I picked up some fresh kale tonight at Farm to Family. I fell in love with kale last winter and have been impatiently waiting for kale to make an appearance at my favorite farmer's market. I squealed with delight when I saw it come in last week!
On my way home from assisting on a photo shoot this afternoon, I stopped in and picked up some veggies for the week and almost forgot my beloved kale!! Fortunately, I came to my senses and grabbed a few handfuls. I thought about blanching it but that doesn't add any flavor so I threw a recipe together! Hope you try some kale and enjoy it as much as I did tonight!
Fresh Kale
2 handfuls of fresh kale, on the stalk
1 purple onion, sliced or diced
2 teaspoons minced garlic
olive oil
Heat the oil in a pan. Add onion and let it start to become translucent. Add minced garlic and stir. While this is cooking, cut your kale into bite size chunks. If you have long stalks, cut them down a bit. Once the onions are soft enough for your taste, add the kale. Stir the kale a few times to make sure it all cooks down. This should take about 4 minutes. You don't want the kale to be limp and soggy looking.
Remove from pan and serve. Top with some Parmesan cheese if desired.
Showing posts with label healthy living. Show all posts
Showing posts with label healthy living. Show all posts
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Veggie success!
I really don't like brussell sprouts. Really don't like them. At all. When my mom made them, I would drown mine in A-1 Steak Sauce to make them tolerable.
Despite my intense dislike for brussell sprouts, tonight for dinner I made Sausage and Potato Roast and brussell sprouts marinara (minus the marinara). The key to the brussell sprouts is the bacon fat. I cooked up three slices of bacon (and ate two of them on the sly while no one was looking), then cooked the onions in the bacon fat. Once the dish was done, I crumbled the remaining, lonely bacon slice on top of the brussell sprouts and then added the Asiago cheese.
Little M ate four brussell sprouts! He wasn't happy about it and there was a tremendous amount of parental cajoling, threatening and bribing involved... but he ate them! Both kids ate their brussell sprouts as did Big M who hates this veggie as much as I do.
Who knows.. I might make squash next!
Despite my intense dislike for brussell sprouts, tonight for dinner I made Sausage and Potato Roast and brussell sprouts marinara (minus the marinara). The key to the brussell sprouts is the bacon fat. I cooked up three slices of bacon (and ate two of them on the sly while no one was looking), then cooked the onions in the bacon fat. Once the dish was done, I crumbled the remaining, lonely bacon slice on top of the brussell sprouts and then added the Asiago cheese.
Little M ate four brussell sprouts! He wasn't happy about it and there was a tremendous amount of parental cajoling, threatening and bribing involved... but he ate them! Both kids ate their brussell sprouts as did Big M who hates this veggie as much as I do.
Who knows.. I might make squash next!
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Butter Bean Burgers
I LOVE lima beans (aka butter beans). My kids, however, aren't very interested in trying new vegetables. I picked up some fresh butter beans today at the Farm to Family market and came home wondering how I could entice my kids to eat them.
A quick Google search on "how to cook butter beans" brought me to a recipe for butter bean burgers.
Interesting. I'm intrigued.
I modified the recipe to better work with my family and they were a huge hit! My son, who can spot a hidden veggie before it even leaves the kitchen, gobbled his burger down and liked it. I'll be making these more often!
Butter Bean Burgers
1 package of lima beans (approx 15 oz)
1/2 onion, diced
1 heaping teaspoon minced garlic
1/8 t crushed red pepper
salt/pepper to taste
1/2 c grated sharp cheddar
1 c Panko bread crumbs
1 egg
Sautee onion. Once the onion starts to soften, add the fresh lima beans and cook until the beans are tender. Dump them into the food processor and run it until the mix is a thick paste.
In a bowl, mix all the dry ingredients. Add in cheddar, garlic and lima bean paste. Mix. Add whisked egg and mix in.
Form into patties and fry in a little bit of hot oil. Turn over and fry the other side once it's crispy.
