Reinventing a Family Favorite
As the chilly winter weather sets in, soups are a common meal in our home. The other day I realized I was getting a little burned out on soup dinners and thought for a moment — what can I create that’s fast and filling? For some reason, I recalled Lizzie’s BBQ Beef video http://lizziemariecuisine.com/index.php?itemid=381 and took a quick mental inventory of the meats in our freezer. No pot roast on hand, but chicken breasts were definitely in stock. In the time it took me to brew my morning coffee, I was able to put all the ingredients together for the BBQ using chicken breasts for the first time and had everything simmering in the crockpot.
Wow, how simple is that? Within hours the house was filled with a wonderful, mouth-watering aroma. Hubby came home and dove into his plate saying, “… this tastes very familiar… what is it?” Lizzie excitedly explained how her BBQ recipe worked great with chicken. The BBQ Chicken, remarkably juicy, was served in organic blue corn taco shells — what a pleasant change from the typical whole wheat bun!
If you’re craving soup this winter season, be sure to read our next article on Lemon Harvest Soup. Until then, think of ways to reinvent your family favorites and look for Lizzie’s secret ingredient in her BBQ video.
Warmly,
Doreen & Lizzie Marie
2008 Food Blog Awards: Nomination Period Open
Now is the time to nominate your favorite food or drink blog for the 2008 Food Blog Awards. All the details can be found on our main site.
New Year, New Opportunity
It’s a new year for everyone in the family. There is a quote by Edith Lovejoy Pierce that goes, “We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.” So, there is not time like the present to take that opportunity, refresh and get going again – as a family. If the adults model healthy eating behaviors, kids will follow. I was looking on Alliance for a Healthier Generation’s site and was thrilled at what a great resource it is.
A good start is with school, since that is where I see so many overweight teens and even a larger number of eating fouls. One preferable way to begin is having children brown bagging it and not purchasing the school’s lunch. (Now, I know all schools are different and some school nutrition programs are making great strides. But not all are there yet.) The Alliance’s link, Tips for a Healthier Lunch Box, offers great, non-invasive, non-wallet breaking tips.
There is also 10 Tips for Keeping Kids Active During the Winter which, judging from the weather I see happening across the use, should prove helpful! Still skeptical because of busy schedules? I sent my sister, who recently found herself a single mom, 12 Healthy Snacks for Super-Busy Moms.
What is on your New Year Opportunity list? What will work for you and your schedule? Many of us may not be able to do everything we “should”, but we can all do something. How will your first chapter begin?
Two other quick links to healthy eating:
Healthy Quick Meals
Healthy Meal Resource through the USDA
Holiday Break
Thank you so much for making our site a part of your regular routine. Without you, we wouldn’t be here. We will be taking a short break to celebrate the holidays with our family and friends, and will resume regular postings on Monday, January 5th (the official kick-off of the annual Food Blog Awards!).
Happy holidays!
How to Stay Sane and Bake with Kids at Christmas
It can be done. It can even be fun. Before you get out the rolling pin and sprinkles, though, these tips can make your Christmas baking more festive than frustrating.
TIP ONE: Pick your recipe carefully. Make sure it has a good task in it that your child can do. Leave the difficult recipes for another time, or leave them out.
Kid-Friendly Tasks:
- Decorating and sprinkles are ideal projects for kids, if a bit messy. Working with just the finished cookies also removes the chance of your child eating raw eggs in the dough. You can use pasteurized egg if this is a worry.
- Sugar cookie dough is usually forgiving and easy to work with. Kids love to help roll out the dough so you might consider a few child-friendly tools. I realized my finger-crushing marble rolling pin was better left in my hands. I bought a child-size silicone version for the small sous chef.
- Measuring ingredients and sifting are great kid tasks and a good opportunity to teach some basic math skills.
TIP TWO: Pick your time even more carefully. If the kids are not ready, most dough can chill for a couple days. And so can you.
