friends, it's easy and incredibly, incredibly good.

The rice is a perfect (and obvious) accompaniment for Mexican food, but I think you could replace some (not all) of the cilantro with more spinach and serve it along side any number of things. I'll be adding this to our regular repertoire for sure!

Beautiful Rice (or Arroz Verde)

1/2 cup packed fresh cilantro
1 cup packed fresh spinach
1 1/4 cups homemade or organic chicken broth ( my favorite is pacific organic free range)
1 1/4 cups organic skim milk
1 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
2 TBS unsalted butter
1 TBS olive oil
1 1/2 cups organic long grain rice
1/4 minced onion
1 clove minced garlic

Put the cilantro, spinach, and broth in a blender and puree, add milk and salt and blend until combined.

Heat the butter and olive oil in a heavy medium-sized pan, when butter is melted, add the rice and saute 3-4 minutes, stirring constantly. Add the onion and garlic and saute 1 minute longer.

Add the blender mix, stir well, bring to a boil. Turn to very low heat, cover and cook for 20 min
Stir carefully and cook for another 5 minutes.

Remove from heat and let stand for 10 minutes until ready to serve.

Weekend Food

2009-07-10T08:12:00.000-07:00

Scenes from last month's White Rock Local Market

We’ve got a few fun foodie activities planned this weekend...

Tonight we're having neighbors over to splash in the baby pool and throw some organic, grass fed burgers on the grill + make an orzo salad with tomato, feta cheese and basil.

Tomorrow we’re having some new friends (fun!) over for dinner and are thinking of making Bryan’s green chili chicken enchilada casserole + Mexican beans and my friend Kristie’s famous “beautiful rice”… It’s so good! I’ll share the recipe on Monday.

But we’re especially excited to hit up the monthly White Rock Local Market tomorrow morning. Check out my piece on Renegade Bus* about the market and be sure to stop by if you live in Dallas!

So, what are you cooking this weekend??

* I'm going to be writing about local food each Friday on Renegade Bus!

Sugar, Sugar

2009-07-09T14:10:00.000-07:00

Full disclosure, I’m eating a mini York Peppermint Patty as I’m writing this… I’m just saying.

So, I’m curious, what’s your take on sweets. How often do you eat them? How often do you let your kiddos eat them? What are your favorites? (I'm a dark chocolate girl...the darker the better.)

In my dreams I’m channeling MeMe Roth* -- a sugar tyrant (Roth might be a little abrasive and over the top but as harsh as she seems, she’s pretty spot on in her thinking…), only allowing treats on absolute special occasions. But it’s not my reality. I like, no, I LOVE dessert. I love to bake, I love chocolate, I love making cupcakes and setting up a candy “buffet” for all our birthday parties. I can’t help it; it’s festive.

But while I have some modicum of self control (peppermint patties notwithstanding) my girlies don’t. They’d eat candy for breakfast, lunch and dinner if I let them. They can’t get enough. So I have to set some guidelines. Generally I don’t buy sweets to keep around the house. (I do make an exception for good ice cream.) And I’ve tried to institute a rule that we only eat sweets if we make them from scratch (no boxed cake mix). That helps curb sugar mayhem a bit.

So spill it… What’s the sweets low-down at your house?

Ode to Leftovers

2009-07-07T11:00:00.000-07:00

a particularly good meal made primarily of leftovers

With each passing week, I’m becoming more comfortable with the amount of money we seem to be spending on local, sustainable, organic food. It’s been an adjustment for sure, but I believe strongly it’s all about choices. In the recent 60 Minutes piece featuring Alice Waters, Waters notes, “we make decisions every day about what we’re going to eat. Some people want to buy Nike shoes…two pairs (This part was a bit humbling given my current shoe purchases…), and other people want to eat Brochs grapes and nourish themselves.”

That said, now that I’m regularly spending five dollars for a bunch of organic, local asparagus, I'm loathe to throw a single spear away.

Actually this isn’t so much a new thing for me. I’ve always been pretty adamant about not wasting food and a huge fan of leftovers -- almost everything tastes better the second day, no? But the "old me" would only save something if there was critical mass…enough for an actual second-day meal. Now if there’s half of an organic sweet Italian sausage and two asparagus spears leftover from Monday night’s dinner, into a little storage container they go. And as I don’t want this new found obsession to turn into an exercise in cluttering up the fridge before inevitably shoving leftovers down the garbage disposable, I’m fanatic about actually doing something with the leftovers.

