Crackin’

I’m in the midst of making some homemade crackers as I type …  Well, you’ve got to have some kind of activity to turn to between batches, right?  A friend turned me on to this cracker recipe at homemadebabyfood.com, which I was about to try out when I realized that I didn’t have any wheat germ and that I DID have a big bowl of cooked quinoa in the fridge that needed using.  Okay, so, quinoa crackers, why not?  So far, things seems to be going pretty well, although I’m finding that I can’t get the dough quite as thin as a cracker dough would be–due to the width of the quinoa grains and their reduced ability to stick together–which means that my cooking times are much longer than those in the linked recipe.  Nevertheless, I think I’m going to be able to achieve a crunch …  We shall see …  Recipe and photos to come …

Pizza!!!!

I’d just like to give a quick shout-out for Whole Foods pizza, which is not bad at all when you’re in a rush for a bite to eat. Masher’s latest fave seems to be the wild mushroom and roasted shallot version, and I’ll admit I’m quite fond of it as well! They actually have a two-for-one special on pizzas on Tuesday nights, so now I’m wondering when I’ll have a Tuesday night occasion that calls for a couple of pies …

From the Farm

Tuesdays are veggie pickup days for our Potomac Vegetable Farm CSA (community-supported agriculture), so what’s for dinner is always a surprise until J. brings the bag home after work. Today was not the greatest day, but I’m hoping things will continue to improve … We got three cucumbers, three onions, one garlic bulb, a bunch of small leeks, two small heads of chard, a head of reddish lettuce, a bunch of little beets, four tiny potatoes, and some “summer savory” herb of some sort. I think that’s it. Oh, and a dozen eggs of course.

Actually, I had an idea of what I’d make before I got the bag. I figured the veggies would still be somewhat lame-o, so I was banking on a salad, crostini with something on top of it (to use up some old hard homemade bread from the freezer — see previous post), and a frittata. The veggies we got worked, along with a few extras from the fridge and pantry, and it was a delicious meal! Here’s what we had:

Frittata with Potato and Leek

Parboil the potatoes and set aside. Chop leeks and add to cast-iron skillet with olive oil and butter. Add potatoes to skillet, along with some salt and pepper, and stir. Beat eggs with a bit of milk, season, and pour into skillet. Let cook on stove for a few minutes before popping the skillet under the broiler to finish the top. Cut and serve! (This would be great with some type of cheese, but I didn’t use any since there was cheese in the crostini and in the salad.)

Crostini with Beets and Manouri Cheese
Crostini with Garbanzo Bean Spread

Slice some bread and toast it under the broiler with a drizzle of olive oil if you like. Peel and dice small raw beets and toss with diced manouri cheese (like feta but creamier and less salty), olive oil, and salt and pepper to taste. Set aside. Using the food processor, whip up half a small onion and one garlic clove in some olive oil, and add a can of no-salt garbanzo beans (without the canning liquid). Continue to process until smooth, adding salt and pepper to taste. Set the toasted bread out on a plate, top it, and serve. (Add a bit of something pretty to the top of the garbanzo crostini, some chopped summer savory herb in this case!)

Summer Salad

Fresh greens, tomato, mozzarella, and cucumber with olive oil and some white wine vinegar. Simple as that.

There’s some beet and cheese mixture and some frittata left for Masher tomorrow, both of which I think he’ll like.  I’ll put a spoonful of garbanzo bean spread in front of him too, but I’m pretty sure this batch is way too garlicky for him!  Yummy for me.

Butter Up!

I gave my birthday present — the KitchenAid KFP 750 — a whirl yesterday and tried making homemade almond butter. I’d ground almonds and other nuts before in my old smaller processor but hadn’t had the patience (or the eardrum strength — so loud in that little one!) to get the ground nuts to the point of becoming butter. And it takes a while, doesn’t it? But eventually the flour-like mixture started to clump together and got sticky, I added a bit of oil and a touch of salt, and it was done!

And I have to say that this probably does mean the end to buying commercial nut butters, as I thought it might.  This almond butter tastes really fresh and good, and it doesn’t stick all over your mouth the way I think commercial nut butters do.  And it was easy as heck to make.  A true winner.

So, what did we do with this almond butter? Well, first I made a little almond butter and fig jam sandwich for Masher’s lunch … yum! And this morning I’m making some almond butter-banana-coconut-oatmeal-no sugar-vegan cookies (whew, that’s a mouthful!) based loosely on this recipe from the web site Clique Clack.

