Soup. Just thinking about the word makes me feel warm and cozy. Now that winter is in full swing, soup is an easy meal I like to cook to nourish and warm my family from the inside out. What I love about this Very Veggie Soup is the flexibility of the ingredients. You can use any vegetables you prefer or already have on hand. Keep the following tips in mind as you prepare your soup: 1. Always start with the garlic and onions. They are flavor builders and should be in the pot the whole time your soup cooks.
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Typically, #WeCookWednesday is a day where Eliana and I cook something Eliana wants to cook. But, on this particularly Wednesday, she didn’t have anything she wanted to cook. I, however, was really excited to try out a new recipe for granola that had been rattling around in my head so I suggested to her that we make granola. Eliana is a big fan of granola, so she agreed to let me dictate the recipe that week. (Whew!) We did something a little different for this recipe. Before we began cooking, Eliana saw me writing out the ingredients and she wanted
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I love guacamole for a few reasons: 1. First, avocados are super good for you. Even though they have a bad reputation for being fatty, they are actually full of “good fats”. And avocados promote heart health, have anti-inflammatory benefits, help regulate blood sugar, and are filled with nutrients. 2. Second, you can easily customize the recipe for guacamole to your liking by adding more or less of any ingredient based on your particular taste. 3. Third, guacamole is a tasty snack all by itself or a delicious addition to eggs, sandwiches, nachos or quesadillas. Eliana and I recently made
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Months ago, I was searching on the Internet for a recipe for whole wheat pizza dough. I came across this recipe from Martha Stewart that creates one large ball of dough that can be turned into two large pizza crusts or eight individual-sized crusts. After a few months of tweaking the recipe, I’m happy to share my adapted recipe below. Typically, I like to use this recipe to make one large pizza for us to eat for dinner and four individual-sized crusts that I freeze for up to four months. Below the recipe, I explain how to freeze the crusts
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I’ve been a vegetarian/sometimes pescatarian for around 20 years and Thanksgiving is always a challenge. For years, I quietly ate whatever side dishes were served and hoped they weren’t made with any broths, stocks or animal bits I didn’t want to know about. But somewhere along the way I realized that just because I wasn’t going to enjoy the traditionally served dead bird on this holiday, didn’t mean I had to limit myself to eating a ridiculous amount of white carbs and random vegetables that might be served. I decided that I could actually be proactive and start contributing to
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Here’s a last minute idea for an easy vegetarian dish to make for your Thanksgiving table. This dish has delicious flavors, beautiful colors and lots of healthy goodness. You can make it a vegan dish by swapping the mozzarella cheese for cannellini beans or chickpeas. Enjoy! Farro with Butternut Squash Yields 4 servings Ingredients: -1 cup uncooked farro -2½ cups salted water -2 cloves fresh garlic, smashed and peeled -2 teaspoons olive oil -½ large yellow or white onion, diced -8 ounces roasted butternut squash, chopped into ½ inch cubes -4 ounces fresh mozzarella, chopped into small chunks
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A few weeks ago, I told you all about our new kitchen tradition called #WeCookWednesday. The first recipe Eliana wanted to make together for this event was Pumpkin Pie. We made the recipe a few times and created our own version that I am sharing today. Below is our recipe for Cinnamon Squash Pie. It’s so tasty, you just might want to swap out your traditional pumpkin pie for our version at your Thanksgiving dinner. A few notes about the recipe: 1. You can roast and purée the butternut squash ahead of time. Keep it in an airtight container in the
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In my experience, the trick to getting my toddler to eat soup is the mix-ins. Often Eliana will exclaim that she doesn’t like soup, even before she has tasted it or knows anything about it. That’s when I break out my secret weapons: tasty mix-ins! Croutons are my favorite item to mix into her soup because Eliana can’t resist carbs and she inevitably scoops up some soup as she digs out the croutons. Plus, the croutons absorb some of the soup so she gets even more of the soup into her belly. Without intending to, she eats almost an entire
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I used to hate squash. Really, I did. The only types of “squash” I knew were yellow squash or zucchini and I found them to be pretty blah tasting. So, I generally avoided those vegetables at restaurants, grocery stores and farmers markets. But, when Eliana came along and was ready for solid foods, I was in a tricky situation. I wanted to prepare homemade baby food and use mostly seasonal and locally grown vegetables, but during winter time in the northeast, what was available at the farmers markets? A bounty of winter squash. The least scary looking to me was
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Here’s how Eliana helped to make these muffins: 1. She measured and leveled the dry ingredients. She’s not able to do this independently or particularly well. But it will come eventually. 😉 2. She grated the zucchini. This was a little tricky because a grater is basically a bunch of little knives. So she did not grate the entire zucchini only about half of it before I took over. And, of course, I hovered over her to make sure her little fingers stayed far away from the blades. 3. She mixed the dry ingredients together with a fork. 4. She pressed down
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Want a last minute idea for a fun Halloween or fall-themed breakfast or lunch? Try these Spooky Pancakes made orange by Roasted Butternut Squash Purée. Here are some notes about the recipe: 1. I added frozen blueberries that I thawed in the fridge to make the eyes for a ghost face. I also used them to make speckled yogurt. You can substitute the berries for pomegranate seeds, chocolate chips or raisins. 2. I learned (the hard way) that you should press the cookie cutter onto the “uglier” side of the pancake. 3. Use whatever cookie cutters you like but I’m
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This week’s Monday Meal, Cracker Jack Quinoa, is one of my new favorite dishes and I’m excited to share it with you. There are a lot of different steps for this dish so it can take around an hour to cook it all at once. But, you can make parts of it ahead of time to save time on the evening you’d like to enjoy it. See below for ideas. A couple of notes about this recipe: 1. Up to 3 days in advance you can make the sauce and cook the quinoa. Keep the sauce in the refrigerator in
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