Next time, I'm going to add some shredded carrot and diced green pepper into the lima bean mix. Might as well add as many veggies as I can!
A quick Google search on "how to cook butter beans" brought me to a recipe for butter bean burgers.
Interesting. I'm intrigued.
I modified the recipe to better work with my family and they were a huge hit! My son, who can spot a hidden veggie before it even leaves the kitchen, gobbled his burger down and liked it. I'll be making these more often!
Butter Bean Burgers
1 package of lima beans (approx 15 oz)
1/2 onion, diced
1 heaping teaspoon minced garlic
1/8 t crushed red pepper
salt/pepper to taste
1/2 c grated sharp cheddar
1 c Panko bread crumbs
1 egg
Sautee onion. Once the onion starts to soften, add the fresh lima beans and cook until the beans are tender. Dump them into the food processor and run it until the mix is a thick paste.
In a bowl, mix all the dry ingredients. Add in cheddar, garlic and lima bean paste. Mix. Add whisked egg and mix in.
Form into patties and fry in a little bit of hot oil. Turn over and fry the other side once it's crispy.
Next time, I'm going to add some shredded carrot and diced green pepper into the lima bean mix. Might as well add as many veggies as I can!
Celebies and Veggies
Did you happen to pick up the Carrie Underwood issue of People Magazine? Go grab it and turn to page 96. People wrote an excellent article on Farm to Family, a super cool, mobile farmer's market here in Richmond. We've been patronizing F2F since February and have come to adore Mark and Suzi, the owners.
Then if you happen to glance at the full page photo on page 97.... yep, that's me and my kids!! We're quasi-celebs now!
Back in February, I bought some amazing ground sausage from F2F. It was so delicious, I decided to go back and buy some more to make a sausage and kale soup. The day I happened to make the trip, People Magazine sent a reporter to interview Mark and his customers. I spoke with her for maybe 10 minutes and went on with my shopping. A few weeks later, Suzi left me a message asking if I could bring the kids down the next day for a photo shoot for the article! It was really neat to be involved in the process but issue after issue after issue came out and F2F wasn't in it. I pretty much gave up on seeing the article in print when I got a message from Suzi that it would be in the next issue!
To say that I made a scene in the Walmart when I finally found the new issue would be a bit of an understatement. I had been driving around all day trying to find the new issue when a friend told me she saw it at Walmart.
Farm to Family got some amazing exposure for their eat-local venture. My kids are totally unphased. I'm still pretty tickled by it. I'm really excited for Mark and Suzi and can't wait to see where they go from here.
Then if you happen to glance at the full page photo on page 97.... yep, that's me and my kids!! We're quasi-celebs now!
Back in February, I bought some amazing ground sausage from F2F. It was so delicious, I decided to go back and buy some more to make a sausage and kale soup. The day I happened to make the trip, People Magazine sent a reporter to interview Mark and his customers. I spoke with her for maybe 10 minutes and went on with my shopping. A few weeks later, Suzi left me a message asking if I could bring the kids down the next day for a photo shoot for the article! It was really neat to be involved in the process but issue after issue after issue came out and F2F wasn't in it. I pretty much gave up on seeing the article in print when I got a message from Suzi that it would be in the next issue!
To say that I made a scene in the Walmart when I finally found the new issue would be a bit of an understatement. I had been driving around all day trying to find the new issue when a friend told me she saw it at Walmart.
Farm to Family got some amazing exposure for their eat-local venture. My kids are totally unphased. I'm still pretty tickled by it. I'm really excited for Mark and Suzi and can't wait to see where they go from here.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
And nothing exploded!
What a great domestic day! Soup, carnitas, baked chicken, friends, dancing in the kitchen, great grocery deals... I ROCK!!
Yesterday, I hit up the produce bus for some fresh kale. I was determined to make sausage, kale and white bean soup. I really wanted to get the kale and root veggies from them. I ended up coming home with organic sausage, a ton of kale and what I thought was a turnip. But maybe it's a rutabega? I'm perplexed and not really sure what I put in my soup, but it's good so I'm not too concerned about it!
