By Stephanie

Our family has continued going meatless on Mondays, though it sometimes feels to me as though I’m putting a bunch of side dishes on the table and calling it dinner.  That is to say, I’m still searching for vegetarian things that truly feel like a main course AND that my kids might eat.  If you have some recipes that fit that bill, do share.

One thing I did make, and which my children did not eat, was French Lentil Soup.  It was incredibly easy to pull together and made enough that an impromptu dinner visit from family only involved setting two more places at the table.  I made this recipe exactly as written and all the adults at the table loved its heartiness and flavor.  The girls were put off by the chunkiness and texture of the lentils.  I served it with little toasts with Boursin cheese and a green salad.

Another area where I’ve been experimenting is in baking healthier versions of our favorite snacks.  Because my girls love Fig Newtons, I made Oatmeal, Fig, and Walnut bars in hopes of incorporating more whole grains.  I made a few changes to the recipe, using butter instead of margarine (the original recipe was vegan), and substituting whole wheat flour for half the all-purpose flour.  Chopping the figs probably took the longest, and I wish I had diced them smaller:

After that, you just incorporate the figs into a filling, then make a crumbly crust that serves as both the base and the topping for the bars.  When it was all said and done (and baked), they came out looking like this:

This recipe made A LOT of bars – a whole 9×13 pan – and my family did not exactly gobble them up.  The girls liked them well enough when I served them as a snack or after-meal treat, but they never once asked for them otherwise.  And my husband and I both thought the bars were more like apple crisp, but with a fig filling – the kind of thing you want to heat up in a bowl and top with some vanilla ice cream.  At 128 calories per serving, though, these would be a good alternative when you feel like baking something but want to avoid having a pan of brownies calling to you from your stovetop.

Next on my list of kitchen projects is baking my own bread.  Though I’ve long loved to cook and bake, for some reason I’ve always been intimidated by doing anything that called for working with yeast.  Even recipes that claimed to be “easy” or “idiot-proof” made me suspicious, and I always suspected that I’d put in all that time and kneading only to remove a hard lump from my oven.  Why I lacked courage here, I don’t know, but I’ve finally come across a recipe that’s convinced me to try.  I’ll let you know how it goes, but if you already bake your own bread, feel free to share encouragement here.  (Bonus points for telling me how great my house is going to smell.)

By Stephanie

Where to begin?

I love to read, I love food, and I love reading about food.  In that spirit, I just finished reading Mark Bittman’s Food Matters.  Now that I’ve read The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food, Fast Food Nation, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle over the last couple of years, any book that starts down the “cows eating corn is bad” path sort of makes me yawn. High-fructose corn syrup is in hiding everywhere?  Cows were meant to eat grass?  Yes, yes, I KNOW.  (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, though, see the movie Food, Inc. or read any of the above books if you’re curious.)

So Food Matters was nothing new or revolutionary to me, and it wasn’t quite as interesting or in-depth as the above books, either. But what I did like about it was Bittman’s section about how he’s changed his personal eating habits to reflect what we’re coming to know about food, environment, and health. He calls his concept “Vegan Until 6:00″ or “lessmeatarianism” and advocates for less meat, more vegetables in everyone’s life, without calling for everyone to become a vegan or even a vegetarian. For himself, he explains, that means a virtually-vegan diet for the first two meals of his day, and then a “normal” dinner, because that’s what works best for him.  Though he is by no means claiming that this strict of an approach would work for everyone, it works for him, and he encourages the reader to think of ways to trim a percentage of animal-product-based meals from their own diets, however that works for them.

I’ve also been hearing more buzz about Meatless Mondays, a non-profit movement started by researchers at The Johns Hopkins School of Public Health with a goal of reducing meat consumption by 15% to improve personal health and the health of the planet.  Their website is fantastic, with a whole page devoted to bloggers who go meatless every Monday and links to hundreds of recipes.

Is it just me, or are meatless Mondays the perfect baby-step way to begin following Bittman’s advice?  Because up until now, though I’ve had plenty of information, I haven’t really used it to change the way my family eats.  I started yesterday.

