Sweets ARE Allowed!

I love scouring through all the fun food blogs out there. The other day while my daughter was looking over my shoulder wondering what “new” creation mommy was going to cook she noticed a recipe for Oreo Chocolate Chip cookies. She preceded to read the recipe exclaiming what a great idea for dessert. Yes, we do allow sweets in our house. I must admit, I am a very cautious and diligent mom when it comes to the amounts of sweets and desserts provided to the girls. I did not grow up indulging in sweets by the dozen but they were readily available most of the time. My mother is a fabulous baker…cook…concocter of meal, so we had plenty of chances to bite our teeth into a nice and hot cookie from the oven. The special part about my childhood was we rarely ever had store bought sweets. Hence, might be why I’m so obsessed in providing fresh non processed foods for my family too!



Anyway, my oldest daughter is great at understanding the importance of fruits and veggies first then a sweet or two every now and then. My favorite is when she declares she must have dessert then we ask what she is thinking of and she proclaims she wants a peach, or cantaloupe or a smoothie for dessert. How nice! So we saw this recipe for Oreo cookies and I starting thinking of a substitute, my own version of the cookie. Since I’m not an Oreo fan, never liked the fake icing inside made from questionable man made fat and chemical items, I wanted something fun for her to enjoy breaking up and throwing into the dough. We took off for the kitchen and found a box of Back to Nature Chocolate Mint cookies, very similar to Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies- perfect addition! I just needed to decide what else I wanted to do differently to make my own yummy version. Mint extract- perfect to go along with the vanilla. Try them out for your family. They might like the minty twist. Honestly, they would be even better with some vanilla ice cream, who's grams of sugar.



Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies

•1 stick softened butter
•1/4 cup + 2 tbsp sugar
•1/4 cup + 2 tbsp brown sugar
•1 egg
•½ tsp vanilla
•¼ tsp mint extract
•1¼ cups flour
•½ tsp baking soda
•½ tsp salt
•8 mint chocolate cookies, broken into pieces
•1 cup dark chocolate chips (semi sweet works fine too)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or use nice non-stick sheet.
In a large bowl, beat together butter, white sugar, brown sugar, egg and vanilla and mint extract until creamy.
In a separate bowl combine flour, baking soda and salt in large bowl and mix thoroughly. Slowly add dry ingredients to wet and mix. Add chocolate chips and crushed cookies, stir until just combined.
Drop by the spoonful onto the cookie sheet. Bake for 7–9 minutes, or until golden brown, but still soft. Let cool on baking sheet 3 minutes before transferring to cookie rack. Enjoy.

Warning: Strange Ingredient Ahead...see if you can find it!

I found this very strange recipe awhile ago while searching for a good black bean dish. On Vegetarian Times site I ran across a Banana and Black Bean Empanada recipe. Banana you might say...yes, it calls for bananas. It has taken me a full week to get my courage up to finally fix this for my Meatless Monday dinner. Since my husband has taken a coaching job this fall we get to have some fun McD girls meals. This also means I get to fix strange dishes like this one for some kids who wouldn't know the difference. Now I can't wait to hear my oldest start asking for bananas in more meals.

http://www.vegetariantimes.com/recipes/10935?section
I took the Veg.Times recipe and made a few modifications.


For the crust you will need:

2 cups whole-wheat flour
1/2 cup all- purpose flour (of course you can use more all-purpose instead of WW if desired)
1/2 tsp of chili powder
4 tbs. cold butter, cut into small chunks
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 tbs. white wine vinegar



Filling

1 tbs olive oil
1 cup chopped onion
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 cup sweet potato, chopped in small chunks
1 clove mined garlic
1 banana, peeled and diced
1 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp coriander
2 tbs. chopped fresh cilantro
1 tsp. hot red pepper sauce (optional)




To make crust: sift flours, salt and chili powder in bowl. Mix in butter with fingers until mixture is crumbly. In a separate bowl, mix applesauce, vinegar and 1/4 cup of cold water. Stir applesauce with flour mixture to form dough. Knead dough on a lightly floured surface until dough makes a ball. Wrap ball in plastic wrap or in sealed container, and chill for an hour or overnight. (I chilled mine for about 4 days since it took me so long to get the courage to make this darn dish.)



To make filling, heat oil in large skillet. Saute onion and garlic for 4-5 minutes. Add sweet potato and cook for an additional 5 minutes. When potato is semi-soft, add beans and and mix. Stir in banana, cumin and coriander, cook for another 2 minutes, or until banana and spices are fragrant. Remove from heat and mix in cilantro and pepper sauce if desired.



Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Break off dough into 12 balls and roll each out onto a floured surface into 6-inch. Place spoonful of filling in center of circle. Pinch together edges and sprinkle with water to seal and make for a crunchy crust.




Next step... place on plate to serve to family and friends serve with a little sour cream and remember don't tell them what's inside. They will LOVE them! Trust me, my girls ate all of their empanadas but most of all... my husband ATE 2 of them and wanted more. WOW! What a hit.

Remember the most important thing about cooking for your family is to provide healthy food with love. Even make it fun. I added a little history to dinner tonight. My oldest and I got into a little Spanish geography lesson. Tell me what's happening at your dinner table. Cheers!

It's Lunchtime

As I prepare to send my oldest gal off to kindergarten, I am reminded that I’ve got to be ready to pack a lunch for her EVERYDAY. When she was in preschool I only needed to send a lunch two days a week and we were pretty limited in what could go in her lunch, needed to be disposable-ugh! Well, now that we are heading into “big school” she is ready for a real lunch. Am I up for this chore? Of course I am, this is what I live for- coming up with fun, enjoyable healthy foods for my kids to eat. Don’t get me wrong there are and will be plenty of mornings when I will dread packing her lunch. I’m not always all smiles and giggles in the kitchen. We have plenty of battles in the evening with dinners and I am sure we will have them with the lunches too.



