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!