{this moment}: Party Girl

A Friday ritual. A few photos - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by SouleMama.

No More Picky Eaters

Back before I started this blog. Back before when my garden was tulips and daffodils, sage and lavender. Back when I started feeding my Little Man solids, the Good Apple and I made some decisions about our family and what we would be eating and how.


When I was pregnant, we cut out high fructose syrup and white flour. Then we went organic.


When it was time for the Little Man to eat, we decided he would eat what we eat and that we would eat well. We knew variety was the key and getting him to at least try foods. We are working on this with the Little Miss and it is much more challenging, but we are still holding our ground.


Planting the garden has helped a ton with the vegetable consumption of the Little Man, but it has turned him into a bit of a produce snob. Who wants frozen peas when you have snap peas off the vine as a snack in the summer?


While chatting with a group of parents recently, some were commenting how their kids would eat anything with Ranch or ketchup and other said theirs would eat only 4-6 things and they were frustrated with meals. I get that. We have our "standards" but that doesn't mean it is always easy or that the Little Man always has a smile on while digging into my latest creation.


Timing is EVERYTHING. I opened my email last night after I had put the kids to bed and there was an email from Elizabeth Pantley, the bestselling author of The "No-Cry" Solution Book Series. She was offering a special blogger contest to kick off the release of her newest book, "The No-Cry Picky Eater Solution - Gentle Ways to Encourage Your Child to Eat--and Eat Healthy." I want it all ready, actually, I REALLY could have used it last night. When it comes to crazy kid situations, I am always bouncing ideas off of my fellow mamas and consulting parenting books. This is a good set.


The book is filled with information, tips and solutions and it includes a chapter of recipes by many well-known family cookbook authors with fun recipes such as Pink Potatoes and Lord of the Apple Rings!


The winner gets a set of cookbooks and TWO sets of the "No-Cry Solution" series to keep or give away. I would give both away...to YOU!!!

The No-Cry Picky Eater Solution

The No-Cry Sleep Solution

The No-Cry Discipline Solution

The No-Cry Nap Solution

The No-Cry Potty Training Solution

The No-Cry Separation Anxiety Solution

The No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers & Preschoolers

In addition I would add in:

The Petit Appetit Cookbook by Lisa Barnes

The way I will choose the winner, if I win (fingers crossed for ya) is by randomly choosing someone who leaves a comment below about why they think they have picky kids or maybe you don't! Give us your best helpful hint.


Here are some excerpts from her book. I know you will be hooked!
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“If your child is a picky eater, keep the correct goal in mind. The objective is NOT to make your child eat more food…but to be sure that food choices are healthy ones.”


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"It can be hard - almost impossible sometimes -to change your child's rigidly held eating habits. Instead of trying to overhaul every meal and snack at once, begin by making a few small changes, one at a time, toward a more nutritious diet. Pick just a few items to start with. Once these become routine, then change another couple of items. If you follow this process, you'll find that within a year you will have improved your child's overall diet significantly; and likely affected his lifelong eating habits."


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"What's in your kitchen? A typical home contains plenty of healthy food, along with an assortment of snacks, desserts, and less healthy fare. An adult can sift through all this and decide what's best to eat, picking healthy options and judiciously choosing the right time for and amount of junk food and desserts.Children, however, will naturally be drawn to the tastiest option, with no guilt over the resulting choice. They will open the refrigerator or pantry and pick the most appetizing thing they see.
How can you help your child make better choices? The best way is to put the healthy foods where they can be seen easily and allow your child to choose between the nutritious options in view. Place desserts and junk foods on high shelves or in opaque containers. This way you can dole out the treats when and where you feel they're appropriate."


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"Health officials call soda liquid candy. It’s easy to see why: there is no nutritional value in soda and a twelve ounce can contains 9 to 12 teaspoons of sugar. A 20 ounce bottle contains 16 to 18 teaspoons of sugar! Having just one soft drink a day can increase a child’s risk for obesity by 60%."


