Raising a Healthy Family: Develop Your Own Filter
March 5, 2010
As part of my job, I spend a lot of time interviewing people. Lately, that has meant conversations with chefs, authors of eating-related books, nutritionists … people who are trying to help Americans live better, healthier lives. I am so passionate about this that I even devote space here every Friday to share nuggets of information about how you can raise a healthy family.
There are so many people who are passionate about healthy living, and they all have something valuable to offer. Some share wonderful healthy recipes, others educate about important health issues. Some have credentials in nutrition, some have life experience.
My purpose with Raising a Healthy Family is to gather this valuable information and pass it along to you. But here’s the thing: I want you to learn new things here and absorb these perspectives. At the same time, I also want you to make your own conclusions.
If every single expert was 100 percent right about everything for everyone, then there would be one singular message to pass along. Raising a Healthy Family would be one single post and it would be easy to convey the message and get people to listen. That obviously isn’t the case. Read more
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Sundried Tomato and Red Pepper Meatballs, and an Easy-Peasy Appetizer
March 5, 2010
These aren’t your average meatball.
Stuffed with bits of red pepper, sundried tomato and fresh parsley, these really don’t need anything more than a toothpick (or a fork, if you must). But, when you take a bit of fresh mozzarella and tomato and top them with half a meatball, it’s awesome. breathtaking. orgasmic. indescribably delicious. Total party in my mouth sensation.
How cute would these be to pass at a party? Seriously. It takes caprese salad to a whole new level. You could even add in a basil leaf, if you wanted.
So, how are these made? The process is simple, you start by mixing up all the dry ingredients. Then you add the egg and stir that in, so it’s well combined. Then you mix in the meat. I am a big proponent of kneading seasonings into meat by hand (don’t forget to wash first!). I think it works best to really get them combined in a full and absolute way.
Then you roll the meatballs into one-inch balls. No need to get the ruler out or anything, just do it by feel and site, making all the little balls about the same size. And no worries about crowding them onto the baking sheet–unlike cookies, it’s totally okay if you put them all really close together.
Finally you bake. That’s it. The best part? All in all, these can be ready in about 45 minutes — chopping included. That’s nothing, right? And while they are cooking, you could cut the cheese and tomato, make something else, whatever … easy peasy.
And guess what? Will and Paige couldn’t get enough of these. Then again, neither could I. They were really that good.
Now, before I give you the recipe and send you off to bake up these delightful little meatballs, I want to introduce you all to someone. Earlier this year, I was partnered with The Teacher Cooks for the latest round of Adopt-a-Blogger. Once or twice a year, veteran bloggers take a newbie blogger under their wing and offer guidance and advice on how to improve their blogging and reach their goals.
Now, I have to admit, when I looked at the The Teacher Cooks’ site, I wondered why she needs any help at all. She has beautiful photos, fantastic recipes and a great concept: she shares things she actually makes with her students — including photos of their creations. It’s genius. We’ve been trading emails for awhile, and I hope I have been (and might continue to be) a help to her. But right now, I wish you would just head over to her site and say hello. She’s a great gal and a fab blogger.
Now, onto the recipe. Read more
» Filed Under Beef, Recipes | 4 Comments
On Roasting a Chicken
March 3, 2010
For being such a big fan of using roasted chickens, I don’t roast my own often. The ones from the grocery store are so darn convenient, you know? However, there are so many really great reasons to buck up and do it yourself. For instance, you can control the quality of chicken used, the seasonings, the spices, the size … Need I go on?
Yes, I really do like being in control – especially when it comes to food.
So, lately, I have been roasting chickens. A few months back, I tried Chicken with 40 Cloves for the first time and I was smitten. I think we had it three or four times within a couple of weeks. But as much as I loved the results, the results of my first one were better than any of the subsequent ones. I have no idea why. And the mass of garlic? I loved it for the flavor and hated the idea that I might actually eat all 40 cloves over a day or two …
So, when I went to roast a chicken yesterday, I first looked for recipes that were easy and simple. When I couldn’t find exactly what I wanted, I improvised using several tips from Fine Cooking to roast. I choose olive oil instead of butter (FC’s preferred fat for browning) because it was more accessible and didn’t require me to soften any butter.
