I've been reading Becki's blog since she started and since I also know her in real life I know that we have similar ideas for how we want to feed our families... healthy, yummy, sustainable meals that won't kill our bank accounts.
I'll be posting about my family's dinners as well as lunches and snacks and the occasional trick to cleaning up the food one of my young children smushed into the rug.
Here are some of the challenges I'll be facing along the way:
1. Money. We are a family of four living on one income. This has been our choice for over 3 years. We love that I get to be home with our kids all day. We do not love that we can't go out to eat whenever we want or totally fill the shopping cart with all the organic, sustainable products we could eat in a week. We participate in a little game of give and take.
2. Allergies and food preferences. My 3-year-old is allergic to nuts. It's not so severe that she stops breathing if she comes into contact with one but she will wake up in the middle of the night and vomit for several hours. It took a year of regular GI problems before we figured it out with an allergist. In general a nut allergy like this is not hard to plan around but she also does not like meat. So nuts; peanut butter, cashews, almond milk, walnut bread, were all staples in her diet. I am always on the lookout for creative ways to get protein into her diet without meat or nuts. Our youngest daughter doesn't like meat either. Other than those things we all eat just about everything. And since Grant doesn't cook (by choice)he loves to eat whatever I set before him.
3. Time. I love playing with my kids. I love reading books. I love sewing and making craft things. And even though I do love to cook I do not have extra hours to be in the kitchen every day. Most days 30 minutes is my max... and once or twice a week I'll have an hour or more if Grant is home hanging out with the girls. I don't love cleaning though, so there's some extra time in each day..and also the reason pictures of my food will always be close-up and never include the backdrop of our living space!
Here's a little virtual 'cheers!' to Becki as I join her in sharing our stories of successes and fails and everything in-between from our kitchens.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Mom Food Bloggers
I didn't look around the interwebs too much before starting The Full Table, but I just now found this list of 100 excellent food blogs written by mothers. Check them out! I'm getting through them slowly, and will put my favorites over in the blogroll.
I came across the list on a blog sent to me by my friend Emily, aka princess granola. Like me, Emily has two toddlers and loves to write and cook. She's also full of great ideas! So when she approached me with an interest in contributing to the blog, I was super excited. I'm thrilled to introduce her as a guest blogger, so watch out soon for what Emily's doing to fill her table. I can't wait.
I came across the list on a blog sent to me by my friend Emily, aka princess granola. Like me, Emily has two toddlers and loves to write and cook. She's also full of great ideas! So when she approached me with an interest in contributing to the blog, I was super excited. I'm thrilled to introduce her as a guest blogger, so watch out soon for what Emily's doing to fill her table. I can't wait.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Bean Salad with Corn and Tomatoes
Well, looks like I was wrong about having no more dinner guests for a while. I'm happy to be; I love having people over. And now that we are mostly meatless, my husband is all the more eager to take hosting opportunities so he can grill some meat, like a man! He invited over a colleague and his wife, who is due to have a baby this month so we figure we probably won't be seeing them much in the near future.
John and I had another one of our little discussions before our dinner, sparked by his realization that the local, grass-fed ground beef I get costs $7 a pound. I don't mean to trivialize things; it's just that neither of us ever says anything new. The gist is that my husband is a nostalgic person who has, for pretty much his whole life, thought of grilled burgers as a delicious and cheap meal, and he is still in mourning for the loss of that second attribute. He believes me that cows' digestive systems aren't designed to process corn, that it makes them sick and more prone to E. coli and "superbugs" that are resistant to antibiotics, and generally fills their increasingly short lives with pain and discomfort. And tonight his colleague, who grew up on a farm, told him that grass-fed beef contains more nutrients as well. It's just that there was a time when we would grill burgers every weekend and think nothing of it. (Yes, I am aware that this is the second weekend in a row we've grilled burgers! It's unusual.)
John made a point about how if we had less money, we wouldn't be able to shell out for ground beef like that. I told him that if we had less money, I wouldn't be buying cheaper beef; I just wouldn't be buying beef. To be clear, this is a perspective I've worked up to over the course of about two years. When we go to a restaurant, I still try to avoid beef (and other meat), but sometimes I do have it and in those cases I'm sure it's corn-fed. So this is not an issue about which I have any standing to be self-righteous. Food choices are intensely personal, as my kids teach me every day. Unfortunately, we have mostly lost our ability to make those choices based on information about how that food is produced. The results are worsening health, environmental damage, and prolonged suffering for millions of animals, some of which are more intelligent than the dogs we keep as pets. I can't live with that, so I'm trying to be the change I want to see in the world. It is not easy.
