Tag Archives: kids

DIY Baby Food: Make Real Food for Someone You Love

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If you don’t have a baby of your own, don’t go anywhere.  This applies to you too. Because who doesn’t love to eat baby food sometimes?  I’m KIDDING.  But if you know someone with a baby, and want to do something nice for them, you could ask if they would like the gift of homemade baby food.  Parents are always busy and anyone who offers to lend a hand is doing a public service.  It takes a village, people.

I have always been confused about why people who care what they feed themselves buy jarred food for their babies.   Even if the label says organic happy super-healthy baby food, I can’t help but imagine that the fruits and vegetables that go into the puree are not the gorgeous specimens that would otherwise be gleaming in the produce aisle.  But maybe I’m just suspicious like that.  Plus, buying baby food is expensive and making it is cheap and easy.

Here’s the big recipe for DIY Baby Food: peel and steam or roast an organic fruit or vegetable.  Puree or mash it (older babies can eat chunkier foods).  Freeze solid in ice cube trays, then pop them out into a freezer bag for storage.

Some easy classics: carrots, peas, apples, pears, winter squash, peaches.  Find something that’s seasonal and delicious.  Babies learn to love real food through these early experiences.

Today my own baby enjoyed sharing bites of tofu and egg out of my spicy bowl of pad thai, so I am thinking the days of smushed-up baby food are close to over around here.  But if I can help out a friend, you can bet I’ll be making it again soon.

A Healthy Indulgence: Whole Grain Banana Cardamom Muffins (with optional chocolate, of course)

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I’ve been keeping a close eye on the banana situation recently.  We like bananas in our family, I usually keep the fruit bowl stocked with them, but, you know, sometimes there is disequalibrium between supply and demand.  And for those times there is banana bread.

After the first brown spots appeared on the bananas on my counter, I began to get hopeful.  I flipped through a few of my cookbooks, contemplating my banana bread options.  I saw a recipe for a banana cardamom cake and got excited.  Days went by.  The bananas were definitely going to be mine to bake with.  Really, it was time.  Seriously.

Then today this recipe popped up on my screen, and I was ready.  (Isn’t that a nice blog?  Go ahead, go click through to her website, check out that recipe, and vote for her for a Bloggie for Best Canadian Blog.  I’ll wait.)  You back?  So you saw why I didn’t just make that recipe: the coconut.  I know I’m in the minority here, but coconut isn’t my favorite.  What IS my favorite, you ask?  Chocolate, of course.  So I knew it was time for a recipe mashup.  One other consideration was that I wanted to make these healthy enough for my kids’ school lunches, which meant that starting with a stick of butter was out.

I went halfsies on this recipe and made some some of the muffins with cocoa and chocolate chips and the rest without.  You’ll like them either way.  Banana Cardamom Muffins start with 2-3 mashed bananas, of course, preferably sorry browning specimens that have been rejected by your family.  Mix the mashed bananas with 3/4 c. buttermilk, 1/2 c. brown sugar, an egg, and 2 Tb. melted butter.  Stir 1 c. oats into the wet ingredients.  In a separate bowl, combine 1 1/4 c. whole wheat pastry flour, 1 tsp. ground cardamom, and 1 1/2 tsp. baking soda.  (If you are making the chocolate version, now add 2 Tbsp. cocoa powder and a handful of chocolate chips to the dry ingredients and 1 tsp. vanilla to the wet ingredients.)  Mix the wet ingredients into the dry just to combine and scoop the batter into lined muffin tins.  Bake at 350 for 20-23 minutes, checking every minute after 20 minutes to avoid overbaking.

Sunny Side Up Pizza With Potatoes and Eggs

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Making pizza is often an improvisational affair at our house.  There are tried-and-true combinations that we like, sure, but often we decide to get a pizza crust going before we check out what’s in the fridge.  One of our usual favorites is a potato pizza, and if you think that doesn’t sound delicious, please go straight to Tom Douglas’s Serious Pie and then stand corrected.  (If you don’t like it, which I believe to be impossible, you’ll still have lots of other amazing options to choose from.  Pro tip: go with a crowd at happy hour when they make mini pizzas so you can try them all.)

This post is not about potato pizza, however.  Because after J roasted a pound of thinly-sliced fingerling potatoes until nearly crisp, I made the mistake of piling them within the children’s reach, where the heap of “chips” was quickly decimated.  So I’ll give you a recipe for potato pizza another time.

Left with only a handful of potatoes, it was back to the fridge, and this Sunny Side Up Pizza was born.  Crank your oven as hot as it goes and put in a pizza stone if you have one.  Layer your thin pizza crust (recipe here if you want one) with thinly-sliced potatoes (first roasted at 425 until just beginning to crisp) and a sprinkling of mozzarella. Pile on chunks of goat cheese and a big handful of rinsed capers.  We crumbled on some smoked salmon, but you could skip that step and just go with a big sprinkle of salt over the whole pizza if you prefer.  Finally, we broke two eggs over the pizza, but they were so good that we later wished we’d used four.  Getting the eggs perfect will depend on your oven temperature and how thin you stretched your crust (because that has to cook through, too), so you might need to experiment a little.  Baked in our oven at 550 for almost 6 minutes, the whites were set and the yolks were lusciously runny, perfect for wiping up with the last piece of pizza crust.

