Home cooking for a Tot

My sweet girl hates mashed potatoes - how can this be? She also rejects eggs, avocados, most other vegetables, popsicles, pizza, fish, beans, and quite a few other things. Mealtimes are constant, but they are also nerve-wracking -- what will I make her? Will she eat it? So tonight I baked a macaroni and cheese casserole, tweaking a Moosewood recipe:

1 and 1/2 cup low-fat cottage cheese
1 and 1/2 cup organic whole milk
1/2 t dry mustard
1/2 t salt
1/4 t black pepper
1 cup cheddar cheese
2 T Parmesan cheese
4 T Italian bread crumbs
8 oz. macaroni noodles (uncooked)

Moosewood instructs you to blend the cottage cheese, milk, dry mustard, salt, and pepper in a food processor, but I do it by hand. Then add the cheddar cheese and uncooked noodles and spread in a greased 9-inch pan. Add the Parmesan and bread crumbs on top and then bake at 375 degrees for 45-50 minutes. Voila! I just hope she likes it. I'll take a photo of her eating it/refusing it either way...

Whole Wheat Tagliolini and Ice Cream Cake

Last weekend I felt ambitious in the kitchen and made this healthy, fresh, time-consuming recipe, Whole Wheat Tagliolini from Cooking Light.

We've also been making this very, very easy ice cream cake recipe from Real Simple. Both dishes go quickly in this household.

In other news, while I haven't been good about taking photos of food lately, my friends and I are pretty good at capturing my daughter in action. So here are a few photos of our summer:

Cranberry Chocolate Chip Cookies

C is for...cookie salad!

I miss baking, and since friends from out of town are staying with us this week, what better excuse? So tonight I made this recipe, and the cookies are both pretty and plentiful. I so love hanging out in the kitchen with a book (well done JSF), a computer, and cookie batter.

I've also really enjoyed reading this series this past week, so much that I feel even more reflective than usual about life with our 1-year old (walking!) girl these days.

The one whose laughter is (pretty much) worth all the tears.

And as we increase the number of hours we need childcare, I can relate more than ever to the moms trying to squeeze in work while caring for a tot. I've given a lot of thought to "finding balance" but in the end I agree with those who say there is no achieving balance -- sometimes you do X very well, other times you do Y. Just a thought.

By the way, even though I don't cook or bake too often these days, I still fantasize about cooking complicated curry dishes and French country cooking. I would love to make cake pops or peach muffins or even an arugula salad, but for now most of my energy is utterly zapped by the time I get around to dinner. So cheers to daydreaming. Until next time xo

Frozen fruit salad and vegan cupcakes

Wow, I haven't posted in forever!

I guess the day-to-day juggling act of working and caring for a young tot has made it hard to remember to post when I cook -- and that's not exactly too often these days! We've mostly been living off Amy's vegetarian and vegan pizzas, baked potatoes with broccoli, and pasta/salad/soup dishes. I also haven't baked in forever - until today.

Anyway, we're not vegan, but I've been more interested in vegan baking lately, so this afternoon I made these pretty cupcakes:

http://www.lovintheoven.com/2007/11/peanut-butter-cupcakes-vegan-style.html

I eyeball/measured the frosting, mixing powdered sugar, cocoa powder, vanilla extract, soymilk, and olive oil.

Then I also made this fruit salad that my mother always used to make for the Fourth of July -- so very sweet!

Frozen Fruit Salad:

Ingredients:
1 and 1/2 c sugar
Frozen orange juice
Large can of fruit cocktail
3 bananas, sliced
10 oz bag of sliced strawberries
Small can of pineapple (or use frozen)
Small can of peaches (frozen is fine too).

1. Boil 3 cups of water with your sugar, then remove from heat. Add orange juice and all fruits.
2. Pour into 9 x 13 pan or large tupperware and freeze overnight.

And too bad I couldn't capture photos of these items - they were gone baby, gone, before I could snap a few!

In other news, our precious girl is now 1! Some days I can't believe she has grown so fast, but I also remember trying to capture each moment in my mind, knowing it would soon pass. A friend of mine recently asked, "what did 6 months look like? what about 8 months?" and I can honestly recall vivid images of my daughter at each stage. At 6 months she had just learned to sit up, and at 8 months she had just learned to crawl. At 10 months she learned to sleep through the night. And at 1 year she abruptly decided she was done with nursing. She is consistently her own person, making her own decisions about her likes and dislikes. May we all be so lucky~xo

Baked Eggs

I remember my mom making this when I was young - it was my great aunt's recipe, a yummy one - great for brunches.

Recipe:
12 eggs, beaten

salt, pepper to taste

1 1/2 cups shredded yellow cheese (I used a mild cheddar)

3/4 cup milk (I used soy milk)

Mix together all ingredients. Pour into greased oblong pan (9 x 13). Bake 1 hour 350 degrees.

Cut into squares.

Sweet Potato Chips

My family has been eating these easy sweet potato chips, or fries a lot lately - for dinner, for breakfast, for in-betweens. They're so easy: you just wash and slice up a sweet potato, put them on a lightly greased baking sheet, add salt and/or spices, and put them in the oven at 375 degrees for 20 or so minutes. Delish.

And now, here's something to warm your heart on a cold day. My sweet girl...

Flaxseed Squares

This is another mother-in-law recipe that my family deemed "Shirley Squares." It's the kind of recipe that changes each time you make it, but this is the current version:

2 cups oatmeal
1 cup flaxseed (I used Bob's Red Mill)
1 (small) container of egg whites (or egg substitute, to make this a vegan recipe)
1 cup Splenda (or sugar or raw sugar if you like it less processed)
2 tsp cinnamon
4 dallops of applesauce

Spray baking dish with Pam or butter spray - mix ingredients and put in dish. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Yay for fiber!

Vegetable Soup, How I Adore Thee

The past few days my mother-in-law and I have made vegetable soup twice - so yummy. I don't have photos yet, but I will post one soon.

We've been using chopped and diced leeks, sweet potato, onions, cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, celery and vegetable stock. I could eat this every. single. day. And not tire of it.

We've also been slicing up sweet potatoes and making sweet potato fries. We've also been playing nursery songs over and over and over again so much that the lyrics get into my head at night and make it harder to fall asleep.

Happy February friends. xo

"Homemade" Pizza

Boy, Trader Joe's really does make it easy sometimes. Today I bought their ready-to-bake pizza dough, pizza sauce, organic mozzarella, and sliced mushrooms. After Rebecca went to bed, I simply rolled out the dough, added the sauce, cheese, and mushrooms, threw in some Morningstar tofu crumbles and leftover broccoli, and put it in the oven for 12 minutes. I like that so many products at Trader Joe's boast "no artificial colors, flavors, and preservatives."

This pizza is the first meal I've made at home in a while - we've been out of town for 8 days, hanging out with dear friends outside Boston and then visiting Smith College in Northampton where I did some research for the diss. We did a bit of cooking in Northampton - including a lovely spinach frittata out of one of James Beard's cook books that I will have to try again soon. I also fell in love with a new recipe for yogurt sorbet, drank a glass of wine every night and read a great book while there. I am going to try to keep this drinking, reading and cooking up as a recipe for more happiness;)

In other news, we're still experimenting with Rebecca's diet. She did not do well with the carrots, and applesauce is still not appealing to her, but she's gladly accepted peas, pears, bananas (finally) and sweet potatoes, along with a few kinds of cereal and some flat rice crackers. I'm using this baby cook book for inspiration, and I will try butternut squash next.

She turns seven months old in two days and I can't believe she's so big already. She's been waving lately, getting on all fours but not yet crawling, and I think (hope!) that she recently said "ma". She still thinks books are chewing toys, and she likes to dance when I play tunes on youtube. Her naps are still not on a "schedule" but I'm more okay with it now. Tonight I sang to her a bit and played with her feet before bed and it was the sweetest part of my day.

Otherwise I'm back to working on the dissertation. With gusto! I haven't written this much since before I gave birth, and, well, it's about time. Here's some dissertation humor for you: A few months ago I thought it would be wonderful to interview the doctor who ran the first clinical trial of the birth control pill in Puerto Rico. Well, what do you know - Harvard thought so too and did so through one of their oral history projects in 1987. I wound up reading the transcript at Smith, which has helped me start off a new chapter.

Anyway, that's all my news these days. To anyone out there reading, I hope you have a lovely night, and here is a recent photo of Rebecca as she was eating a cracker:

Happy New Year!

We rang in the New Year at home with red wine and Greek takeout from here. Our baby fell asleep at 5:30 and Jake came home at 6ish. I wasn't wearing heels and glitter, but we watched The Town and talked about the past year together - one of the most amazing years of my life, I must say. It wasn't an easy year, but it inspired awe.

Then this morning I used our new Baby Pro baby food maker to make a very simple carrot puree, which, thank goodness, our fairly particular baby actually ate. I'll spare you the photo of the carrot puree -- which looks identical to the photo of the sweet potato puree. Instead I'm leaving you with this, my current favorite pic of Becca lounging on my in-laws' patio. Sigh, La Vida Miami: