What Ana Does

 This really hit home for me when I saw it.  Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. and Yes.  Come to my kitchen so I can feed you because I love you.

Last week, to liven things up from the boredom of making dinner every night, I declared it PASTA PALOOZA and challenged myself to prepare a brand-new pasta dish every night.  The girls and I love pasta, so I wanted to find a new dish to add to my monthly repertoire. The rules were the dish needed to be new to us, incorporate veggies and from a cookbook I don't often cook from.  It was a total success! We looked forward to the new meal every night and really liked each recipe, but one the most.  Sweet Leek Carbonara ( link to recipe )  This was our favorite! It's from Jamie Oliver's VEG cookbook and has very few ingredients but came together really quickly. It's really silky and super savory. Who knew we'd love leeks so much?!   Sunshine Fusilli Pasta  There's no link for this recipe online, but it's from the same Jamie Oliver VEG cookbook, on Amazon . The pasta sauce is made from yellow peppers blended up with cheese and pistachios! We all really liked...

As much as I miss summer days, I love Sundays in October. Normally, we stay home. Dave turns on football ALL DAY. And the girls and I putter around the house, watching a few snippets of the games, sorting, cleaning, playing. Lately, Dave and I have been doing our weekly food shop on Sunday mornings. Just the two of us. It's kind of a date. Then, we'll make something BIG for lunch to eat with the girls in a very casual way at the island. Maybe in the crockpot? Dave has been prepping food for lunch and dinners on weekends, as well, in an effort to eat more balanced meals. So he also spends much of Sunday in the kitchen, where he can watch the football games while cutting up veggies and making rice. Last weekend, Leah decided to film him to make a cooking show. As a self-proclaimed, proud HOMEBODY, Sundays in October are just about perfect to me. And they make saying goodbye to summer temperatures and looking down six months of cold, winter weather almost doable. ...

After spending a week at a Mexican resort, we all got hooked on the "green juice" at the breakfast buffet. When we asked what was in it, the waiters listed off things: cucumber, spinach, celery, orange juice and pineapple. Maybe apple? Ginger? It was hard to tell and each morning it tasted just a little different. But so delicious. The weekend we got home I got to work on the recipe. We thought it was a traditional Mexican juice and therefore a published recipe would be easy to find. Not so much. Our Mexican friend Patty had never heard of "jugo verde" and each recipe I found was very different. Cactus, parsley, cilantro, almond milk were also kicked around as ingredients. Undaunted, I got a few things we "thought" were in there and whipped up a few test batches. I gotta say, I was definitely off, but what I ended up with tasted pretty good. And the juice lasts a few days in the fridge, so it's only requires a weekly mess. Recipe Making My ...

Due to some pretty heinous past experiences, I approach recipes mined from Pinterest with extreme caution. They're much less reliable than recipes from trusted cookbooks that have been copyedited and kitchen-tested by various cooks and editors. But I've been looking for some kitchen inspiration as I attempt dinners that the girls will eat, and are also high in veggies and beans (I'm introducing other protein sources to go meatless more often). Last night I got lucky with this recipe from the Cooking Classy blog. It's her Avocado Hummus and it was pretty delicious. I didn't make any variations on the recipe, but I will warn you a little garlic goes a LONG way. Avocado Hummus Recipe Here . The only drawback is because of the two avocados, it gets brown pretty quickly (despite the lime). It's not something you can store in your fridge for a few days like regular hummus. Did the kids eat it? Sadly, no. But Dave and I enjoyed it along with chicken, feta ...

