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.