Missed naps, bad days at school, a tantrum or two (or eight) usually means time out on cookie-making. Heed the crayon writing on the wall.
It’s easy to forget, we moms put ourselves last a lot around busy holidays (okay, in general), but make sure you are up for it, too. The process takes extra time and patience, if you don’t have that in store, just wait.
TIP THREE: Tell your inner-Martha to get lost. Holidays are a lot more fun without that kind of pressure.
If you are gazing at the cookie issue of Gourmet, visualizing your cookies to look like this, remember you have child labor. The end result is going to look a lot like their other art projects. Adjust your vision.
Finally, when it comes to sprinkles and gumdrops and frosting, you might want to get a good meal into little bellies before you line the countertops with sugar. Face it, the rest of the day is blown nutritionally and a layer of healthy food can buffer the sugar rush.
My Own Quiet Little Stand
My son’s preschool has a weekly tradition of naming one student “Star of the Week.” During that time, the student’s pictures are put up on special corkboard and family are invited in to read a story, talk about the student, and share a treat. This week was my son’s turn, and I was faced with own dilemma. What can I make for 25 pre-schoolers?
I chose this school for a variety of reasons — none of which included assessing the nutritional agenda of the administration or the personal preferences of the parents who send their children there. It never really occurred to me. Some friends I knew had elected to send their children to schools that had strict prohibitions against bringing in sugary treats for sharing or for snack. At the time, I laughed. What’s next, I thought — banning cupcakes for birthdays? Ha ha.
It turns out, they might be on to something. Repeatedly, Jordan has come home for lunch with no appetite to speak of. At first, I assumed this was just one more instance of his pickiness cropping up. Then I discovered that he had eaten “a special snack” at school. Special snacks seem to occur with alarming frequency. In addition to the star of the week, they celebrate all the major holidays, they invite parents to come in and celebrate unique cultural traditions (with snack, of course), and there are birthday treats. Constantly.
Conversations at the Table - Where Eating and Discipline Collide
(In this series of posts, I share my experiences of dining at home with my two preschoolers. We eat, we laugh, I ponder the meaning of their conversations. All the while, I wonder how I can teach them how to behave, how to enjoy healthy eating, and how not to throw food at each other or the dog.)
I’ve freely bought into the notion that dining together as a family is the way to accomplish all sorts of important parental tasks — like teaching healthy nutritional habits, the art of polite conversation, and how to share the experiences of our lives together. The trouble is, getting to this blissful state involves an uncharted path fraught with pitfalls, time-outs, and threats. And that’s just what I’m willing to admit to on paper.
I’m the proud mother of two preschoolers, an almost four-year-old, and a two-year-old. They are the joy of my life, but they are also the cause of many an anxiety-ridden meal. At breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I sit with them and we try to make sense of our day. At least that’s what I tell myself. Most of the time, I’m too busy enforcing basic rules of civility, like “Don’t talk with your mouth full.” Or my new favorite, “We don’t say the word yucky at the table, especially about food we haven’t even tried yet.”
Other times, I’m the referee trying to break up fights that stretch across the narrrow width of our little breakfast nook. Sometimes, I’m the repo man, taking toys away that should never have been brought with them, or grabbing bites of food that someone wants to share with the dog. What’s particularly frightening to me is the way they have discovered that they outnumber me. Using just their little high-pitched voices, they squeak and shout at each other across the table until I’m the one begging for mercy.
Trust me when I say that I never intended to play the role of enforcer. In my rich fantasy life, before having kids, I imagined we’d be the family that dined together every night, the one that shared our busy lives together over the steaming bowls of carefully planned meals. I pictured loving faces happily asking for seconds. I did not picture myself saying, “Those are the choices on your plate. You either eat now or your next meal will be breakfast.”
