A watched pot...

You know the old saying, " A watched pot never boils"? Well, that may be true, but so is this: If you watch the pot until you think it SHOULD be boiling, then look away for about 15 seconds, that pot WILL boil, and boil over. This is especially true if you are boiling something

potentially messy, stinky, or otherwise not fun to clean up. And you have a glass top stove. And you just spent a great deal of time the previous day giving the kitchen a major overhaul.

Thank goodness it was just yogurt and water at the time!

Now the pot is full of Organic Cheddar-Parmesan Polenta with Fresh Herbs. Sounds fancy, huh? Not really.

My mission for this morning was to make breakfast, a contributory potluck lunch dish, AND something for dinner tonight since I have a meeting to go to as soon as my man gets home from work. All of that before 9 am, so we have time to get ourselves motivated to leave in time to do all the errands we have on the to-do list.

So of course, as soon as I got up today, I prioritized by checking my email, facebook, and now that I tweet, twitter. Yeah, I know, I know. I saw a tweet from Foodimentary that said today is "Grits for Breakfast" day, and the light bulb above my head appeared: My (still sleeping at 9am) children will have "cheese grits"(read polenta) for breakfast, potluck will be cheesy

polenta(since my kids rarely eat my food at potlucks anymore anyway), and dinner will be fresh salad and maybe some homemade ravioli from last weeks pasta day with Cheri (we'll post on that soon, I promise!). Mission accomplished!

Now I can just add scour the stovetop to the list of things to do!

Thankfully polenta is a magic food that is quick, yum, super easy and cheap! All the qualities we love over here at Eat @ Mom's! Yessiree!

Here's this mornings version...

Bring to a boil:

4 cups water

2 cups plain yogurt

a pinch of salt

Wisk in:

2 cups yellow corn meal (ours is non-GMO organic that we get in bulk from our dry goods co-op, and tastes so good!)

Once it begins to thicken, which is always faster than I expect, reduce heat to low and stir in a couple tablespoons of butter, then grate in cheese to taste. You can grate first then measure, but I usually just do it right over the pot until it looks like enough. Today I used raw organic sharp cheddar (also from our co-op and also SO good!) and organic parmesan that I found by accident at BJ's! (I was pretty stoked about it actually). I probably used about a half to 3/4 cup of cheddar and 1/4 cup of the parm.

My garden is ready to be planted next week (remember I'm WAY down south so, fall is our spring) which means hardly anything is out there. Surprisingly I scrounged up enough thyme and plenty of garlic chives to make the polenta extra tasty, which was about a tablespoon of them combined. You can use whatever herbs you grow or can otherwise get a hold of.

Then give your polenta a fancy name based on what cheese and herbs or other secret ingredients you stirred in , and you have yourself a very impressive dish to share with friends!

So now, kids are up, day is started, we're ready to tackle the to-do list, I still have a stove to clean (blog = procrastination), and I'm ready to watch my pot again, but this time I hope what's in it disappears!

::kristin::

More Mango Madness!

Yep, we're in the thick of it over here! Mango madness continues, but this time I don't mean it in an angry, ranting sort of way. More like a giddy, maniacal way. There are mangos everywhere!

We see cars at rush hour pull off the road, so drivers can help themselves to the heavy branches of fruit- laden trees that reach out over their fences. We see kids with baskets lined up along the swale in older neighborhoods hocking their backyard mangos. We even saw a lady in a bikini and sunglasses, reading a novel on a lawn chair in the back of her pick up truck parked on a busy corner. She had a big ol' sign made of cardboard that said MANGOS 3 for $1.

My kids and I find fallen ones when we go on bike rides and walks. We have taken to turning them over to check if squirrels (or the squirrels of the night, rats) have nibbled them, or if bugs have bored their way in through the thin colorful skins to have a party inside. Everyone around here loves mangos, human and otherwise, so finding them still on the tree where we can reach is less likely if its in a "publicly accessible" place, and unless you're lucky enough to find a freshly fallen one, chances are creatures have found it first, or its already so fermented and stinky from the South Florida summer that it pops in your hand like a slimy water balloon when you try to pick it up!

We found a really perfect one on our bikeride the other day and my daughter, who still rides in a seat on my bike, toted it around like her baby for the rest of the journey. Once we got home, our neighbors (who's trees you can see in my previous post) delivered a bag full of gorgeous  fresh picked mangos from their yard. It's the best thing (and the only thing, actually) that's entered our home in a plastic Walmart bag in a very long time!

Mangos are truly lovely in my opinion. These were red, pink, orange and green speckled with little black spots, meaning they are ready to eat right this minute! And that is no exaggeration. In fact, I, radical lover of food and local produce, am ashamed to admit that several of the last mangos that were given to us met their fate in our compost heap. I just didn't get to them fast enough. That would NOT happen to these beauties!

