Category — Recipes

The next time you’re in the kitchen and feel inspired to puree something colorful to blend into dinner, save yourself a step later on and puree enough for future meals.

Pick your veggies – zucchini, yellow squash, carrots, sweet potatoes, beets, broccoli, you name it.  Steam until soft and then puree them in your handy blender or food processor.

Use some for dinner tonight (pasta sauce, meatloaf, soup, stew, meatballs…) and put the remaining puree in the little sections of an ice cube tray.  Throw it in the freezer and those purees will be ready for you to pop right into your favorite dishes later on!

Ming Tsai, owner of Blue Ginger in Wellesley, MA offers us another joy that is safe for those living with food allergies. 

You will love this recipe (along with accompanying video) for his Turkey Fried Rice – how2heroes.com!

Every once in a while I find myself motivated to try something new with my kids at dinner time.  Sometimes they’re my companions in the experiment.  More times than not, though, the tinkering is more of a solo affair.

Last night was one of those latter efforts.  I was in a pureeing mood (I really love my blender).  One of my kiddos was complaining of a sore throat so I was thinking chicken soup.  Actually, let’s be honest, I was thinking more along the lines of chicken stock and some noodles.

I know, not the big nutritional blast.  Until I pulled out that blender. 

My lovely really was only interested in sipping something, so the challenge was to come up with a dish that had at least some of the nutrients I wanted in her belly in the form of pale yellow slurpy liquid with the occasional noodle.  So, I took the yellow squash and zucchini I found in my veggie drawer (peeled the zucchini), steamed them a bit, plopped them in the blender, then added some cannelini beans (right from the can) and pushed “Blend”.  Perfect.

I added this pale yellow mixture to my chicken stock and noodles (watch the combined consistency – you don’t want glop), seasoned to taste, and 10 minutes later my two little people (one with sore throat, one without) had emptied the pot.  And I, the woman with the cape, had the satisfaction of knowing that my girls had consumed some extra fiber, vitamin C, potassium and protein in their day’s intake.

My kids are sort of used to these efforts of mine, and this one too seemed to amuse a bit.

Take a look at a kitchen favorite for me and my girls on Cafemom.com!!!

All of us need sodium for our bodies to function well.   It regulates blood pressure and fluid balance.  Overdoing it, however, can be dangerous with regard to high blood pressure and heart disease.

The daily recommended daily intake of sodium is just over 2000mg (ONE TEASPOON).  The next time you go shopping, look through the pasta sauce and soup options, for example, and surprise yourself by noting how much sodium is in one serving (keeping in mind, once again, that you need to take a look at the serving size line on the label – one can of soup might contain 2 servings).

I’ve recently started making my own pasta sauce at home…

One can of crushed tomatoes (no sodium)

Garlic

Diced onions

Italian seasonings of my choosing

Red pepper flakes

A bit of salt and pepper to taste, which I can control. 

Not only do I feel more confident about what I’m serving the folks around my table, but it takes about as long to prepare as unscrewing a jar of the store bought variety and heating it up.  AND it’s a heck of a lot cheaper.

Adding pureed vegetables to your regular dishes is a terrific way to boost the nutritional impact of your favorite foods.  Steam your veggies and put them in a food processor or blender and you’re ready to go.

Add whatever veggies you like to soups, pasta sauce, meatloaf, meatballs, even pizza sauce.  Get creative, and once the kiddos realize how they can get those veggies in their bellies and not even taste them, they might even help with the pureeing.

A key note here.  This approach is not meant to “train” little ones to eat their vegetables only under conditions where they can’t detect them.  This is simply a fun and easy way to introduce the notion that veggies are a wonderful part of the eating experience and can be incorporated into the foods we love in imaginative ways.  It’s a spring board for those kiddos in our lives who are less than enthused about the world of carrots, zucchini, sweet potatoes, broccoli, spinach, etc.

Here’s a recipe my kids and I love.

3/4 cup flax meal (1/2 cup flaxseeds before being ground up in my coffee bean grinder)

2 mashed ripe bananas

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup canola oil

2 large eggs

3/4 cup whole wheat flour

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

You can also add dried fruits or chocolate chips if you like (about 1/2 cup)

1. Preheat oven to 350.

2. Beat banana, sugar, oil and eggs at meduim speed of a mixer until well-blended.

3. Combine dry ingredients and gradually add to wet mixture, beating until well-incorporated.

4. Stir in mix-ins’ if desired.

5. Pour batter into loaf pan coated with cooking spray and bake at 350 for 55 minutes or until inserted toothpick or knife comes out clean.

6. Cool 10 minutes in pan on wire rack.  Remove, cool some more and EAT.

We love it plain or with a little butter. 

Enjoy!

Here’s a great idea for snacking – especially on the go.  Stash washed grapes or blueberries in the freezer.  They make terrific candy-like munchies, chock full of phytonutrients!