Picnic Plans

We are big picnickers. (Is that a word?) Actually, to be more accurate, we are big boaters. And let me tell you, nothing stimulates the appetite more than being on a boat. I have no idea how it works, but I can be totally and completely stuffed from my latest meal, and the second I step foot on the boat, my stomach starts to growl.

One of my most challenging food weeks was when we were on a week-long sailing trip while I was pregnant with our first child. Some people have extreme mood swings; I had extreme food swings. My conversations with DH the entire week went something like this: I'm nauseated! No, I'm hungry! No, I can't look at food! I must eat now! Stop talking about food, can't you see I don't feel good? STEP AWAY FROM THE CHEESE AND CRACKERS, THEY'RE MINE...and so on. Perhaps not the best vacation we've ever been on. Frankly, I'm surprised he didn't just push me over the side so he could enjoy his week.

But I digress. In order to survive and enjoy our frequent boat and beach outings, I have become the supreme Picnic Packer, and I'm always on the lookout for good picnic recipes. Here's one that got a test run this week, and was great:

1 package frozen cheese tortellini
1 10oz package frozen peas
1 cup homemade pesto
1 cup parmesan cheese

1/2 - 1 lb shrimp, peeled and deveined
olive oil
salt and pepper

Bring water to a boil in large pot. Salt well, add tortellini and peas. Boil according to package instructions for tortellini (generally about 4-5 minutes). Drain and set aside.

Preheat oven to 400. Toss shrimp with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Spread on a baking sheet. Roast for 5-6 minutes. Allow to cool.

Toss shrimp with tortellini, peas, pesto and parmesan cheese. Add salt and pepper to taste. Pack and serve with a cold beer on the beach. Happy eating!

Meal Planning

How do you organize your meal planning?

I love just about everything about food. I love reading about it, shopping for it, writing about it, talking about it, and of course, eating it. That said, I do NOT like planning it. I do think that good meal planning is one of the most important weekly household chores. It saves you money, time, and calories - so how could it possibly be objectionable, right? But facing a blank page on Sunday night when I'm already wiped out from the weekend can be awfully intimidating and can squelch the creative juices in the best of us. (Side note: I am aware that in certain cultures weekends can actually be relaxing and rejuvenating experiences. Sadly, this is not the case in the Land of Preschoolers and Toddlers).

I read a tip once that one mom always served the same thing each day of the week (e.g., spaghetti and meatballs every Monday night), to take the hassle out of menu planning. I can't do that - I need more variety in my life. But it did get me thinking that I could at least narrow the categories for myself. So, for the past year, I've planned weekly menus that include one pasta dish, one red meat dish (sorry pork industry, that includes you, no matter what your commercials say), one poultry dish, and one seafood dish. If I need an additional meal, I make it a breakfast-for-dinner night, though I usually only need 4 planned meals in any given week.

Here's an example of next week's meals (and what a favor I'm doing for myself, to do this on Friday instead of Sunday night!):

Monday: Shrimp pizza, salad (Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a pan, add pinch of pepper, dried cilantro, juice from one lemon, 1/3 cup of good white wine, and 1 chicken bouillon cube. Cook over medium heat until bouillon cube is completely dissolved and mixture is slightly reduced. Spread over pizza crust - Boboli works great. Top with mozzarella cheese, thinly sliced white onion, and 12 peeled and deveined shrimp that have been cut in half length-wise, giving you 24 shrimp halves for the whole pizza. Bake directly on oven rack at 350 for approx 8 minutes, or until shrimp are pink and cheese is melted.)

Tuesday: Cheese tortellini and veggie salad (toss cooked cheese tortellini with sundried tomatoes, lightly steamed asparagus, fresh herbs, any other veggies that strike your fancy, and whatever vinaigrette salad dressing you have on hand).