When my neighbor asked (via facebook flair of a mango-selling lady with a huge hairdo and earrings to match) if I wanted some, I promised to make some mango sorbet in return ( but only if she wore the hairdo and earrings). So I got promptly to work. Sounds pretty industrious, but besides gooey, juice covered hands, and the right kitchen gadgets, there isn't much effort involved for this summer delight! Here's how to make it:

3 good sized ripe mangos

good, local honey (about 1/4 - 1/2 cup)

1/4 cup lemon or lime juice, fresh is best, but bottled works fine

fresh grated ginger to taste (about 1 teaspoon)

Cut and cube the mangos and toss in the blender. This is actually quite easy to do, and there are so many videos showing how on youtube that I couldn't even choose one to post here. I don't like to waste anything so I peel the seed and squeeze all the extra flesh and juice from it right into the blender, hence the gooey hands! Add the other ingredients, tasting to adjust for the ripeness of the mangos, and puree. Pour the puree in to an ice cream machine for about 20 - 30 minutes. Serve and ENJOY!

That's what we did, enjoy it! In fact, the whole neighborhood did. I love to share food, especially with people who appreciate it, so mango sorbet went to the neighbors who brought them to us, and the neighbors across the street. In return we got a little sampling of their dinner, fresh caught fried snapper with stuffed jalapeños and fried mushrooms! Our across the street neighbors have promised to let us try the clams they just brought back from Alaska. I don't

 know if clams go well with mango sorbet, but I do love the reciprocation and sharing of summer foods!

Mangos will be around for a while longer, so more sorbet is sure to be on the menu, and probably my friend Elizabeth's Summer Pie recipe, which really calls for peaches. Mangos can be substituted for peaches in all kinds of recipes: cobblers, quick breads, or classic a la mode! But the summer pie is just delightful. Mmmm, I might have to make that one today. Hope the neighbors are home...

::kristin::

Mango Madness?

Warning: this is sort of a continuation of my previous pineapple pondering post, only slightly more aggravated.

Today's post could have been about my love affair with cast iron cookware, or the lovely spelt pita bread I made today for the first time, but I just read a brief article posted on facebook by NPR about importing mangos from India. Here's a short excerpt.

"At over $30 a box, that's a king's ransom for a taste of home. But I paid up.

Inside were 12 forlorn mangoes, each wrapped in a little pink Styrofoam net stocking. This is not how mangoes were meant to be sold. In India, you find them piled on the side of the street, great pyramids of red, green and gold, ripening in the lazy heat. And a vendor chants the names of his mangoes: Himsagar, Babu Himsafar, Langra."

I can only imagine how luscious it would be to sample the 1500 varieties of fresh mangos from street markets in India! One day I will walk down the little crowded alleys, haggle with vendors, and eat myself sick on rare and ripe mangos. But that will have to remain in the realm of someday, because I don't live in India. I am lucky enough, though, to live in South Florida and right now is mango season!

Mango trees are everywhere, heavy with long thin green varieties, dark purple heart-shaped varieties, bright pink, yellow, and orange varieties! I'm not too familiar with names of the mangos that grow everywhere here, but my favorite varieties are begged, borrowed, bartered and gleaned!

View from my front window: My neighbors 3 different varieties of mango trees.

In fact, I just started a fruit gleaning group to encourage people to share their fruits among their neighbors rather than let it rot on the ground as the many, many fruits ripen and we are engulfed in mango mush!

Really? We need to import more mangos from India? I'd be OK with importing some saplings for propagation here. I'm even accepting of shipping some into temperate states from my home 

state of Florida, or the mega ag state California. But I have a hard time imagining a fruit picked before its prime, wrapped in a foam net, gassed, zapped with radiation, flown or shipped half way around the world and processed through customs before sitting on the shelf at my local ethnic grocery is gonna be able to compete with the deliciousness I can get by trading garlic rolls and pumpkin cake with my neighbors who have trees.

So sorry to all you mango lovers who don't live where mangos grow, but you guys have produce that don't grow here. Eat that and save your pennies for a trip to India instead.

::kristin::

Summer Fruit Festival at Fruit & Spice Park, Redlands, FL

Pondering the Pineapple Upside Down Cake

I'm reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, or should I say, I'm STILL reading it. It's taking me so long because I'm barely getting in a chapter every few days, in between Harry Potter and Artemis Fowl. But it's wonderful!

If you haven't heard of this book, here's a very brief summary: The author and her family move to an old farmstead in Appalachia and vow to eat only what they can produce themselves for a year. It's non-fiction in case you were wondering. And it's really got me thinking...

My family lives in "Unincorporated Miami-Dade County" in a semi-rural agricultural area Southwest of Miami, Florida, between Biscayne and Everglades National Parks. There is a lot of agriculture here, but most of it is not only conventionally grown (read: guys in haz-mat suits on tractors with sprayer attachments) but much of it is ornamental

 and landscape plants. We have participated in a local CSA (community supported agriculture) program and do know some of the organic farmers, but I have been wondering what the hell I would be serving if I tried to get ALL my food from within 25 miles or so. Draceana? Impatiens?

Even still, more and more farmers are selling their land to developers. One of the fastest growing "crops" in the area now seem to be yellow houses with clay tile roofs! Not very much taste at all, in my humble opinion!

Yesterday we spent the day at my mother in law's, about an hour or so North of our house. Most visits, she makes a pineapple upside down cake, special for me since she knows how I like it. It is good, too! Moist, super sweet with a layer of crunchy caramelized brown sugar on top (used to be bottom) of the pineapples. This is a classic space-age house wife recipe: a box of this, a can of that, set the timer and VOILA! I often say that if Duncan Heinz and Betty Crocker had a baby, that baby would grow up to be would be my mother in law!