I made Ina Garten’s Scalloped Tomatoes, which are really a cross between bruschetta and tomato bread pudding (but with no custard involved).  I didn’t feel like spending five dollars on sad winter basil, so I left that out, and I also left the crusts on my whole-wheat sesame semolina bread, but other than that, I followed this very easy recipe to a T.  Here’s what the mixture looked like before it went into the oven:

and here’s what it looked like, in all it’s crusty, cheesy, chewy, tomato-y glory when it came out:

It was divine.  My children would not touch it, even my child who has always loved pizza and pasta with red sauce, but I DID NOT CARE because, hello, MORE FOR ME.  I can’t wait to make this again in the summer when the tomatoes are actually good!  (I used Romas, which tend to be the same year-round, and less mealy than off-season traditional varieties.)

I rounded out the meal with a big green salad with goat cheese, dried cherries, and toasted pecans, plus a little of the whole-wheat pasta I was serving to the kids.  The whole meatless meal looked like this:

I was totally satisfied by that, and my husband was, too, although he later supplemented with a hard-boiled egg from the fridge.  The girls ate what they usually do for dinner, which is to say, very little.  (Oh well.  They eat for about an hour straight at breakfast.)

Now that I’ve committed to putting this Meatless Monday concept into practice, I’ve spied lots of promising recipes for the weeks to come.  I’m thinking about Barley Soup with Greens, Fennel, Lemon and Dill; Potatoes with Leeks and Gruyere; White Bean Chili; Cheesy Lasagna Rolls with Spinach and Ricotta; and Quinoa with Black Beans and Cilantro.  But I’d love some help, especially from those of you who have been cooking vegetarian for longer than, say, A DAY.  So I’ll try to post here more regularly, even if just to let you know what I made for Meatless Monday (and how it was), and if you want to join the lessmeatarianism movement (“It’s Cheap!  It’s Healthy!  It’s Good For The Planet!”), I’d love if you’d let us know what meatless wonder you’re cooking up on Monday nights for dinner, too.

By Stephanie

A week or so ago, I gloated to a few people about how this winter wasn’t seeming bad at all.  ”It’s been so sunny!” I bragged.  ”Usually I hate it by mid-January, but this hasn’t been so bad.”  I’d been working out regularly, cooking and eating fairly healthily, and even enjoying the outdoor play time with my girls.

I spoke too soon, though, because for the past nine days straight, it’s been dark and dreary here in Michigan.  Most of the snow on my street has melted, letting the matted-down, brown grass show through.  My energy has sagged.  I’m struggling to stay away from the simple carbohydrates my body suddenly craves (“Give me Nilla Wafers!!!”) and trying to keep my family healthy.  The solution?  Soup.

The first one is one of my favorite things to make on a cold weeknight.  It’s my mom’s standard Chicken Rice Soup recipe, more or less, that I’ve jazzed up a little bit.  Here’s what you’ll need:

• 2 carrots, peeled and chopped
• 1 large celery stalk, chopped
• 1/2 onion, minced
• olive oil
• 3/4 c. long-grain white rice
• 6 c. chicken stock or more
• leftover cooked chicken (from a rotisserie or roasted chicken breasts), shredded or cubed
• fresh rosemary
• lemon

Pour a tablespoon or so of olive oil in a heavy stockpot, heat it up, then saute the carrots, celery, and onion for a few minutes, until soft.  Add the rosemary.  Add the chicken stock and bring to a gentle simmer, then throw in the rice and cook according to the package directions, adding more broth if the rice absorbs too much of the liquid.  When the rice is done, add the chicken and stir until heated through, then remove from the heat and garnish with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice.

It sounds simple, and it is, but something about sauteeing the veggies first, then adding the broth, rice and chicken makes it more complex that you’d think.  It’s freezable, it’s re-heatable for lunch the next day (add a little more stock to think it out), and my kids love it.