Per Fine Cooking’s tips, I didn’t truss the chicken (frankly, I hate trussing anyway!). This allowed the chicken to cook evenly and I got a crisp, delicious skin all over it. Oh, the skin … it was fab. Also, I loved the flavoring that the lemon and rosemary sprigs in the cavity imparted on the meat. So delicious.
We’ll be having this again soon.
Do you roast your own chickens? What are your favorite seasonings for it? Read more
» Filed Under Chicken, Recipes | 4 Comments
Whole Wheat Biscuit Recipe
March 2, 2010
One hundred years ago, making biscuits didn’t need the qualifier of “from scratch.” It’s just what people did. People cooked. They sifted and baked, rolled and cut. It wasn’t a big deal because it was just a part of daily eating life. But, as with everything, things eventually began to change when premade, ready-to-bake biscuits hit shelves in the 1930s. Although biscuit making is easy, the premades were even easier.
I would love to travel back in time and be a fly on the wall — or a distant cousin — to my family and see first hand how they lived, cooked, ate. It fascinates me. I leaf through pictures and journal entries and am awed by the intertwining lives of my cousins of the 20th Century. They shared wonderful experiences, like heading off for a picnic dinner on a whim.
Nostalgia is a funny thing. I read through our family’s cookbook, soaking in the words and emotions, and I feel like I am there at the homestead, though I never was. (Actually, truth be told, I was in our family’s home just once when I was in elementary school — but it was about 10 years after the home had been sold. Today, I live in the same town as that home, but I haven’t been there.) And I wonder, what is the homestead of my generation? What will my kids look back and remember of the family?
Each generation creates their own space, dynamic, memories … my generation surely has ours. There are so many things to look back on and smile. Maybe someday I will share them, but for now they belong to us: my family.
In the introduction to that family cookbook, my cousin Barb wrote, “During dinner you are apt to hear the loud laughter echoing from the pantry when a frozen sherbert (sic) dessert gets away and skitters across the painted floor. Failures are followed by giggles after the initial cursing of whipped cream turning to butter.”
Oh, to be a fly. My generation is a giggly bunch too. Accidents and mishaps are almost certain to dissolve the room to laughter … like when my mousse exploded all over the kitchen cabinets on Christmas Day last year. There is always a good reason to laugh.
What about your family? Do you have that strong family bond, binding generations and cousins? Do you look back and wonder what it was like to be part of past generations? I would love to hear …
Now, onto the biscuits. I really love biscuits, but finding a recipe that I loved proved to be challenging. I wanted an easy recipe made with pantry items that produced a fluffy inside and a crisp outside. I ended up experimenting a bit to get the right mix (more whole wheat, less ap flour; more fluffy, less chewy). These biscuits are the result.
Have you made biscuits from scratch before? If you haven’t, you should. I swear, they aren’t difficult to make. Served hot from the oven, these only take about 20 minutes total. Maybe 30 minutes, if you are a first timer. They’re wonderful and go so well with so many meals.
The trick is to roll out the dough and fold it in a few times (see photo below) before you cut the biscuits. It gives them that lovely layered texture that is just so awesome.
» Filed Under Bread, Recipes | 5 Comments
Cooking with Kids: Make Your Own Couscous
March 1, 2010
One of the most brilliant gifts of motherhood is watching your kids develop their own personalities, likes and dislikes. I am blessed to mother two strong, brilliant, adventurous kids who don’t think anything is beyond their reach. It’s amazing.
If you are a regular reader, you know that both of my kids adore cooking with me. Will, who currently wants to be an archeologist, will undoubtedly love spending time in the kitchen no matter how old he is. I love that he goes through cookbooks with the same intensity that I devour them and that he will pick and choose recipes that look good to him. This morning, he was flipping through a cookbook and selected a recipe that he wants to make this week. It involves stuffing peppers with a brilliant veggie mixture. It’s colorful and pretty and filled with things that they absolutely love. Tomorrow, we will make it and if it goes well, then you will be hearing more about it next week.
In the meantime, I decided to turn the tables on the kids today. Rather than cooking with me, I gave the kids the tools to cook for themselves today.