As I was gobbling up my second piece, I was wondering where it all came from. The canned pineapples were probably last year's crop from Costa Rica. The sugar was probably from Malawi or Honduras. The eggs were likely from an artificially lit factory in the midwest. And who knows what's actually even in the cake mix to begin with!? 

My mother in law was born in 1930. When she was growing up, learning to cook, becoming a mama, the majority of her food probably did come from within the county in which she lived. Only rare and exotic delicacies and foods that kept well without much refrigeration would have come from far off lands. And there I was sitting in her dining room, sucking it all down, sneaking extra pieces of crumbly sugar bits off the rest of the cake that had been flown, shipped and trucked from all corners of the globe.

It was truly a surreal moment. Where do you think our food will come from in 2030? I've always admired Saturn...

::kristin::

It's springtime!

Just got finished gorging on strawberry shortcake.  Oh so good.  I am so glad it is warm weather time.  That means that fresh fruits and veggies are back!  Here in Wilmington we have a local farm, Lewis Farm, that does U-pick strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries.  Right around May the strawberries are ready for picking and we go as many times as we can.  They are so cheap this way and they taste better than any strawberry from the store.  I like supporting a local farm too.   The girls love going and picking their own berries.  Maggie has gotten the hang of it and does really well.  River just pretty much eats her way down the rows.  I would be in trouble if they did a before and after weigh in of the children.   The berries are so ripe that you can smell them when you are walking up to the plants.  On hot days it starts to smell like strawberry wine out there with the too far gone berries fermenting in the sun.  It is such a pleasure to be connected to the food you eat and I think good for the girls to know that food is grown and does not magically appear at the grocery store wrapped in plastic.  

 

So, the thing about fresh produce is...you have to eat it!  Right away.  It is picked when ripe and strawberries especially will not last.  So for two days we eat strawberries with everything, with chocolate, on salads, in cobblers...etc.  Today, I had a hankerin' (I do live in the south ya know) for strawberry shortcake.  I had some strawberries that were still good, but not really for eating whole.  Perfect!  I looked up the recipe in the bible of cooking (Joy of Cooking) and lo and behold, they recommend putting the strawberries on scones!  My other obsession of late.  I just went back to the Tea Room this week with Maggie to have a little mommy/big girl day. My ulterior motive was to get back to their scones.  Well, the recipe for scones was really, really easy.  Here it is in a slightly altered version:

Classic Scones

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.  Whisk together:

2 cups flour

1/3 cup sugar

1 T baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

Cut up and drop in:

6 Tablespoons unsalted butter

When making something like this or pie crust, I always break up the butter with my hands.  I know you are supposed to do it with 2 knives or a pastry cutter, but I find I can do it faster and easier with my hands.  You have to do it quick so the butter doesn't warm up too much.  Work the mixture till the largest pieces are the size of peas and the whole mixture looks like bread crumbs.

Form a little well and pour in:

1 large egg

1/2 cup heavy cream

Whisk that together quick and then mix the whole thing together with a rubber spatula.  After it is mixed use your hands to knead it a bit and work the dough together.  Transfer it to a lightly floured surface and pat it out to 3/4 inch thick round.  Cut into 8 to 12 triangles and place on your ungreased baking sheet.  Brush the tops with cream and sprinkle with sugar. Bake until the tops are golden 12-15 minutes.  

The strawberries I just cut up small and added about 2 tablespoons of sugar.  For the topping, I whipped about 1/2 cup of heavy cream with 1-2 tablespoons sugar in my fabulous stand mixer. Have I posted yet about my love affair with my mixer?  I must do that soon.  I love that damn thing.  

So delicious.  I was going to save this for dessert tonight, but it had to be eaten immediately.  I am so proud that I know how to make scones now.  

My next project:  How to make fruit preserves....

Can't wait for blueberries and blackberries to come!

Amy

What's for dinner? Curry!

If you ask my kids what their favorite dinner is, the answer is always: Curry!  I am so freaking proud of that.  Before I had kids, I was always worried that they would only eat macaroni and cheese or something, but then once they arrived I realized that for the most part, kids will eat what you eat.  I know that I felt like I needed to clean up my diet a bit when my kids got old enough to want what we had.  Soda especially has gone by the wayside.  If the kids see a can near my lips they surround me like flies demanding to know what I have and can they share it? I am not totally anti-soda or treats, but I realize that if I want my kids to eat well and make good choice, then I have to model that for them.  

We have never made separate food for the kids to eat.  Even when they were infants, they ate what was on our plate.  I never made any special baby food or fed them out of a jar, they just ate what we had either mashed up or as I called it, the baby bird style, where I would chew it up a bit with my front teeth and feed it to them.  That sounds gross when I write it down, but hey, they didn't mind!  So they have been eating all of these different flavors and spices from the beginning.

Well, that is the long wind bag explanation for why my kids love curry...the real reason is that it tastes freaking awesome.  This curry tastes kind of like Thai massman curry and it is super easy to make.  Here is the recipe:

Chicken Curry

3-4 chicken breasts

3-4 medium potatoes (or other root vegetables i.e. swt. potatoes, squash etc.)