Packing Up My Cup O Noodles for Work So all of a sudden I'm a trendy foodie, I guess. The big thing right now is using mason jars to transport food like salads, soups, cereal, etc. (Isn't it weird how popular mason jars have become?) And maybe because they use these trendy jars and they're super photogenic ( see here ), I've seen recipes pop-up in every magazine, food blog, new recipe book (like Gwyneth's) and Pinterest over and over again. If it's in Martha Stewart magazine, it's a THING. I've been using the cup o' soup recipe from Martha Stewart for the last week and it's been a total success, though I'm going to continue to experiment with other ingredients. What's inside: The noodles are a Chinese bean noodle, I add thinly sliced mushrooms, frozen corn and a few teaspoons of Miso paste. I want to add greens like scallions but I don't have any in the fridge, so today I took the last bite of spinach. Overall, very qu...

I used to make pies in my 20s. Not great pies, but I got almost confident in my skills. Then, I didn't make a pie for a long time. With my father-in-law, a huge cherry pie fan, coming to town, it just felt like the right time to pull out my pie skills and see what I can still do. Not to mention I had a TON of sweet cherries from the CSA in my fridge. First, it was all about pitting. And I used my tried and true technique of popping pits out with a ... paperclip! Fancy gadgets abound. Pitting Cherries Ok, so things got a little dicey with the crust. I made it a few days ahead of time and tossed it into the fridge. But when I attempted to roll it out, it didn't exactly hold together.  Pre-Baked Crust. No, I Didn't Use That Avocado In the Pie.  So, it wasn't going to look beautiful! But how about the taste? Baked to golden-brown-ness, it was sweet and very good. And, best of all, my father-in-law loved it.  Ready to Slice!  So maybe I won...

Pictures in cookbooks are essential. I need a visual goal of what I'm cooking, especially if it's something new. And the more lovely and artistic the picture, the better. This week I attempted a recipe sent to me via the hubby. It came from the The New York Times, and printed as a PDF, it had no image. But the many beans and veggies in the recipe followed my ongoing goal of EAT MORE PLANTS, so I attempted it. It was kind of like cooking without a net. Does this look right, I kept asking myself. Maybe? Keep going.   Here's the link to the Ribolita recipe  (there's a picture on the website) and here's what it looked like in my bowl. It was the perfect winter soup! Delicious.   Related posts: More cooking posts 

Don't judge me but I loove award shows! And particularly the Golden Globes because I get to see TV and movie stars mingle. So last night, I sent the girls up to play Mario Kart, I poured myself a glass of wine and basked in the glory that is red carpet and award show hoopla. Not that I saw any of the movies or TVs up for awards -- that hardly mattered. Especially when Christian Slater high-fived Leo on the way to get his reward and my 15-year-old-self exploded. Or when Brad and Ryan were on stage together and my brain couldn't comprehend the hotness on my TV -- or maybe that was just the wine. Anyway... I also used my NEW pressure cooker last night for the first time, making a Beef, Barley and Vegetable Stew from the Martha Steward One Pot cookbook. The pressure cooker is a little intimidating to use, just think about all that built-up pressure sitting on your counter. Plus, you can't see into the thing to know what's going on inside there. But the stew came ou...

Not sure what got me thinking about this, but there's a bunch of food I have always wished I liked. And isn't it weird to think you WANT to like these things but YET you don't? Why do tastebuds have such power over my life?! Here's my list, in no particular order: Honey -- I love the idea of becoming a novice beekeeper to help bee populations, "as the bees go, so goes the earth" and all that. Plus, it's a natural sweetener you can get locally.  But, yuck. Too bitter.  Granola -- healthy, nutritious and cheap. My hubby loves it. But me? No thanks.   Jam and Pickles - because I took a jamming seminar and thought it was the coolest thing, but why go through all that just to make something I don't like to eat?   Applesauce -- my Mom used to hide penicillin in applesauce, thus all applesauce has that awful chalky taste to me. Done.  Oatmeal -- seriously, why don't I like oatmeal? Much the same reason as granola, I guess. I discovered steal-...

