June 14, 2013

Simple Plates #26

Happy Friday! Here's our week in kid plates. We're getting ready to move from Florida to New York at the end of the month, so great upheavals are taking place in our home and in our thoughts. I'm been starting to plan ahead some road-eats, stockpiling (maybe overzealously) frozen trail mix bars and muffins. We'll have a cooler and I'll probably pack a few baked sweet potatoes, sandwiches, and some frozen lentil stew. I'm not sure how my attempts to feed a toddler healthy food on the road for three days will pan out, but I plan to document them here (you can expect less glamorous backgrounds than my lovely hardwood floors, like the console of our Toyota.) In the meantime, enjoy these ordinary eats.

yellow beans, apple slices, peanut butter on sprouted grain toast, baked sweet potato

cherry tomatoes, scrambled eggs with spinach and cheese

purple coleslaw, raspberries, sweet potato, baked chicken, split pea soup with herbs

spinach and Gouda omelet, raspberries
It's always so hard to wait for raspberries. Notice: toddler not complete without a few swipes of pen on extremities.

split pea soup with herbs, sweet potato, watermelon, coleslaw, half a hotdog
Wait, hot dogs?? We tried the Applegate brand of all-beef hot dogs, which are nitrate-free, antibiotic-free, uncured, and made from from humanely-raised cows. Aside from being a little salty, they were a tasty and reasonably nutritious treat to accompany a veggie-rich meal.

whole wheat, fruit-sweetened banana nut muffin; broccoli, white nectarine slices

steamed carrots, raspberries, half a banana nut muffin, mini cheese wheel

red grapes, whole wheat pasta with lentils and sauce, garlicky curly kale, sweet potato
This is one of my favorite quick ways to get more legumes in our bellies: mix cooked lentils into pasta with jarred marinara sauce. Try this if your kids are lukewarm on beans or lentils.

garlicky rappini, cheese quesadilla in corn tortilla with cherry tomatoes and micro cilantro, white nectarine and raspberries
I grew these tiny cilantro plants. Wow, zesty!

Bosc pear and red grapes; whole wheat pasta with lentils, marinara sauce, and turkey-veggie meatballs, garlicky curly kale

purple sauerkraut, hard-boiled egg, red grapes, sweet potato

toasted cheese on whole wheat pitas, garlicky rappini, white nectarines
Darwin and I often share a piece of fruit with our lunch. On this day he looked at my plate and said, "Mama's nectarines are big."
"Yes," I replied, "I cut yours into small pieces because you have a small mouth."
"Mama's got a big mouth."
I walked right into that. RIGHT into it.

refried beans, cheese, and avocado on corn tortillas; carrots; watermelon
Homemade refried beans are fun and easy to make. I sauteed an onion and a minced jalapeno pepper until soft, then added Mexican spices and a pound of pressure-cooked pinto beans, mashing the beans right in the pot.

green grapes; spinach, carrot and brown rice stew
This stew comes from Mark Bittman and the New York Times. I got swept away by the mysterious romance of his description of eating it "at a Turkish lunch counter" and felt compelled to make it. The recipe uses a whole pound of spinach, half a pound of carrots, and 3/4 cup of brown basmati rice simmered in homemade chicken broth until it is, as he puts it, "cooked to death." I usually favor brisk, lightly-cooked vegetables, so I was very curious. It was delicious! Because the veggies are so tender, this would be a great stew to serve a baby who's still learning how to eat solids.

plum pieces, refried beans with avocado and salsa, sauteed celery and rappini 
Ever saute celery as a side dish? It's surprisingly complex and tasty.

broccoli, tomato pieces, fruit-sweetened whole wheat banana nut muffin

hard-boiled egg with dijon mustard, sweet potato, green grapes 

plum pieces; whole wheat pasta with lentils, Mozzarella, and marinara sauce; mayo-free coleslaw

spinach, dried "strawberry snack," cheddar cheese, refried beans with salsa
These are the last few scraps of our crunchy home-dried fruit snacks left over from strawberry picking a couple months ago.

June 7, 2013

Simple Plates #25

Hi, friends and foodies! Here's a long photo-post of this week's simple kid plates. It seems I can only manage to post once a week for the time being, and recipe posts have been slow out of the gate. For those of you who share my strange curiosity and appreciation for these simple visuals of children's food, I hope you'll continue to visit. I'm not going anywhere.

We've had some severe storms lately, so a lot of the food appears under this weird, gothic lighting on my porch.

Mexican black beans, avocado and cheddar on corn tortilla; butternut squash puree; tomato, corn, and pepper salad

turkey-veggie burger, peas, sauteed fresh spinach, mango, and blueberries
Our water was shut off for repairs when I put together this plate. I used a splash of drinking water to moisten the peas and spinach in a pot, and defrosted the turkey burger from the freezer. Whew!


steamed sweet potato, mayo-free coleslaw with raisins and cilantro, nectarine, mini cheese wheel
 Sweet potato scraps from star cutouts... still tasty.

steamed fresh green beans and carrots with butter and Parmesan cheese

veggie quiche, raspberries and blueberries, microgreens
The storms basically blasted my microgreen crop to death. This was a little harvest before that happened.


buttered whole wheat cracker, cherries and nectarines, avocado, lentil-vegetable stew

lift off!

broccoli, blueberry-banana oats with cinnamon and cream

veggie quiche with whole wheat crust, baked sweet potato fries, raspberries

pretty pretty slaw
We enjoyed this slaw so much, I made it twice in a week. The vinaigrette dressing is the same as this one. The cabbage is half purple and half green, and the only other ingredients are thinly sliced onions and unmeasured handfuls of raisins and cilantro. Love those purple-pigment antioxidants!

fresh cherries, turkey-veggie burger, sungold cherry tomatoes, peanut butter on sprouted grain toast, mayo-free coleslaw

raspberries, steamed spinach, cheddar cheese, whole wheat pita with olive oil, avocado

salmon salad, steamed carrots, mayo-free coleslaw, veggie quiche
whole wheat pasta with parsley-walnut pesto, nectarines and raspberries, cherry tomatoes
 These little brown cherry tomatoes came from the farmers' market, and they're super sweet.

baked sweet potato, salmon salad
How do you make tuna/salmon salad? I find that a dollop of dijon mustard and a swirl of extra virgin olive oil tastes better than processed mayonnaise by far. I add minced onion and celery.


apples and raspberries, Swiss melt on sprouted grain toast, homemade pink sauerkraut, garlicky kale
Here's our beautiful magenta sauerkraut, fermented and ready to eat.


steamed yellow beans, whole plain yogurt, baked sweet potato
Darwin has been so sweetly enamored of these yellow beans from the farmers' market. He just can't get over their yellowness. He's always reminding me about the small extraordinary things in life.


raspberries, brown rice with chicken, roasted vegetables, and black beans, garlicky curly kale

broccoli with butter, fruit-sweetened whole oat muffin, nectarine pieces
OK, big breakthrough! I've been making fewer batches of my oat breakfast cookies, lately, because one batch doesn't feed the three of us for very many breakfasts. Last night I tried scaling them up with some modifications (added yogurt and changed some ratios--ask me for the recipe), and baking them in muffin tins. Totally great! They puffed up perfectly, stayed moist and sweet, and now they're in useful serving sizes in my freezer.

whole wheat linguine with parsley-walnut pesto and cherry tomatoes, raspberries, pink sauerkraut

apple slices, steamed spinach, brown rice with chicken and vegetables, steamed yellow beans