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"Make family dinnertime a routine because your children who eat with their parents will eat healthier overall, have better social skills, be less likely to abuse alcohol and drugs later in life, and stay closer to you emotionally throughout childhood, and perhaps beyond. Family mealtime does not have to be formal, structured, or complicated to reap great rewards. A night when you eat sandwiches around the table while chatting about anything under the sun counts just as much as those more formal dinners.There are four things that shouldn't be brought to the dinner table: lectures, reprimands, rigid expectations, and demands for specific conversation.The key to success for the family dinner idea is regularity-four to five times a week or more. Families that make a practice of dining together in a relaxed, pleasant atmosphere reap the most benefits."


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Don't forget to leave a comment about your picky or non-picky eaters!!


(I am not being paid to deliver this post, however, I do stand getting two sets of the books to give to my readers along with some cookbooks I will most likely pass on to my readers as well. - I know as soon as the Good Apple sees a stack of cookbooks for the already jam packed cookbook shelf there will be a *discussion*.) The winner will be chosen at random on November 30th, 2011.

Soup's On: Julia Child's Potato Leek Soup Spun

“The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude.” ~Julia Child

She is a classic, without a doubt. Julia Child brought the home kitchen to a new level with her love of cooking, her personal flare and her cookbooks.

Last winter, as a homage to Ms. Child, I made her famous Potato Leek Soup, Potage Parmentier. I was expecting a hefty grocery list as I was searching for the recipe and then I read: potatoes, leeks, water, salt, cream (or butter) and parsley. Huh? This puzzled me. I had heard marvelous things about this soup. "All you need is a loaf of bread to go with it." "Perfect cold night soup."

I get it. There is something you do in the preparation of the soup, right? That has to be it.

Wait. What? There are only three steps?!? EPIPHANY.

Let the ingredients sing for themselves and they will. I made it. We loved it. It was that simple.

Being me, I wanted to give it a little spin. Just a little though. It was so good as it was. First, I changed it to chicken broth instead of water and as a result, cut the salt in half. When serving I added a dollop of sour cream and a light sprinkling of Parmesan. If I had chives, I would have added them and it would have been perfection. For the kiddos, I added the dollop of sour cream, the sprinkle of Parmesan and then I scattered about 20 of Annie's Cheddar Bunnies to frolick around the bowl. My sweet ones will do anything for Cheddar Bunnies.

For the kiddos

Here is my discovery and where you should make the call based on how daring your family is with what you serve them. When you are slicing the leeks, definitely use the white parts, if your family will dig into a bowl of green soup, head into the tender parts of the green. The flavor is fabulous.

If you are on a budget, this soup with a homemade loaf of French bread and a simple green salad will fill the tummies 'round your table and allow you to splurge on another night's meal.

Affordable. Filling. Flavorful. How can you beat it?

“The best way to execute French cooking is to get good and loaded and whack the hell out of a chicken. Bon appétit. ”

Atta girl Julia.
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Potato Leek Soup

Ingredients:
1 lb potatoes, peeled and diced
3 cups leeks, thinly sliced, use the tender greens if you have a willing audience
4 cups chicken stock
2 cups water
1/2 tablespoon salt
4 tablespoons whipping cream

Optional Toppings:
Sour cream
Chives
Grated Parmesan
Cheddar Bunnies

Procedure:
1) Simmer potatoes, leeks, broth, water and salt together, partially covered, 40-50 minutes.
2) Use immersion blender to purée soup. If you use a standing blender, blend in multiple batches.
3) Off heat and just before serving, stir in cream. Pour into a tureen or soup bowls and decorate with the optional toppings.

And of course, one final Julia-ism...

“If you're afraid of butter, use cream.”

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Sharing Sunday: Icing & Crumbs

Since I began blogging. I have become part of an inspiring community of blogging women. Oh ok, and a couple of guys out there too!!  During conversations with friends I would find myself saying, "Oh on this blog there is......" quite a bit. As a person, I have always been about celebrating someone else's joy with them. When a friend has an achievement, I feel such a deep sense of pride for them.