I've had a few solid successes. My favorite by far had me thinly slicing the aforementioned sausage and asparagus and tossing it with some whole wheat fettuccine, a 1/2 cup or so of organic chicken broth and a handful of cherry tomatoes. I added a few leafs of basil from our little herb garden and then at the last minute folded in a heaping tablespoon of goat cheese, which made the whole dish a touch creamy and gave it a nice zing. It was the perfect amount for a solo lunch and was so good that it reappeared (but this time sans leftovers) as a Sunday dinner.

Other re-purposing wins include some leftover skirt steak + magic sauce that I tucked into a whole-wheat tortilla, adding a few leafs of arugula and a smear of sour cream. So good. Then there was the little bag of handmade pumpkin seed toffee that got incredibly hard before I could eat it all (that’s what lack of preservatives will do, fyi…) I was determined not to let it go to waste, so I smashed it into little shards with a mallet and added it to my cookie dough. It’s an almost indiscernible addition but adds a perfect caramel kick, and I’ve gotten more compliments on those cookies than ever as a result.

So…I'm curious, how are you using your leftovers these days?

One Of Our Favorite Things -- Green Tea Ice Cream

2009-07-01T07:40:00.000-07:00

I have been on a quest for the best, most perfect green tea ice cream for the better part of a decade. It started in college; I'd go to Boulder a few times a year to visit my best friend Kirsten, and as soon as my plane touched down, we'd head to our favorite sushi restaurant and tuck into some rolls and sake. But the best part of the meal was always the little scoop of green tea ice cream they served for dessert. It was perfection. After much cajoling, we got the restaurant to tell us it was actually Dryer's green tea ice cream, but it was only available to restaurants.

We were bummed but certain we could find an acceptable substitute...which lead to tasting every. single. brand. of green tea ice cream we came across and a string of disappointments.

Until now. Last year, my sweet hubby spotted a carton of Maeda-en at our local Central Market and picked it up for me hoping it would be "the one". And friends, it was. It is literally the best ice cream I've ever had...green tea or not.

I highly recommend you find some stat and eat a nice big bowl. It will make you incredibly happy. I promise.

Progress!

2009-07-01T07:37:00.000-07:00

I finally got Audrey to eat warm fruit in the form of peach cobbler... Read about it over here at the Small magazine blog Smaller

101 Meals...

2009-06-30T10:34:00.000-07:00

I've been reading Best Food Writing 2008, I know, I know, major nerd, but the essays and articles are perfection... And it's ideal reading for someone with kiddos, as you can slam out an entire piece in about 10 minutes...

One of my favorite articles in the anthology is Mark Bittman's article from the NYT on 101 quick meals (actually it's 101 simple meals ready in 10 minutes or less, but I'm a smidge skeptical on the 10 minutes or less, as anytime I'm trying to whip-up something to eat, I've got kiddos underfoot and that inevitably adds a good 15 minutes to the whole enterprise...)

So let's just call it 101 meals ready in 30 minutes or less and call it a day, deal?

Virtually all of Bittman's meals look great to me, and as they're intended for quick summer eating, they also require minimal oven use, but there are only a few guaranteed to be out-of-the-gate hits with Audrey, so I'll start with those and ease her in to a few more.

Next stop tuna...yes, my child doesn't like tuna...sigh.

Four meals Audrey is sure to like from Summer Express: 101 Simple Meals Ready in 10 (30) Minutes or Less ;-)

Fried egg “saltimbocca”: Lay slices of prosciutto or ham in a buttered skillet. Fry eggs on top of ham; top with grated Parmesan.
Make a thin plain omelet with two or three eggs. Sauté cubes of bacon or pancetta or strips of prosciutto until crisp. Cut up the omelet and use it and the meat to garnish a green salad dressed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. (sans salad, unfortunately)
So-called Fettuccine Alfredo: Heat several tablespoons of butter and about half a cup of cream in a large skillet just until the cream starts to simmer. Add slightly undercooked fresh pasta to the skillet, along with plenty of grated Parmesan. Cook over low heat, tossing, until pasta is tender and hot.
Hot dogs on buns — with beans!

Homemade Pizza Part II

2009-06-29T13:02:00.001-07:00

Friday night's homemade pizza was such a success that we decided to made another big batch of dough for Sunday dinner. We're still working on getting the crust super thin (any tips here?), but that was our only big issue -- seriously so, so easy and incredibly good...

I picked up some crumbled mild Italian sausage, a tiny bit of really good pepperoni and some organic mozzarella at Whole Foods for the girlie's pizza. They wanted a sort of straightforward "meat lovers", but since we were making it ourselves, we could control the quality and amount of meat, which made me feel better about the whole endeavor.