The second soup I made to combat the winter fatigue is called “Super-Tuscan White Bean Soup.”  I found it on the Food Network website by searching “white beans” because I wanted to see if I could make a (nearly) meatless yet hearty soup that would satisfy my husband’s carnivorous tastes.

You’ll see from the recipe that this soup, too, starts with that same trick of sauteeing carrot, celery, and onion in olive oil for the soup’s flavor base, only this time, to liven things up, we’re adding garlic and prosciutto, too!  But only a slice or two; in fact, I had bacon, so it’s what I used.  Sparingly.  I wanted this to be healthy, after all.  Next, you add the beans and chicken broth, which I let my helper do (she’s the one wearing a Tinkerbell nightgown at 3:30 p.m. on a Monday):

Here’s what it looked like when I had cooked all the beans in the lovely broth and was ready to “puree the solids”:

After pureeing the solids, you add most of the cooking liquid back in, and you find yourself with a satisfyingly thick, cream-free soup that’s a subtle shade of orangish-pink and that your children, with some persuading, will actually eat.  And your husband – your husband who does not love soup and does love meat! – will eat seconds, and thirds.  I guess I’ll gloat about that, while I’m waiting around here in Michigan for the sun to come back out and play.

By Stephanie

It’s fall, and that means I’m cooking and baking with pumpkin.  So far, I’ve made pumpkin pancakes, pumpkin bread, pumpkin-chocolate chip cookies, pumpkin soup, and pumpkin-seed salad.  (I recommend all but the cookies, which were possibly the most boring cookies I’ve ever made.  Huh.)  But I’m here to write about one of the best – and most unusual – ways to use pumpkin in a hearty fall meal, one that’s perfect for the day after Thanksgiving.  It’s Spicy Enchiladas with Pumpkin Sauce, and even my kids love it.

The recipe, from Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food Magazine, calls for using leftovers of Thyme-Roasted Chicken, another Everyday Food recipe, in the enchiladas.  Instead, I use some shredded rotisserie chicken (a favorite dinner short-cut of mine) and throw in a tiny amount of fresh, chopped thyme.  I also mix a generous serving spoon or so of sour cream in with the chicken to moisten it up a little.  But since it’s Thanksgiving season, and leftover turkey will be abundant, I’d love to hear from someone who substituted that, too.

Rolling up the enchiladas takes about five minutes, and making the sauce is almost as easy (pumpkin, garlic, water, chili powder, and jalepeno).  Even better, you can assemble it up to 8 hours ahead and bake when you want it, or bake it ahead and heat up leftovers.  My husband has been known to wrap up two- or three-enchilada portions in foil, freeze them, and tote them to work for his lunch.  Here’s what they look like, just out of the oven:

And, Thanksgiving miracle, my children eat them, too (especially when I leave out the jalepeno):

So this Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for pumpkin.  Obviously, I can’t get enough.  It’s full of vitamins, low in fat, and so yummy.  If you’re as obsessed (and thankful) as I am, share your favorite pumpkin recipes in the comments.  And happy (healthy) cooking and eating!

By AndreAnna

Every weekend, my husband and I sit down and decide what we want to eat that week. We go through our recipe books, or bounce ideas off each other for new things to try. Then we make a list and go food shopping.

This is not to save money because inevitably, we spend eleventy billion dollars a week on food, but it’s to prepare ourselves for the week ahead. To make sure we’re satisfied in our cravings and to ensure we have healthy snacks and options to grab as we go.

Then when we get home, I re-package almost  everything. I take the bag of Baked Lays, the pretzels, and the trail mix, and weigh, measure, and bag them into serving size portions. Since we’re on WW, I even write the POINTS value on the outside of the baggie with Sharpie.

We slice the fruit and veggies and put them into tiny Tupperware containers. We pre-pour our serving size of cereal into paper bowls, seal them with plastic wrap and stack them on a shelf. I even have little containers that hold 1 cup of milk with a pour spout. Sometimes, I make steel cut oats or farina for the week on a Sunday, and portion out the week’s breakfasts.