Frosting-less Cut-out Cookies and Product Review: Sunny Seed Drops
These fabulous chocolate-covered sunflower seeds are DE-LI-CIOUS and the kids also love them sprinkled on oatmeal, peanut butter and banana sandwiches, in homemade trailmix, or even by the handful. They come in a rainbow of colors (and now several different varieties of naturally-colored seeds, which is even better!), and are available on Amazon.com, and maybe even in your local health-food store or specialty candy shop. They are also available online through various other retailers; unfortunately, they tend to come packaged in small plastic-laden packages (or in 10-lb bulk packages!), but they are definitely worth it! I am considering the 10-lb package with the intention of splitting the lot with several families we know.It’s Cut-Out Cookie Time!
There is nothing that heralds the beginning of the Christmas season for our family like the first batch of cut-out sugar cookies. Whether I whip up the dough in early December or late December, the second the cookie cutters make an appearance, my children are there, beaming like there is nowhere else they would rather be. They wait impatiently for the cookies to bake and cool, and this year, my daughter received the task of setting up the table for The Great Cookie Sprinkling.
She lined the table with waxed paper to catch errant sprinkles and then carefully divided the sprinkles between her and her brother. I sent them off to play while the cookies cooled and I made the frosting, but they were back in a flash, asking what colors we were going to make the frosting this year. They lit up like Christmas trees as they watched small bowls of white frosting turn pink, blue, yellow, purple, green, and chartreuse. In no time at all they were laughing and giggling as they sprinkled to their hearts content. It was very interesting to see my daughter take a more artistic approach to her cookies this year while my son just sprinkled away with a rather heavy hand.
Once they were finished, and all the cookies had their frosting and sprinkles, each child carefully picked out the cookie that they treasured the most- that cookie was going to be their first victim. With eyes closed, they bit and savored and enjoyed every single bite of cookie magic- and then they asked for another one.
Hanukkah, oh Hanukkah…
…come light the menorah. (The song is bound to start going through your mind about now…).
For our family, one of the best parts of Hanukkah is Potato Latkes! Even though we will be away during most of the Festival of Lights, we will come home in time to host a Hanukkah party with friends. Our friends will gather in the kitchen to prepare potato latkes and home-made doughnuts, and all will share in a delicious pot-luck supper.
Here is the recipes for latkes I will be making with my students this week, and the one that we will make at the party next week. One word of caution — sometimes the oil in the pan can splatter, particularly if your latke mixture is too wet. If kids are watching, be sure to have them stand back a bit or use a splatter guard on top of your pan.
Potato Latkes
1 lb potatoes
1/2 cup finely shredded onion
1 large egg, lightly beaten
3 Tbs flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 to 3/4 cup canola oil
- Preheat oven to 250°F.
- Peel potatoes and finely grate (use the fine grating blade of a food processor to save time), transferring to a large bowl of cold water as grated to prevent discoloration.
- Soak potatoes 1 to 2 minutes after last batch is added to water, then drain well in a colander.
- Spread grated potatoes and onion on a kitchen towel and roll up jelly-roll style.
- Twist towel tightly to wring out as much liquid as possible.
- Shred onion in the food processor. Put onions in a large mixing bowl.
- Transfer potato mixture to the bowl with the onions and stir in egg , flour and salt.
- Heat 1/4 cup oil in a 12-inch nonstick skillet over moderately high heat until hot and shimmering (but not smoking.)
- Working in batches of 4-6 latkes, spoon 2 tablespoons potato mixture per latke into skillet, spreading into 3-inch rounds with a fork.
- Reduce heat to moderate and cook until undersides are browned, about 5 minutes.
- Turn latkes over and cook until undersides are browned.
- Transfer to brown grocery bags to drain and season with salt.
- Add more oil to skillet as needed.
- Keep latkes warm on a wire rack set in a shallow baking pan in oven.
Servings: 6
CALL THE KIDS
Kids can:
- Peel the potatoes
- Push the button on the food processor to grate the potatoes
- Wrap shredded potatoes in a dish towel and roll to remove liquid
- Crack the egg and beat lightly in a separate bowl.
- Combine potato with egg, onion and salt
(Photo courtesy Flickr user kthread)
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