And just because I posted about it last week ... it arrives on Tuesday!!!  The Homemade Kitchen - In MY Kitchen I've been finding little bits of time here and there this week to explore, but won't have any time to really dive into the little essays and recipes until this weekend. Oh the anticipation ....  ( Did I mention I loved her first book?  Oh yes, last year.) Related posts: More cookbook reviews All the book posts

This weekend I dipped into my collection of Everyday Foods  from Martha Stewart mini-magazines, which I've been hoarding since the early 2000s, looking for some simple veggie recipes. (I don't think we're eating enough veg lately.) Anyway, it got me thinking about how much I loved this now-defunct recipe magazine and how it's odd to have recipes that feel are in "my style." Do recipes or cookbooks go after a certain style? I'm not aware if they do. Sure, there's a theme and focus, but food doesn't traditionally follow a style, right? But I'm starting to think it does. Similar to how J.Crew is my clothing style and Express or Loft is not. Everyday Foods is my food style, as Ina Garten and Jaime Oliver (oh how I love them both) are not my style of food. I try to make their recipes, but I don't generally love the taste, or some of the ingredients or how they prepare things. Does that even make sense? My Treasure of Everyday Foods ...

I'm not the world's biggest fan of Nigella Lawson, but I do have one of her cookbooks ( this one ) and a few weeks ago I was flipping through it and noticed she had a Spanish omelet recipe. Yum Spanish Omelets!  Now, as a little Spanish girl, I've been making Spanish omelets since forever. I watched my Mom and Dad both make tons of them, several different ways. And when I was last visiting relatives in Spain, I watched my godmother Rosie make one, too. And I love making them for my family and pestering my kids to eat them. (At first, they didn't like them, but they're growing on them. How eggs and potatoes are an "acquired taste" is beyond me, but...) Back to Nigella. She had a few differences in her omelet recipe, such as adding cheese to the eggs, not separating the eggs out for fluffiness and finishing under the broiler instead of flipping it on a plate. She also prefers boiling the potatoes as opposed to frying them -- which has been my prefere...

From Lisa Leake's 100 Days of Real Food cookbook, I found a recipe for tossing a whole chicken into a crockpot, no liquid necessary, and dinner is served in 6 hours or less. Yes, I had to try this out. Plenty of Cooking Liquid Out of the Onions and Juicy Chicken To say the meat was falling off the bone would be an understatement. I literally spooned out the meat and plopped it on plates with some roasted veggies. Easiest meal ever. Then, Ms. Lisa suggested I make chicken stock from the bones and skin left behind. Just add celery, carrots and some water and leave the crock pot on overnight. OK. Sure. Stock! Two More Jars Completed This Haul And the fruits of that "labor-intensive" project: About 8 cups of chicken stock cooling on the island. All for the $6.00 I spent at Trader Joe's for the bird.  That's a winner of a deal.  Plus, I'll be mixing bbq sauce with the leftover chicken for dinner tonight.  Meanwhile, the dog was my BE...

Today was a busy-in-the-kitchen day. I'm being a happy homemaker! There was instant oatmeal to make -- because that stuff in the packet is just a waste of money. Oats are cheep, folks. Eat them.  Then, I pickled a few of the cucumbers from the garden -- for MY FIRST CANNING project. Ever!  Messy Start! Turned in this... Pickles! Which, Honestly, I Don't Like .... But Dave Does! Then, it was jammin' time. I can't eat all the fruit we get weekly from the CSA. So, for my first food-in-jar project I made apricot and rosemary jam.  Let's just say it was a big learning experience. But overall, wasn't as hard as I thought.  Yummy Apricots and Fresh Rosemary Turned into this... Pretty Jars - Ready for Toast or Roast Chicken! Last, homemade cereal bars to pack in lunches and pre-soccer-practice snack bags. They're my go-to recipe that I'm just starting to master from Alana's cookbook.  I had planned to make spelt ...

