There seems to be this idea out there that kids will not eat vegetables. There are suggestions to disguise the vegetables as trees, or puree them and hide them in the brownies. I just don’t get it. Sure, some kids are neophobes — they will view anything unfamiliar with suspicion. And some kids won’t touch anything green. But I think it’s our job as parents not only to get them to EAT vegetables, in some sneaky and underhanded manner, but to actually get them to like vegetables, as vegetables. That’s going to serve them a lot better in life than never eating spinach unless it’s part of a cupcake.
The challenge is in how to do that. And there is no answer that works for every kid. Try different things. Prepare vegetables in different ways. Try roasting them, or sauteeing with a little bacon, or serving a salad, or baking into a lasagna. Let them dip the vegetables in ranch dressing, or cover them with a cheese sauce. If they don’t like green vegetables, cook carrots or cauliflower or pattypan squash. Make vegetables, in all of their wondrous variety, a part of their life.
Before you run screaming for the hills, don’t think that the Nuni is sitting there saying “How about some cardoons for Sunday brunch today, Mom?” She’s not a great eater in general in terms of quantity, and macaroni and cheese or ice cream tend to be more successful than bell peppers and eggplant. (And I fully admit that there have been nights when dinner WAS ice cream, ideally washed down by a vitamin and some green juice from Trader Joe’s (that stuff is magic — it looks like pond scum, but tastes like bananas and mangos, and has things like spinach and seaweed in it). But I keep trying. I serve her the veggies she’ll reliably eat, like carrot sticks and raw broccoli, and I keep trying new preparations on her. And occasionally, I hit gold.
Last week we were driving home, carrying on our typical patter “Who did you play with today? What books did you read? What do you want for dinner?” (the answer is usually “Macaroni and cheese, because that’s a dish she remembers), when she suddenly piped up “I want kale for dinner.” Kale? My child wants kale? Not one to miss an opportunity, I stopped at the Whole Foods on the way home to pick up some kale, and rushed when I got home to prepare these kale chips.
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Tags: kale·Kid Friendly·Vegetables·Vegetarian·weeknight
The summer after I graduated from college, I took off for Europe. I wasn’t living the bohemian life with a backpack and a Eurail pass (Quel horreur!), I was traveling with my parents and about 30 college juniors on a summer program for my mom’s university. The downside of this plan was that I spent three weeks in a hotel room with my parents in what may be the most boring down on the French Riviera. The upside was that we got to take a leisurely coach ride (OK, it was a bus, but coach sounds much more romantic with its regency overtones) from Paris, through Southwestern France, and into Provence. We visited Chateaux in the Loire Valley, peered over the defensive walls in Carcassonne and tasted wine in the caves of Bordeaux. But the experience that really stuck in my mind was the day we visited the goat farm. We drove up through bucolic pastures into a fenced yard which held any number of baby goats, and then we were ushered to a small restaurant where we ate a five course lunch featuring goat cheese. There was goat cheese quiche and goat cheese flan, and aged cheeses with fruit. But the dish that I loved the best and that I still remember, many years later, was a goat cheese salad with honey. The sweetness of the honey perfectly balanced the pungency of the cheese, and the vinaigrette on the salad added a lovely acid note.
It was that dish that I had in mind when I created this maple mustard chicken with goat cheese. I’m always looking for new things to do with chicken, which seems to be the ubiquitous protein, and to add some flavor to chicken breasts. In this dish, Chicken breasts are pounded thin, and then marinated in a sweet vinaigrette of maple syrup, mustard and lemon juice. They’re then spread with good fresh goat cheese and some arugula (which adds a lovely nutty taste) and then baked.
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Tags: chicken·weeknight
I have a little bit of a cookbook problem. You see, when we moved to our current home, we dedicated a reasonable sized bookcase to the cookbooks. It had four shelves, was about two and a half feet wide, and seemed perfectly fine. Until I started putting my cookbooks on it. There was a little overflow, a few cookbooks I put on another shelf, some books that I recategorized as “travel books.” But the problem only got worse. It’s not that I buy a ton of cookbooks — I mean, I do buy a few, sometimes to cook with, sometimes as a souvenir when I’m traveling, sometimes because I really can’t resist a used book sale. But I also receive cookbooks as gifts. And cookbooks have a way of finding their way into my house in other ways too. As a result, I have several cookbooks that are more for recreational reading than actual cooking, per se, and several more that never really see the light of day (but do look so ornamental on that bookcase. And the surrounding bookcases as well.)
The point is, I have a lot of cookbooks, and while I don’t mind this, my husband seems to think my collection is a bit … excessive. So you know a new cookbook is good when he comes up to me and says “You know, that cookbook really fills a niche that I think was missing from your cookbook collection.” This cookbook isn’t only endorsed by me, it’s endorsed by him, and that is a rare thing indeed, when it comes to cookbooks.
The cookbook in question is, of course, The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook by Jaden Hair
. People who are up on the food blogging community will recognize Jaden from her popular blog, Steamy Kitchen, and if you’ve met her in person or seen her on TV, you know that she has a lot of personal charisma and energy (Full disclosure — I met Jaden at the 2009 Blogher Food Conference, and I received a complimentary copy of the book through the conference after party), but even if you’ve never heard of Jaden Hair, this is a book you’ll want in your kitchen.
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Tags: Asian·cookbooks·Noodles·shrimp·weeknight