1 medium onion minced

1 green or red pepper

2 14 oz cans Coconut milk

1 T Red curry paste

2 T Fish sauce

2 T Brown sugar

Handful unsalted Cashews (optional)

Start by simmering your curry paste and coconut milk over low heat until the milk and paste are combined.  While waiting for this, chop up your onion, potato, and peppers and add to the pot.  I chop the onion up quite small for the kids and make the potatoes and peppers around bit size.  Add the fish sauce and brown sugar then bring the pot to a slow boil and cover.  Cook until the potatoes are soft.  You can also wait to add the peppers till the end if you like them crunchier (we do).  While you are waiting for this to cook, chop up your chicken breasts into bite sized pieces and cook in a skillet.  When done, drain off excess liquid and add to the pot. Viola!  Serve over rice.  If you have unsalted cashews, throw them on top!  

You can really use any vegetables, but I suggest keeping with the root veggies.  You can out in anything else you like or have.  If you want to make this vegetarian, just omit the chicken and add more veg.  

Fish sauce is the absolute integral part of this recipe.  It is the stinkiest substance on earth, but without it, Thai curry is blah.  You probably have to go to an Asian market to get a jug of it, but it will last you a long time.  I just finished off a bottle my dad got me a year ago.  He got it in Florida and drove it up here to NC.  The lady in the Asian market asked him what he was going to do with it and he told her he was driving to see his daughter and give it to her.  Her response was "No break in car!"  Seriously, I think the stuff may be listed on the EPAs hazardous waste list.  I kept mine in a freezer bag in the cabinet, just in case.   On its own, toxic waste. Combined with coconut milk and brown sugar, heaven.  

PS:  This tastes even better the second day and it freezes beautifully.  I freeze this and take it when we go camping.  It serves to keep the cooler cold and heats up quick for a fantastic camp dinner. 

Blueberry + Lemon = LOVE

Lately I've discovered that late spring is blueberry season in Florida. I have lived here my entire life and never even knew blueberries grew in Florida! I've really been trying to buy as locally as is financially feasible for our family of 4, so when I saw giant boxes of Florida blues on sale at the store, I went nuts. There is reasonable debate on which is a more sound environmental priority: organic foods picked before their prime and shipped via tons of fossil fuels across the country, or conventionally grown in a neighboring county? Local won out over organic this time and I bought 2 huge containers.

They've been in my fridge for a few days while I decided how to most decadently serve them. Some had already been dipped into, and they were as good as they look! I originally wanted to make a light fluffy cake of some sort and top it with a goat cheese icing, with a few ripe strawberries to set off the blues. But alas, I'm am out of flour and our next co-op order was postponed 'til next week. What to do?

Well, I got out my cookbooks, digging to the bottom of the stack for a lovely Mediterranean pictoral book I picked up at a yard sale a few years ago, and the top of the stack: King Arthur Brand Whole Grain Baking. Both had lovely renditions including all american blueberry  cream pie, lemon blueberry calfoutis ( which I still don't think I'm pronouncing correctly) and all sorts of nice looking things, but they all required cooking the berries. These berries were too perfect to cook! I wanted something to pile them on top of FRESH, so I had to do a little mixing up...

Here are the pics. The recipe will be posted tonight. Now I'm off to work off the pie at jujitsu! 

Ok, Jujitsu was definitely a work out! Shihan at American JuJitsu Center decided to heat the room to about 92F! It felt like more than that, and delivered a workout to justify yet another slice of heaven, a.k.a. lemon pie with blueberries! The thought of that cool confection waiting at home helped me hang in 'til the last  kick, kata and "KIA"!

So here's how it happened...

The King Arthur cookbook had a great pie crust recipe made from oats and pecans. But of course, I had no pecans, and also no brown sugar, which it also called for. Technically speaking though, turbinado sugar is brown, and I had plenty of that. I also ended up combining the lemon curd/tart recipe from the mediterranean book with a lemon filling from King Arthur to make something easy that included ingredients I had in the pantry. So here is the recipe modification I came up with:

Lemon Pie with Whipped Cream and Blueberries

pat-in-the-pan nut crust:

-preheat oven to 350F

-on a cookie sheet spread out 1 1/3C whole rolled oats and 1/2C cashews

-bake them to toasted brown about 10 - 15 minutes, then cool before pulsing in a food processor to a uniform consistency ( I don't actually have a food processor, so I use my little chopper that came with my immersion blender and just do small batches)

-cut the oat/nut flour with about 6 TBS cold butter, a pinch of salt and about 1/4 - 1/3 turbinado sugar ( I do this with the whisk on my kitchen aid, mostly because its fun and I have one, but by hand is fairly easy to with either a big fork or a pastry cutter)

- turn out the crust mixture into a 9' pie plate and press with your fingers to evenly fill/line the pan and set aside.

The original crust recipe said to bake the crust without filling, but it was for a different type of pie with less time in the oven, so I elected not to, and I'm really glad. the nuts really brown up fast!

lemon filling:

-cream together 4 TBS butter with about a cup of turbinado sugar and a pinch of salt

-add 4 eggs one at a time

-add zest and juice of 2 lemons

Pour the filling into the crust and bake for about 50 minutes. Mine developed a dark sort of skin made of caramelized sugar, which was delicious, but not so pretty. I simply peeled it off (and ate it myself, fringe benefits of being the household chef) while the pie cooled on the counter for a few minutes. Then I stuck it in the fridge for about an hour. Once it was cooled through, I topped it with a generous layer of whipped cream ( 1C heavy cream, pinch of salt maybe a couple teaspoons of sugar whipped in the mixer 'til stiff) and then the glorious berries!A whole mountain of them!