Wednesday: Oven-fried chicken thighs, mac and cheese, green beans (Take 4 skinless, boneless chicken thighs, rinse well and pat dry. In a large bowl, combine 1 tablespoon dijon mustard, 1 tablespoon honey, 1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary, 1 cup buttermilk. In another bowl combine 1 cup shredded parmesan cheese and 1 cup breadcrumbs. Dip chicken in buttermilk mixture, then breadcrumb mixture. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 350. Bake chicken in oven for approx 25 minutes.)

Thursday: Grilled steaks, baked sweet potatoes, caesar salad.

Happy eating!

Keep It Simple

Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much. If you are a foodie, or a regular New York Times reader, you might recognize these breathtakingly simple words of advice about healthy eating from reporter and writer Michael Pollan. They have changed my food life. His article can be found here, and he's now written a book, In Defense of Food, that is fascinating. No joke - I couldn't put it down. (Put it on your summer reading list. Seriously.)

His general rules are this: Read labels. If your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize it as food, don't eat it. Fill your plate primarily with fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. And stop eating so damn much.

Ah, all so easy to read, nod sagely, and then ignore. But these really are the food rules I try to live by. Here's a recipe that fits the rules, that I make 2-3 times each week:

Breakfast Smoothie
1 cup orange juice
1 cup yogurt (read those yogurt labels! Get real yogurt - I like Stoneyfield farms organic yogurt)
1-2 cups frozen fruit, depending on the consistency you like. (I buy bags of frozen berries and separately freeze my own bananas, pre-sliced, so my smoothies are usually a banana, strawberry, blueberry combination)
Put ingredients in blender, blend until smooth.

Tip: if you have popsicle molds like these http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&search-alias=kitchen&field-keywords=popsicle%20maker&page=1, this recipe makes super yummy popsicles.

Spring Cleaning

My freezer is a disaster. I pride myself on having a freezer full of things that I can turn to when life gets too busy or hectic, but I'm afraid at the moment, the food is turning on me. All the bins are overflowing, I can't find anything, and everything is either past its prime or rapidly getting there. So I have vowed that this week and next are clean-out-the-freezer week. Every day one thing has to go, and nothing will be replaced until the entire contents of the freezer have been used up or tossed. (With, perhaps, the exception of ice cream sandwiches, because if I don't have those for bribery, my entire parenting approach falls apart.) This could be fun. It's like my own personal iron chef challenge.

As with any good over-reaching and too-ambitious project, I like to start with an easy step. Today I dug out a bag of green beans suffering from freezer burn, and fed them to the dog. I'm already feeling accomplished. We'll see what tomorrow brings!

Dinner tonight: pan fried tilapia, whole wheat couscous, and green salad (why do I always write "green" salad? As if I know how to make a purple or red salad?)

Cook Once, Eat Twice

What are your food quirks? Mine revolve around leftovers. As my mother well knows, I refuse - with a few exceptions all involving mac & cheese - to eat leftovers for dinner. I don't mind leftovers as the next day's lunch, but will not eat the same thing for dinner 2 nights in a row. That said, I am a big fan of turning leftovers into something else. Every time we have roasted chicken for dinner, we have chicken and black bean quesadillas the next night. I love it because it's easy, yummy, healthy, and takes the guess work out of meal planning for at least one night. It's a great Sunday/Monday combo, when you have the time on Sunday to roast the chicken, and then a super fast dinner ready for you on Monday. Here are the steps:

Sunday:
Preheat oven to 425.
Take 5-6 pound whole chicken, rinse and pat dry. Salt and pepper the cavity well.
Stuff chicken with fresh thyme and rosemary, onion slices, lemon halves, and garlic.
Brush melted butter all over chicken, sprinkle generously with salt and pepper.
Pop it in the oven for one hour and 30 minutes.
(Note: if your family will eat an entire chicken, roast 2 at the same time so you'll have enough chicken leftover)

While the chicken is roasting, cook a double portion of rice, and set aside half of it.

Make your veggie. If you like roasted veggies, pop a pan in with the chicken for the last 30-45 minutes (I often do this with carrots tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper).

Eat and enjoy!