Regardless... I was so excited to make this soup today! I had to hit up the grocery store for onions, carrots, celery and a few other items. I came home with pork loin (for carnitas), two packages of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, various veggies, butter, two gallons of milk and a few other things for under $30. Not too shabby! I came home knowing exactly how I'd use these groceries and I was determined to maximize my time in the kitchen and adopt a Once A Month Cooking mentality.
First, I tackled that amazing soup! DELISH! Okay wait.. let me start at the beginning. First I cooked the organic sausage and drained it. As I was chopping the root veggies, I kept... er... sampling the sausage. Yes, I was sampling it; making sure it was good enough for us to put in the soup. That sausage.... it was like a pork dream come true! Such a mellow, butter after taste. I wanted to sit down with a straw and suck it all up slowly. Thank you, thank you, thank you Farm to Family for selling the Polyface sausage! I'll be back for more!!
While my root veggies were cooking in the leftover pork fat (not the healthiest choice but so so scrumptuous!), I did another first: I cooked the white beans in a pressure cooker. Not any old pressure cooker, but my grandmother's pressure cooker! I'm sure she was having a good chuckle watching down on me as I danced in the kitchen to my Pandora station, cut root veggies and fretted about the cooker exploding everywhere.
This soup turned out to be so amazing! And it makes a huge batch so I shared half of it with a friend. I think from now on when I make a soup, I will always find a friend to pass some of it along to. Next time, I'm going to try to make it using only local ingredients. Gotta support those farmers!
Oh! The rest of the food! The pork tenderloin is in the crockpot with some lime juice, busy working on becoming carnitas. That should be done by bedtime tonight and I'll put a lot of it up in the freezer. The chicken breasts are in the oven with the remaining onion bits and carrots, roasting in a little bit of left over chicken broth. When that's done, I'll put the veggies in the fridge to snack on and will cut the chicken up into bite-size pieces. Then into baggies and into the freezer!
Out of the $30 I spent today on groceries, I have at least a dozen meals for my family of four! The carnitas last forever. They're such an easy, inexpensive meal that spreads out for quite a while. By cooking and cutting the chicken in advance, I find that I'm able to spread it out over more meals than if I just plopped a chicken breast on each person's plate.
Move over Claire Huxtable and Martha Stewart! I'm rockin' it today!
Yesterday, I hit up the produce bus for some fresh kale. I was determined to make sausage, kale and white bean soup. I really wanted to get the kale and root veggies from them. I ended up coming home with organic sausage, a ton of kale and what I thought was a turnip. But maybe it's a rutabega? I'm perplexed and not really sure what I put in my soup, but it's good so I'm not too concerned about it!
Regardless... I was so excited to make this soup today! I had to hit up the grocery store for onions, carrots, celery and a few other items. I came home with pork loin (for carnitas), two packages of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, various veggies, butter, two gallons of milk and a few other things for under $30. Not too shabby! I came home knowing exactly how I'd use these groceries and I was determined to maximize my time in the kitchen and adopt a Once A Month Cooking mentality.First, I tackled that amazing soup! DELISH! Okay wait.. let me start at the beginning. First I cooked the organic sausage and drained it. As I was chopping the root veggies, I kept... er... sampling the sausage. Yes, I was sampling it; making sure it was good enough for us to put in the soup. That sausage.... it was like a pork dream come true! Such a mellow, butter after taste. I wanted to sit down with a straw and suck it all up slowly. Thank you, thank you, thank you Farm to Family for selling the Polyface sausage! I'll be back for more!!
While my root veggies were cooking in the leftover pork fat (not the healthiest choice but so so scrumptuous!), I did another first: I cooked the white beans in a pressure cooker. Not any old pressure cooker, but my grandmother's pressure cooker! I'm sure she was having a good chuckle watching down on me as I danced in the kitchen to my Pandora station, cut root veggies and fretted about the cooker exploding everywhere.This soup turned out to be so amazing! And it makes a huge batch so I shared half of it with a friend. I think from now on when I make a soup, I will always find a friend to pass some of it along to. Next time, I'm going to try to make it using only local ingredients. Gotta support those farmers!