 So, so pretty, don't you think? And the flavor was A-MAZ-ING! As approved by my kids, my man, and my sister. ( My mom said it was good, but too fruity for her, so I still accept that as a compliment!) YUM!

::kristin::

One more thing!  The other night I harvested the first veggies from my garden, some red leaf lettuce.  I was as proud as a new mama.  It is such an amazing feeling to grow something that you can actually put on the table.  We had chef salad that night and I mixed my sweet little lettuce leaves with some spinach, green peppers, mandarin oranges, dried cranberries, and feta cheese.  I cooked and chopped up some chicken breasts and I topped everything with a really light asian dressing that just had soy sauce, white vinegar (I would have usually used rice wine vinegar, but we were out), olive oil, and sugar.  Dee-lish!  

I will keep ya'll posted on my garden goodies.  My tomatoes have tons of flowers!  I can't wait!!

As predicted on the LIST, tonight is lentil soup night.  Opened bag of leftover ham from (honestly) too long ago to find that ham had suspicious smell to it.  Oh well, lentils alone are packed with goodness anyway.  Lentil soup is ridiculously easy to make.  Mine tonight has 1 bag of lentils, 8 cups of water, 1/4 cup olive oil, 2 carrots shredded, 1/2 an onion finely chopped, a bunch of salt and pepper, some thyme, and probably about 1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar. Towards the end I throw in some minced garlic.

Simmer all of this for about 30-45 minutes or so until your lentils reach your desired softness.  I like them a little more creamy, so sometimes I let them go a bit longer then stir them up really well.  You can't believe how filling lentils are.  I like to serve mine with some fresh bread, but alas, time ran away on me so I am making some drop biscuits instead.  Super yummy and simple, here's the recipe:

Easy drop biscuits

1 2/3 cup flour (you can substitute 1/3 to 2/3 cup wheat flour if you like)

1 Tbs baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

2/3 cup milk

1/3 cup oil (veg or olive oil, your choice)

Preheat your oven to 475.  Mix the dry ingredients and then make a little well and pour in the milk and oil.  Stir up the milk and oil a bit and then mix the dough up until the dough just starts to pull away from the sides.  It is a really wet and sticky dough.  Use a teaspoon or your hands and pull out little blobs and drop them on an ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake for about 8 minutes until they are light brown on the bottom.  Serve with copious amounts of butter...drool.....

Cheap and easy.  Hey, who are you calling cheap and easy!?  

The List

When my friend Stephanie comes over and walks into my kitchen, the first thing she says is, "Ok, let's see the list for this week."  She is referring to the ever changing menu for the week that exists on a dry erase board on my fridge.  I am very flattered by this as it makes me feel like I am sooo put together and prepared.  Ha.  Really I just do this because if I don't, 5 p.m. will come around and I will stare blankly at my cabinet and declare in my head that we have nothing to eat.  The list keeps my procrastination and laziness in check.  

Usually, at the beginning of the week I look at what we have left and decide what I can make for the week for dinners.  I am not so much a spur of the moment kind of cooker, I like to plan ahead.  If I am hungry and the kids are hungry and screaming and crawling up my leg, my creativity tends to wither a bit.  Strategizing at the beginning of the week helps to avoid this 5 p.m. meltdown (mine and the kids).  So I make up a menu of possible meals at the beginning of the week and shop accordingly.  I put the possible nightly meals on the fridge so at 4 p.m. I can look at choose something for the night.  

Steph always says "Pizza and pancakes again?"  Well, yes.  The pizza is a weekly meal (I keep dough in the fridge so this is super easy) and pancake night is for when I don't feel like cooking anything and just want some damn pancakes. 

This week was a little different as my aunt is visiting and I needed to make a little more rigid meal plan.  That and our budget is really tight till the end of the month, so I wanted to make sure we had enough to last payday.  As you can see, a lot of beans start appearing towards the end.  

Tonight I am making Egg Pie.  I am sure I could come up with some other sort of spiffy name for it, but it is a super tasty recipe given to me by my friend Erin.  The kids love it and it is really hearty and satisfying.  Here's the recipe:

10 frozen spinach

1 medium onion chopped fine

6-7 white mushrooms thinly sliced (optional)

2 T butter

1 bouillon cube

3 eggs

12 oz Cottage cheese

2 T parmesan cheese

2 deep dish pie crust (or make your own if you are so inclined)

Pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 450.  Defrost spinach in the microwave while you are preparing the other ingredients.   When the spinach is done, squeeze out all water and place in a large bowl.  Next, saute the onion and mushroom in butter until both are soft.  Add these to spinach along with the cottage cheese, parmesan cheese, and bouillon (I usually just crush this up and sprinkle it in.)  Stir this up well and then add the eggs.  I just make a little well and then beat the eggs up before I stir up the whole mixture.  Pour the mixture into the pie crust and cover it with the other pie crust.  I literally just put the other pie crust on top (sans pan) and it sinks down as it cooks.  Gently cut a couple of slits in the top of the crust.  Bake for 30-45 minutes until the center seems firm and the crust is golden brown.  If it is not yet firm, but the crust is getting too brown, lay a piece of foil over the top till done.

