Have you heard of Cookthink? I saw the site linked on Mango & Tomato. Cookthink is more than just aggregated recipes from all over the Web, they’re a super search engine (you can even search by “what are you craving?”) and they test all their own recipes. Their “Cookthinktank” includes Vegan Yum Yum, which I already read and love. Plus they have in-depth tips on how to handle specific ingredients.
I stumbled across wastedfood.com today, and can’t stop reading. It bothers me when I waste food in my own home, and I’ve often wondered about the tremendous amount of waste grocery stores must have, especially in an area like mine where there is probably little market for reduced dairy and produce. Wasted Food takes a look at all the excess around us, and tries to find ways to redistribute that food to those that need it. They discuss how to create less waste, too.
I’m thinking of getting back to composting. J. built us a huge outdoor compost bin a few years ago, and we’ve used it on and off (with the composted material being used in his garden). I just haven’t found a good solution to storing the compost in our small kitchen before I bring it outside and add it to the heap. I found a link on Wasted Food to BioBags, which makes biodegradable bags for countertop composting bins. I’m excited to get back into this and think having a bin that’s easier for me to use in the house will help me throw away less of all the veggie and fruit scraps we create, especially during CSA season.
I made my mom’s Chicken Castillo in my crock pot on Thursday, and though the flavor was delicious it was very watery. Normally, it’s cooked in a deep skillet on the stove and you can simmer the dish, uncovered, to reduce the liquid. That just doesn’t happen in a slow cooker. I’ll post the recipe once I’ve tweaked it a bit.
J. and I ate at Q last night, which just opened a second location in Mt. Kisco. I’d been to their Port Chester restaurant before and really enjoyed it. Our meal was 50% off — an unexpected bonus — because they’d just opened four days earlier and were still figuring a few things out. The service was totally smooth regardless and the food delicious. Even the Texas brisket passed J.’s rigorous quality standards.
Homemade ice cream in a bag! I’m going to buy some rock salt to keep on hand — this will be a great rainy day activity for the summer.
A. loved the zucchini muffins, and had two for breakfast. After the first one he exclaimed, “Mom, I could eat 10 more of these!”
Cookie magazine has a new column called “Acquiring Taste.” They pick a basic ingredient and then offer recipe suggestions that aim to range from basic (”any” kid would try it) to advanced (where it may be a stretch getting your child to give it a try). So far they’ve featured lettuce and tomatoes. I like the concept, but haven’t found any suggestions that would work for us, yet.
There’s an interesting article on the Ask Dr. Sears site, “Kids and Food Colors: The Nutrients that Give Food Their Color.” (They are annoyingly aggressive in marketing their newsletter, but you can just click through and get to the article without signing up.) There is a simple list of healthy colors to eat, and suggestions for activities you can do with your kids to get them excited about eating a “rainbow” of foods.
I’ve had both of these new-to-me items in the past two days, and no, I’m not pregnant!
The Talk 0′ Texas Crisp Okra Pickles were in my supermarket, I grabbed them because I thought J. would love them. I couldn’t have guessed I’d like them too, I thought they’d be soggy and unbearably spicy, but they were neither. I wonder if they’d make a good dirty martini…
My mom brought the chocolate back from Israel. It’s Elite milk chocolate with “popping candy” — like Pop Rocks — inside. Very bizarre. Even after the chocolate melted away you’d still get these surprising crackling sensations all around your mouth. The boys, of course, clamored for a piece and I was sure they’d be freaked out by it (they ask for a sip of soda every once in a while, and do not like the carbonation at all). But they loved the chocolate and even when I asked them directly they didn’t find the popping sensation to be unusual. Serious Eats mentioned this Israeli chocolate bar last year, and it seems Pop Rocks came out with their own limited edition version, so if you’re desperate to try it you can probably get your hands on one version or another.
