Cooking through winter: Couple healthy veg recipes, as -friendly as they get

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comfort food, healthy food, recipes, seasonal, vegetarian, winter food

Garlicky gnocchi with butternut squash puree and kale.

Winter is here. It took its sweet time, but I’ve already cursed while scraping my windshield, so it’s official. I can’t think of any new ways to stay warm other than my basic standbys: red wine or chocolate stouts, bubble baths, fleece-lined leggings under everything, and comfort food.

Except I ate about 600 holiday cookies too many and am a little concerned about my starch and dairy intake—less because of gaining weight, more because I don’t want to (re)introduce myself or my eating-machine 3yo to crappy habits.

I always say I wish this was a food blog. I could blog about food every day. Maybe I should just change the name to “Dinner dates with Jax” (or the food blog name I’ve carried in my head for years: Unsophisti-kitchen).

Here are a couple new dishes I’ve done that were kid-friendly, waist-friendly, palate-friendly, consciousness-friendly, earth-friendly, winter-friendly…the kind I’d make if friends were coming over. 

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Would you like orange fries with that? Kid food, patience, and creativity

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cooking, eat your vegetables, fast food, french fries, get creative, good eating habits, happy plate, healthy, homemade popsicles, kid food, meal time rules, patience, toddler food, toddler meal ideas

Ordered! “Mamasicles,” but should be called, “There are vegetables in this bwahahahaha.”

I have made inroads into the ongoing struggle to get my kid to eat vegetables, and also demonstrated the kind of persistence and patience worthy of some sort of medal.

Jax used to love veggies. When he was just starting out with teeth, he chased sweet peas around his highchair tray, devoured my spinach quiches, and once sprayed the front of one of my hoodies with mashed carrots because he’d jammed so much into his mouth that I called him a chipmunk and he started laughing.

It all changes once kids taste crappy food.

Watermelon weather and letting myself complain

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complaining, complaint, heat, humidity, I don't want to cook, it's hot, letting myself complain, watermelon, watermelon weather

I carried a watermelon. Photo by Flickr user Sam Valadi (Creative Commons license).

It’s hot. Waaa. I’m going to complain about the heat. I’m going to say what’s become a joke in my house, a whiny summer refrain that passes for small talk when it’s so hot you’d rather drive nails into your feet than talk to people: It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.

I’m going to say that, because that’s what it is. I’m giving myself permission to be a cranky cliche right now.

I love summer. I love heat. I don’t even mind moderate humidity. But the heat index was 103 Sunday and close yesterday and I can’t stay cool and my kid is climbing all over me with his adorably stifling head of crazy pin curls and how is he still moving?

Market, memoir, and magic: Take nothing for granted

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choice, Damien Echols, Eddie Vedder, farmer's market, food, inspiration, Life After Death, magic, memoir, take nothing for granted, West Memphis Three

I’ve finally read Damien Echols’ Life After Death. I’ve seen exactly none of the documentaries about the West Memphis Three (yet), though I’ve poured over wm3.org and followed the case in the later years of Echols’ (and Baldwin’s, and Misskelley’s) incarceration with interest and empathy.

I’ve considered what it must be like to suffer though you’ve done nothing wrong, and to have few people believe you.

So I read the 400-page memoir over two days last week and then, with no time to sit and reflect, closed the book and jumped up to make the farmer’s market before it closed.

I did not expect to find chanterelle mushrooms. I bought them.

This past weekend, I fried them up and ate them and Echols’ words flashed back into my brain as I chewed.

I blogged while hungry again: Muffin tin quiches

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feed me, food, food matters, healthy food, muffin tin quiche, picky eaters, quiche, recipe, sneaking veggies into food, toddler food, vegetarian

I won’t say that my blog is having an identity crisis, only that perhaps I am, but I think it still kind of wants to be a food blog.

I pin a lot of recipes on Pinterest—because sometimes my tiny eater is picky but I’m not. I like to cook and eat new things. It’s a different interpretation of all the “trying” I document here.