I served this with my cousin Peggy's awesome slaw (cabbage, broccoli, walnuts, apples, carrots in a vinaigrette dressing), it was soooo good.  I will post that recipe later.  

Anyway, the kids freaking love this.  We call it Egg pie or Spinach Pie (depending on what the kids are prejudiced against this week.)  My aunt (who is nothing if not logical) said that it should really be called Egg and Spinach pie since it has both.  OR if you are wanting to make it fancy, let's call it Ovo Florentine Quiche.  How's that for fancy (or just weird?)

Till next time... Amy

My Saturday Afternoon Craving!

Loungin' around the house today being very unproductive...I began to crave salsa and chips.  I usually have a jar of salsa in the house at all times, but not today.  So I decided to make this super simple salsa to calm my craving.

My grandparents gave us some fresh corn on the cob yesterday. I microwaved one small ear for 2 min. in husk, cooled and cut it off the cob. I then added 1 chopped tomato from Grammy's garden, not mine (damn it), and a small onion, rinsed a can of black beans, and added some chopped parsley from my organic herb garden.  Although, cilantro would be great if your family is a fan of it. Squeeze 1/2 small lemon, add salt and pepper and a dash or two of Crystal sauce.

Garnish with a dollop of sour cream.  Serve with blue corn chips.  And there it is!  Fast, delish, and healthy salsa to satisfy my Saturday afternoon craving!

from Chez Cheri

Must nap after food orgasm...

Just a quick post about a food orgasm I just had.  My aunt Margie is in town and whenever she comes to visit, I always get to do something fancy and different.  This visit we decided to go to the Wilmington Tea Room.  Dear lord, it's been an hour and my mouth is still chanting: thank you, thank you, thank you....

We started with a pot of Raspberry Tea with delicious cream and little sugar cubes in fancy china tea cups (I love those little sugar cubes, what is it about square shaped sugar that seems so fancy? I felt like the queen dropping my little cubes in my tea with tiny sugar tongs.)  Then we had a choice of an asian salad or seafood bisque.  I, of course, had both.  Both were phenomenal.  You can just never wrong with a bisque soup.  Totally delicious.  I think the asian salad was pretty simple with romaine, cranberries, almonds, mandarin oranges, and little crunchy noodles.  It had a light soy sauce vinaigrette that I am going to try and make.  

So next arrives the triple decker tray with fruit scones, finger sandwiches, and little sweet cakes on top.  The scones came with devonshire cream (like a really rich whipped heavy cream) and fruit preserves.  I took one bit of the scone topped with cream and preserves and I actually had to sit back in my chair and close my eyes it was so good.    Sigh....bliss...

Tea was fabulous, food was fabulous...just the whole experience of eating and being fancy for a little while.  Why does everything taste so good in miniature form?  

Anyway, so this isn't about cooking, but dammit, if we are going to eat out, it should be worth it.  Now, must figure out how to make fabulous scones at home....

Rockin' some good food!

The Meads just got back yesterday from a rockin' awesome weekend at the Shakori Hills Grassroots Music festival up in Silk Hope, NC.  It was so amazing...great music, beautiful weather, good friends.  And good food of course!  

We are so totally broke, so I cooked up a storm before we left.  I made a huge batch of Chicken Curry and a double batch of Pea Soup before we left.  I froze all of it and brought it along.  It worked out great.  The food acted like giant blocks of ice and kept everything cold till we were ready to eat it. 

As an aside, I wanted to talk about buying things that get you multiple meals.  I bought this massive ham last week that was on sale for like 99 cents a pound.  It was about a 12 or 13 pound ham, so I hemmed and hawed about it for a while, but decided it was too good a deal to pass up.  From that one ham we had 2 nights of the most delicious ham (with assorted veggies and other side items), ham and scalloped potatoes, ham sandwiches for lunch, and two nights of killer pea soup.  5 nights of dinner and lunches (not to mention a giant bone for the doggie that still has her looking lovingly at me) for about 12 bucks.  You seriously cannot beat that.

Anyway, the pea soup it easy to make.  Most recipes will call for a ham hock, but I would definitely recommend getting a bone in ham and then using the ham bone for pea soup afterwards.  I froze my ham bone till I was ready to use it.  

Since I had a giant ham bone with tons of meat on it I decided to make a double batch and therefore used two 1 lb bags of split peas.  In my biggest pot I put the ham bone and the 2 bags of split peas and simmered them for 1 1/2 to 2 hours till the peas were disintegrated.  I then chopped and chucked in 2 carrots, 2 celery stalks, and one onion.  I put in about a tsp of ground thyme and shook in some chopped up bay leaves.  I let these simmer until tender and then I removed the ham bone, stripped it of meat and set it aside.   I pureed the soup with my hand blender (an invaluable tool in my opinion) and then dumped in the meat.  At this point you can adjust the salt and pepper to your taste or you can let individuals decide if they want anymore (the ham can be kind of salty to begin with.)

