Greens!

Yeah! My first CSA delivery of the season! Lettuce, swiss chard, dill and a whole lot of spinach.

Can you guess what I had for supper? No peaking at my flickr.

Butterfly Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

We served these little guys last night accompanied by tomato soup. The youngest got their soup in sippy cups. It never hurts to make the kids food a little unexpected.

The Food Group

Chickpea Sewing Studio has started a little foodie photo challenge that I’ve decided to participate in as an effort to get to know my new camera. We’ve really stepped it up a notch with this new camera as not only does it have a macro setting, but also super-macro and super-macro with LED. Not to mention a whole kit ‘n caboodle of other features. I thought this photo share seemed like a fun way to learn about all those new facets and improve my general photo skills as well. So without further adieu, here’s my first submission, the cranberry orange bread my son and I made for breakfast this morning from a box mix. It was quite tasty.

I probably won’t post here everyday as I can’t imagine you’d be that interested in what I eat, but you can always check out my flickr set or the photo pool for all of the participants.

Smoothies

You can’t mess up a smoothie. You can’t. It’s a fact. So much so that I let my son choose many of the ingredients AND how much to put in. All you need is vanilla yogurt, a little sugar, a few ice cubes and some fruit. While I place a few dollops of yogurt in the blender I let Seth pick out three frozen fruits. He’s allowed one scoop of sugar with a tablespoon and however many ice cubes and pieces of fruit he wants. Granted I did once have to convince him that frozen corn doesn’t work well in a smoothie. Which I suppose goes against my first statement, but you knew I was exaggerating. Here’s a couple more tips:

1. If your doing this with a child, have everything ready prior to inviting the kiddo to join you. I turned around to get a spoon and when I turned back Seth had his finger in the yogurt container. I told him I would take the smoothie away if he stuck his finger in there again. The next time I turned around to grab something he stuck his tongue in there.
2. When fruit such as berries, bananas and peaches are starting to go bad freeze them for smoothies later. Clean and chop them the size you would want for the blender. If you have more than a couple consider freezing them in a single layer prior to bagging to avoid them freezing to each other. Something like a banana could simply be peeled, broken in half and frozen separately. Then you could toss one half in your next smoothie.
3. If you have a side by side or bottom freezer keep all the containers of fruit in one easily accessible spot for the budding chef to choose from.

Oops! Forgot to take a picture before we drank it all. Boy was that yummy!

Rutabaga & Pumpkin

Spent the evening making baby food. Specifically rutabaga and pumpkin. I wanted to mention this for those of you that read my previous post on beets. Just thought you should know I do know my rutabagas now. I peeled, chopped, steamed and pureed that baby up. I have no idea what I was thinking when I bought those beets. Sooooo different. As for the pumpkin, well, I kind of cheated there, what with buying a can of puree and all. But I did spoon it into the ice cube tray myself.

I think I’ll reward myself by watching a little Psych on hulu and ordering pizza.

Veggie pizza

We like our pizza in this household, be it delivered sneakily after the kids go to bed or our own homemade version. Once a week Steve and I take it easy by feeding the kids and putting them to bed a little early. Then we order some type of delivery and hunker down to watch a movie. It’s like a mini date night and I love it. Other nights we make our own for the whole family. Here’s the recipe for a no sauce veggie pizza we like to indulge in. It’s based off a pizza our friend Rebecca used to make.

Ingredients:

• Purchased or homemade crust - here we’re using Pillsbury’s pizza crust in a tube, but we’ve made our own and used a number of purchased premade varieties.
• 1 small tomato, chopped (de-seed 1st if your so inclined)
• 1/2 a small zucchini, chopped
• 1/2 a sweet bell pepper, chopped - here I used an orange one, but any color will do
• goat cheese
• mozzarella
• 1 tbsp oregano
• 2 tbsp pine nuts

1. Prepare/make crust
2. Scatter veggies across crust
3. Dollop goat cheese here and there
4. Sprinkle mozzarella across - not too much, just enough to hold the veggies on
5. Sprinkle with oregano and pine nuts
6. Bake according to crust directions - usually about 10 to 15 minutes
7. Enjoy!

While I’m not an advocate of making children a different meal than the adults on a normal basis. This is one case were it’s not too big of a deal. It’s next to impossible to convince Seth to eat large chunks of vegetables interspersed with dollops of goat cheese so we cut a little crust off and made him a more traditional pepperoni pizza.

What did Eleanor eat? Pureed fresh avocado. Yum! If there had been any tortilla chips on hand I’m not sure it would have gotten to her highchair.

Green coffee cake!?!?!

You bet! Your color is not off on your computer screen and I didn’t totally botch this photo. Seth’s into coloring his food these days and he wanted to make coffee cake with his papa. I don’t know why, but he requested to color the batter green. Maybe it had something to do with the color mixing experiments we’ve been doing lately. Maybe he just saw the food coloring and a light bulb went off. Who knows?

After his father had him put me on the spot for granting permission, they set to work with just a few drops of food coloring. They showed remarkable restraint and created a lovely light tinged batter. It wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I thought it was going to be. There were no ill effects to the final product and Seth just beamed with pride. Could this be our St Patrick’s Day breakfast? What will be next? Muffins? Loaves of bread?

Do you ever use food coloring on food other than frosting? If so, leave a comment on what you like to color.

Beets!

A friend and coworker recently asked me “why do parent’s always have to take pictures of their baby with food all over their face?” Although I’m usually like minded with this individual I knew exactly why. Once you’ve experienced feeding a baby you can’t help but think it’s cute. You try and try to keep it a tidy affair but eventually give in and enjoy the mess that is first foods. Here I give you proof that Eleanor really does like beets. It was purely by accident I discovered beets as a baby food. I was trying for rutabaga but the signs at the grocery store were messed up. Since I really didn’t know what a rutabaga looked like and have never cooked with beets I figured the rutabaga must be like a beet. Boy was I wrong! Chalk it up to another happy accident.

My Favorite Stir-fry

My husband makes a great stir fry. Here’s the recipe he’s developed over the years:

1. Stir fry ½ lb chicken in olive oil until cooked mostly through.
2. Add 2 to 3 cups of chopped veggies; such as a combination of red pepper, green pepper & zucchini. Cook until veggies are soft.
   
3. Add 1/2 cup unsalted, roasted cashew pieces.
4. Pour peanut sauce over. How much is up to you, I like it rather saucy. Our preferred brand is San-J’s Mildly Spicy Thai Peanut Stir-fry & Dipping Sauce.

Veggie version? Substitute one of the following for the chicken:

• Tofu
• Chick peas
• A sturdy vegetable such as broccoli

Serve over good rice.

Fish stick hot dish!

Here you go - the fish stick hot dish recipe as requested:

Mix together:

• 1 small container of sour cream (your call on fat content)
• Mashed potatoes made from flakes with a little less liquid than the box states (I’m guessing here - but make about 4 servings)
• 1 box of frozen spinach, thawed

Spread mixture across bottom of a lasagna pan. Top with fish sticks in a single layer and bake according to fish stick package directions.

Note: The reason you use less liquid in the potatoes is that you get some from the thawed spinach. It would get too runny if you used the regular amount of water.

Suggestion: Why not gourmatize it? (Yes, I realize that’s not a word but you get my drift) Make the mashed potatoes from scratch and top with lightly breaded cod or other white fish. Let me know if you do this, I would be interested in the result.

This recipe has kind of traveled around the family so I’m not sure whom to give credit. Could be a magazine, family member or cookbook. If anyone knows please leave a comment.