 

And what else is cooking in the kitchen?  Last night we enjoyed one of my favorite summer dishes:  fresh wild Alaskan salmon on the grill.  J. prepped the fish with some salt, pepper, garlic, butter, and olive oil while I put together two quick salads:  organic lentils with carrots, Potomac Vegetable Farm kohlrabi,  and a spicy lemon dressing and a green salad with some fresh bufala mozzarella from New York, tomatoes, and Potomac Vegetable Farm cucumber.  The salads were good, but the fish was delish.  It was tough to save any for Masher to have today!

You Never Know …

Masher consistently refuses cut-up fruit.  I’m not going to say that he doesn’t like it because (a) one of my rules is that I’ll never say my child “doesn’t like” something and (b) he eats whole fruit like it’s going out of style.  If I’m interested in getting him to eat an apple or pear, for instance, I’ll start it off for him by taking a bite or two, then let him go to town.  The last apple he ate I had to take away because he had eaten it down to the seeds on one side.  When I removed the core and handed what was essentially still half an apple back to him, it had apparently lost all allure.  Bananas, obviously, are no problem whole, and Masher deigns to eat cut-up melon, although he’d rather stick his face right into a juicy, fat quarter.  But apples and pears have that issue of the core and seeds to contend with.

Still, I continue to offer cut-up apples and pears to Masher from time to time, and this evening was one of those times.  Aside his warm bowl of black beans (with peppers and onions), rice, spicy ground turkey, and cheese, with a dollop of yogurt (just like sour cream!), I placed a small dish of sliced pear.  Masher took one pear slice in his hand, gave it a dirty look, and placed it as far away from him on the high chair as it would go.  He then turned his attention to the beans, and I turned mine to dishes (was it loading or unloading the dishwasher this time — who knows?).  When I turned back to him several minutes later, he was gently dipping a pear slice into the beans.  ”Ugh, playing with his food …  That means he’s done,” I said to myself.  Eating his food gets him dirty enough; we don’t need to play in it, too.  And then I paused.  He took a big bite of the bean-coated pear, chewed, and swallowed.  And I realized that his bowl of pears was almost empty.

So, pears dipped in beans and spicy turkey …  who knew it would be such a hit?

Green Hummus?

Mmmmm, all things green. So, I make hummus pretty regularly for Masher — a tahini-free version so that his dad can help himself, too, of course! I thought yesterday that it might be interesting to add spinach to the hummus … Why not, right? I see red pepper hummus in the store all the time. Well, it turned out delish! And such a lovely green! Now, I’m thinking about how pretty a trifecta of hummuses — spinach, red pepper, and plain — would look as dips for a party. Here’s how I made it:

1/4 cup good olive oil (plus more to taste)
1-4 garlic cloves (depending on the tolerance of your audience), chopped
1 bag frozen spinach (10-16 oz), briefly cooked and drained
2 cans chick peas/garbanzo beans (prefer Eden Organic, which is very low in salt), drained and liquid set aside
Salt and pepper to taste

Whiz the garlic cloves around with the olive oil in your food processor until they are totally smashed up in the oil. Add the spinach and whiz again, then add the cans of chick peas (in batches if necessary). Process, adding canning liquid (not if too salty!), water, and/or olive oil as necessary, until smooth. Add salt and pepper to taste, then eat or refrigerate ’til later.

It Does a Body Good

Yep, milk. Masher’s drinking it. Finally. No longer does he make a face like I’ve just offered him liquid nitrogen in a sippy cup. He actually drinks it.

So, how did we manage this, you ask? Well, I’d say it’s probably a combination of factors: (1) Who knows why? That’s the most likely reason. He probably just got tired of me shoving the milk cup in his face all of the time and decided he’d better drink some to get me to stop. (2) I waited until he got really thirsty on a really hot day, and then offered only cold milk. But before you start lecturing me about milk containing solids and how you really need water to rehydrate properly, let me explain in my defense that (a) I always had water available for emergencies, (b) Masher gets plenty of water throughout the day, (c) I only operated my milk monopoly for about two weeks’ time, and (d) I myself as a child used to drink three huge glasses of milk the second I got home, exhausted and sweaty, from soccer practice, so I can say from personal experience that it quenches real thirst. And (3) I started buying fresher, less pasteurized milk from the farmers’ market or MOM’s. There’s definitely a major difference in taste between that stuff and the ultrapasteurized grocery-store milk. Do the taste test yourself!