Will gave me the idea when he saw the photo with the recipe and started talking about couscous since it looked like it included Israeli couscous (it didn’t though). Since Will wanted couscous as a result and I wanted an easy lunch before rushing Will off to school, I improvised.
I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid, I loved the idea of anything with a Make-Your-Own component. Make-Your-Own Sundaes was (and still is) an incredible favorite of mine. More toppings? Yes, please! But seriously, this is a great kid-friendly way to make lunch fun and exciting, while also making it a little easier for you. Being empowered to choose and make your own food is just so exciting, especially when you are little. My kids definitely feel the same way. Once I explained what they would be doing, they couldn’t get to the table fast enough.
The process is easy: arrange potential mix-ins for the couscous in bowls with spoons for easy cutting. You can cut up veggies, pull out leftovers leftovers, and get out oil, nuts, seeds, cheese, beans … the possibilities are endless. Then you just let the kids put their own concoctions together. Easy peasy.
Be sure to use oversized bowls so that they have room to stir without knocking everything out of the bowl. Trust me on that one.
Read more
» Filed Under Recipes, cooking with kids, lunch | 3 Comments
Raising a Healthy Family: Teaching Kids about Food
February 26, 2010
Watching the Jamie Oliver TED talk the other day, tears came to my eyes. In the video, Jamie talks about how he visited a West Virginia school and the children couldn’t tell a potato from a pear from an eggplant. He showed clips of the kids earnestly guessing what veggies he was holding up. It was so sad, and so eye opening. Kids should know what their food looks like at its basest level.
Kids who get up close and personal with their food — helping to prepare it from scratch – are more likely to try new foods and be open to them, experts say. Oliver isn’t the only chef talking about this and bringing it to the public consciousness, though. This is something that chef, cookbook author and Food Network personality George Stella is passionate about too.
Recently, I spoke with Stella about his work with the Junior League, the new Junior Leagues In the Kitchen with Kids: Everyday Recipes & Activities for Healthy Living cookbook and his passion for inspiring families to eat well. It was an amazing conversation with someone who shares my unwavering belief that kids should be in the kitchen and should be involved with their food.
Stella started cooking with kids while working on the Food Network and doing food demonstrations. “I started to incorporate kids [in the cooking process] and I saw the response was tremendous,” says Stella. The parents were moved, seeing their kids cook and try new things. “The parents would be smiling, laughing, almost crying … We were doing healthy meals,” says Stella.
These days, Stella is the spokesman for the Association of Junior Leagues’ Kids in the Kitchen program, which is a traveling food education program where kids are introduced to healthy foods and challenged to cook with them. The program’s intent is to fight childhood obesity by empowering kids to make healthy choices.
So, what do parents need to know to help their kids grow up healthy? Read more
» Filed Under Raising Healthy Kids | 3 Comments
Easy Parmesan Breadsticks Recipe
February 25, 2010
Do you ever start cooking something and then think, gee I wish I had ___? That’s what happened the other night as I stirred our beef stew on the stove. I really wanted something bready to go with it. I happened to have some fresh pizza dough languishing in the fridge, so I was totally in luck.
Pizza dough is good for so much more than just pizza. It can be used to make calzones and delicious chicken parm rolls. It can also be transformed into fun creations like these breadsticks.
In short order, the dough is rolled out, flavored and cut into stick shapes for baking. This recipe is pretty flexible, so you can change up the flavors pretty easily. A mix of feta, rosemary and lemon zest could be fabulous with a Greek salad. Or perhaps some asiago, minced sundried tomatoes and minced garlic would be great with a salad.
But this parmesan creation? It worked perfectly with the beef stew I made. Crispy on the outside with a doughy interior, hints of spiciness mingled nicely with the cheese and garlic. They were perfect for dipping … or just eating in quick succession.
After all this talk of other combinations, I might have to pick up some dough at the store later and make the Greek version I mentioned. It’s sounding rather delicious right now. Read more
» Filed Under Bread, Recipes | 3 Comments
Chicken Souvlaki Sandwich Recipe
February 24, 2010
Confession time: When I listed out my favorites of 2009, one of the lists included a Chicken Souvlaki Salad from a local pizza place. Honestly, I thought it was their own creation … not something I could easily recreate at home. Then, right after I interviewed Aviva Goldfarb, I received the first weekly menu from my trial of Six O’Clock Scramble and the first recipe on it? Chicken or Pork Souvlaki. I was floored.