We just used an organic tomato basil pasta sauce that I also picked up at Whole Foods and spread a thin layer on the crust with a pastry brush. The girl's especially loved this part, as it was like they were "painting" their pizza, and they could control the amount of sauce they wanted. (Audrey is a light sauce girl, but the neighborhood joint never gets it right... Yet another bonus of making it ourselves.)

For the grown-up pizza, I went a little wild and topped it with a smidge of pasta sauce, some very finely sliced drunken goat cheese, a little smattering of the mozzarella, a bit of the crumbled sausage + a few crumbles of bacon, some arugula and some pine nuts.

It was incredible!

Two Milestones

2009-06-26T11:58:00.000-07:00

image via Tamara Davis Cooking show

We're experiencing two milestones at our casa... Audrey is hosting her first sleepover guest tonight and I made my first homemade pizza dough so the girlies can have a little "make your own pizza party".

I suppose the second doesn't seem like much of a milestone, but I've been a smidge intimidated by making homemade pizza dough. I decided to go with a recipe from the Tamara Davis Cooking show, as I've had success making her dishes before (and her videos ensure that I don't screw things up too badly.) Turns out I had nothing to fear. The process was awfully easy, and there was something strangely liberating about squishing my hands in that dough to knead it. Audrey would love it...we'll definitely make it together next time.

So, what are you cooking this weekend?

Pizza Dough (for 4 small pizzas) adapted from Tamra Davis Cooking Show

4 cups of bread flour
1 package of active dry yeast
1½ Teaspoons of salt
2 Tablespoons of olive oil

Sprinkle 1 package of active dry yeast in a half a cup of warm water. Let it sit for 5 minutes.

In a Cuisinart, put in flour and salt. Pulse.

Add olive oil, yeast, and another 1 ½ cups of room temperature water. Pour the water in slowly while the Cuisinart is on.

Stop blending when the dough binds. If it is too moist add more flour, if it is too dry add a little more water.

Knead the dough on a floured surface into a ball. Place the dough ball into a well-oiled bowl. Seal with plastic wrap or foil. Make sure the seal is tight to keep the dough moist. Let it sit for 2 hours.

It should double in size. On a well-floured surface, shape your dough by using your hands, into pizzas. Place them on parchment paper until you are ready to use.

One of Our Favorite Things

2009-06-25T14:32:00.000-07:00

I’m diggin these features on Cookie’s site that unearth some of the best snack foods and organic frozen foods, as despite my best intentions to never buy processed food, well, it’s just not going to happen. The reviews are a good reference if you need a few back-ups in the freezer or some snacks to ward off backseat meltdowns.

In that spirit, I thought do a weekly post sharing one of our favorite food “products” -- highlighting a few of the things that we’re really loving amidst all the “choices” at the supermarket.

This week’s favorite is the insanely yummy Sunbutter.

My friend Jodi turned me on to this nectar of the Gods when her family stayed with us a few weeks ago. We were chatting about how her daughter Arden has a few classmates with nut allergies, and in trying to find a sub for her fave p-nut butter sandwiches she came across Sunbutter, which is basically sunflower seed butter.

What started out as a stop-gap became one of her family’s favorite things... they like it better than peanut butter. I was totally intrigued as we’re HUGE peanut butter fans around here. Well, Jodi was right. This stuff rocks. Both girlies love it, Bryan loves it, and I’ve been eating it every morning on my English muffin in lieu of my normal smear of p-nut butter.

So, spill...what's one of your favorites?

Friends, We Have A Win...

2009-06-24T08:49:00.000-07:00

And, it's a vegetable!

We roasted a big batch of cauliflower last night, and it was a huge, huge hit with Audrey.

Success.

The cauliflower was incredibly tasty on its own, just tossed with a bit of olive oil and sea salt and roasted at about 425 for 20 minutes or so, but the bar was raised significantly when we dipped it in the "magic sauce" that I originally whipped up for our skirt steak. (I also ended up dumping a bunch on my baked potato. By the end of dinner my entire plate was green -- it's that good.)

Our friend Ben, made this sauce for one of our Sunday dinners, and it has since been one of our faves. It's sort of the love child between a chimichurri and cilantro salsa + you really can't mess it up, it's totally improvisational...a beautiful thing!

Magic Sauce

(This is a very inexact creation, experiment a bit with the following ingredients, but a food processor is key.)

Small bunch of cilantro, stems cut off
Small bunch of parsley, stems cut off
1-4 cloves of garlic depending on your preference
3 poblano peppers OR if you want a mild sauce, 1/2 a green bell pepper
Juice of one small lime
Olive oil (but I was completely out last night so I used a bit of walnut oil instead... I know, I know, how does one run out of olive oil??)
Sea salt, Fresh cracked pepper and Spike to taste

Chop the cilantro, parsley, garlic and peppers and lime juice in a food processor, slowly add in about 1/8 cup of oil and pulse for a few more seconds.