We served the pizza with a simple green salad with Creamy Pear Vinaigrette and bowls of leftover Cauliflower Soup–which, like most soups, was even better after a day in the fridge.

Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate Cookies

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Ok, so maybe they’re only Chocolate Chocolate Cookies.  The point is, they’re CHOCOLATEY.  I love chocolatey.  At this point I could say something like, “but given their dimunitive size (as compared to one of those cake-sized cookies you could get at the mall in the 1980s, say, or a watermelon), they make a perfect sweet bite after dinner or a nice after-school snack for the children with a glass of milk.”  But that would be disingenuous.  Because, let’s be honest, what I really plan to do with these cookies is sit down and eat a whole plateful.  Or at least two.

I have been thinking about a good chocolate cookie since I saw this post the other day.  I have made, and I do love, that cookie recipe.  But these are something a little different.  The Clinton Street Bakery Cookbook calls them “Brookies,” as in a cross between a brownie and a cookie, and the description is pretty perfect.

Perfectly chewy, with a crispy edge, these Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate Cookies are worth getting 3(!) bowls dirty for.  First, combine 1 c. chocolate chips, 1 Tbsp. canola oil and 1 tsp. butter and melt in the microwave or a double boiler.  In a large bowl, whisk 2 eggs with 3/4 c. brown sugar and 1 tsp. vanilla.  In a third bowl, combine 1/2 c. flour, 1/4 tsp. baking powder, and 1/4 tsp. salt.  Fold the chocolate mixture into the egg mixture, then stir in the flour mixture.  Fold in another c. of chocolate chips, then pop the batter in the freezer for about 10 minutes to firm up.  Bake well-spaced 1-Tbsp. scoops of dough on parchment or a buttered cookie sheet at 350 just until the tops are dry and cracked, about 8-10 mins.  Let cool completely before attempting to move (read: eat) them.

Light as Air: Yeast-Raised Whole Wheat Pancakes

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We usually make our pancakes with at least some whole grain flour, and we like the hearty texture of whole grains.  But in these yeast-raised pancakes the whole wheat flour is barely detectable; they bake up airy and light.  Which is delightful for those of you trying to “sneak” more whole grains into your family’s food–and also for those of us who aren’t sneaking them at all.

These Yeast-Raised Pancakes have a well-developed flavor and are fun to make because you start them the night before by mixing 2 1/4 tsp. yeast (1 pkg.) and 1 tsp. sugar with 1/4 c. of warm water and mixing well.  In a separate bowl, combine 2 c. warm milk with 1/2 tsp. salt, then stir in the yeast mixture when it is nice and foamy.  Whisk in 1 1/4 c. whole grain flour and 1 1/4 c. all purpose flour.  Cover overnight (you can leave the bowl on the counter if the room is cool, or refrigerate if the room is warm).  Then in the morning all you have to do is roll out of bed, add 2 Tbsp. sugar, 5 Tbsp. canola oil (or melted butter), 2 beaten eggs, and 1/2 tsp. baking soda.    Cook them up with a few eggs for a great weekend–or snow day!–breakfast.

This recipe, like many of my favorites, is from Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.

Cherry Almond Granola

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We served a make-your-own yogurt parfait bar this morning when friends came to breakfast with their kiddos: just-baked Cherry Almond Granola, yogurt and milk, fruit salad, honey and jam.  With strong french press coffee with cinnamon mixed into the coffee grounds–why didn’t anyone tell me about that trick before this week?  Delicious.  I am going to try cardamom next.

The Cherry Almond Granola is a riff on my usual granola recipe from Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.  Mix 6 c. oats, 1 c. wheat germ, 1 c. almonds (we had delicious tiny ones that my mom sent; there are lots of almond orchards near where I grew up), 1 Tb. cinnamon and 1 tsp. nutmeg in a big bowl with a big pinch of salt.  Pour in 1/2 c. canola oil and 3/4 c. honey and stir well. Spread onto two baking sheets and bake for 30 mins. at 300, stirring well and switching the pans every 10 minutes.  Mix in 1 c. dried cherries and let the granola cool to get crunchy.

 

Living Deliciously

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So here’s the plan.  I love to eat.  I love to cook.  I have a passel of small children (where passel=3) and suddenly it seems like I never have enough time to cook/feed myself the kind of meals I want to eat.  Delicious.  Healthy.  Delicious.  (Did I say that already?)

Mostly this is a function of poor planning.  We don’t eat out a ton these days (you try enjoying a restaurant meal with said passel of small children), but we do eat a lot of scrambled eggs.  Scrambled eggs with a tumble of veggies and charred poblano peppers laced with a salty, spicy chile de arbol oil, maybe–but scrambled eggs.

I think with some advance planning we could branch out.  In the olden days (read: before kids), J and I used to cook together for hours, stuffing handmade pasta for ravioli or pounding our own curry paste or reducing fancy sauces.  I’m not talking about that.  I’m talking about just making dinner.

I’m usually the cook in our family these days, so we’ll follow my peculiar dietary guidelines: Yes vegetables!  No red meat!  Yes fish with fins!  No shellfish!  Maybe chicken.  I haven’t eaten meat for years but I think I should try to introduce my children to some protein sources beyond yogurt and edamame (and those scrambled eggs, of course).  So yes chicken!

Do you have any great recipes for me?  I’m ready to get cookin’.