I really wanted to purchase a Bento box http://www.laptoplunches.com/ for her lunch but decided to do that later. Instead, I purchased a really cute sandwich box and a small insulated bowl for her lunch bag. You can check them out here http://www.trudeaucorp.com/us/products/fuel/default She’s all excited that they are pink. Remember what the food is served in can make a difference in their wiliness to eat.





Now the food that will be housed in the new cute containers. My oldest daughter loves goat cheese! If goat cheese is on top she’ll eat it, well almost anything except butternut squash. I will hit the grocery store this weekend armed with two lists, one for our weekly meals and now one for lunches. Goat cheese will definitely be on the list. You might be wondering what I’ll do with the cheese for a kindergartner's lunch. Well, I plan on taking a whole wheat tortilla and spreading the cheese like butter and layering it with spinach, thinly sliced avocado, a couple of small slices of roasted chicken breast and a some slivered almonds. Once I add all the ingredients then I’ll roll the tortilla into a wrap, slice it up into at least three or four spirals and place them in her sandwich box. Perfect, she has a protein, actually two sources, two veggie sources, some fat and a complex carbohydrate. Can you begin to see how my mind works? I am constantly thinking in terms of “servings” and “sources”. I don’t always see the food pyramid but pretty close though. For her fruit I’ll cut up some watermelon with blueberries and cantaloupe and drizzle it with orange juice and sprinkle it with wheat germ and put it all in her dainty pink bowl.


For her drink- most of the time I'll put water in her water bottle(also from FUEL), but I’ll give her a juice box every now and then too. Nothing is wrong with a small amount of 100% fruit juice once or twice a day. See- the key is “small”. I recently discovered a new juice from Apple and Eve http://www.appleandeve.com/fruitables.php. Anytime my girls drink juice, it’s always watered down. Even at restaurants I’ll ask for them to add water to the drink. Yes, this is crazy, but you would not believe the amount of sugar (fruit still has sugar) that is in even 100% fruit juice. I also am not a believer in counting juice as a “serving” of fruit or veggies, unless you are really struggling with getting any fruit or veggies into your diet or are limited to liquid diet.

Here's another lunch idea:
An "egg"normous wrap:





Cook 2 eggs (hard boiled)
Peel and slice eggs. Place yolks in a bowl and mix with 1 tbsp of mayo (I prefer a canola based mayo or even an "eggless" mayo)Mash the yolk and mayo together, then add 1 tsp of mustard and 1 tsp of honey. If you want a little extra spice, add some curry powder. Next, mix in 1 cup of shredded carrot and salt if desired. Dice the egg whites and mix in with the yolks. Take a whole wheat tortilla, spread the egg mixture in the center and top with some shredded spinach. Gently roll and slice. Perfect!

A McDonald’s meatless Monday meal

Not so long ago I was a vegetarian. Yes, I loved everything non-meat (and still do!). Tofu, tempheh, TVP, soy protein, beans, quinoa, kamut and many other odd Co-op shopping favorites could be found in my pantry. Part of my reason going veg-head was the health aspect. I wanted to do things a little different than some of my family members. My dad had his first heart attack at the early age of 42 and I will never forget the image of him laying on the swing under our deck, all grey and clammy. My dad had a couple of bad habits including indulging in a fatty fast food restaurant meal for lunch to insisting on having plenty of meat on the dinner table. The other habit was smoking which I will leave for another blog entry due to my soap box tendencies-but he has since quit this habit!

Anyway, the choice of meat was always cooked with care by my mom and by the way, she was very careful in what she served me, but meat was plentiful. I realize growing up in the 70’s and 80’s meat was the thing. I mean Spam was the next best thing to the golden arches. You could either see pork chops, hamburgers, sloppy joe’s, spaghetti with meat sauce or meatballs, country fried steak or the nastiest-bologna and hot dogs served at any family or friend gathering. Somehow I was the one who always wanted to be different, and still am. But, my decision was not ONLY based on health. It was also based on being introduced to John Robbins and Diet for a New America, www.amazon.com/Diet-New-America-John-Robbins/dp/0915811812 and from working in a really cool health food store that opened in Lexington, Rainbow Blossom. As I mentioned in my first post, How May I Help You?

So, I was a pretty strict veg-head for about 8 years. Living in Portland, Oregon was the ideal place to feed my beliefs, but right before moving to Asheville, North Carolina I decided, for my own health reasons, to start eating a little chicken. Before long I was even craving, I blame this on my pregnancy, a more B-12 filled meat source---beef. After feeding this craving I noticed I was feeling sluggish and blah. So, back to the flexitarian eating plan. With having kids to feed, I feel that nutrition should be our number one priority in the kitchen and at the dinner table, so I enjoy introducing my girls to all the odd Co-op shopping foods.

Here are the main ingredients I started with last night:





I diced the onion and sauteed it with a clove of garlic in 1tsp of EVOO. Then added 1cup of diced yellow squash and 1/2 of block of tofu crumbled. I let this cook for about 5 minutes or until the juices from the tofu cooked down and started resembling scrambled eggs. Next I added 2cups of spinach, 1tsp of Trader Joe's 21 Season Salute, 1tsp of tumeric and 1tsp of salt. Let this mix together for a few minutes and then I served it with some chunks of goat cheese on top. Yummy! My girls and hubby enjoyed every bite. Success!









Please check out this great site for fabulous ways to incorporate a meatless motto into your weekly meals. http://www.meatlessmonday.com/