Add in salt, pepper and spike, pulse again, taste and add any additional seasoning.

The Sad, Sad State of School Lunch Part II – Glimmers of Hope

2009-06-23T11:18:00.000-07:00

Photo by the lovely and talented (and incredibly kind) Chelsea Fuss

First up, the Lake Highlands Community Garden -- A first of its kind partnership between the City of Dallas and local residents to find a productive and beneficial use for unused property owned by the city… We’re on the waiting list for a plot and really, really excited about this.

How does this relate to the state of school lunch you ask? I recently finished Alice Water’s biography and was incredibly inspired by her Edible Schoolyard project and how it ultimately influenced a complete re-engineering of the school lunch program at Berkley public schools. I think this garden is a huge step for our city and one that will hopefully trickle through our school district.

We’ll see.

Next there were Michelle Obama’s recent remarks regarding school lunch and the responsibility of the USDA to ensure the children eat nutritious meals in school. (via school lunch talk)

“We’re approaching the first big opportunity to move this to the top of the agenda with the upcoming reauthorization of the child nutrition programs,” she said. “In doing so, we can go a long way towards creating a healthier generation for our kids.”

There’s still time to sign the petition urging congress to update the USDA’s School Nutrition Standards.

Small steps…but steps nonetheless!

Sunday Dinner + Dip of the Week

2009-06-22T09:18:00.000-07:00

image via Gourmet

This week lovely cousin Erin + boyfriend Ben hosted a special Father's Day Sunday dinner at their place. Erin whipped up an amazing meal of pork chops with a blueberry sauce, green beans and roasted potatoes. It was incredibly tasty!

Audrey, in what I would consider a major win, shunned the uncured pepperoni pizza that I brought from Whole Foods as backup, and dove into the pork chops (sans blueberry sauce, but still) + veggies with gusto. She even rubbed her tummy in appreciation... Nice.

our Sunday dinner via little e

But the pièce de résistance was the edamame arugula dip and crostini that Erin served before dinner. Erin's got some seriously magical dips up her sleeve, and given that it's insanely, un-fathomably hot in these parts of late, I could do an entire dinner of a great dip. No oven, minimal effort, light, but still incredibly tasty and satisfying.

To that end, I'll try to post a rockin good dip here each week this summer.

Herewith Erin's dip, adapted from the May 2009 Gourmet:

1 cup shelled shelled fresh or frozen edamame
1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, divided, plus additional for drizzling
1 1/2 cups packed baby arugula (1 1/2 ounces), divided
3 tablespoons grated Pecorino Toscano
1/4 teaspoon grated lemon zest
1/2 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
Sea salt to taste
1 baguette
1 garlic clove, halved crosswise

Preheat oven to 350°F with rack in middle.

Cook edamame in boiling water, uncovered, until tender, 3 to 4 minutes, then drain and transfer to an ice bath to stop cooking.

Pulse edamame in a food processor until very coarsely chopped, then transfer half of mixture to a large bowl. Add 1/4 cup oil, 1/2 cup arugula, cheese, lemon zest and juice, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/8 teaspoon pepper to edamame in processor and purée until smooth. Add to bowl. Coarsely chop remaining cup arugula and gently fold into edamame mixture. Salt to taste.

Cut 16 diagonal slices (1/3 inch thick) from baguette and place on a cookie sheet. Drizzle with remaining tablespoon oil. Bake until pale golden and crisp, 8 to 10 minutes. Rub with cut side of garlic.

You can either spoon edamame dip onto baguette toasts and drizzle with olive oil or serve the dip in a bowl and let folks dip the toasts in.

Either way, it’s PERFECTION.

Yet Another Reason I Love This Man...

2009-06-19T05:21:00.000-07:00

He makes homemade cheese straws, and they are really (really) good.

He’s actually been obsessed of late with recreating a "healthy" Cheese Nip… The man loves Cheese Nips. But I reminded him that he also loves those asiago cheese straws we buy at Central Market, so why doesn't he try to recreate those instead and then cut a few into little Cheese Nip shaped rectangles.