Turns out that this delicious marinated chicken is a Greek specialty that is typically served on a skewer, kabob style. Better yet, it can be made at home. It takes just minutes to pull together the marinade and get it started. Once it’s really soaked in the delicious combination of lemon, oregano and other flavors, it’s ready to cook.
I’ve taken some serious liberties with this recipe. It’s traditionally served with tzatziki (a sauce made of yogurt and cucumber), onions and usually tomatoes. You could certainly add all that to this sandwich, but I didn’t. I also opted to use thin chicken breasts instead of pork or chicken thighs. Using thin breasts, this cooks up in about 10-15 minutes on the stove top. Easy peasy.
Don’t want to spend the money on thin-cut breasts? If you cannot find them on sale, then purchase regular ol’boneless skinless chicken breasts and either pound them down to about 1/4 inch thickness or carefully cut each breast into two slices. I used to be a huge advocate of the slice method, but I think pounding really makes them more tender. What do you think?
Instead of making the salad that we’re used to, I decided to use this delicious marinated chicken on a sandwich. Layered with goat cheese and mesclun salad greens, this was absolutely delicious. My husband couldn’t get over how similar the taste of the chicken was to our local restaurant’s salad chicken, which is positively craveworthy.
If you aren’t a fan of goat cheese, I suggest trading it for a slice of feta cut from a block. Use about one ounce per sandwich. In a pinch, fresh mozzarella could be used too — though I think that goat cheese just works better with this marinade. Read more
» Filed Under Chicken, Easy Recipes, Recipes | 4 Comments
Cooking with Kids: Chopped Salad Recipe
February 23, 2010
The kids and I made a Mexican Chopped Salad today. It was awesome, and they gobbled it up. Actually, we gobbled it up. But what was more awesome was our conversation while we cooked.
While making it, I made a last-second trade-out of an ingredient, substituting agave nectar for honey. Will immediately asked me why, since he’d already seen me get out the honey jar. I showed him how the honey had hardened in the bottled and explained that it wouldn’t mix well. He asked me if the new jar was a sweetener (yes, he really said sweetener). I said yes and he dutifully informed me that honey is a sweetener too. I love his four-year-old curiosity and his ability to retain information like this.
And this is the beauty of cooking with kids. From start to finish, there is open opportunity for questions, answers and discussions. Today, I explained what mise en place means and why it’s important in cooking. They listened. They got it. I love that too.
If you aren’t cooking with your kids yet, or your nieces and nephews or your grandkids, you should start. Seeing you cook, and being allowed to help fosters a child’s natural sense of curiosity and also lets them become informed eaters. That is a very important thing. Read more
» Filed Under Raising Healthy Kids, Recipes, cooking with kids, salad | 3 Comments
Avocado and Red Pepper Israeli Couscous Recipe
February 22, 2010
Dear Readers, My weekly Cooking with Kids recipe will appear tomorrow. Due to technical difficulties, we had to delay it a day. Thanks for your understanding! -S
Sometimes, the best dishes come out of error. While busy testing recipes this weekend, I had a thought to try serving the Key Lime shrimp that I was playing with over a quinoa dish. But once I tried to make said dish, my trusty supply of quinoa was nowhere to be found. (I later discovered it in the only cabinet that I didn’t check.) Not willing to be deterred, I grabbed Israeli couscous and used that instead.
You’ve probably already noted that there are no shrimp to be seen in this photo. No, I am not spreading the recipes out over two days. No, they weren’t so good that I didn’t photograph them. Quite the contrary – I intended for them to appear together but the recipe was an epic fail.
But that’s okay. The couscous – originally an afterthought – turned out to be a wonderful star of a dish. The creamy avocado goes so well with the soft, fluffy couscous. And the red peppers add a bit of sweetness and crunch to the dish. It’s subtly flavored, and so, so good. Will devoured a big bowl when I made it.
Eat this within a day of making it, since the avocado won’t last beyond then. But chances are that it won’t last that long anyway. Read more
» Filed Under Recipes, side dishes, vegetables, vegetarian | 3 Comments
