We’ve started a new routine here in the teeny tiny foodie kitchen. #WeCookWednesday will be a day Eliana and I cook something she wants to make just for fun. Usually, we cook together for the sake of preparing a meal for our family, but I want to begin giving Eliana the opportunity to choose what we cook so she can take more ownership and control in the kitchen. Yeah, that giving up some control thing is a teeny tiny bit hard for me, but I’m working on it. 😉 So, for our first official #WeCookWednesday recipe, Eliana and I made an adapted
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If you’ve been reading teeny tiny foodie, you may have figured out that I’m a mama on a mission. My mission is to keep my 3-year-old daughter from becoming a “picky eater.” So often I hear parents talk about how their kids used to eat “everything” and once they became toddlers they stopped eating all but around 5 foods. So, I’ll let you in on a secret: Over my dead body will that happen to my daughter. Want to learn more and get the recipes for 5 dishes Eliana and I love to make together? Head over to Eating Rules
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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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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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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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Have you heard about the breakfast phenomenon that is “Overnight Oats?” Think oatmeal without the heat and without the porridge-like texture. It is a brilliant breakfast invention that cooks itself overnight with less than 10 minutes of hands-on time! It’s so freakin’ easy that I’m totally embarrassed to say that it took me a few tries to work out some kinks and get it “right.” But, as a result of my kitchen fails, I now have a recipe, and some tips, to share with you! And if you have a teeny tiny sous chef at home, he or she can
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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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Kale can be a pretty scary looking vegetable to foodies young and old. And if you taste it raw, your fears may well be confirmed by the slightly bitter taste of the rough and tough leaves. Want to know how to make kale taste tender and a little bit sweet? It’s so easy and hands-on (literally) that even your own teeny tiny sous chef can do it! You simply massage the kale. By massaging kale, you “cook” it and make it tastier and easier to digest, too. So, go ahead and give it a good rub down! How To Massage
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I don’t know about you, dear reader, but for me 2014 has been a year of learning. To be honest, I’m a total nerd and get all psyched about learning new things that interest me. Can you guess what interests me a lot? FOOD, of course! So, since January I’ve been taking some online classes about cooking, nutrition and food safety. Let me tell you, I thought I knew a lot about keeping my food and my family “safe” in the kitchen. But there are some facts that surprised me that I must share with you. Even if you do not
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There are few dishes I love more than a vegetable strata. A strata is basically a frittata but with a layer of bread at the bottom, which makes it a complete dish of protein, carbohydrates and produce all in one. It’s a great BLD meal you can serve for breakfast, lunch or dinner. When I feed my family, my goal is to serve a meal that has a combination of protein, starch and produce, so a strata is an easy way to pack it all in. To make a strata, you can use whatever fresh vegetables you have on hand
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