I try to present vegetables to the kids in an attractive way, hoping to keep their exposure to foods they have previously refused very light, fun, and non-confrontational. I never fight with them about food, and just try not to make a big deal out of it if they eat something or not. I figure if they see their family and friends enjoying a range of foods — eating them because they taste good, and also because they help our bodies feel good — they’ll eventually (20 years from now?) come around.
We are big Jenga fans, so I thought they’d get a kick out of playing red pepper Jenga with J. and I at dinner! They loved the idea, but were happy to just watch J. and I play and eat the stack.
G. is starting to feel a little better, but he’s still lying around on the couch asking me to hold him and watching a lot of TV. If I never see another Super Why, it will be too soon. It was an episode of Little Bear, however, that made him decide he needed to eat pancakes, NOW!
I took our regular pancake recipe and adapted it a little, using 1¼ c. all-purpose flour, and ¼ c. flax seed meal. I’ve never tried flax seed meal before, but I grabbed it the other day when my supermarket was out of whole wheat flour. It worked beautifully in these pancakes.
I was initially put off when I opened the package: I was expecting something the consistency of flour, but the ground flax seed was much more rough and closer to its whole-seed version than that. Similar to wheat germ, but perhaps in even larger pieces. I figured that with such a robust appearance, it wouldn’t blend well into the pancakes. I was pleasantly surprised, however. You did not taste any crunchiness or extra grainy texture in the pancakes, and I didn’t think the flavor changed at all. I would definitely try upping the flax seed meal to a half cup in future batches.
G. took a couple of bites of a pancake, and then asked for applesauce instead. He said they were good, but he was just “not in the mood for pancakes today.” Apparently the 15 minutes it took for us to make them quashed his must-have craving. I’ll freeze the rest and pull them out another day.
I mentioned a few weeks ago that we were getting ready to ditch the last of our sippy cups. At two and half years old, G. has no problem with the mechanics of drinking from a regular cup, he just really liked using a sippy cup for his milk. I was right on one count: he barely protested when I told him we were done using those cups, and he doesn’t ask for them. But he had an ace up his sleeve. He stopped drinking milk altogether.
Initially, I thought he might need a few days to miss his milk and then he’d embrace drinking it from a regular cup like his brother. That never happened. We tried switching to a straw cup that was similar in appearance to the sippy cups he had used, but he wouldn’t even try it. Crazy straws didn’t tempt him. Drinkable yogurt held no allure. He just calmly refused and has continued to refuse plain milk since April 19th. That’s going on nearly four weeks now.
I’m torn because on one hand, I know he likes plain milk — he has been guzzling it in a sippy cup for 18 months. I am reluctant to replace those milk servings with flavored milk because I know it’s not a problem with the taste, just the delivery method. On the other hand, he does not get enough calcium from his very self-limited diet without those milk servings.
I’ve been loosely keeping track of how many milligrams of calcium he averages a day over the course of a week, and it’s falling short by about 300 mg — the equivalent of a cup of milk — most days. That’s even with 8 oz. of chocolate or vanilla milk a few times a week when we’re out. (I’m not worrying about the vitamin D right now, because we’re outdoors a lot.) So it’s not enough calcium and I need to make a change.
I feel like I have a few options:
1. Offer flavored milk.
2. Increase other calcium sources.
3. Add a vitamin with calcium.
4. Give back the sippy cups.
There’s a ton of research that says flavored milk is better than soda or fruit drinks. That makes sense, but at home their other option is water, not soda, aside from an occasional 4 oz. juice box (which offers about 100 mg of calcium towards the 800 mg daily goal for kids under the age of 4). Also, A. is a terrific plain milk drinker but would definitely only drink chocolate-flavored if that’s what his brother was having. I’m very reluctant to add an additional sugar source (even if the sugar is minimal and paired with milk) to their daily diet. The real sticking point is that I know G. likes the taste of plain milk!
Other calcium sources are hard because he is such a picky eater. He barely eats any cheese, already eats 6 oz. of yogurt a day, and does not consume any vegetables or fish that would help boost his calcium levels. He is very reluctant to try anything new that is not in the shape of a cookie or a slice of cake.
I would be OK with a vitamin, which generally adds about 200 mg of calcium, but I don’t think he’d take one. He won’t even try the gummy fruit snacks that A. adores.
And finally, I suppose we could bring back the sippy cups. To be honest and a bit petty, I just can’t do this because I feel like it’s giving in. Is that the wrong attitude? I think if he was still talking about the sippy cups and missing them terribly, I might feel otherwise — like I had taken them away before he was ready. But he doesn’t seem to care that they are gone.
I’m trying to look at the big picture — for instance, calcium intake over a month rather than each day — and not obsess about one particular mineral. And I also understand it’s just a guideline. But as a mom, it’s upsetting to me to see him go from 16-24 oz. of milk a day to nothing, and not make up that loss somewhere else. I think the next step is to try to find a vitamin he will accept. And then, if that fails, we may wind up with chocolate milk in the house after all as a once-a-day treat.
Update: I did speak to his pediatrician, and she suggested we give it another month, continuing to offer plain milk whenever we used to (actually put it in front of him, and not make a big deal about it). She also thought he’d do fine with double the yogurt for now, and that alone gets him close to his daily requirement. So that’s the tactic I’m going to start with. I need to go buy a pallet of yogurt, or perhaps stock in Stonyfield Farm.
Our seders Saturday and Sunday night were wonderful — full of family most importantly, but also good food that makes you happy to loosen a belt buckle. The boys have been having sleepovers at our parents’ houses, so we’ve been lucky to have a little vacation ourselves (including a quick trip to Atlantic City). There has been very little cooking going on here — I still have leftovers from the seder that I froze and am just now defrosting.
Tomorrow, however, the boys are back and I’m cooking quinoa pudding and some Passover rolls, so I’ll finally have recipes to post. I may also try a cauliflower souffle recipe Sarah sent to me, to accompany grilled chicken and skirt steak. I’ll try to make up for lost cooking time earlier this week!
Swiss chard, you remain my nemesis. I bailed on the planned dinner for tonight (Swiss Chard & Mushroom Squares) and just made scrambled eggs instead. (A. ate some of his egg without prodding!) I’m thinking about incorporating the swiss chard and mushrooms into the roasted veggies & quinoa I’m making for the first seder so it won’t go to waste.
In the past few days we’ve used up all the soy sauce, ginger, pretzels, pasta, ice cream sandwiches, and ramen. There’s one breakfast worth of waffles in the freezer, and then that will be cleaned out too. I was surprised that we got our weekly challah from school today — we will have to eat it quickly. Tomorrow is our last day of eating chometz in the house before Passover!
I tried the new Pike’s Place roast at Starbucks. If you know me in real life, you know I am a crazy Starbucks-lover. Usually people think that means I order some intricately sweet concoction that has basically no coffee in it at all, but nope. I just really, really like their regular coffee (the extra bold blends — like Gold Coast or Sumatra — are my favorites). The Pike’s Place roast is more mild than I like, and even a bit sweet when you drink it black.
A pro and con of starting dinner in the crock pot at 9 AM: Pro = it smells delicious all day long and I feel satisfied that I can cross “make dinner” off my list. Con = the boys start complaining about dinner before they’ve even had lunch, because they can smell it all day long.
I'm Dara, the chick in the kitchen. Living in the suburbs of Manhattan with my two boys, ages 3 and 5, and husband. Trying to feed my family something more diverse than a different shape of pasta each night. Reach me at .
Want to Try
Black Bean Cakes: Looks like a delicious, high-fiber way to dress up some leftover chicken.
Cook to This
"Dirty Little Secret," by All-American Rejects. We played Rock Band on our friends' Wii New Year's Eve, and had a total blast. This was my favorite song to sing. When I checked out the video today I was tickled to find it based on Postsecret!
I'm Dara, the chick in the kitchen. Living in the suburbs of Manhattan with my two boys, ages 3 and 5, and husband. Trying to feed my family something more diverse than a different shape of pasta each night. Reach me at .