Oh! The rest of the food! The pork tenderloin is in the crockpot with some lime juice, busy working on becoming carnitas. That should be done by bedtime tonight and I'll put a lot of it up in the freezer. The chicken breasts are in the oven with the remaining onion bits and carrots, roasting in a little bit of left over chicken broth. When that's done, I'll put the veggies in the fridge to snack on and will cut the chicken up into bite-size pieces. Then into baggies and into the freezer!
Out of the $30 I spent today on groceries, I have at least a dozen meals for my family of four! The carnitas last forever. They're such an easy, inexpensive meal that spreads out for quite a while. By cooking and cutting the chicken in advance, I find that I'm able to spread it out over more meals than if I just plopped a chicken breast on each person's plate.
Move over Claire Huxtable and Martha Stewart! I'm rockin' it today!
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Investigating an angry chicken
Through some random craft-related blog surfing and clicking, I came across the Angry Chicken blog. I have read this blog in the past and enjoyed it but never kept up with it for some reason.I've thoroughly enjoyed reading through the archives and have found some treasures.
One of my goals this year is to be more 'home made'. This includes embracing some natural home-remedies. I haven't spent much time researching yet, but this witchy post about herbs for kids has inspired me to start digging around the internet.
Looks like I'll be building an herb planter for the balcony as well as the topsy-turvy tomato planters!
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Trying to do better
I have a hard time feeding my children what I consider healthy meals -- meals I would be proud of and I know are chock full of good stuff, not junk, fillers and chemicals.
I never really thought about food this way until I became a mother and realized I didn't want my children drinking milk from cows shot full of antibiotics and hormones, nor did I want them eating foods that are highly processed when I can make the equivalent at home and it's healthier and tastier.
Then, my buddy Tara on RichmondMommies started ranting to me about high fructose corn syrup. Tara is great and really educates herself on stuff like this so I try to just suck all the knowledge out of her brain and go with it. I trust her judgment on stuff like this. So now I'm trying to eliminate HFCS from our foods. Man! That stuff is in EVERYTHING!!
One more way I'm trying to improve our diet is by buying hormone free, antibiotic free beef directly from the farmer. I have found a farmer who sells beef and has been raved about by people I know so I'm going to try it out.
I can't completely change the way we eat overnight but I'm trying to strategically choose options that give us great benefits.
I never really thought about food this way until I became a mother and realized I didn't want my children drinking milk from cows shot full of antibiotics and hormones, nor did I want them eating foods that are highly processed when I can make the equivalent at home and it's healthier and tastier.
Then, my buddy Tara on RichmondMommies started ranting to me about high fructose corn syrup. Tara is great and really educates herself on stuff like this so I try to just suck all the knowledge out of her brain and go with it. I trust her judgment on stuff like this. So now I'm trying to eliminate HFCS from our foods. Man! That stuff is in EVERYTHING!!
One more way I'm trying to improve our diet is by buying hormone free, antibiotic free beef directly from the farmer. I have found a farmer who sells beef and has been raved about by people I know so I'm going to try it out.
I can't completely change the way we eat overnight but I'm trying to strategically choose options that give us great benefits.
Saturday, August 4, 2007
Making some changes
Let's just say that between the dressing room fiasco at Kohl's and hearing this amazing quote from Oprah (who I really don't care for on most days), I'm inspired to make some serious changes in my life. They are:
- Get a hair cut. I've let my hair go and it looks b.a.d.
- Join the gym that I've been threatening to visit.
- Start eating a healthy breakfast with my children. I make them do it; I should too.
- Deal with my skin problems. Since this last pregnancy, my face is a nightmare. I ordered mineral makeup and ProActiv tonight.
- Stop eating freezer food and start cooking.
- Get back into healthy eating habits.
- Take pride in myself
"Nothing tastes as good as thin feels."
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