Recipes and cooking tips for foodie families.
Featured Recipe: Risotto Milanese
Featured Wine: that bottle in the back of the fridge that made it beyond the weekend.
What do you get when you take an overzealous _______ and add a healthy dose of absolutely no spare time? All too often a _____ full of the best intentions that’s threatening to spoil. Continue reading
Hi! I’m Gourmet Mommy’s first guest poster – her sister. I guess that makes me a gourmet auntie, although I’m also a mom. My son (hereafter referred to as The Bear) is 10 months old, just a few weeks older than his cousin, Baby K. Continue reading
Featured Recipes: Grilled Gruyere with Salami and Cornichon Relish, Roasted Tomato Soup
First, a tale. Then, winter BLT that is actually salami and gruyere. Continue reading
Brrrrr, fall is upon us and winter is close behind! Time for some warming comfort foods! I’ve gotten in the Halloween spirit this week and made a menu almost entirely of orange foods that are both comforting and seasonal. Since I just headed back to work after my maternity leave, I’m also focused on recipes that are super easy and come together in under 1/2 hour.
Dinner #1
Butternut Squash Risotto
Garden Salad
I’m making this dinner on Halloween. I’ll roast the squash on Sunday afternoon, make some pureed squash for Katie while I’m at it, so Halloween dinner will come together in 20 minutes or so. It’s orange and festive for the holiday, but also chock full of veggies so hopefully will offset some of that candy.
Dinner #2
Broccoli Cheddar Soup
Toasted Whole Wheat Bread
Garden Salad
Nicholas LOVES broccoli. It’s weird, but I’m not complaining. If your kids aren’t such a fan, here’s a way to encourage them to try again. Creamy, cheesy soup…that’s actually made up mostly of broccoli!
Make sure to make enough soup to have 2 servings leftover for the next night’s dinner.
Dinner #3
Cheesy Chicken & Rice Casserole
Garden Salad
This casserole is a great way to use up leftovers. It calls for cooked chicken and cooked brown rice; I typically have both of those in my freezer because I notoriously make way to much food and always have leftovers. If you don’t already have cooked chicken on hand though, consider getting a rotisserie chicken. Take the meat off the chicken for this recipe, and use the bones to make stock on the weekend.
This recipe also serves 6-8 depending on appetites, so you may be able to get two nights of eating out of this one.
Homemade Baby Food
Shopping List
cooked chicken, 1 cup (rotisserie chicken)
broccoli (2 lbs, plus more for baby food)
butternut squash (2 1/2 lbs, plus more for baby food)
lettuce
cucumbers
tomatoes
onions (2)
garlic
sage (fresh preferred, but dried is fine)
brown rice
Arborio rice
chicken or vegetable stock (1 1/2 quarts)
flour
nutmeg
sharp cheddar cheese (8 oz)
butter–unsalted
Parmesan cheese
milk
whole grain bread
One of our favorite weekend activities is walking with the kids down to the local farmers market. We each have an agenda for the excursion: I shop for veggies, Dan gets some locally produced pickles for his lunches, and Nicholas pick out an apple then sits on a bench and gobbles it up. 
Last weekend I grabbed one of my favorite fall veggies: butternut squash. It’s delicious just roasted as a side dish, or mixed into a pasta or risotto dish. One of my favorites is Butternut Squash Risotto with Sage and Parmesan from A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen. It’s a simple dish, with very few ingredients, but is elegant enough to serve for dinner parties or special occasions. If you roast the squash ahead of time, the risotto comes together in less than 1/2 hour. I also like that it uses roasted squash, because then I simply make some extra squash for Pureed Butternut Squash for Katie.
Even though it’s April, we can’t seem to shake this cold, wet weather. So, I’ve decided to embrace it and make a rainy day comfort food: Broccoli Cheddar Soup. What I love about this recipe is that it’s not only delicious for Mom, Dad and the older kids, it’s a versatile base for younger kid recipes as well. For babies on a single food diet, simply steam extra broccoli and puree for a easy Pureed Broccoli. For older babies, take your leftover soup and combine with precooked brown rice and puree. And for your older kids and adults, you can take leftover soup, any leftover chicken or tuna you have, precooked rice, and make an easy Broccoli Cheddar Rice Casserole to send for daycare lunches.
At the farmer’s market the other day, kale was in abundance. At one farmer’s stand I found red russian kale, which I’ve never tried before. The perveyor described it as sweeter than regular kale so I happily brought it home for a try. Quickly braising it with smoky bacon and sweet onions, and serving over a rich Parmesan polenta made a delicious, quick, and vitamin-filled dinner for our family. Braised kale over Parmesan polenta paired with a hearty zinfandel is a perfect way to eat your veggies!
So far Nicholas has taken to eating with a zeal that even I find surprising. The other day he even had manchego and olives for a snack because that’s what Dan and I were enjoying for our afternoon snack. But I am preparing for the day that he decides that the only thing he’s going to eat is cheese. Or something equally unhealthy. I’ve been warned that day will come soon.
So, to prepare for that day, as well as providing him today with a healthy lunch I feel good about sending to daycare, Very Veggie Tuna Mac does the trick. I make a huge batch and store it in a bunch of 2 cup containers–one for the fridge the rest go in the freezer. Then I always have a great meal that Nicholas loves ready for him. And for mom and dad too!
It snowed recently in our area. No, that’s an understatement. In a city that usually gets 10 inches of snow per season, it snowed 4 feet in less than a week. Stuck in the house with a 14-month old for a week while the entire city completely shut down was one of our biggest adventures yet. Plus, I was out of my stock of prepped and frozen food for Nicholas.
We ventured outside a couple of times to escape the monotony of our house, and always returned refreshed but chilled. To make us all feel a little better, I made a batch of comfort food from remnants in my freezer, pantry, and fridge. I usually have some smoked sausage in the freezer because I live down the street from a Polish sausage store, but it’s also often on sale in the supermarket and so versatile that I like to keep it around. I found a big bag of kale in the fridge that I’d only been able to use half of in a previous recipe. And I always like to keep dried beans around the house; they never go bad, are ridiculously cheap, and are great for meals like this. Sausage, Kale, and Navy Bean Soup hit the spot during our Snowpocylpse. Surprisingly, Nicholas loved it too, even the kale!
In August the farmer’s market overflows with tasty and healthy foods that the whole family loves. I invested in a vacuum sealer so that I can cook large portions for baby and freeze to enjoy later when pickings are slim.
Today I did something I rarely do: I spent a whole day cooking for baby. Typically I try to cook along with what I’m cooking for mom and dad, but with all of the great items I picked up today, I wanted to stock the freezer for Nicholas.
A couple of recipes from today include Succotash, using fresh lima beans I discovered at the market, and Apples and Wheatberries, which take advantage of the first sweet apples of the season.
auntieangela
gourmetmommy