Then, after dinner, get every last bit of chicken off the bones, and put in a large mixing bowl with the rice (watching your carbs? then leave out the rice). Pour in 1-2 cans of rinsed black beans (1 can if you're using leftovers from one chicken, 2 cans if you are using an entire 2nd chicken), and a generous handful of shredded cheddar cheese. Stir well, cover and put in fridge.

Monday
Using the chicken mix you've already prepared, whip up some super fast quesadillas. Around here I add salsa for the adults and a little extra cheese for the kiddos. Serve with sliced tomatoes, and voila, dinner is done. Even Rachael Ray couldn't do it faster!

Happy eating!

To Market, To Market

How much do you spend at the grocery store? How do you try to save?

I grocery shop twice each week - Monday mornings I do the big weekly grocery run, and Thursday mornings I make a quick stop to pick up the fresh things we're running low on (milk, fruits, and veggies). Groceries are by far our biggest weekly expense. So I was intrigued by an Op-Ed in today's New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/opinion/16stein.html

Impulse buy at the grocery store? Me? Never! Except for the sushi I bought for my lunch today. And the 2 boxes of Cheerios and one box of Kashi because they were on sale. And the whole chicken because it seemed like a good idea for dinner tonight (despite the fact that I already had tonight's dinner planned and ingredients purchased). And the lemon and onion to go in the chicken while I roast it. And the frozen spinach and feta cheese because I got it in my brain - while wandering around the grocery store, of course - that a spinach/feta omelet might hit the spot this weekend (even though I think I'll puke if I see another egg anytime soon). All in all, a good $25 worth of groceries I didn't need. Oops.

I will try to do better! In the meantime, here's a recipe for the best roast chicken ever. And believe me, I've tried them all.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/lemon-and-garlic-roast-chicken-recipe/index.html

Dinner tonight: roasted chicken, lima beans, rice. Happy eating!

Mac & Cheese, Please

There are many, many things I love about Savannah. The beautiful downtown, the beaches and islands, the restaurants...it's a long list. But if I have a teensy complaint about this place, it's that we are a smidgen behind the rest of the country. By say, oh I don't know, 20 years? (Exhibit A: I saw a woman wearing stirrup pants in the grocery store the other day. I was SO TEMPTED to take a picture, but my good manners prevailed). So while the rest of America has things like Costco, nanny services, and local TV news on weekends, we putter along in a weird version of 1989.

I am therefore incredibly thankful to my out-of-town friends who, understanding my plight, keep me well supplied in whole wheat pasta, which is ridiculously hard to find here. Without it I couldn't make my weekly batch of my mother's homemade mac & cheese, a true family favorite. (If your kids have access to a microwave at school, this is a great thing to make Sunday nights and send for lunches during the week).

Cheese sauce:
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
1.5 cups skim milk
2 cups of your favorite cheese, shredded (I usually use a combo of sharp cheddar and mozzarella, but will throw in any bits and pieces of cheese I might have sitting around - gouda, havarti, etc.)
Salt and pepper to taste.

Melt butter in sauce pan. Stir in flour, let it cook 1-2 minutes until flour is slightly brown. Add milk, whisking well. Cook over medium heat, whisking quickly to get out all the lumps, until thickened. Don't let it boil! Once thickened enough to cling nicely to a wooden spoon, add the cheese, whisking in until smooth and creamy. (Oops - did you have to leave it unattended for a few minutes while you intervened in some child-crisis and then it thickened so much it was more like paste than sauce? Just add a little more milk until it gets back to your desired consistency. Not that I know anything about this...). Add a generous sprinkle of salt and pepper. Taste. Taste again. Taste one more time and remind yourself it's meant to be eaten on pasta, not fingers. Pour over cooked macaroni (this makes enough to nicely coat a 16oz box of macaroni).

A true story - I once left my 4 year old in the care of his babysitter and a box of Kraft mac & cheese for their dinner, the deluxe kind, no less. The next morning he sweetly requested that I never, ever, never again serve "that store-bought stuff." A food snob at age 4. Awesome.