Tonight I went to a canning demonstration at my library by the author of Preserving by the Pint. It's small batch canning for folks like me with a CSA membership and just a bit too much fruit on my hands -- but not enough to put up a few dozen jars. Marisa, the author and writer on this blog , made a vanilla plum jam in the hour-long session. All that was left to do at the end was cool the two half-pint jars and eat them. That. Was. It. And I was so PUMPED after seeing how easy it is. I bought the book several months ago and still found the whole canning thing difficult to imagine. My Mom never canned/jarred, so I've never seen it done. Just reading about preserving food sounds exotic and risky. I don't want to give anyone food poisoning from a jar of my homemade jam, for pete's sake. But her step by step was so simple, and we got to interact and ping questions as she did each task. I'm a doer-learner, ya know? And watching a demo, I'm SO ready to ma...

I've started thinking about what foods I can make at home instead of buying processed. I've already ventured into homemade yogurt, which I enjoy and love eating, I'm wondering what else I can make weekly to become less reliant on food companies to make (and muck-up) the foods my family eats. And it's definitely a growing trend! For me, it started with Michael Pollen's books about the food industry. And I'm so inspired by the  Homemade Pantry cookbook, which I continue to love and use all the time. Not to mention sites like  100 Days of Real Food  that makes dumping processed foods look easy. Here's a breakdown of my Make or Buy foods: Yogurt - both: I love my homemade jars of yogurt, and each week I experiment with time and steps. Some batches are stiffer than others, but in another few months, I should have this buttoned up. Now, getting the kids on board will take some doing. They're hooked on the sweet flavors of our Sunnybrook and Trader J...

I've been thinking a lot about aspirations lately. Maybe because of this diet and how close I'm getting to my goal -- it's a pretty fantastic feeling. Like, I put it down (the lbs, not the inches around the middle, unfortunately) and now I'm getting there. And the saying is, if you put it out there, it might come back to you. Not sure where "there" is, but this blog seems "there" enough for me. Alice in Paris! 2010 Goal 1: Live in Paris for 2 or 3 weeks.  - I dream about renting a small apartment and living as a Parisian for a time. What we discovered during our time in Berlin is you get so much more out of a city if you're at their grocery stores and taking the kids to playgrounds and little restaurants. Bring my kids, my hubby and just enjoy the sights and sounds of daily life in France. Goal 2: YA book reviewer/editor or something.  - Let's just say it. I would love to read as an occupation. I'd be good at it. I find holes...

The grocery rule of thumb is: if you can't pronounce it, you shouldn't eat it. Or, put simply, stop eating over-processed, chemical-laden foods. For Pete's sake! But in reality, that's not totally possible. Especially with the kiddos. Their reliance on fruit bars and cheese crackers (albeit organic and mostly all-natural) is a convenience I can't deny. Working Moms don't have oodles of time to bake granola mini-muffins, weekly sandwich bread and stumble upon veggies picky kids will actually eat. (This mom did it and is now making a living off helping others do it ... 100 Days of Real Food .) Hey, I'm trying! So this weekend I decided to find a granola bar recipe the girls would like -- one less unprocessed snack food for them. Of course, I went right to the cereal bar recipe from Alana's The Homemade Pantry -- mostly because I'm in the middle of a passionate love affair with that cookbook. And her two daughters eat them. That's kid test...

Every week for the last few years I've been making pizza for Pizza Thursday. Occasionally, it's from a box. But usually it's homemade. At first, I was focused on perfecting the dough . If I have time, I'll make the dough from scratch the night before. I have a no-fail recipe that uses half whole wheat flour and sits in the oven (turned off) where it will rise until the next night, when I'm ready to bake it. My backup is the whole wheat dough from Trader Joe's -- which I consider a staple. There's always a bag of dough in my freezer. It's pretty delicious. And I pre-cook it, so it's extra crispy once we top and cook it. Lately I've focused on toppings and adding a lot of veggies. I've read there's nothing you can't put on a pizza and I'm starting to test that theory. Most recently, baby spinach. Delicious! And this week I threw on sliced tomatoes. I love when they get all soft and juicy. Fantastic. The experimentation conti...