It's especially not easy because I can pretty much count on my kids to eat meat when it's served to them, so that's just one more reason I like burger night: it always makes me happy when my kids eat dinner. Tonight, Sophie ate her meat, the bun, pineapple chunks, and some strawberries that John's colleague brought for dessert. Ben did much better, as usual: he ate his meat, his bun, pineapple chunks, some guacamole, and some cheese. Oh, and we had chips, too... and then ice cream after that. It was a good night for the kids.
I also made this bean salad with corn and tomatoes from allrecipes.com, recommended to me by my friend Daniela! I didn't make it exactly as written, and I probably should have. The dressing looked like a cilantro-lime vinaigrette that I already had made, so I just used that instead of mixing up a new one. But this recipe calls for some sugar that I think was missing in my version. It was still very fresh tasting, and a great substitute for that second burger I might have eaten! Very filling, though. I don't think the four adults even got through half of it. I guess I know what I'm having for lunch this week.
John and I had another one of our little discussions before our dinner, sparked by his realization that the local, grass-fed ground beef I get costs $7 a pound. I don't mean to trivialize things; it's just that neither of us ever says anything new. The gist is that my husband is a nostalgic person who has, for pretty much his whole life, thought of grilled burgers as a delicious and cheap meal, and he is still in mourning for the loss of that second attribute. He believes me that cows' digestive systems aren't designed to process corn, that it makes them sick and more prone to E. coli and "superbugs" that are resistant to antibiotics, and generally fills their increasingly short lives with pain and discomfort. And tonight his colleague, who grew up on a farm, told him that grass-fed beef contains more nutrients as well. It's just that there was a time when we would grill burgers every weekend and think nothing of it. (Yes, I am aware that this is the second weekend in a row we've grilled burgers! It's unusual.)
John made a point about how if we had less money, we wouldn't be able to shell out for ground beef like that. I told him that if we had less money, I wouldn't be buying cheaper beef; I just wouldn't be buying beef. To be clear, this is a perspective I've worked up to over the course of about two years. When we go to a restaurant, I still try to avoid beef (and other meat), but sometimes I do have it and in those cases I'm sure it's corn-fed. So this is not an issue about which I have any standing to be self-righteous. Food choices are intensely personal, as my kids teach me every day. Unfortunately, we have mostly lost our ability to make those choices based on information about how that food is produced. The results are worsening health, environmental damage, and prolonged suffering for millions of animals, some of which are more intelligent than the dogs we keep as pets. I can't live with that, so I'm trying to be the change I want to see in the world. It is not easy.
It's especially not easy because I can pretty much count on my kids to eat meat when it's served to them, so that's just one more reason I like burger night: it always makes me happy when my kids eat dinner. Tonight, Sophie ate her meat, the bun, pineapple chunks, and some strawberries that John's colleague brought for dessert. Ben did much better, as usual: he ate his meat, his bun, pineapple chunks, some guacamole, and some cheese. Oh, and we had chips, too... and then ice cream after that. It was a good night for the kids.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Tomato Rice Salad
Menu: Deviled Eggs; Tomato Rice Salad; Peas with Butter and Cheese
Lessons learned:
I boiled my eggs and cooked my rice this afternoon so they'd both be cool by dinnertime. My mom says she has the perfect method for hard-boiling eggs: you cover them with about an inch of water in a pan, bring it to a boil, and as soon as it's boiling you take the pan off the heat and cover it for EXACTLY 18 MINUTES, then run them under cold water to stop the cooking. I've never taken this too seriously because I couldn't really picture an overdone boiled egg. Well, I think I can now. They still tasted totally fine, but the yolks, whites, and shells all stuck together a little more than I'm used to. Also, the ones I made tonight were noticeably denser-tasting than the ones I grew up on. So I guess next time I'll be more careful.
Here's how I make deviled eggs: I boil the eggs as described above and peel them. Then I cut them in half length-wise, gently remove the yolks so as not to tear the whites, and put the yolks in a bowl with a generous amount of Miracle Whip, a stingy amount of dijon mustard, some salt, and some pepper. (Sorry, I'm not good with amounts; I just put things in until it tastes right.) Then I fill the egg whites back up with a dollop of yolk mixture and sprinkle with sweet paprika. Yum!
The tomato rice salad is an idea from HTCEV that I've been wanting to try for a while, but haven't because it seemed risky. The experiment was about the dressing: I threw about 1/8 of an onion, a medium tomato, a handful of orange mint, salt, pepper, and about 1/3 cup olive oil into my blender and pressed go. It was actually really delicious!