Well, the pea soup was a hit at the festival.   We ate it on the second night and it was so hearty and warming.  The kids ate it up.  All of the preparation (I spent a day cooking my little heart out) was worth it.  I only brought $20 to the festival and half was for parking.  That left a little money for Ralph to get coffee in the mornings and everyone was happy and well fed.   Though I would like to put out a warning, pea soup may produce noxious gases.  Ralph almost killed us in the tent after pea soup night, cough, cough, gag, gag....

We got back last night after a great camping trip all tired and sunburnt and the last half of the pea soup awaited us.  I had some homemade bread dough in the fridge that I baked up and we had that for dinner.  Phenomenal, even better with fresh baked bread.  (And yes, I took the chance of refueling my husband's anoxic gut bacteria, it was worth it for pea soup heaven.)

Amy

ACHEW!

Well, I'm not going to make it to the LLL Conference for the Eat@Mom's presentation.  I thought I 'd spare all those mamas and babes the extra sneeze.  I guess all the stress from taxes (mine & work) left behind a little bug, sore throat, popping ears, sinus congestion, BLAHHHH! Instead, I've been rootin' around in my kitchen lookin' for a cure.  And here's what I found.

In the freezer I found a homemade chicken stock combined with a broccoli puree, a little lazy concoction I threw together late one night, there's about 6 cups.  In the fridge I pulled out some kale and carrots, and added the carnival squash I've been holding on to for awhile, along with lots of mucous mending onions and garlic.  Oh!  And I can't forget 2 handfuls of green beans.  I love green beans.  All of these beautiful veggies coming from our organic produce co-op.  I then quartered these beauts' with 2 homegrown tomatoes from Grammy's garden, placed them gently on a baking sheet and drizzled olive oil all over them, a pinch of salt 

& pepper and roasted them in the oven @400 degrees for about 45 mins.

Once nicely roasted I cut the carrots, squash & green beans into bite size pieces and set them aside.  Then I placed the garlic, tomatoes, and onion in my magic bullet, another love of mine, a food processor will do, combine till almost smooth.  I then put a 1/2 cup of my broth onto the baking sheet to scrape all those yummy brown bits up and added this and the remaining broth into a large pot with chopped kale, thyme, and 1 bay leaf.  Bring to a boil and simmer 15-20 mins.  I then added my carrots, squash, & green beans and continued simmering another 10-15 mins.  Add salt & pepper as needed.  And wahlah!  My delicious healthy snot cure!  I am now ready for a full recovery!  I love food!

        Cheri

I Love Produce Day!

Cheri and I run a small organic produce co-op. We love Produce Days! Our orders come every other Thursday, which is OK, but not really our best day. Fridays were better.

We used to get deliveries on Friday, which was great! It was an all day ordeal. She and her girls would come over mid-morning, have a little breakfast/brunchy meal (during which we'd talk about lunch) the big truck would come, kids would play while we'd leisurely sort and pack the produce, then we'd start making lunch as the other co-oppers arrived to pick up, and have a nice relaxing afternoon visit, potluck included of course.

It still happens sort of like this on Thursdays, but Cheri works at an architecture firm on Thursdays, and my son and I have jujitsu class in the late afternoon. It really puts a time crunch on our lazy day fun. We have to move a lot faster sorting and packing, which cuts into the gossiping. There's a much narrower window when people can pick up, which limits the potlucking, and the kids have to clean up and stop playing much earlier than if it were Friday.

Today was a Produce Day, or our "therapy session" as Cheri and I sometimes refer to it. It was definitely rushed. She's working on taxes and payroll. I'm working on my new organization and four upcoming events. We got a little done together, preparing for this weekend's Eat @ Mom's session at a local parenting conference. But that was kind of hurried too.

I roasted some beets since I've been saying for days that I wanted to make a beet and cucumber salad with dill from the garden. Didn't happen. ( Actually, it's almost 2 in the morning now, and the beets are still in my oven!) I did manage to throw together a quesedilla with mushrooms, kale and pepper jack, but not fast enough to give any to Cheri before she had to hurry to work. She did leave her oldest daughter with me, so at least the kids got to play. (Read playdough crumbs all over my floor in a 10 foot radius, which I'll likely get to after I tend to those beets.) I think all they ate today was fruit and berries that they swiped from our share of the produce! And some playdough.

At least our order was lovely! Carrots, yellow onions, red romaine, strawberries, Pink Lady apples, Florida blueberries, green beans and cantaloupe. It filled up my wagon with goodness and just as I was admiring it and flipping my hot quesedilla on to my plate, Produce Day got even better...

My friend Mansura ( I love that name) arrived to pick up her order. She was pressed for time too, as she had been making some traditional middle eastern foods for her Syrian mother who can't make them anymore. Can you guess what's coming? She brought me three, fresh, hot,  still-steaming in-the-middle, homemade kibbeh!  Bulgar wheat and beef and onions and pinenuts. And LOVE! Ugh, so deeee-lish! So, so deeee-lish!

Man, I love good food. And more than that, I love my good friends who love good food, especially when they share! And I really do love Produce Day no matter how rushed it gets!

Kristin

Oh sweet potato, how I do love you....

Here’s a perfect story for our inaugural post.  It epitomizes how we cook, live, and feel about food.  