The food scale remains on the counter, so when we’re making our lunches for work or plating our meal for that evening, we know how many ounces we’re eating. So that we can be aware of what a true portion is.

I try and make controlled, healthy eating Idiot-Proof.

Rather, Busy-Working-Momma and Daddy-Proof.

Does it take a significant amount of time each weekend to do all this chopping, cutting, weighing, measuring, labeling, bagging? Sure. Sometimes it takes two-three hours. If I’m making batches of food for the week, like oatmeal or chili or soup, it can take an entire afternoon. I do it while watching football or while my kids play underfoot. Or I let my three-year old help me measure. “No, MOMMA, That says ONE, not FWREE!”

I’m sure some of you are sitting there – and someone actually said it to my face while rolling her unibrow-covered-eyes at work – that they would never! have! such! time! for! this! You have a life! You’re too busy! And though I don’t get offended easily, I felt snappy and insulted. As if I sit at home all week long with my head up my ass thinking, “Gee, I’m just soooo bored. I wonder if those children should eat today or if those papers will edit themselves?”

Dudes, when I tell you I’m busy, I’m effing busy. I have a 3- and 1-yr old. I have a full-time deadline-oriented job for a worldwide publisher as a technical editor. I work in my office twice a week (for which the commute is 53 miles EACH WAY) upwards of 14 hours a day. On the other days, I work from home, taking care of the kids, the house, the dog, my job, my writing commitments, exercise, social events. I. Am. Busy. Happy. Oh, insanely happy, but really fricken busy.

But I do this.

I find the time because it’s important to me. Eating well-controlled portions, being able to grab a pre-chopped bag of fruit on my way out the door, having a warm breakfast already made when I’m rushing to the office – is important to me.

If you think you don’t have the time to do this, I want you to think about this: How many hours a week do you spend watching TV, playing on the internet? I’m gonna guess a lot more than it would take to portion out and plan. I’m not saying everyone needs this kind of organized control in their lives to succeed at eating healthy. Plenty of people do just fine with their portion control. I do not.

So maybe it’s not about the time you have, because if we really face it, no matter what circumstances – a favorite TV show, manicures, girls nights out, date nights -  we have time for what we want to have time for.

And it’s about damn time I made time for myself.

I deserve it.

YOU deserve it.

(P.S. down 8 pounds in two weeks at WW. Husband down 13.)

EDITED TO ADD: A few people asked for some pictures, so I took some for you. Here’s a link to my Flickr set.

My husband’s father and my mother are both diabetic, so I’ve come up with some pretty inventive recipes for pies and desserts over the years that they could enjoy just like everyone else.

Also, since having my son, sugar is not my friend and immediately sends weight to Mah Belleh, so this is a great option for something sweet without the actual sugar.

What you need:

1 Pillsbury frozen pie crust
1/3 c. water
2/3 c. Splenda
(2) TWO 0.8 oz pkgs of Jell-O Cook N Serve Sugar Free Fat Free vanilla pudding.
3/4 c. evaporated skim milk
1 ½ c. canned pumpkin (not the pie filling)
2 large eggs
1 tsp each of cinnamon, nutmeg, pumpkin pie spice, and vanilla

Directions:
1) Combine water and Splenda in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, then simmer on low for 5 minutes. Let cool.
2) Whisk the two packages of dry pudding mixture in. The consistency will be extremely thick and “goopy”. This is okay.
3) Beat the two large eggs and whisk them into the mixture.
4) Add the evaporated skim milk and pumpkin.

5) Add spices and vanilla.
6) Pour into pie crust and bake @ 350 deg for 30-35 minutes or until center is firm.

Note: if you want, you can brush the bottom of the pie shell with egg whites and bake quickly for 5 minutes before pouring in crust. This helps form a “seal” on the crust.

(I realize this isn’t the best picture but the pie crust was old and in the freezer too long and as a result broke apart easy)

-You can serve with sugar-free coolwhip as well.