Tonight I made it with white rice to be safe, but next time I think I'll do brown. Also, I think it would be fine to substitute some water for oil to cut down on fat, since the dressing is for rice and not vegetables. That would also thin it out a little bit: it was fine once it was on the rice, but right out of the blender it was very viscous -- a little disconcerting.
The last change I would make is that the peas could really have just been mixed into the tomato rice salad instead of being served on their own. Some grated carrots would be nice, too.
John really liked the eggs. He ate his rice before I put the dressing on it, partly because he just loves plain white rice and partly because he was very skeptical about liking a dressing that was made of onion, tomatoes, and herbs, none of which he particularly likes. Ben liked the dressed rice ok, but he mostly ignored it because he was absolutely obsessed with the eggs -- the filling, specifically. I finally had to cut him off.
The only problem was Sophie. There was literally nothing involved in this dinner that she was even willing to taste. I would love to make this again, but that is a real problem. I guess next time I will put the veggies in the rice and just have a fruit salad... we needed some sweetness to balance the flavors anyway.
Lessons learned:
- Egg filling is Ben's new favorite food.
- Tomato rice salad is my new favorite food.
I boiled my eggs and cooked my rice this afternoon so they'd both be cool by dinnertime. My mom says she has the perfect method for hard-boiling eggs: you cover them with about an inch of water in a pan, bring it to a boil, and as soon as it's boiling you take the pan off the heat and cover it for EXACTLY 18 MINUTES, then run them under cold water to stop the cooking. I've never taken this too seriously because I couldn't really picture an overdone boiled egg. Well, I think I can now. They still tasted totally fine, but the yolks, whites, and shells all stuck together a little more than I'm used to. Also, the ones I made tonight were noticeably denser-tasting than the ones I grew up on. So I guess next time I'll be more careful.
Here's how I make deviled eggs: I boil the eggs as described above and peel them. Then I cut them in half length-wise, gently remove the yolks so as not to tear the whites, and put the yolks in a bowl with a generous amount of Miracle Whip, a stingy amount of dijon mustard, some salt, and some pepper. (Sorry, I'm not good with amounts; I just put things in until it tastes right.) Then I fill the egg whites back up with a dollop of yolk mixture and sprinkle with sweet paprika. Yum!
The tomato rice salad is an idea from HTCEV that I've been wanting to try for a while, but haven't because it seemed risky. The experiment was about the dressing: I threw about 1/8 of an onion, a medium tomato, a handful of orange mint, salt, pepper, and about 1/3 cup olive oil into my blender and pressed go. It was actually really delicious!
The last change I would make is that the peas could really have just been mixed into the tomato rice salad instead of being served on their own. Some grated carrots would be nice, too.
John really liked the eggs. He ate his rice before I put the dressing on it, partly because he just loves plain white rice and partly because he was very skeptical about liking a dressing that was made of onion, tomatoes, and herbs, none of which he particularly likes. Ben liked the dressed rice ok, but he mostly ignored it because he was absolutely obsessed with the eggs -- the filling, specifically. I finally had to cut him off.
The only problem was Sophie. There was literally nothing involved in this dinner that she was even willing to taste. I would love to make this again, but that is a real problem. I guess next time I will put the veggies in the rice and just have a fruit salad... we needed some sweetness to balance the flavors anyway.
Bust
Menu: Shrimp Bisque; Green Salad with Strawberries and Goat Cheese; Garlic Bread
Lessons learned:
I first tried the recipe a couple of months ago. It was tasty; the only problem was that the milk separated, so it looked kind of nasty. This is a common problem when I combine milk, acid (the soup contains lemon juice), and heat. This time I tried to avoid it by heating the milk up before adding it to the soup, and keeping the heat very low. That only slowed the separation; by the time we ate it, it looked very curdled. And this time the taste was much worse; it was sort of watery and flavorless. All I could taste was the curry powder.
Oh well. The bread was good.
Lessons learned:
- It's time to give up on the bisque recipe. It's not going to happen for me.
- The strawberry salad doesn't work as well with regular lettuce.
I first tried the recipe a couple of months ago. It was tasty; the only problem was that the milk separated, so it looked kind of nasty. This is a common problem when I combine milk, acid (the soup contains lemon juice), and heat. This time I tried to avoid it by heating the milk up before adding it to the soup, and keeping the heat very low. That only slowed the separation; by the time we ate it, it looked very curdled. And this time the taste was much worse; it was sort of watery and flavorless. All I could taste was the curry powder.
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