So I apparently have a thing for sweet potatoes.  I really like sweet potatoes.  Not only are they yummy, but good for you too!  I have been buying them every week at the store.  Due to my mom-nesia, I forget every week that I already have a bunch at home.  So, I probably had around 5 lbs. to begin with in our hanging basket.  Of course, this week sweet potatoes are on sale for 30 cents a pound and like a jackass, I buy another 6 lbs. (for only a buck 80!)  Now I get home and I realize I now have more than 10 pounds of sweet potatoes.  After informing my husband that we will be eating sweet potatoes with every meal for the next month, I set about trying to figure out what to do with these little gems.  

I went online and found this website (sweetpotato.org) that had some great recipes for all things sweet potato.  We are going camping this weekend so I decided on some sweet potato muffins for some easy breakfast and snacks.  Coincidentally, we had a play date here at the house yesterday and every single child here took and apple as a snack and took 5-7 bites out of it.  I found little apple carcasses here and there.  Funny thing about these apples is that no one will eat it after even one bite has been taken out of it. I could not waste all these apples so I decided to throw them in the muffins. 

 One of the great things about sweet potatoes is that you can microwave them and they come out great.  They probably aren’t as sweet and caramelized as if you did them in the oven, but they are quick and taste good.  I’d say 9-10 minutes on high for 3-4 potatoes, depending on your microwave.  Don’t forget to poke some holes with a fork all over the potato or you will have exploded potato in your microwave.  Also, turn them over once about halfway through cooking them.  You can freeze the cooked potato too.  A lot of moms will cook and freeze sweet potatoes in ice cube trays for use as baby food.  

Anyway, yay sweet potatoes!

Here’s the recipe: 

The original called for ½ cup light molasses and all I had was really dark molasses.  I decided to use ¼ of the dark molasses and ¼ honey.  Also, the original didn’t add any other sweetener (and the first batch was bleh) so in this recipe I am adding some sugar.  

2-3 sweet potatoes (1 ¼ pounds) baked, tender, and peeled

2 eggs

½ cup milk

¼ cup unsulfured molasses

¼ cup honey

3 T butter

¾ cup sugar (use white or brown, your call)

1 ¼ cup all purpose flour

½ cup whole-wheat flour

1 t baking powder

1 t ground cinnamon

¾ t salt

½ t ground ginger

Optional: 1 cup minced apples

 Preheat oven to 375˚ F.  Prepare muffin tins with oil or cooking spray.  

If your potatoes are stringy, puree with hand blender or food processor.  Place 1 cup sweet potatoes in bowl or mixer.  Add and blend in eggs, then milk, molasses, honey, sugar, and butter.  When these are mixed, add dry ingredients.  Add apples at end if desired.  Fill muffin cups about 2/3 full with batter.  Bake until springy to touch and a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, about 25-30 minutes. Transfer to rack and let cool.  

  Taste tester Mead trying out the batter (naked of course.)

These came out pretty good, though they are very dense.  And like I said, they definitely needed some more sugar.  My test kitchen tasters are deliberating over whether they like them or not.  And by that I mean they are taking one bite out of each muffin they grab and then abandoning them somewhere for me to find later. 

Welcome to Eat at Mom's!

We feel passionate about good food.  Not just good tasting food (although believe me, we like to EAT), but food that is good for us with fresh and whole ingredients.  The diets of most Americans consist fast food, processed blandness, convenience cooking, and eating out. When we started our own families, we knew that we wanted to feed them better food, but how? 

Each of us arrived at our own particular style of cooking in different ways.   Cheri is our gourmet, although you’d never hear her say that.  She can cook anything from melt in your mouth ribs to delicate crepes and sauces that have you asking her for the recipe.  To which she always says, “Oh I just threw it together….”  Amy defines herself as more of a meat and potatoes gal.  She grew up in a family where there was always a meat, starch, and veggie on the plate and tends to gravitate towards that style.  That combined with a husband who thinks that a dinner with no meat is highly suspect has molded her cooking to include old favorites like chicken pot pie, meatloaf, and pizza night to name a few.  Kristin tends to be our creative muse.  Going to Kristin’s house is always a treat for the senses.  First, she is a crafty little lady.  So you never know what sort of outrageous project in progress she is going to whip out.  This incredible creativity spills over into her cooking.  She can make food out of things that most people would never think of.  

We met at a time in our lives when we all had small kids and we all had the same question:  How do we feed our kids wholesome healthy food that we’ll all love?  Thus began our friendship started over a love of food and humor.  Whilst our kids ran off and hopefully didn’t drown in the pool or set anything on fire, we gabbed in the kitchen over our latest creation.  Potluck lunches became the norm.  If someone was trying out a new bread recipe, guess who got to try it first! Leftovers from last night turned into a delicious soup?  We’ll eat it!  At the time, we didn’t know that there was anything special about what we were doing, we were all just feeding our families.   But people kept asking, “Can I have the recipe for this?”  And we began to wonder doesn’t everyone know how to do this?  Slowly we began to realize that somewhere along the way, our generation has lost the arts of our mothers and grandmothers.  We need to relearn and find a new appreciation for cooking and creativity in the kitchen.  The three of us have learned that we do have something special and we want to empower others with what we've learned. 

We have decided that our fabulousness must be shared with the world and therefore, we’ve decided to write our own cookbook and blog!  Enjoy!