**This is 2.5 pts for 1/8 pie. If you use egg beaters instead, it becomes 1.5 pts/piece

(Original Copyrighted Recipe by AndreAnna. Originally posted on Chop. Stir. Mix.)

By Angella, who can be found online at Dutch Blitz, her personal blog; her professional photography website; Flickr; Work It, Mom!; and Blog Nosh.

I am one of those unlucky individuals who cannot get away with eating much in the way of bread products unless I feel like having thunder thighs and a nice caboose out the back. One of my lunch and dinner solutions is to make a lettuce wrap out of almost anything and everything. I get to have the tasty filling and skip out on the bootyliciousness. One of my favorite recipes is one that is Thai inspired and it’s a hit whenever I serve it.

INGREDIENTS

¼ cup hoisin sauce
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
2 tbsp canola oil
1 tbsp grated fresh ginger (I buy those little jars of minced ginger to keep in the fridge)
1 green bell pepper, diced (Or any color, really. I use red/yellow/orange as well.)
1½lbs ground chicken or turkey (I’ve also used chicken breast cut into bite-sized pieces)
4 green onions, sliced
a pile of big lettuce leaves

DIRECTIONS

1. In a small bowl, combine hoisin sauce, soy sauce and sesame oil. Set aside.
2. Heat canola oil in a frying pan or wok on high, and stir-fry ginger and peppers for a minute or two. Add chicken (or turkey), and leave to sear for a minute. Add the sauce mixture and stir-fry for 5 minutes or until the meat is no longer pink and is cooked through. Mix in green onions and transfer to a serving bowl.
3. For each wrap, place 2 large spoonfuls of the chicken mixture on a lettuce leaf, gently fold and enjoy.

My husband needs more than lettuce to fill him up, so he will often eat this spooned into a tortilla with a big heaping of grated cheese on top.

By Stephanie

A questionable title for a health-focused column on a fitness website, no?  But in my ongoing quest to incorporate a larger variety of healthy food into my family’s diet, I remembered that I actually own a cookbook with this title, so I thought I’d put the concept to the test.  Turns out, it’s totally true.

In our CSA delivery last week, we got – among many, many other things you see here spread all about our kitchen – a head of napa cabbage that was bigger than my husband’s head.

Luckily, I had recently come across an old recipe for Warm Napa Cabbage Salad when I was searching my pile of cookie recipes.  Just as luckily, we had half a head of radicchio to use and sage growing in our garden, too.  Here’s the recipe, from an old issue of Bon Appetit:

Warm Napa Cabbage Salad with Bacon, Blue Cheese, and Apple

2 T. Dijon mustard

2 T. white wine vinegar

2 T. vegetable oil

4 or 5 slices bacon, chopped

1 1.5-lb. head of Napa cabbage, halved, thinly sliced

1 8-oz. head radicchio, halved, thinly sliced

1 Granny Smith apple, peeled, coarsely grated

1 C. crumbled blue cheese

thinly sliced fresh sage leaves

Whisk mustard and vinegar to make a dressing.  Set aside.  Heat oil in large heavy pot.  Add bacon and cook until crisp.  Add cabbage and radicchio to pot and stir until wilted, about 1 minute.  Transfer to large bowl, add dressing, apple, and cheese to bowl and toss.  Sprinkle with sage and serve.

Do you see how easy this is???  Even with the chopping, I’d say this was done less than fifteen minutes after I started getting things out of the fridge.  I had forgotten to buy the blue cheese, which I am not a huge fan of anyway, so I grated some sharp cheddar instead, and the flavors still worked together.

This was awesome.  My husband loved it, I loved it, my daughters ate it cautiously with a minimum of face-making.  Best of all, it used up all that giant cabbage!  But because I felt a little guilty eating it with all that bacon, I looked up the nutritional information.  Turns out bacon has 3.6 grams of fat and 46 calories per slice.  So, it’s not a health food by any means, but when your goal is overall nutrition (and not, say, weight loss), adding a small amount of fat to lots of other good-for-you food is a nice way to trick yourself into eating lots of veggies.  I’ve done this before with brussels sprouts, too, and I’m wondering if there are other, semi-healthy ways of adding bacon to veggies that make everything just a little bit more appealing.