With that in mind, I am going to start "Sharing Sundays". The idea is to share some of the amazing blogs I have been lucky enough to frequent over the past months / years. With that I wanted to start with Icing & Crumbs. 

Kristina is incredibly humble. She is a recipe machine. A GOOD recipe machine and a great writer. Although I have never talked to her, I can hear her through her writing. We reached out to each other and found that we had a lot in common beyond being island moms.

Born and bred in Australia (as well as several years spent living in the mid-west of the US), she now lives on the beautiful island of O'ahu, Hawaii. She is a mother to two beautiful children. She loves to cook and eat healthy foods, and she started blogging in hopes of passing these loves onto her young children. Lucky kids. 

Here are a few of my favorite recipes, but when you explore her blog, don't stop at the recipes. There is so much more!

• Chicken & Broccoli Pasta Bake
• Warm Sweet Potato & Spinach Salad
• Key Lime Cheesecake
• Goat's Cheese & Mushroom Bruschetta

And now we are lucky enough to have a post from her!! Thank you Kristina for joining us here.

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Sweet Memories

by Kristina Hoy

I have wonderful memories of my mother’s desserts growing up… especially those made when we had dinner with friends. Never plain or ordinary, her dishes were rich, full of flavour, and presented with an artistry usually seen among professional cooks. There is one dessert I remember particularly well – constructed in a manner similar to the savoury version, this sweet pizza was simple to make and looked amazing – the round biscuit crust, made from crushed cookies, was topped with a layer of cheesecake-like mixture, and then decorated with slices of fresh, colourful fruit, their brightness glowing through the brush of thin glaze.

My children love dessert… small bowls of ice-cream decorated with sprinkles or little chocolate chips; soft vanilla cupcakes topped with fluffy pink icing; tiny squares of brownies, their dark, fudgy crumbs smearing little fingers and lips as they are quickly eaten up… Ideally, I’d like for my children to have desserts that are always healthy (most nights dessert consists of just a small bowl of yoghurt and some fruit), but I am constantly drawn to the sweet dishes first made by my mother… Wanting to make a healthier version of her fruit pizza, I set to work in the kitchen today…

Little Fruit Pizzas

You need:

For the base-

240g of plain flour

1 teaspoon of finely grated lemon zest

120g of butter

3-5 tablespoons of cold water (enough to bind, but not leave the dough sticky)

½ cup of jam (warmed)

For the topping-

1 cup of ricotta cheese

1 teaspoon of cinnamon

1 teaspoon of honey

fresh fruit

You do:

To make the base, place the flour and lemon zest in a mixing bowl and, using your fingers, rub the butter through until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Slowly add the water and mix until the dough forms a smooth (but not sticky) ball. Shape the dough into a disc, cover in clear wrap, and refrigerate for about 20 minutes.

Pre-heat the oven to 220 degrees Celsius (420 F). When the dough is ready, roll it out until it is a couple of mm thick, and using a large cookie cutter, cut into the desired shapes. Place the shapes on a lined tray and top with the warmed jam. Bake for 10 minutes, or until the edges have just started to turn golden.

 

Remove the tray from the oven and allow to cool completely.

To make the topping, place the ricotta, cinnamon and honey in a small bowl and stir until evenly combined. Spread a layer of this onto each cooled base and top with pieces of fresh fruit.

These little fruity pizzas are so easy and so much fun to make with the kids! They can help mix and roll the dough, cut the shapes out and put the toppings on. It doesn’t matter what type of jam you use – we used apricot and blackberry, but any will do. We used mostly fresh fruit (watermelon, rockmelon (cantaloupe) and kiwi-fruit), as well as some dried blueberries – the combination is up to your imagination! If you don’t want to make all the pizzas at once, any left over uncooked dough or ricotta mixture can be kept covered in the fridge for a couple of days. The recipe above makes 10-12 small pizzas (depending on the size of the cookie cutter).

“Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love,

the things you are, the things you never want to lose.”

(The Wonder Years)

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{this moment}: Friends Frolick in Fall Foliage

A Friday ritual. A few photos - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by SouleMama.