So, yeah, who knows the reasons for it really, but I sure am glad that Masher started drinking the moo juice.  He doesn’t drink anywhere near 20 oz/day, or whatever figure it was I read on the Internet that kids his age need, but he definitely gets at least four 4-oz servings of milk, cheese, or yogurt each day, which our pediatrician said should be sufficient.  It seems like a hard thing to judge, especially when an outsider has no idea what else the child is consuming, but I assume we should be as on track as we need to be.

Memorial Day Baba Ghanoush

I made a take on Mark Bittman’s recipe for eggplant dip for a Memorial Day BBQ with some friends. It was a big hit with the adults … and all of the toddlers, too! Here’s my rendition (no tahini due to allergies):

3 medium-sized eggplants
1/2 cup walnuts
1/3 cup sunflower seeds
olive oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
lemon juice (to taste but somewhere between half a lemon’s worth and a whole lemon’s worth)
salt and pepper (to taste)

Heat oven to 500 (or you can use a grill on medium high). Poke the eggplants a few times with a fork, and put them in the oven on a cookie sheet and/or tin foil. Roast, turning occasionally, for 15-30 minutes until the skin is really dark and the eggplant has collapsed. Take the eggplant out and set aside, turn the oven off, and put the walnuts and sunflower seeds on another baking sheet (or the same one with the dirty tin foil removed) in the oven. Just toast these quickly and be sure to take them out before they burn. Pour about 1/4 cup olive oil in the food processor/blender, add the garlic cloves, toasted nuts and seeds, and lemon juice, and process until smooth. At this point the eggplant should be cool enough so you can peel off the skin, roughly chop the flesh, and throw it in the processor with the oil mixture. Process until smooth, in batches if necessary, adding water, more lemon juice, or more olive oil as necessary for the right texture. Taste it, then add whatever salt and pepper you want.

More Mac ‘n’ Cheese Please!

We’ve all been digging variations on mac ‘n’ cheese lately …  Who wouldn’t?  The fact is that it’s easy to make, doesn’t take much time, and doesn’t require very specific ingredients apart from pantry staples.  But my favorite thing about it is that you can put absolutely anything you want into it, and it tastes delicious!  Here’s a favorite “recipe” (with no actual measurements, of course):

Saute an onion and a clove of garlic in some olive oil.  Add some chopped greens (e.g., kale, chard, spinach) to the pan.  When it starts to get a bit soft, add a big can of diced/pureed tomatoes.  Meanwhile, cook a 1 lb box of pasta according to instructions (maybe a bit on the al dente side).  When the pasta is cooked and drained, throw it into the pan with the sauce, add a big handful of cheese and any other veggies (raw, cooked, or partially cooked) on hand (e.g., corn, peas, broccoli, green beans), and stir.  Pour the whole mixture into a lightly greased 8×11 pan and cook at 350 for 20 minutes uncovered.  Yum.

A Day in the Life of Masher’s Stomach, Take Two

Masher may have the beginnings of a cold today, so he wasn’t a big eater.  He nursed as usual as soon as he woke up around 6:30 a.m. and then …

• 8 a.m. — He didn’t respond to my asking if he was hungry until pretty late in the morning … when I started making pancakes.  Actually I first offered him a bowl of big ol’ fresh blueberries and diced pear, which he totally turned his nose up at, so I threw them into the pancake batter along with some finely chopped walnuts.  Whoa.  These were the best pancakes ever.  Didn’t even hardly need maple syrup.
• As soon as Masher was done with one pancake he was ready to get down … until he spotted the bananas, which I have to keep hidden because otherwise he’d only eat bananas for every meal!  So, he ate a banana.
• 1 p.m. — Poor lil’ guy decided to nap early, so he was up early too.  He ate another pancake while watching some lacrosse with Daddy, then polished off a half-cup or so of some homemade, very garlicky, chickpea dip with some low-salt Triscuits.
• 3 p.m. — Masher sat down to eat about a cup of plain yogurt … hard to say exactly how much since he insists on feeding himself these days, and a lot of yogurt ends up ON him.
• 5 p.m. — We left the babysitter green beans, cheese, and toast to feed Masher.  Apparently he ate all of the cheese and toast, none of the green beans, which he used to polish off in a frenzy.  Hmmmm … going to have to work on these tomorrow …