He was in, and after a little Internet research and careful reading of the back of a Cheese Nip box (scary stuff), he set to work. The result was oh so much better than a Cheese Nip, but no real surprise there…

Cheese Straws

1/2 stick of unsalted organic butter (softened) and cut into pieces
1 1/2 cups extra-sharp White Cheddar cheese (grated)
1 teaspoon each of shredded parmesan, Romano and asiago cheeses
3/4 cup organic flour
1/2teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes or 1/8 teaspoon cayenne (rounded)
1 tablespoon organic milk or half-and-half (we used half-and-half)
You could also add about 1/2 teaspoon of chopped rosemary to these for a little twist, but we didn't this time...

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Combine the butter, cheeses, flour and salt and cayenne or red pepper in a food processor, and pulse until coarse. Add in milk or half and half until a smooth dough ball is formed.

Lightly flour your surface and roll the dough out until it’s about 1/8-inch thick. We don’t have a rolling pin (sad I know), so we floured an empty sparkling lemonade bottle. It works great ;-)

Cut the straws into thin strips about 1/3-inch wide using a floured pizza cutter. The dough gets sticky, so flour is your friend here.

Bake straws on a cookie sheet for about 12 minutes, remove and let cool.

We’re headed down to Bryan’s cousins’ ranch outside of Austin this weekend and thought it would be fun to bring along some homemade treats, so we're toting along the cheese straws and a big batch of the oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Something tells me these won’t survive the trip down, as they’re perfect little car snacks.

Have a lovely Father’s Day weekend!

The Game Changer

2009-06-18T08:54:00.000-07:00

What I’m about to admit may hurt a few of you. I expect you may feel a bit like I did when I discovered my husband (who has otherwise great taste in food) doesn’t like olives and stinky blue cheese. I was crestfallen, perhaps even a smidge devastated. Olives and stinky blue cheese are two of my all-time favorite foods. But I digress (perhaps delaying the confession?).

Here goes; I’m not crazy about avocados.

There I said it. I don’t hate them per say, I’m just not really a fan -- I don’t buy them and when they come on something I've ordered, I bequeath them to someone who actually enjoys them… that sort of thing. And with guacamole, I’m mezzo mezzo. I would never make it or order it, but if it’s already on the table, I’ll dip a few chips in.

But recently there’s been a change. A few months ago, my friend Stephanie showed up at a party toting some homemade guacamole specked with feta cheese. I dipped the corner of a chip in and was completely intrigued... In the days after the party, I couldn’t get it out of my mind and set out to re-create my own version at home.

After a little experimenting, I came up with the following simple and foolproof recipe, and I have to say (all modesty aside) it’s amazing… Truly.

I highly recommend giving it a whirl this weekend.

p.s. – yes this is the same guacamole that set off Audrey’s "gag fest 2009". Don’t hold that against it…you know we’re working on her taste buds here.

Guacamole with Feta Cheese

3 ripe (preferably organic) Haas avocados
One small container crumbled feta cheese
1 lemon
Sea salt, fresh ground pepper and Spike to taste
1 medium diced tomato (preferably local + organic) *
1 small Vidalia onion *
About ¼ cup finely chopped cilantro *

* I often substitute the above three ingredients with the better part of a container of Whole Foods Pico De Gallo. It’s perfection.

The assembly couldn’t be easier, I just dice my avocado, squeeze in the lemon, add the feta and the pico and smash it all together with a fork. Then I add in my salt, pepper and Spike to taste and smash a little more.

Our Absolute, Without a Doubt, Favorite Cookies

2009-06-17T07:47:00.001-07:00

My girlies love cookies so much, it’s almost embarrassing (the way they clamor for them, you'd think I'd deprived them of sugar their entire lives.) So this post is pure recipe sharing. There'll be no tales of cajoling Audrey to take a bite of something new or epic gagging sessions to regale you with... Sorry.

From the time I could read a recipe and turn on the oven, I’ve made some variation of the cookie recipe found under the lid of the Quaker Oats container. In it’s own right, it’s pretty much a perfect recipe – I’ve never made a bad batch of cookies using it. But, as an adult, I like a slightly less sweet, more “wholesome” tasting cookie, so I've tweaked it a bit and the girlies are none the wiser.

Oatmeal Dark Chocolate Cookies

3/4 c. firmly packed brown sugar
1/4 c. turbinado sugar
1 organic egg
1 stick unsalted European butter (softened)
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. almond extract
1 1/2 c. organic, whole wheat flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
3 c. organic, old fashioned oatmeal (uncooked)
1 bag good quality, dark chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Beat together softened butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Beat in egg, vanilla, and almond extract. Combine flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon; add to butter mixture, mixing well. Stir in oats and chocolate chips.

Put rounded tablespoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 8 to 9 minutes. Cool 1 minute on cookie sheet; remove to wire cooling rack. Store in tightly covered container. 4 1/2 dozen.

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