What Ana Does

Last Spring I started a meal delivery subscription, so they'd send me two complete, vegetarian meals each week. That left me with just two-three meals a week I had to plan and shop for, and a lot more brain space for other things. I couldn't believe how much weekly stress it took off me. I looked forward to those boxes and quickly preparing the simple meals.  Well, we ended that last week when the subscription prices got hiked up and I just couldn't justify the expense. And I had to contemplate my first week back to cooking all the meals. On my own. Every night. SIGH.  I LIKE cooking and preparing a nice meal for my family. And we're lucky that we don't have a lot of after-school activities that make it more complicated to sit together. And I work from home, so you'd think I have a leg-up on the commuters, but it's still a lot to think about, especially on days when I'm thinking about a lot of other things.  Anyway, I decided on a sure-fire strategy. Thi...

Last year I started a Pasta Week. Why? I was tapped out of ideas for dinners after cooking almost every night for me and the girls during quarantine. So, to get creative juices flowing, I made the last week of January, a long and boring month, Pasta Week. We loved it!  So we did it again.  It takes a bit of planning to pick the pasta dishes that fit our criteria:  New recipe!  Low on dairy (Leah is lactose sensitive)  Includes veggies  But once we get the dishes picked, and the grocery list made, the week has a little bright spot each night to see if we're going to LOVE a recipe or not. And the recipes we love usually make it into our repeat favorites -- like the Leek Carbonara we made last year and at least once a month since.  Here are the Recipes, and links, if I can find them.  Pasta with Roasted Cauliflower and Lemon Zest from Martha Stewart Meatless (link)  This recipe was pretty simple and came together quickly. But it was not a star. ...

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...

I've been drinking a berry smoothie almost daily for years. It started when I did ten weeks of Beachbody in 2014 (and hey, I lost some weight) and got hooked on their Shakeology powder. It just seemed like a much better breakfast than cereal or toast -- nutrition-wise. And I could drink it while making lunches and running kids out to bus stops. I pretty much follow the same recipe every morning and just change around the fruit. So here's my very unprofessional, yet delicious, smoothie concoction. Start with: Frozen Spinach - about 3/4 cup Frozen Fruit - almost 2 cups * Note: I don't actually measure anything, so this is just a guess. I've tried several different frozen veggies, including spinach, kale, boiled-then-frozen cauliflower, and found I just prefer the spinach. I used to puree and freeze the spinach in an ice cube try for easy-to-use servings, but lately, I'm just freezing our leftover salad spinach and using that. (In the picture it looks li...

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...

Thanks to some gift certificates for my birthday I was able to increase my growing cookbook library. This time, I've picked up some food blogger books and Gwyneth's latest. If ever I'm in need of a mini-vacation to the French countryside  Mimi Thorisson  and her Manger blog provide it. Her large (and growing) family, ancient home and thoughtful posts take me away. Her husband's textured images provide all I need to dive in to taste the food, feel the breeze and walk through her kitchen. This book has been on my wish list for months and I finally broke down. This is more of a good read than a recipe book, as I'm not sure I am adventurous enough to attempt the French dishes. Maybe. And speaking of French cooking, I got Clotilde's book from Chocolate & Zucchini food blog . She's in Paris and her recipes are all about simple dishes from The French Market. Lots of yummy-looking veggies. Deb Perelman is a food blogger from Brooklyn and the dishes s...

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 

With soccer season finally over (I have mixed feelings about this), I'll now have some extra time to get back to real menu planning. During soccer season, my weekly dinner menus heavily rely on frozen nuggets and veggies heated in the microwave -- what more can a working mom who gets home from soccer practice at 7pm do? Do you create weekly dinner menus? It's a life-changer. No joke. You'll spend less at the grocery store, throw out less food and help maintain a healthy diet. Plus, silence that nagging "what am I going to make for dinner tonight" question that runs on repeat on your drive home. It's all planned, sister! But it requires dedication. You can't plan a taco night and decide that evening you're in the mood for pizza. No sir! It's on the menu so YOU GET yourself in the mood to eat that taco. (!!) I sit down to plan meals on Saturday or Sunday morning -- depending on when I'm grocery shopping. First, I take a look at the week ahe...

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

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...

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...

What's the latest crazy mom trend out there? Bento-style lunch boxes! Or, at least it's new to me. I spent Sunday evening looking at Pinterest posts loaded with ideas on these artfully-crafted school lunches from all over the place -- the best using lunch themes, like spring, gardens, or Star Wars. (See my Pinterest Lunch Board here .) After all that review, I've come to the conclusion that some Moms have way too much time on their hands -- especially the ones who cut cucumbers into little flower shapes, sandwiches to look like hearts or bears and artfully chopping cheese sticks. (And that's just the tip of the iceberg, there are books being published and Instagram clogged with little masterpieces.) That's not appealing to me. However, the idea of nutritious (mostly-whole foods) lunches, divided into little groupings that are visually attractive does appeal to me. Very much. And the reusable containers cuts down on awful ziplock baggies and tinfoil. And I ma...

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...

Ever since reading "French Women Don't Get Fat" I've been dying to make my own yogurt. It's a French thing, apparently. And the author makes several good points about WHY you should cook-up your own yogurt; like control over what exactly what goes into it, most-active bacteria and less waste of those little plastic cups. This Christmas I got not one, but TWO, yogurt makers from my two favorite guys. And I've been waiting for the right time, and yogurt starter, to cook my first batch. And today was the day! I've been doing research and picked up a few tips; such as treating the pot with some ice to keep the milk from scalding, and use a ice bath to cool the milk instead of waiting for the milk to cool on its own. On a side note, I also read about people who made yogurt in a warm oven, a crockpot and with a warming pad. That's just super crazy! Step 1: Heat Milk to 180degrees Anyway, I used half skim and half 2% milk on one of the tips from t...

I give you ... The Grand Jessica !! I Made the Ultimate Sandwich From the top: Dab of mayo, ham, lettuce (from my garden), egg, sliced cheddar, avocado smashed into the bread -- all on a slice of fresh, crunchy French bread. Yum!! And, yes, it was as delicious as it sounds.  Related links: More FOOD posts