The challenge to get my kid to eat vegetables continues. Right now, he’s really into cheese and fruit with his protein. He won’t completely ignore veggies, but he doesn’t ask for them or go to town on them, either. We do a lot of broccoli mac and cheese, shrimp and shroom alfredo linguini, and veggie pizza.

And when mama needs a break from that stuff, she resorts to sneaking greens and reds and oranges into likable, recognizable staples. Enter the muffin tin quiches.

I heart farmer’s markets

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buy local, eat local, farmer's markets, vegetarian

Cipollinis from a farmer’s market last fall. I didn’t even get them home before I had to snap a pic of their awesomeness.

The farmer’s market came back to my town a little earlier in the season than usual, so I’m taking this opportunity to geek a little bit, and to share one of my major “I try”s in life: to buy and eat seasonal, locally sourced produce.

When I left home to gallivant around the country for some years, there was no farmer’s market here, to my knowledge (if any Huntingdonians are reading, correct me if I’m wrong, by all means). There were plenty of roadside stands to buy tomatoes and sweet corn, maybe a watermelon or some funky squash in the fall, but a collection of vendors at a consistent time and place each week? I never saw one.

A new thing I’m trying is getting people to try new things

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food, spaghetti, trying new foods, trying new things, zucchini

Spaghetti made out of zucchini! With shrooms! In alfredo! Eat it and like it.

I used to think being described as “preachy” or “demanding” was a horrible thing. It’s something I’ve actively tried not to do, for a very long time, to varying degrees of success.

Mostly, this relates to food. I love food, as evidenced by the fact that I don’t have a food blog but I sort of blog about food constantly. I’m an 11-year pesco-lacto-ovo vegetarian (i.e., I eat fish, dairy, and eggs, but no other animal products). I’ve been the victim of countless, shameless attempts to coerce or trick me into eating meat, and it sucks, and I never wanted to do that to anyone else with, say, tempeh or kale.

My toddler might be a foodie

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blueberries, breaded cauliflower bites, breakfast grilled cheese, cauliflower, foodie, foodie toddler, picky eater, picky toddler

Grilled cheese with blueberries!

I mom-ed so hard this weekend, you guys.

I always thought the greatest pleasure or sense of satisfaction I would ever experience re: food would be a direct result of eating it. Then I started cooking a lot in my mid-20s and revised that notion: creating and THEN eating something spectacular is the best.

Then I had Jax. 

Pear bread and possibilities

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baking, banana bread, gratitude, job hunting, new jobs, pear bread, pear bread recipe, possibilities, recipe, toddler food

When life hands you pears, make pear bread. Seriously, it’s so good.

As evidenced by a second food post in a week, I’m on a baking binge.

I used to be in the habit of baking something every weekend, to last into the week. Then I had Jax. But since that little man, while picky about some things, likes baked goods a whole freaking bunch, I decided to try to resurrect this practice. The apple cheddar scones disappeared quickly and I wanted some bread. I wanted banana bread. I was out of bananas and it was freezing and leaving the house just wasn’t going to happen.

But I had these pears.

Thought for food: Picky toddler eaters, making time for experimenting, and apple cheddar scones

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apple cheddar scones, food blogs, foods kids like, healthy food for toddlers, picky eaters, Pinterest, Smitten Kitchen, toddler eating habits, toddler meal ideas, toddler snack ideas

I could make these scones, which are packed with roasted Granny Smith apples and extra sharp Vermont white cheddar, every day. If I had time.

One of my obsessions has always been food and cooking. I toyed with the idea of starting a food blog instead of singlewritingmom, but why can’t I talk about food here? We all gotta eat, right?

Food is an especially relevant, important, and often frustrating topic when you have a toddler. My little man, Jax, is a relatively good eater, but he has his moments. Lately he’s decided pasta is the enemy. What kid doesn’t like pasta, you ask? Mine. He won’t take more than a few bites of it before turning his head to the side and trying to knock the spoon out of my hand.