Anyone else have a sorta-good-for-you vegetable recipe for us to try?  Pass it on; as you can see by the state of our kitchen counter, we had LOTS of veggies to eat this month.

By Stephanie

When your kitchen sink and surrounding counter looks like this after a visit to the farmer’s market, you know you have a lot of cooking to do:

The leafy stems were, among other things, turnips, carrots, and fennel.  The berries, well, I couldn’t resist.  I decided to use my whole week’s supply of greens (yes, kale and swiss chard AGAIN) by sauteeing them with some olive oil and garlic and then incorporating them into a quiche with gruyere cheese.  And, since I was going to serve it for dinner, I took the whole “Breakfast-For-Dinner” theme all the way and used some of those lovely berries to make Barefoot Contessa’s Tri-Berry Muffins, too.  Behold:

Admittedly, neither was much to look at.  But the quiche is going to become my go-to recipe (I used a store-bought crust, so I can’t vouch for the pastry), and the muffins, while a little misshapen and muddled looking, tasted wonderful and were packed full of fresh fruit.  My daughters loved them, as did my mom and my grandma who happened to visit the day after I made them.  They weren’t huge fans of the quiche,

but I stand by it as a solid choice for breakfast.  Or for dinner.

Then, there was the fennel, yet another vegetable I had never cooked with before.  I perused www.epicurious.com, my favorite recipe site, and saw that most of the recipes including fennel involved either slicing it thinly and serving it raw in salad (usually with orange) or sauteeing it with onions or garlic to make a sauce.  It was a cool, gloomy day, so I opted for the latter, choosing an old Gourmet recipe that had lots of enthusiastic reviews.  Called Fennel-Rubbed Pork Tenderloin with Roasted Fennel Wedges, it was spectacular and easy enough to make for a weeknight dinner.  My husband loved it, my daughters ate it grudgingly, and I don’t see why you couldn’t make it with almost any meat.  Pork tenderloin is low-fat, as meat goes, but I think it would be great with a bone-in chicken breast, too.  The fennel gives a depth of flavor (with no added fat) that I enjoyed; sauteeing it with the onions takes away the strong licorice tone.  Here’s the sauce:

And here’s the entire meal (I made it with Lemony Potato Salad and Mesclun and Cherry Salad with Warm Goat Cheese, both from epicurious as well).

And so our summer continues.  Our fridge is full, our tummies are happy, and we hear rumors of lots of eggplant, squash, and basil to come.  What have you been cooking?

By Stephanie

Since my last post, we’ve continued to pick up weekly shares of local, organic vegetables from our CSA every Tuesday.  And as our summer weekend travel schedule heated up (we were out of town six weekends in a row, people), our feelings about the bags of produce began to change.  What was once an occasion for curiosity and excitement (“What’s this?  Oooooh, look at all the spinach!  I love radishes with salt!”) became less so.  And it seemed as though our “share” increased in size and quantity in inverse proportion to the time I had to cook creatively that week.  My husband would walk in the door with four or five or SIX plastic grocery bags of Green Things, and I would cringe.

“Look at that kale!  It’s like a tree!” I said, a couple weeks ago as the leafy stalks lounged in my sink, waiting to be washed.  I shoved them unceremoniously into the fridge, and when I was showing my babysitter the dinner options the next night, I apologized.  ”There’s a lot going on in there right now,” I muttered, as kale and chard spilled out of the crispers and a giant bunch of basil threatened to fall out of the door.  When does kale go OUT of season, I wondered.

Then my sister-in-law alerted me to a recipe that her CSA had passed along for Kale Chips.  She claimed that her children loved them.  So the next afternoon, I went ahead and made them, glad, at least, for a way to use up all that leafy greenery for another week.  Here’s her recipe: