Quinoa can be a tricky ingredient. It can be as easy to cook as rice, but there are some simple steps one must take to ensure it comes out well. I used to wonder why my quinoa was sometimes mushy, had an off taste and well, kind of sucked. I felt so silly when I realized a couple simple steps would make it so much better. So now I’m turning my previous kitchen failure into your success and sharing with you the secrets to cooking a great batch of quinoa. 1. After you measure out the quinoa, pour it into
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How To Roast Cauliflower I used a pretty green cauliflower Eliana chose at the store but the steps are the same no matter the color. Ingredients: -2-3 cups raw cauliflower, roughly chopped -2-3 teaspoons olive oil -1 pinch each of salt, pepper and garlic powder, mixed together in a small bowl Preparation: Heat your oven to 375°F and line a small baking sheet or baking dish with parchment paper. Add all the ingredients to your baking sheet and mix together. (You can do this in a bowl if you prefer.) Toss so the cauliflower is well-coated. Transfer cauliflower
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Are you ready to take the challenge and cut out all processed foods this month? We are! This month, teeny tiny foodie will be joining Andrew, the brilliant blogger behind Eating Rules and founder of October #Unprocessed, along with thousands of others who are committing to cutting out all processed foods for the month of October. Intrigued? Head over to Eating Rules where Andrew outlines “The Kitchen Test” to find out more about what foods qualify for the challenge and what foods do not. There are also tons of tips and resources on the site to help you get started such as how
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Recently, I was asked to participate in the program Rock The Lunchbox in which bloggers create healthy lunches using products from various companies like Organic Valley, Annie’s Homegrown, Rudi’s Organic Bakery and more! To participate in this challenge, I was given coupons to use for different foods at the grocery store as well as great lunchbox containers like a reusable bag from Blue Avocado and stainless steel dishwasher-safe containers from Kid Conserve pictured above. For Eliana’s lunch, I put together: kale chips, cubes of watermelon, salsa, plain Greek yogurt for dipping and a 10 Minute Quesadilla. I used my favorite shredded cheese for the quesadilla
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I love quesadillas for a bunch of reasons. First, I’m basically a cheese addict, so something that consists mostly of melted cheese is a favorite in my book. Second, quesadillas can be on the table in around 10 minutes, so they are a lunch and dinner staple around here. Third, I love quesadillas because they can be customized to include anything you, and your family members, want. This way, everyone in the family can have fun “building” his or her preferred quesadilla and the food battles are kept at bay. Mom likes carrots and black beans? Toddler wants just corn
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I like to have fun in the kitchen. But I especially like to play around with recipes for muffins by adding various fruits, vegetables, herbs, seeds and whole grains to the mix. Literally. It’s a fun culinary challenge to come up with different, sometimes wacky and unexpected, flavor combinations. For this recipe, though, I wanted to create something simpler, using the bare minimum of ingredients necessary to create a muffin. These Straight Up Strawberry Muffins are delicious, easy to make alone or with the help of your teeny tiny sous chef and…they have less than 1 teaspoon of sugar per
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I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it again, one thing I love about eggs is that I can toss just about anything in them and make it into a meal. This week’s Monday Meal came about when I was emptying out the kitchen recently before leaving town. As I was searching around the kitchen I found a bunch of different ingredients that would need to be used before we returned. Here’s what I found: an onion, an ear of corn, and one zucchini leftover from our trip to the farmers market. I also found some leftover fresh mozzarella
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Over the last several weeks, we’ve been on an avocado kick in the teeny tiny foodie home. Avocados are delicious and are really good for you, though they can have a bad reputation because they are high in fat. However, they are full of good fats, as well as numerous vitamins, minerals and nutrients that provide many health benefits for the whole family. For example, avocados are filled with folate, which is a vitamin that promotes healthy cell and tissue development. This means it is an especially great addition to the diet of a pregnant mama, nursing mama, baby or
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The Big 3. No, not The Big 3-0, but The Big 3. My pediatrician warned me that while parents typically worry about the “Terrible Twos” they actually need to be on guard for what she calls the “Terrorist Threes”. Well, let me tell you that we are a little over a month into Eliana being officially 3-years old and I’ve coined my own term for it: the “Tyrannical Threes”. This is not to say that my sweet little lady couldn’t easily flip the switch and turn into a crazy person in an instant when she was the tender age of
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When you read the title of this recipe, you might question my use of black pepper in a recipe for little foodies as young as 6 months. So, here’s my thinking on that: introducing your baby to solids is your time to expose him to a variety of flavors and textures through various fruits, vegetables, proteins, herbs and spices. You are setting up your baby’s palette for what he will want to eat for the rest of his life. I’m not suggesting you load up your baby’s food with tons of spicy ingredients and make the poor thing gag, but
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When I shared my recipe for Yellow Squash & Tarragon Purée last week, I alluded to the fact that I’d be using it for a recipe for “grown ups”, too. Before I share that recipe below, I want to let you in on a little bit of my thinking behind this recipe… When I began making homemade purées and other first foods for Eliana when she was 6-7 months old, I typically bought extra amounts of the same fruits and vegetables I wanted to cook for my husband and me to use to make purées for Eliana. For example, knowing
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My teeny tiny foodie takes after me in a lot of ways. The most obvious way is that she basically looks like a “Mini-Me.” But, we also share a lot of personality traits, too. Like her Mommy, my little lady likes things the way she likes them and she has LOTS of opinions. Most recently, these opinions on how things “should be” manifested in the cupcakes she was dead set on eating at her birthday party this past weekend. Eliana basically demanded “magenta cupcakes” for her party and there was no way she was going to accept anything else. Being
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