Let's Talk Feast Foods...

Do you have must make recipes for holidays?  Foods that if they weren't part of your gathering it just would not be the same?  Foods you just have to make, whether anyone else eats them or not?  Do you potluck your holiday feasts or does one person do the majority of the food prep?  I adore hearing all about other folks holiday traditions when it comes to food.  Just yesterday I learned of two different families traditions that include Friday Pie-Day and a communal scavenger hunt.  I love these ideas and am gleefully working on figuring out how to work these in to our traditions in the future.  I mean Friday Pie-Day???  Seriously, this needs to become a phenomenon!  The woman I heard about this from told me she makes six pies of all sorts for Thanksgiving with the explicit intention of enough leftovers for many days of pie-for-breakfast for her and her kiddos to enjoy as well as a few extra pies for Friday Pie-Day.  They use the turkey leftovers to make turkey pot pie and have friends over for game night with loads of pie, sign me up.

For me I love to make fresh cranberry sauce, this year I found a game changing recipe that I do believe will become the keeper from here on out, it is like a cranberry sauce meets marmalade meets cocktail.  The red wine gives such a depth of flavor and cuts the tart of the berry just right.  We held some back from what we took over to my in-laws house just to be sure we had enough for home leftovers.  I also am often put on veg side dish duty for our family gatherings as I love coming up with tasty ways of sharing vegetables with others.  This year there were specific requests for waldorf salad and layered pea salad.  Leading up to Thanksgiving my youngest and I made candied yams to take to a friends-giving event at her school.  I discovered that when one reheats candied yams the marshmallows pretty much melt away, so we turned the leftover sweet yams into a new favorite meal by adding them to some big delicious sautéed brussel sprouts and chopped bacon for an amazing day-before-thankgsiving-eat-lots-of-veggies dinner here at home. My husband and I even enjoyed this for breakfast the day after with some leftover wild rice and a friend egg on top while our girls where off taking in all the Black Friday fun.  I am still thinking of that delish combo and hoping to recreate it soon and often.  This year I also experimented on a whim with a wild rice and sun choke dish that I really loved.  This started with sautéed leeks and sun chokes then added wild rice, pine nuts and dried cherries.  No recipe to share, but I do hope you will try combining these ingredients on your own,  the nutty flavor of the chokes and the rice made me very happy next to the turkey.  We even used leftover rice in soup the following day, repurposing leftovers makes me ridiculously happy.

I would love to hear about your favorite holiday foods to make and share as well as your family traditions, so please share them in the comments below, let's have a virtual feast together.

The Scramble...

I have a friend who regularly posts on Facebook pictures of the most amazing looking scrambles she makes herself for a late breakfast once the kiddos are off to school.  Seriously, every picture gets my mouth watering and sends me into a Pavlovian state of hunger.  She has totally inspired me to amp up my breakfast and lunch game when I am at home.

We have these lovely ladies who lay for us nearly every day, and I often have bits and pieces of leftovers that will not stretch to feed a family of four a second time around.  Put them together and it is usually pretty wonderful.  Today, my oldest had brought home some leftovers from a meal out with her fabulous aunties, a roasted veggie mix of squash and brussel sprouts, lentils and chickpeas.  I tossed the lot of it in a pan to heat up, scrambled a couple eggs and topped it all off with a bit of siracha, that is my kind of meal!  This has come to be my favorite go-to, not just as meal for one (sauté leftover cooked veggies and/or meat and serve topped with an egg cooked your favorite way) but its also a great way to stretch a quick family meal as well.

We started raising chickens a few years ago (something I encourage everyone interested to try, I mean there is nothing like eggs from your own back yard -- really) and have loved watching these ladies grow from day old chicks to the more mature bunch that they now are.  In the years we've had chickens we have counted ourselves very lucky to not have lost a single one... until now.  We lost our sweet little Daisy a couple weeks ago, and even just today I was telling my oldest how strange it is to arrive home and not see her big waddling white and black self running to great me.  She was the smallest chick when we started, we really didn't expect her to survive as she always seemed to be in utter distress, but she grew to be on of the biggest of our flock and a true personality.  We miss you Daisy...

Summer Salad Roundup...

Who wants to spend time at the stove when it's hot outside and there are so many fun things to get busy with?  Come summer,  I happily take a bit of a step back from the typical dinner fare we know and love throughout the rest of the year and cook more "picnic" style around here.  Healthy and filling salads become a go-to for me, as I'd much rather eek out more time at the beach with the girls, go on a picnic to any of the array of summer movies and outdoor concerts in the area, have fun out on our bikes, or let myself get totally engrossed in a great book.  I especially love it when a salad is hearty enough to stand up over night in the refridgerator - we are not afraid of leftovers around here.  Here's a sneak peak at my summer salad line up; variations on a Cobb Salad, must try this Mango and Red Pepper Salad, this Bok Choy Slaw, any sort of cold Rice Noodle Salad with a ginger dressing and slivered veggies, this Fennel Salad is calling me to try out, as is this simple Green Salad With Cherries, this Quinoa Salad is a favorite, a simple green salad loaded with nuts, beans or chicken, and all those little bits of veg needing to get used up, salsa (can we call salsa a salad?), and this Corn Salad looks like it would be a perfect picnic salad along side some sliced meats and cheese.  Last night we feasted on a cold rotisserie chicken, spinach topped with this Garbanzo Salad, and some left over chips and salsa (my oldest is our in-house salsa maker and we happily reap the benefits of such).

Yesterday my youngest came up with a new creation for lunch that I am sure will make a repeat visit as she happily exclaimed she'd take it to school for lunch any time.  She sautéed up a sliced zucchini in olive oil then added some chopped up roasted red pepper, a few cherry tomatoes from the garden and bits of leftover chicken, then she topped it with a few shavings of parmesan cheese.  Even my mostly vegetarian daughter enjoyed it.  We ate it warm as is, but I think it could be great cold with your favorite pasta as a salad or atop some fresh summer greens.  What I really loved about it was that she took a recipe of interest and shifted it to suit what we had on hand and our own personal tastes.  As a parent, one of my personal goals has always been to build a sense of competency in my girls around preparing good food for themselves.  I want them to have the ability to walk into the kitchen, scope the scene and make something tasty and relatively healthful for themselves.  I think we are on our way as the oldest has become my go-to condiment maker (salsa, pesto, guacamole etc...) and has really started developing an interest in baking and now the younger one is building confidence and skills too, she did not shy away from the huge knife I handed her to chop veggies and meat with yesterday.  Though I can't lie, I'd be tickled pink if they found the joy and sense of creative outlet in the kitchen that I do, mostly I want them to be able to feed themselves and those around them well without a box of this or that or a phone to call for delivery.

Well, back to those summer salads, do you change up your typical dinner routines this time of year too?  If so what are your favorite summer salads?  I'd love to hear what you all are living off this summer, I am sure there are so many possibilities that I haven't even thought of yet.

Lunch Made A Bit Easier

My kids pack their own lunches for school every day, and they have been doing so for the last 5 years. Initially it started from my own frustration over how crazy I was feeling in the mornings trying to send them off with a good breakfast in their bellies, get lunches made and everyone out the door on time with all the necessary books/homework/sports gear etc... needed for the day. So I threw my hands up and surrendered. I will be honest here and tell you all how very hard it was for me at first to let go of the micro-managing and directing as to what the girls should be packing and get past my own hang ups regarding packaged and prepared foods. I knew simplicity would be the key to success with my two, so yes I started buying baby carrots, individual yogurts, juice boxes, and Amy's frozen burritos (one per kid per week). My standing request is that they make sure to pack a good protein source and two fresh foods (one of which needs to be of the veggie sort). How that looks to each of them is very different. My oldest is really about no frills and convenience so she packs an apple every day along with either baby carrots or sliced cucumbers (snap peas if we have any), and leftovers which have been packed up the night before during dinner cleanup. My youngest needs more protein so she prefers to have cubed up smoked salmon or rolls of sliced turkey (she will on occasion also take leftovers), a double serving of any of the following - cut up red peppers, cucumbers, carrots, snap peas or tomatoes and some sort of nut and dried fruit combo. On occasion one or both of the girls will make a sandwich but it is definetly not a go-to for either of them. I chalk that up to the nature of my gluten free cooking, bread has all but fallen off their radar. Last year, seeing that packaged leftovers were trending high I started making some planned leftovers for their lunches like curried chicken salad, fried rice heavy on the meat and veg, and once in a while pesto pasta salad with peas and mozzarella cheese. Recently my oldest came home from an overnight with a friend and was raving about this new food she'd had there - tabouli. That sounded like the perfect opportunity to sneak some variety into the lunch rotation to me. So, true to my nature I took the idea and put my own twist on this traditional dish, starting with making it gluten free. I cooked up a bit of quinoa (a food I have yet to be successful getting my family to embrace) and tossed it with ribbons of kale, sliced kalamata olives, chopped tomatoes, slivered almonds, feta cubes and dressed it with lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper. I am sure a bit of red onion would be great in this too but with the plan being to send it for lunches I figured I'd do all involved a favor and leave those out. This is a quick dish to whip up that will keep anyone happily in grab-and-go lunches for the week. So if you have the heart to step out of the beautiful sunshine today offers, I strongly suggest making up a big bowl for this, I promise you will be so glad you did come tomorrow. My next hope is to get the girls thinking this way and to work on making up a big batch of this themselves for the week. Baby steps...