Dinner tonight: Whatever dinner-to-go the farmer's market is selling this afternoon. Happy eating!

Meals on (Stroller) Wheels

We've had a mini-baby boom here in our neighborhood, with 2 cute little tots born to good friends of mine within 3 weeks of each other. One of the very, very best things the moms in our neighborhood do for each other is well-organized meals when someone has a baby. It's truly a lifesaver to have 2-3 weeks worth of meals lined up and taken care of, particularly when the novelty of the baby wears off, all your family goes home, and you're left to stare at each other wondering how the heck you're going to get a shower, let alone cook a meal.

Here's my favorite recipe to take to someone when they've had a baby (or surgery, or any other life event warranting the delivery of food and a good old "bless your heart!"), Ina Garten's chicken stew recipe. You can find it here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/chicken-stew-with-biscuits-recipe/index.html

It's an amazing recipe, and freezes/travels perfectly, and can always be made ahead of time. That said, it also has about a million steps, and given that I just don't have that much time in my day, ESPECIALLY when I'm cooking someone else dinner, I use the following shortcuts:

1) Use a store-bought rotisserie chicken, getting as much meat off it as possible, instead of separately roasting chicken breasts.
2) Instead of separately dicing and parboiling carrots, I just buy a 10oz bag of frozen peas and carrots, and skip that separate step altogether.
3) If I don't have any chicken stock in the freezer, I use Kitchen Basics chicken stock (comes in a box). It's a million times better than the canned chicken broth we're all used to, and really does make a difference in the taste.
3) I don't use the pearl onions.
4) Use frozen, pre-made biscuits. Pillsbury Southern Style are the best. Really, you can't beat them.

If you're making this for someone else, make the stew, put it in a disposable casserole pan, cover with tin foil, and deliver with the biscuits still separate in their original bag. That way, they can either freeze the entire recipe until they need it, or heat the stew that night and add the biscuits themselves. Don't precook the biscuits for them or they'll get too soggy during delivery.

Dinner tonight: chef salad with...what else...ham and hardboiled egg, french bread. Happy eating!

Leftovers!

If you have a recipe that requires copious amounts of ham, I will pay you money for it. Seriously. Post it NOW. (And bonus points if it requires parsley, rosemary, basil, or thyme, as someone apparently fed my herbs steroids.)

One of the best things about holidays is all the leftover food. Especially when you're the one who hosted, and all that delicious food is sitting in your fridge. Here's my problem, though. I don't know what to do with all the ham. The hard boiled eggs are easy, despite the fact that we have about 24 of them. I can make deviled eggs or egg salad, which will be promptly inhaled by my cholesterol-loving family. But I drew a blank for creative ideas while staring at our leftover ham this morning. A side note: have you ever noticed that in November and December the magazine are all filled with articles about easy leftovers using turkey, but come March or April, not a peep about ham leftovers?

Luckily, Google never lets me down. Here's a recipe for ham scones I found this morning, and we'll be making it this afternoon. Note it includes rosemary - even better!

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/rachael-ray/rosemary-and-ham-scones-recipe/index.html

Dinner tonight: ham scones (I hope), green salad, deviled eggs. Happy eating!

Tuesday T-ball

Just a quick note today as I'm suffering from severe basketball hangover and must go research how to start a caffeine IV on myself. On the upside, the Tar Heels won and life is good!!

It's t-ball night again, and this time I'm prepared with plans for a real dinner for myself: baked potato with ham, broccoli, and cheese. Couldn't be easier - I'll pop the potato in the oven before I run to get them from school, and then throw on the toppings while they eat their sandwiches. Pair with a glass of wine and I'll be fed and relaxed on the ball field, ready to actually chitchat with the other moms instead of wondering if I could snatch granola bars out of their kids' hands when they're not looking.

Game Day!

