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