It's Game Day! The Tar Heels are playing for the national championship title tonight, and that means our oldest is answering only to "Tyler Hansbrough," and our youngest has been stuffed into UNC overalls that are too small. He complained about it briefly this morning, pulling at the straps, but since it would be bad luck for anyone not to be wearing their game day attire, I told him to suck it up and take one for the team. He considered this for a minute, and being the little bruiser that he is, agreed to do so.

In celebration of the game tonight, we're having one of our all-time favorite meals: Ina Garten's parmesan chicken. You can find the recipe here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/parmesan-chicken-recipe/index.html. The chicken can be prepped ahead of time, so all you have to do is throw it in the pan when you're just about ready to eat. The kids love it, we love it, and it makes its way to our table a couple times each month.

I'll confess - I spent way too much time yesterday trying to come up with a uniquely North Carolina meal to have tonight. Barbeque would have been the obvious choice, but I'm not a fan of North Carolina barbeque (tomato-based or vinegar-based, depending on where you live; I prefer South Carolina's mustard-based, but our family's slavish devotion to Melvin's is another post entirely). I had some great UNC pasta given to me by Chapel Hill friends, but we ate that when we played Duke. And other than these two ideas, I drew a complete and total blank on what would be a good Tar Heel meal. So parmesan chicken with salad greens, french bread, and white wine it is.

Happy eating, and GO TAR HEELS!

Fool-Proof Ribs

We've just finished eating dinner and the BBQ ribs were SO GOOD that I had to come post the recipe before I forgot. These are fall-off-the-bone-tender. And the best part is they can be made ahead of time.

Heat oven to 400. Take a large rack of baby back ribs. Rinse and pat dry. Season generously with salt and pepper on both sides. Wrap tightly in tin foil, put on baking sheet, and bake for 1.5 hours. (This is a great time to also throw a couple of potatoes in the oven with them, then make a quick salad, and voila, dinner is 95% finished) If you're making these a day ahead of time, take them out of the oven and refrigerate at this point. Otherwise, unwrap from the tin foil, brush on your favorite BBQ sauce (I like Kraft Honey BBQ Sauce) and grill on medium high for 10-15 minutes until the BBQ sauce is nicely caramelized onto the ribs (or until hot all the way through if you refrigerated them). Serves 2 adults and one 4 year old in our family, might serve more or less depending on how much your family likes ribs.

Happy Eating!

Elmo is a Girl's Best Friend

I have come to dread the 5 o'clock hour in my house. It used to be that 5 o'clock was a happy time. Work was over for the day, drinks were poured, little snacks or appetizers were set out, and the transition from day to evening would be downright delightful.

Then we had kids.

Now, starting at 5 o'clock on the dot, the whining and clinging begins (and that's just me, calling DH every 5 minutes wanting to know WHEN HE'S COMING HOME). A child who was happily playing at 4:59 is suddenly a starving maniac at 5:01, unable to entertain himself for a single minute more because he is so. very. hungry. And I swear, if I have to cook one more meal with only a single arm because I'm holding our 16-month-old in the other, I might just beat myself in the head with a pot and call it a day.

Thus, I have begun my Elmo campaign in earnest. With our oldest, we dutifully followed the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommendation that children not watch any TV at all before age 2. (Except for basketball. That didn't count) But once he turned 2 and we flipped on that TV, it changed my life. No kidding. With the help of Sesame Street (aka Toddler Crack), I could actually get dinner cooked and on the table, and the return to a semblance of normalcy in the evenings was comparable to when he started sleeping through the night. Such relief. And yet now, with our younger one, we're right back into that cling-to-Mommy-as-if-your-life-depends-on-it-stage, and when that gets to be boring it's the how-many-times-can-I-flush-the-toilet-before-she-comes-running-stage, or my all-time favorite, the let's-check-out-what's-in-the-cat-litter-box-stage. As much as I love cooking, and as strongly as I feel about us eating together as a family each night, it's sometimes so logistically difficult that I dread it. So there's no way I'm waiting until this one is 2 to turn on that TV. I'm praying for a quick and prolonged addiction on his part to a red monster or purple dinosaur. Wish me luck.